Contrary to popular belief, video games weren’t always a predominantly male-oriented pastime. As staff writer Dougie Powell from gameluster.com writes, “When the gaming industry first kicked off in the 1970s, [games] weren’t marketed toward a specific gender…early games such as Pong and Computer Space were considered unisex and never marketed toward boys.” According to her article, the split occurred sometime after the gaming crash of 1983, when gaming companies like Nintendo geared their marketing toward boys to appeal to a smaller and more manageable audience in toy stores—which were still segregated by gender at the time. More gaming companies followed suit until the belief that only boys could play video games became ingrained in our societies; industry kingpins like Nintendo went so far as naming their first handheld console, the GameBoy, after their new target demographic, an act that only served to further exclude girls from the conversation. 

But to assume that women derive less enjoyment from video games than men do because of this one arbitrary decision is sheer prejudice. If more women were compelled to join the minority of female gamers, many would find that they enjoy gaming just as much as men do.

Although official statistics show that 45% of all gamers are women as of 2021, the fact of the matter is that 41% of women who were surveyed indicated they were “casual” gamers, which includes playing mobile games such as Candy Crush or Subway Surfers. This article is not meant to disparage people who play games casually, but most mobile games are games in the traditional sense of being a quick distraction rather than a fully fleshed-out world that people pour several dozens of hours into. In contrast, around 70% of “hardcore” gamers are male, as opposed to the 30% of “hardcore” gamers who are female.

Karolina Cieślak from tryevidence.com notes that although female participation is slowly growing with the rise of esports, “in the collective consciousness, games are still associated primarily with men. They are the target for the majority of the promotional materials related to digital entertainment.”

The most prevalent cause of the skewed gender ratio lies in gendered upbringings. Toys for girls often pertain to activities that cultivate ideals such as beauty and domesticity, such as dolls, toy makeup, and play kitchens. On the other hand, toys for boys are meant to inspire a desire to be powerful and aggressive, examples of which include cars, guns, and video games. Children’s early interests and experiences are primarily determined by these gendered toys, which shape the people they grow up to be.

So we know fewer women play games than men, and why. But is that statistic representative of how much enjoyment any one person reaps from playing video games? Is one’s enjoyment solely dependent on their gender and not their personality and interests? And what about non-binary people, who may have been raised as female or male, but don’t identify with either gender? How do their gaming habits fit in with the whole “men enjoy video games more than women” debate?

While according to CNN, it is true that video games activate the reward center of the brain in territorial games more often in men, the same article states that “what [this] shows…is a brain basis for why men are more drawn to these types of games and why they are more vulnerable to playing them too much,” and not that they necessarily enjoy said games more than women.Video games play an increasingly important role in modern society, which is all the more reason to encourage women to participate in them and debunk stereotypes labeling them as inferior at video games.

“If we want to promote gender equality in these areas of our society, then we must recognize that the stereotypes about gender and video game performance are not only false but are also harmful outside of gaming contexts,” says Rabindra Ratan, assistant professor in the Department of Media and Information at ComArtSci.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying stereotypically feminine or masculine activities—a person’s gender isn’t defined by their interests. However, instead of perpetuating sexist beliefs about who should and shouldn’t participate in video gaming, gaming communities should divert their efforts to welcoming and enhancing the experience for everyone involved, because people should be able to play whatever they want, regardless of gender.

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