“Boy Math” is Ignoring the $174 Billion Dollar Market of Female Gamers
It blew my mind when I first read about it — so utterly absurd that I found myself reading it out loud. Women make up 48% of all gamers, but since 1985, only 6% of mainstream video games feature a woman as the main character. I read it a few more times aloud before flashing back through the cobwebs of my mind…the days of a gamer girl past.
I’m an ’80s baby filled with fond memories of playing Donkey Kong and Galaga. However, my earliest memories are of me playing Pong with my three uncles while wearing my favorite Spider-Man pajama set. Ahhh, the good ole days. Then there were the trips to The Pantry, a small convenience store in my hometown of Spencer, North Carolina, to watch my Aunt Sharon — aka the “Ms. Pac Man Queen” — munch on flashing ghosts in between sips of her Cheerwine slurpee.
Gaming has always been a part of my life, but it wasn’t until I launched my company Shero Comics in 2016 that I began to realize just how much of an impact gaming had on the trajectory of my life. Growing up an only child, Nintendo was my best friend. I cured my boredom with Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out and WWF WrestleMania. My Nintendo gave me “cool points” with my friends and cousins, fueled my insatiable thirst for creativity and gave me a peek into the whimsical land of Asia — Japan to be exact. However, the one thing I don’t remember from my Nintendo playing days was playing a game with a standalone female protagonist — especially not one that looked like me.
I felt a pang of anxiety as I scrolled through each and every headline that I found on the subject of women in gaming. Could this really be true? I began to reminisce, surfing through the mental Rolodex of games in my head, desperately trying to prove myself wrong. I think back through the ’80s, and nope, I don’t remember any standalone female protagonists then. I get to the ’90s, and there’s Lara Croft. Ding ding ding! There’s one! Then, I think back to Street Fighter and my all-time favorite video game, Mortal Kombat. Wait, there are a few women in those games! And then it hits me, Kitana was no Liu Kang, and Street Fighter was all about Ryu. As I flashed back through the 2000s and 2010s, it was almost like that scene from “The Fifth Element” when Leeloo mentally downloads what she’s missed over the past 5,000 years and is visually devastated after catching up.
Though I was less tearful than Leeloo and more Hulk Smash at the idea of women being overlooked in gaming for the past three decades, I couldn’t help but wonder how does something like this happen in one of the most capitalistic societies in existence. How could creating standalone female characters in video games be a bad idea in anyone’s boardroom? They do realize that women make up half the population, right?
Despite my initial disappointment, I figured maybe I was overreacting. Perhaps my “girl math” wasn’t mathing. Prior to my life as the Queen of Geekdom at Shero Comics, I had a long career in sales and marketing. Most notably, I spent six years at Coca-Cola doing corporate sales in Beverly Hills and Pasadena. One of the biggest lessons I learned while selling Coke was how important it is to serve the needs of your target market. Though before my time, I heard all about the “New Coke” debacle and how detrimental it could be to give your customer something they didn’t want or request. So, when it came to the gaming industry, I figured maybe the female market just wasn’t into video games enough for the powers that be to consider us a viable target market.
I went down the rabbit hole of Google to solve the mystery of where the disconnect occurred between women and the gaming industry. Soon I was slapped in the face with some pretty massive reality bricks: Article after article, year after year about women being missing from the multi-billion-dollar global industry of gaming.
The statistics were mind-boggling. Video games, which now included mobile games since the invention of smart phones, were estimated to bring in $347 billion dollars annually and counting. Women make up 47% of console video game players, 50% of PC video game players and 54% of mobile video game players. Yet when it came to the games that were being greenlit, only 6% of them were bold enough to feature a woman as a stand-alone protagonist.
Women gamers are either forced to play popular games with the limited number of female characters available or play as a male or even an animal. If they do actually find a female avatar, she’s likely a stereotype or a hyper-sexualized character created for the male gaze. And even worse, these women gamers often face harassment from male players when they play online games. And if they dared to complain, they’d face even more animosity from the male gamers.
By the time I looked at the statistics for women of color, I became full-on Scarlet Witch infuriated. But my anger went beyond the toxicity, exclusivity and stereotypical characters. By not including women in a significant way, this boys’ club is potentially leaving $174-plus billion dollars on the table. What kind of “boy math” is that?
If I learned nothing else in my years slinging Coke, I learned that you don’t leave money or a loyal customer on the table. Especially a customer who’s waiting to be seen, heard and championed. So, I channeled my rage into my gaming company, Shero Games, which focuses on developing games that give women and girls of color all the main character energy we deserve. The boys have been playing in our faces for far too long, and we are long overdue for some “girl math” in the gaming industry.
To quote a page from the Book of Beyoncé, “Okay ladies, now let’s get in formation.”
Support Shero Games and our mission to “get even with girls” by contributing to our gaming fund: https://sherogames.com/gaming-fund/
Bio: Shequeta L. Smith is an award-winning writer-director based in Los Angeles. In 2016, she launched Shero Comics, a multimedia company that builds comic book, film, and gaming IPs that feature women and girls of color as the main protagonists. Company Website Instagram Facebook
