Women are no longer considered to be a minority in the gaming community. Female gamers are slowly increasing in numbers and are emerging from the shadows. According to an article by Lev Grossman regarding the large amount of Americans who play video games, he mentions that more than 145 million Americans play video games (1). He states that, “Nearly half of gamers are women.” This means that around 72.5 million Americans are female gamers, making them essentially at the same level as males. There is also a large amount of women who enjoy to live stream their video gameplay on social video platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. From my experience with Twitch, I have seen an even amount of both female and male gamers. Most females that I …show more content…
It could be that females enjoy online gaming due to the ability of being anonymous. Some females would choose to be anonymous because they don’t want other gamers to be stereotypical towards them. Other than the noticeable increase in girl gamers, women enjoy playing video games where they can look at unrealistic images of men which men do as well, but with women. In the article, “Gender and Games” by Liz Danforth, the author mentions that in a recent discussion about gender in the LibGaming Google Group, a woman spoke of having a crush on Squall in Final Fantasy 8 and enjoyed playing him more than the girl characters. I enjoy playing many games, including Final Fantasy. The male characters in most games are attractive, but most of the times when I choose a game to play, I choose it because the story grabs my attention. There are plenty of games where the character you play is a female such as Tomb Raider, but male play these type of games because they find the storyline intriguing. Although many people say that girl gamers are a minority, females are on the same level as males in the gaming