The presence of the Internet has vastly changed the landscape of the world we live in currently. The way we handle daily transactions either business or personal-related significantly impacts the relationships we built within the society we live in and it definitely alters the way we perceive the value of life. What’s life without free WI-FI? I can bet that anytime you go into a restaurant or a café, the first thing you look for is the WI-FI password, and that’s only if you don’t have fast and reliable 4G data on your cell. It’s true, and we can’t deny this issue plaguing our societies and the communities we advocate for. The Internet provides us with an array of services- forget Online Banking! We can even place bets online. On BettingTop10, we can even access predictions and betting strategies without being physically present in betting centers like we used to, way-way back in time! How convenient is that?
However, this question remains in my mind, and I’m sure does in yours too. Why then does gaming exists in a male-dominated scenario and female gamers are not classified under the term “gamer”? Why the double standards in the representation of who a gamer should be? Is there an underlying cause to this question or is it just the part and parcel of an egalitarian movement taking place since the start of the 60s? Understanding the outrage and anger it has caused on the female gamers, many reject the term “female gamer” and believe it to be endemic to stereotypically male-dominated industry.
Let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we? Tradition. Yes, long lines of deeply embedded traditional roots and culture have identified and put forth the way and how a lady should behave, what they should wear, how they should go about their business in life and most importantly, what they can and cannot do. I find it explicitly hard to identify the line beyond culture and plain idiocracy. No matter how much you try to justify certain things under “culture and tradition”, you still find yourself shrugging.
Well, the same goes back to gaming among the female race. Some games are challenging, and typically involves a whole deal of action-packed missions, stacked with fast-paced explosive action and combat and first-person shooter- games such as PUBG, Fortnite, and Counterstrike. Other games, referred to as mobile games and Facebook games, are reserved for audiences who prefer interpersonal relationships through character development and plot dynamics and also in-game communication. An example of a game that creatively encompasses both of these characteristics is PUBG, unsurprisingly becoming a preferred game among youths and adults from as young as 10 to over 60 years in age. The female race is not far behind. Recently, over 41% of gamers are female counterparts, showing an upward trend over the years. Unsurprisingly due to the increasingly liberated and free world that we live in, male societies do not oppose female counterparts in these areas of leisure and hobby as much as before, which could account to acceptance of female gamers in societies across nations. Women over 18 years of age were the highest recorded market demographic when it comes to playing games.
The movement of saying “No” portrays much more than just the surface when it comes to empowering female gamers. Female communities seek more equality and the choice to freely choose whichever game they would want to play. I’m not going to lie, I was given a Barbie video game growing up and now, I can proudly admit that I am a gamer, and should not be singled out for my gender. Gaming offers a form of release, a different dimension in this world in which I can escape to and once I’m down from the high of gaming, real life is seen as an interesting illusion. Female Activist groups can be seen marching, protesting and advocating entrepreneurial feminism and gender empowerment with the absolute goal of challenging the stereotypic male psyche which has been led to believe that all women should do in life is to serve them, and their families.
The emergence and uprising trend of female YouTube gamers also push forward and advocate gender equalities through the freedom of speech, empowering scores of female gamers across countries and nations. iHasCupQuake, SSSniperWolf, and Aphmau are just a few examples of real-life female YouTube gamers with millions of followers and subscribers, most of them being women themselves. This is such a positive and welcoming trend to look at, as compared to a few decades ago when women are supposed to act according to how the men in their lives decide them to and how focused they should be in feminine values, the family household and children. Marketers and video game corporations now specifically include the female audience in games, and therefore, are extremely careful to showcase or present female characters that seek to demonstrate rampant sexism and the gender disparities to be not as omnipresent as they once were.
However, the benefits aside from distracting females from busy work lives and/or an unassuming one through gaming cannot be denied! Whilst gaming unarguably has its bad times, it does improve one’s focus, attention, and even hand-eye coordination through multitasking and virtual stimulation of the mind and its coordinated muscles. A study conducted by the University of Texas Medical Branch even discovered that a young group of gamers can outperform medical residents and surgeons in virtual surgeries. Why is this strange? Simply put- these youngsters play an average of 2 hours a day on video games whilst the others did not at all. Many studies have been conducted over the past decade in understanding effects, implications and consequences of children, youth and adults in playing games, as part of an ongoing investigation into the question, is gaming really harmful for the human psyche?
Conclusion
There are considerable differences between classifications and genres of different games, with each statistic bring a different value into the lives of both women and men. Female gamers are a rising trend and should be viewed as a formidable data by any marketeer, as they now represent the future of all gamers.
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