What do Kratos, Duke Nukem, and the entire cast of Gears of War have in common? Over-the-top masculine themes, for starters. They absolutely love killing things, moving around weirdly (they must be getting stuck on their huge muscles), and making things go boom.
But do players, male and female, actually connect to these stereotypes, or are developers trying to push tired elements into games?
If you believe anything about a study written about by The Guardian, then 52% of players are now female. Surely, they don’t feel the need to play games that feature strong male jabs at female sexuality, like Duke Nukem, right?
And the men, are they themselves not tired of the male power fantasy main character?
The Study
Published by the Internet Advertising Bureau and reported on by The Guardian, a study revealed that 52% of players are female. The mobile gaming industry is a main component of the study, but console and PC games are also included.
Upon the release of the study, controversy sparked, since it’s main argument was less about females playing games and more about how mobile games should be considered real games.
For instance, the entire article by The Guardian defends mobile games as real games that count and only goes back to women to ask if women are “. . . playing mobile games because women are more interested in mobile games? Or is it because they have been told, over and over again, that ‘proper’ games are not for them? That, more broadly, video games are not for them?”
If we take a look at “proper” games, such as Call of Duty or Battlefield 1, we can gauge where the question comes from. It’s obvious: the strong male themes in games haven’t died down since the inception of video games. So, again, are these strong over-the-top themes pushing away females and making them gravitate toward mobile games?

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)
What’s Lenient About It?
What the study doesn’t tell you is that the demographics are skewed. The study counts women who simply opened Angry Birds once on their phones. Sorry, but that doesn’t make a player no matter how you slice it. All we can say for sure is that only 18% of people visiting gaming services like Steam are female, and the percentage of actual female players on Steam is probably smaller still.
It’s safe to say that 52% is too high of a percentage, although the real percentage of female players is unknown at this point. This is a world where questions like this aren’t in a rush to be answered, and when they are, they often consist of the wrong demographics.

(Source: Robert Couse-Baker, Flickr, free to use images)
An Untapped Market: Female Players
Which leads us to the point of the untapped market. The sex ratio for the world is 101 men to 100 women. That means that roughly half of the world’s population is female. If 52% of players aren’t female right now, then why aren’t they? It’s an untapped market that developers could be using to their own benefit and the benefit of the gaming industry as a whole. And, chances are, people would welcome it.
For a long, long time, “proper” video games have been fueled by those overly masculine perceptions that even male players are tired of. The male power fantasy has become jaded. Men can’t often relate to characters like Kratos, who look like they spend most of their days in the gym bench pressing hydra heads.
If developers were to, once and for all, kill these tendencies to fill their games with exaggerated masculine themes, men would get a fresh gaming experience. And perhaps women would be more inclined to play as well. In the end, the percentage of players would rise and include more women.

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)
Daydreaming
Imagine a world where more women played games and the men could enjoy relating to male characters that were actually believable. Nothing power fantasy, just real. Not only would developers probably have more fun creating games, but the industry would be much better off for it as well.
Female players would probably feel more welcomed, and try their hand at online gaming more often. This could lead to more dating among players, or perhaps player marriages. It would also raise sexual harassment and prejudice over gender, but in the end, most women are capable of handling themselves. Surely, not including women, and underestimating them, is worse than being more inclusive?
Something like this could eventually lead to a whole new perspective on gender roles and stereotypes, player biases, and global perspectives on gaming culture.
The Known Unkown
For now, all that is known is that 52% of players are not female, and that studies are in no rush to figure out the real percentage. Developers are choosing to rehash tired, safe, themes consisting of exaggerated, power fantasy masculinity, rather than create fresh characters. This could be a major reason why females gravitate more towards mobile games, but it is also proving tiresome for many male players.
As a whole, players (male and female) want new material, with more relatable characters. The heroic, fantastical characters based on epics are better left in epics like Homer’s Odyssey. There’s a reason why movies like Moneyball and The Descendants are so successful: flawed male characters that learn something, eventually leading to some sort of success or understanding of those around them, are complex, deep, and inherently interesting.
So, when will video games catch up with the news that to expand the industry, they need to be more inclusive?
I don’t outright hate this article but why is it so focused on proving that “real games” are all male power fantasies ?
Duke Nukem hasn’t done anything noteworthy in years. And gears of war and God of war are just two games that fall under the category.
If you can ignore a few of the mainstream games people who barely plays games can tell you about, more games are now much more focused on narrative where having relatable protagonists are essential.
Personally, I think while this article holds a strong point about how The Guardian badly inflated the statistics and outright lied to the industry, Jennifer (the writer) was WAY off-base about what needs to be done to resolve the current issue with the gaming industry.
For starters, of the games listed as “male power fantasies”, I do not see why Gears of War should even be on the list. The cast of GOW was hardly ever macho-men action characters like Duke Nukem and Kratos were, matter of fact, GOW’s theme more so portrayed a sense of brotherhood – Brothers in Arms fighting and bonding to the end (like the WW2 game series of the same name), there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. For some reason people give that series flak because of that. Even the creator (and formerly one of my idols in game dev) bashed his own project with sexist slurring by calling it a “dude-bro” game.
Further more, this was a game where I actually can relate to Delta One’s members, particularly Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago – the story truly had impact. I am guessing given the writer’s gender and more importantly her lack of experience with the game, I could see why she thought it belong there. Perhaps it’s not something most members of the opposite sex can truly understand. Like the games that revolve around sisterhood (see Bratz, Revolution 60, or Sisters of Battle from Dawn of War: Soulstorm, my most favorite faction from one of my favorite games of all time), not many men would be able to relate to that either. I can say with the last game in the parenthesis, the SoB received very little love and credit than they deserve.
That aside, I also think she’s been focusing too close to the AAA games from existing AAA veteran game devs, and trying to convince them to change is as good as beating on a dead horse on a transmutation circle expecting it to resurrect. If you have did what @priomblaze:disqus stated and look further into the indie devs – the true game devs of tomorrow, you will see there are devs trying to make a change to the industry with very relatable protagonists and a rising number of female protagonists, especially on the PC front. There’s also plenty of AAA and indie games centered around female and/or colored protagonists that are just under radar that even other women and colored don’t seem to want to play. What honestly happened to Velvet Assassin? Since I played the game in 2009 ago, I never heard it resurfaced again. It was truly a fantastic experience.
Finally, we don’t need to restart gaming or “kill these tendencies to fill their games with exaggerated masculine themes”. Let the AAA devs do what they desire and instead let the new indie devs take over. That’s the goal of progression after all am I right? The old dies out and the new take over. I honestly don’t mind EA or Activision drying out and closing shop. But let’s please keep the guns, violence, and gore.
I don’t know. From my experience game developers tend to go by stereotypes when designing characters… because they work.
Like it or not, humans judge people (virtual characters included), by how they LOOK. We are very used to matching patterns in movies, games, and daily life. A wimpy-looking Kratos might be less stereotypical, but he would also look silly in his given role. Imagine a skimpy guy fighting Zeus… yeah.
Also, stereotypes provide a great tool to game developers because they can let the player understand a character’s role by just looking at them. The tough drill sergeant, the protective mother, the awesome warrior, the wise elder.
In the art medium that allows for the least number of narative lines per minute of gameplay, developers need any trick they can get their hands on.
oh wow.