The world of video games is a virtual contradiction.
Video games first emerged as a global presence in the 1980s. Today, with thousands just a click or swipe away, they are no longer a marginal phenomenon seeking acceptance but are a fully recognised form of creative art. With the exception of cinema, other art forms can only dream about the numbers and demographics that gaming enjoys.
Global gaming industry revenues are predicted to reach €65.6 billion this year (a €4.8 billion leap from 2013) – approximately €16 billion in Europe – and €82.8 billion by 2017. Global filmed entertainment revenues, estimated by Statista at €73.2 billion for 2014 (up comparatively little from last year’s €71.1 billion), are rapidly being overtaken.
As a planet, we spend over three billion hours a week playing video games, says game designer and author Jane McGonigal (Reality Is Broken). What is surprising is the number of women playing, in spite of prevailing stereotypes that gaming – from social network, role-playing and interactive games to online gambling –are, well, a man’s world, commonly thought to be populated mostly by pimplyfaced teenage boys playing in dimly lit bedrooms or dimly lit cybercafés.
Worldwide the average age of gamers ranges in the 30s, and in North America and Europe, female gamers have grown to 42-49% of the overall computer and mobile gaming market. What’s more, at 36%, adult women are now the largest single demographic of America’s gaming industry, followed by adult men at 35%.
In Asia, an enormous gaming hub, over 43% of mobile gamers in 2013 were women. Statistics are still hard to come by for Africa and South America, but in Brazil, the number of female gamers has increased to over 41% of consumers.
However, these figures drop sharply when one looks at console gaming, played on dedicated devices like Xboxes or PlayStations as opposed to PCs, mobile devices or online. The most popular console titles include the controversial Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, Call of Duty (COD), football giant FIFA’s series, Pokemon and Animal Crossing; and here, despite the breakout popularity of the latter two, the percentage of female gamers drops to 20-30% consistently around the globe.
Which helps explain why critics are most vocal about the misogyny and violence against women in the gaming industry (this year’s Gamergate ‘flame wars’ came as no shock to core gamers). They also accuse games of being addictive, instigating antisocial or violent behaviour and contributing to health problems ranging from obesity to heart attacks.
Their advocates, however, point to studies that show that video games increase problem- solving skills (even among neurosurgeons), give teenagers especially a safe outlet for venting potential anger and even produce positive emotions like optimism, curiosity and determination. They may also help players build stronger social relationships through interactive games playable with or against anyone, anywhere on the planet.
Yet while studies fail to show a direct correlation between virtual and real violence, it is nevertheless telling that a popular art form created in an era of unprecedented gender and racial equality (with respect to, say, the advent of sculpture, painting or cinema) should come with so much conventional gender and racial baggage – and appear so resistant to fashionable ‘political correctness’.
Women in most of the best-selling games continue be hyper-sexed or damsels in distress: when they are not absent entirely. And according to a 2009 study conducted by Dmitri Williams of the University of Southern California, video game characters are overwhelmingly white (82.9%), followed by black characters (11.4%), with Asians and Latinos at 2.6% each. This despite the fact that, in the US, Latinos make up 12.5% of gamers and Latino children play more per day than white children.
Video games have since their inception been at the vanguard of profound, global social change. Yet while we’ve made great strides in their design, accessibility and variety, we still have far to go before we see global ethnic and gender realities reflected in one of our most popular pastimes.
The world of video games is a virtual contradiction.
