Carol Shaw
Shaw was one of the very first women to design and program video games and is often considered to be the first *professional* female video game designer.
One of the most persistent myths about female gamers is that they're a rare sight in the gaming world. But the truth is, female gamers are more common than you might think. In fact, according to Statista, women make up almost half (41.5%) of all gamers in the United States.
Most people use the terms gamer girl and girl gamer interchangeably. For people who associate the term gamer girl with the negative “fake” stereotype, the alternative girl gamer is a way to emphasize the gamer part of their identity. Girl gamers are a kind of gamer, but gamers first and foremost.
There are now an estimated one billion girl gamers in the world, so why is the stereotype that games are a pastime for teenage boys still so prominent?
Lack of role models
Esports tournaments are generally open to both sexes but the professional esports scene is very male dominated. Due to the lack of role models, many female players do not see esports as a viable career option.
Canadian Starcraft II superstar Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn is the highest-earning female esports player, almost doubling the lifetime earnings of the previous player. Scarlett started from humble beginnings, winning the NESL Iron Lady twice.
A version of kawaii, or Japanese cuteness, the gamer girl aesthetic often features cat ear headphones, Japanese school uniforms, and anime or Sanio accessories that create a playful, feminine vibe. Although in China, some girls incorporate streetwear apparel or heavier makeup to give it an edgier spin.
Rachell Hofstetter (born January 8, 1992), better known as Valkyrae, is an American live streamer and YouTuber. She is a co-owner of the gaming organization 100 Thieves and has been YouTube's most-watched female streamer since 2020. Moses Lake, Washington, U.S.
Alisha Marie is arguably the cutest female YouTuber to watch in 2023. She was born on 5 April 1993 (age 30 as of 2023) in Riverside, California, United States. Alisha Marie's YouTube channel has over 8 million subscribers.
Visit gaming or comic book conventions.
Conventions may be the most opportune places to meet like-minded women, as they'll most likely be there because of their own interest, and they're engaged in a large, public setting which makes anybody more open to conversation: ”That costume is incredible!
Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority. However, industry surveys have shown that over time, the gender ratio has become closer to equal. Beginning mainly in the 2010s, women have been found to make up around half of all gamers.
Despite Chu's theory, it obviously varies from player to player. It is not uncommon for players to have girlfriends or more elaborate social lives. Team Liquid players Christian "IWDominate" Rivera, Diego "Quas" Ruiz, and Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin all have girlfriends.
One piece of data showed that 76% of female gamers hide their gender when playing online, with many doing so in order to avoid sexual harassment.
According to recent statistics, 46% of gamers in the United States are female and women aged 18 and older represent 36% of video game playing population compared to boys aged 18 and younger at 21%.
At the age of just 15 years 229 days, Jaden, better known among gamers as "Wolfiez", walked away from one of the biggest esports tournaments with over $1 million in his pocket, making him the youngest esports millionaire from a single tournament.
For 2019, the numbers of female gamers had grown to 38% of the 1.33bn Asian gaming population, according to Google which collaborated with market researchers Niko Partners. For China, they now account for 45%, while for South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia the figure is 40%.
In their most recent report, Circana broke down the female playerbase here in the states, and here's what they've come up with for 2023 so far. Pretty awesome to see that the Switch has the highest percentage of female players, but the most important takeaway here is that roughly 50% of gamers in the US are female!
A female gamer, or gamer girl or girl gamer, is any female who regularly engages in playing video games.
A female person who games—and who, by virtue of being female, is inherently less skillful or more casual about gaming than the “traditional” male gamer.
As of March 2023, 49 percent of video gamer in the United States were female, with the remaining 51 percent of U.S. video gaming audiences were male. Currently, there are approximately 212 million gamers in the United States.
At 7.6 hours per week, the average gamer plays just over one hour every day on average. US gamers spend the longest, while German gamers spent the least amount of time on games out of the nine countries in scope (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden, Brazil, and South Korea).