Show Up for Fem Gamers: Improving Your Social Support Tools is Good for Business

The global gaming market was valued at 173.70 billion USD in 2020 by Mordor Intelligence. In such a competitive and lucrative market, expanding and maintaining your playerbase (the total number of active players in your game) should be a priority. Some tried and tested ways to increase player numbers are fixing bugs, adding content, and releasing downloadable content (DLC) . However, there’s an important piece to the playerbase retention and growth puzzle that many online gaming creators and publishers are missing: robust social support tools. Seeking social support is one of the strongest motivators for humans seeking out humans and is one of the main benefits of human relationships. There’s a wealth of research that shows online interactions, including via video games, is an effective way people seek out social support. Creating a positive social experience for your players requires fit for purpose social support tools e.g. code of ethics and reporting. Good social support tools could be the key to grow and support fem gamers and will also benefit your entire playerbase.

Women make up 45% of the global video game player base and are disproportionately affected by harassment in the games community, particularly in online games. In Europe’s Video Games Industry’s annual survey in 2020, only 23% of women reportedly play online games. Limelight’s 2019 white paper The State of Online Gaming indicates that men are more likely to play online than women. This disparity could be due to the amount of gender based harassment fem gamers receive. While men also experience harassment in online games, fem gamers disproportionately experience harassment due to their gender. 77% of women stated they have experienced at least one form of gender-specific discrimination which include things such as  their skills, gatekeeping, patronizing comments, and unsolicited relationship asks. To decrease the likelihood of being harassed, 59% of women hide their gender while playing online. In a thematic analysis of an online forum for fem gamers, users shared their strategies to reduce the likelihood of being harassed while playing online:

“A lot of the time I end up playing as male characters in MMORPGs so people don’t realize I’m a girl.”

“We try to hide what we are so people don’t flirt with us, send us stuff, send us messages we really don’t want, or pictures.”

“Better to play alone than subjecting myself to potential toxicity.”

These strategies are disheartening, to say the least, and may illustrate why numbers of online fem gamers are so low. Strategies that involved using social support tools were rarely mentioned, and many fem gamers  viewed them as being largely ineffective. For one such tool in a popular team based first person shooter, you can block someone and decline their friend request but they are still able to spam you with invites to play a custom match. In MMORPGs, it’s easy to create new accounts and characters after being blocked to continue harassing other players. These cracks in the social support system deter fem gamers from playing your online games. This could eventually lead to a shrinking playerbase and reduced revenue.

When you block a player but they still have the ability to harass you - based on a real fem gamer experience. Illustration: Jamie Blackett.

While game publishers can’t control other people’s behaviour directly, they can work towards improving their games’ social support tools to make communities more positive and inclusive. The quality of these tools impact the quality of play. Small tweaks can make a big impact on player retention and growth. Arguably, one of the best people to make these changes are the people affected by it. Which means you should be hiring more fem people. Including more voices and lived experience in the design and development process leads to more inclusive and successful outcomes.

An alert received after reporting a player with an inappropriate name - based on a real fem gamer experience. Illustration: Jamie Blackett.

User research is a cost effective way to identify the best ways to improve your social support tools. Gamers spend hours of their free time in your virtual worlds and are eager to help you create friendlier and more enjoyable virtual worlds. They are keen to let you know where the biggest pains in the social support journey are. Conducting this form of research will save your product and development team time and money by reducing guesswork and failed prototypes. One research method you could use is conducting a journey mapping workshop with fem gamers on how they really use your game’s social support tools. You can also conduct a daily diary study and follow up interviews to measure community satisfaction of these tools. Finally, an ethnographic field study where you immerse yourself in their world is a sure way to generate key insights into what draws in and pushes away fem players from participating in your franchise.

We are hopeful that the gaming world will make the changes it needs to become more inclusive.  if you need help conducting your own gaming research then get in touch with us! Our research team has decades of combined research experience in the gaming industry and we’re also gamers ourselves, so we get your playerbase!

Get in touch with us for free consultation by contacting Mark Brady.

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Thank you to my colleague Jamie Blackett for the amazing artwork that accompanies this post!