4 myths about female gamers

Wiktoria Wójcik
2 min readFeb 27, 2023

Gaming is only for bros? Wake up, it’s 2023. 🙄
Don’t make the mistake of targeting gaming marketing ONLY to men.

You’ve probably heard countless myths about women gamers.
Today we will deal with the 4 most popular ones.

⚠ MYTH #1 Only men play games.

It’s like saying that only men watch movies, listen to music or have feet. According to the “Polish Gamers 2022” report, 47% of gamers in Poland are women.

Not enough? The report of the Entertainment Software Association indicates that in Europe and the USA, women account for 41% to 46% of all gamers.

⚠ MYTH #2 Women only play simple mobile games or simulators like The Sims.

Bullshit. Women play all sorts of games.

You can see it even on streamers. Take a look at what games LuluLuvely (one of the most famous gaming influencers) has recently streamed — Apex Legends, Valorant, Overwatch 2, Fortnite, Hogwarts Legacy, God of War Ragnarök etc. So, FPS, RPG, action games…

Yes — statistically more often you will come across a woman who plays, e.g., life simulators like The Sims, but this is not the rule.

Women generally put more emphasis on some aspects of games (adventure, design, story, roleplay) but they will still be visible in the playerbase of every game.

⚠ MYTH #3 Women are not interested in esports.

That’s not true either. It’s difficult to estimate the exact number of esports women’s fans, but according to Interpret data, they account for up to 30.4% of all viewers.

Statista gives more balanced data and indicates that 22% of all esports fans are women. Most of them are in South Korea — even 32%. The situation is worse for professional esports participants — the number of women players is still relatively small, but it is growing.

⚠ MYTH #4 Women don’t take games seriously.

Surely, you’ve heard that women are interested in games superficially, but that’s not true.

Gaming for women is just as important as it is for men. And some women have made careers around him. For example, Imane “pokimane” Anys, who is the 10th most followed streamer on Twitch with 9.3 million followers.

✍ Conclusion for marketers:

Every time you make a gaming campaign keep in mind that there will be women on the receiving side of it anyway.
In most cases, it will be hard to specifically target women but it does not mean you can forget about them.
Play into the core gaming motivations of a (human)player first.
ALSO: if done right there is a huge untapped potential when it comes to getting to female gamers — think about it.

What myths have you heard about women in games?
Please let me know in the comments. 💬

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Wiktoria Wójcik

co-founder of inStreamly, Genki.me & Streamcoi. Writing about GenZ, metaverse and gaming — especially from the angle of marketing.