The Rise of the Hardcore Girl Gamer
Power-armor slick with rain, with the din of gunshots thundering across the desert, the female gamer holsters her rifle. She can be found venturing across the apocalyptic wastelands, flying intergalactic spaceships, looting dungeons and ancient temples, and sniping German soldiers in the ruins of World War 2. The rise of the hardcore girl gamer approaches ever nearer, and game developers are doing their best to appeal to this once-untapped market.
According the ESA 2009 statistics, 40% of all gamers are female. If this is so, then why do we continue to treat female gamers as a rare breed? Many began as fans of the "Kingdom Hearts", "Final Fantasy", "Pokemon" and "Zelda" franchises, yet there are a surprising number of women who play "typically male" games, such as "Halo", "Bioshock", "Fallout 3", "Half-Life", "Oblivion", "Fable", "Team Fortress 2" and "Call of Duty". In the web series, "The Guild", the female characters are all obsessive MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) players, although one of the female antagonists bemoans the protagonist by saying that she's an "FPS kind of girl."
The science fiction RPG "Mass Effect 2" represents a major shift toward appealing to the female demographic. In ME2, not only do girl gamers have the opportunity to create a female avatar to represent themselves, but they have the opportunity to have six love interests: three male, one female, and two androgynous, female-like characters. While it can be argued that the potential lesbian relationships are for male players who happen to like playing female characters, game developers still are trying to appeal to a female demographic.
Nevertheless, we still are in dire need of more female main characters in games where the player cannot customize his/her own avatar. Since there are almost as many female as male players, there should be no reason to not. Yet, for some reason, those "gender-neutral" games which appeal to both sexes contain male protagonists (ie. "Zelda", "Kingdom Hearts" and "Pokemon Red/Blue"). Why cannot a female protagonist appeal to both male and female gamers? The answer is not to create "girl" games and "boy" games, but games that appeal to all genders, or to none specifically.