There's something to be said about kicking back after a long day and playing a solid video game. Letting all your responsibilities melt away while blasting aliens in the face with a bazooka or dominating your buddies in a word game is endless fun, but if you've ever spent any amount of time lurking around in the gaming community, you'll know that there's a connotation that it's very male dominate.
This is something that Google wants to address with a new initiative called "Change the Game."
Google partnered with Newzoo to take a look at the presence of women in the gaming space, and the results just might surprise you. The study showed that 65% of all women play mobile games of some sort, and women are actually more active mobile gamers compared to men with 43% of women playing games for more than five days each week compared to just 38% of men doing the same thing.
It's clear that a lot of women enjoy playing mobile games, but when it comes to the industry itself, the numbers aren't nearly as high. Google discovered that just 24.8% of workers in the gaming industry identify as either female or transgender, and likely as a result of this, only a mere 30% of women feel that games being released are made for them.
With Change the Game, Google is launching an interactive web experience that talks about mobile gaming and women in the United States. Alongside this, you'll also find a new short film shedding light on the same topic and a collection of games in the Play Store that feature strong female protagonists.
Once you're done checking out Google's releases for Change the Game, head to the comments and let us know what your favorite game and/or female protagonist in a game is. She's not from a mobile game, but my vote easily goes to Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn. What about you?
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