Gender Segregation in Gaming

    We were looking at a few statistics last week relating to the female population within the games industry and how they are vastly outnumbered in comparison to male numbers. It was also asked whether there was a link between the number of females playing games and females working in the industry.

    I think that unfortunately there is a fair bit of stigma that surrounds video gaming with regards to the type of people that associate themselves with it, alot of people still think that only young boys play these games, however we know this is not the case. Especially nowadays where casual games, indy games, social games are all swarming the market. I remember reading an article in Edge magazine a while ago about how social networking was changing the face of gaming, it also talked about how Zynga's Farmville had managed to attract something like almost 70 million users (composed of both female and male players) in a matter of months, which is absolutely mental. I suppose this suggests that in order to increase the amount of female videogamers there should be some kind of synergy between video gaming and other more unisex fields, like social networking in order to balance out the numbers. Developers have been doing this more commonly I feel in recent years, with titles like Just Dance, Nintendogs, Super Monkey Ball etc. hitting the market, which in my opinion are female/'neutral' games. 
    Let's face it, even though stereotypes are typically something to frown upon, they do ring true sometimes. Men/boys love shooting, racing, war, blowing stuff up and women/girls generally speaking like less aggressive themes like... baking. Obviously I'm taking the piss with the last one, but on a serious note there is definately a contrast between the genre of games that males and females play. Recently I've been playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops, (a war themed FPS) a fair amount and I'd say that roughly 95% of the players I hear speaking are male, and when I do hear a female player usually this is followed by some harrassment from male players, which probably doesn't help the gender segregaton dilemma.

    Anyway I've gone slightly off track. In the article we were given to study it was reported that the jobs that women were occupying were positions relating to marketing, IT, Human Resources etc. less development orientated roles. This report was done around 2004/5 I think so hopefully since then there has been an increase in female numbers because of the industry's emphasis on opening itself up to a unisex demographic. I think in the future, females in the industry will begin to spread themselves over the more 'core' roles associated wth games development, for example developer, art or coding positions. And again this I feel will be down to gamings expanse into areas such as the ones previously mentioned. If this was to happen I think that this would be better for the industry, as it may break down the viscious macho circle that the games industry has allowed itself to get stuck within.