Article on Girls and Gaming
Girls and gaming- Two odds together
Being a gamer never had anything to do with anyone’s age, gender, race or anything else. Having this said, it’s 21st century and this world is still struggling against prejudices and stereotypes. By the standards of some perpetuated beliefs gaming is claimed to be a man’s thing by the majority. A simple reason could be dominant presentation of men in most of the fields especially when it comes to developing and coding.
Globally women actively participate in gaming. An article published some time ago suggested the gaming populace in UK to be made up largely of women, up to 52%. This ratio saw a three percent increase within three years from 49% to 52%. However, it takes into account all kind of gaming from Xbox to online and mobile games.
Women generally have hard time making people digest their status of being a gamer. It’s believed to be a cool trait and women are rather expected to be cute. The expectations from women intensify to a whole new level when eastern side of the hemisphere is considered. Here we have more women in less challenging roles. But all this never stopped women taking up fields of their choice. The regular concept of the under participation of women in gaming in Pakistan is nixed with what’s found while taking reviews from some of the ladies gamer. Is gaming really a man’s thing or do we have women in here too? The easy to track population offered good insights about the gaming scene in Pakistan.
Mostly ladies asserted that the problems and often heard comments are what women are tired of hearing globally. Being a gamer girl stacks so many odds, the idea of a lady gamer is received with surprise at first. But then which sphere of life doesn’t have women now. “Gaming is genderless,” is how Anamta shuts down casual sexism over her choice of playing games while Farah isn’t fazed by this. Women decipher criticism in their own way some view the comments as sexist while for others it just boosts their morale to perform better. For them it’s always better to seal mouths with your performance. A fact to add to the amazement is mostly women like playing games either on computer or X-box. In case someone belittles that these are the views of ones who count crushing candies on phone as gaming. The results also reflect that most of the women are into the genres of role playing and strategy games.
“It all starts with cyber bullying and ends up with cyber flirt,” quoted a lady while sharing her weirdest experiences. Cyber bashers lately crash into messages to accept their friend request as reported by ladies.
Like every industry gender inequality prevails here too with less ladies in game development sector. There are not much women in gaming to write about female characters. It is also noticed that women, being 50% of the world’s population has only 20% female characters in games, with most of the games using them for attention purposes only.
For prominent inclusion of women in gaming there is a dire need for women to fiercely show up in Tech and game development industry. The more women we have in development the more women we attract in gaming.