The boundaries of technology continue to expand, and, with it, the so-called glass ceilings of traditional gaming roles continue to get broken down too. One such area is that of the female gamer. Whilst gaming has always been considered a male-dominated field, that can no longer be justified with females almost leveling the gender split in terms of consumerism and even leading the way in some aspects including bingo.
60 million bingo players make up the American bingo scene with 57% of these being women. Head to bingo with PayPal site and you will find more feminine brands and colors being championed as males seemingly sit on the back-burner. Whilst women dominate the bingo scene, men still have overall hegemony in the gaming industry, but that is slowly being cut down.
Female gamers rack up impressive numbers
That old-school belief that video gaming is for men only has been ripped to shreds in the past decade or so. As research from Barclays Corporate Banking discovered, women spent just over a billion pounds on video games between 2018 and 2019 which amounted to a third of video games spending that year.
In fact, women now make up 46% of gamers in total, with one billion females taking part in video gaming. But, just where has this incredible rise come from?
Why mobile gaming has helped
Mobile gaming – like the rise of the female gamer – came out of nowhere. The most common device for American gamers is the smartphone with 60% of adult gamers placing the smartphone as their number one choice as opposed to the computer at 52% and the games console at 49%.
Whilst mobile gaming has gone hand-in-hand with the rise in female gaming, the latter is not becoming more mainstream in the same way that male gaming did. For example, more than a third of female gamers are categorized as “time fillers” which simply means that they play games to pass the time. That number seems unusually high when considering that just 19% of men fall into this category.
Whereas men prefer the social stimulation that consoles bring, women also seem to make the most of their alone time with one-player games on mobile devices. It truly is interesting to note how the genders differ in this remark.
Female roles and characters play a major role
Of course, with gaming once being a male-dominated arena, game developers focused almost entirely on creating male characters. However, developers have had to move with the times alongside the rise of female consumerism.
As such, characters such as Princess Peach in the Mario games to even the female soldiers added by Sledgehammer Games to the new Call of Duty in 2017 – to honor the 350,000 American women that answered the military call during the Second World War – have given females new personalities to embrace and idolize.
Women have even entered into the realm of subscription with female gamers such as iHasCupQuake – who has had over two billion views on her videos – providing female gamers an entertaining outlet from someone who they can perhaps relate to and learn from.
Where is the female gaming heading?
Female gamer participation does not seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, the more that the glass ceilings within society get broken down, the more that females seem to be venturing into previously considered male-dominated areas.
The creation of female characters and roles have inevitably sparked female interest in the gaming industry whilst the proliferation of mobile gaming and offshoots such as bingo and “time-wasting” games have only served to deepen that interest. That interest and participation are only likely to grow.
