There has been some recent debate about the use of female playable characters in video games and what impact a female lead will have on actual sales. This topic is right up our alley at EEDAR, since the gender of playable avatars is one of the features we track for every game.
As an industry, we still clearly have a bias towards males characters, with 90% of all video games released in the U.S. and Europe on seventh generation consoles having playable male characters. However, that 51% of games this generation have playable female characters is an incredible accomplishment for our industry and reinforces our progress towards serving ever widening demographics. Even when core (Action, Shooter, RPG, etc.) and casual genres are separated, the percentage of core games with playable female characters remain at a respectable level, while the male/female ratio in casual games reaches parity.
However, the two primary arguments on the subject are not gender parity, but rather the impact of playable character gender on the quality and sales of core targeted games.
For the next graph, we arranged the data to show games that allow you to play only as one gender (Only) and games that allow you play as either gender (Either).
Analyzing the average review score of over 910 core genre games, the difference in quality scores between the two genders is insignificant. Surprisingly, having an indiscernible gender correlates with lower review scores by a significant amount (sorry Spores!). However, “Not Discernible’s” low score is likely due the character design; these games tend to have robots or cute furry non-gendered creatures that are harder to identify with.
While the entire debate is contextual to the type of game you are making and probably more dependent on elements such as quality of development and marketing budget, console games over the last 5 years show no aggregate statistical evidence that indicates that gender selection (aside from having no gender at all) impacts quality scores.
Sales, unlike reviews, do not have an arbitrarily restricted range of 0 to 100; this makes them harder to quantify. The colossal disparity in video game sales cloud statistical analysis due to the quantity of outliers. Games such as Mario, Madden, FIFA, and Call of Duty are your top ten sellers every year; yet their exclusion of female playable characters has little bearing on their success. Mario’s success (Galaxy 1 & 2) is due to its gameplay and iconic status, Madden and FIFA are officially licensed products of iconic sporting events, and the Call of Duty series is based on historical and modern day wars (even if fictional), where women are restricted from fighting on the front lines.
In terms of gender equality, the factors that drive sales are based more on brand licensing, marketing budgets, development budget and a thousand other factors that have little to do with the gender of playable avatars. But as gender relates to game quality, as long as consumers and media critics rate games purely on their inherent quality (and the data suggests they do), then our industry is progressing nicely.
