Well Fastfinge this is an interesting question, and one which (as someone who is interested in geneder relations), I have considdered myself.

One thing first however, is you state that in the mainstream community %80 of those who play games are male. While this is distantly true, at the same time I do think there is a little more to it than initially appears. Most of the girls I've met who play computer games fall into two camps. Very casual, social gamers who play arcade style games as a random dayly occurrence, and incredibly serious gamers, part of the hardcore gaming crew who play rpgs, stratogy games or online mmorpgs with extreme seriousness. Among these groups of gamers, the ratio is more like 40-60, and even that is changing. Heck I played through all of the ff games with a female friend.

The one thing that I have never encountered are what you might call standard gamers. People who play the latest game as a matter of course, usually restrict themselves to very specific series of fps, war games or toom raider style exploration affairs, and are heavily interested in the latest thing and only the latest thing.

these standard gamers are a rapidly growing group, especially now games are a mainstream part of soceity rather than a miner interest, and it is this group to whom the industry tends to market games and to whom cultural sterriotypes of gaming apply.

I am not sure the ratios are quite the same for audio games, but to a great extent I believe them to be. Certainly I have noticed a pattern in online games or interactive fiction, those games like metroplexity which attempt to appeal to the standard gamer tend to have mostly mail player bases, where as those games with more to offer serious gamers tend to be more gender neutral, ---- heck in core exiles it's virtually 50-50. Similarly I've seen lots of female players of casual arcade style games, but comparatively few of games with mid range complexity.

How this applies to audio games I'm not sure exactly, though judging by the female players I've met who play interactive fiction or complex games, it does seem there is some sort of correspondance.

I will also note however that just because girls happen to be blind doesn't mean they aren't free of a degree of socialization in interests and outlook. For example, I would be willing to bet that the least played of the choiceofgames titles by male members of this community is choice of romance, (I've played at least the start on the choiceofgames site and do intend to buy the game in the future, but I considder myself pretty much gender neutral so it likely doesn't apply to mee.

I'll also add that this socialization factor applies in some degree to the faculty of competition, sinse men are generally encouraged to be competitive where women aren't, meaning basic competitive games such as chess are probably less encouraged among female players.

Of course, social trends aren't universal and I'm always pleased to meet men and women who go against them, but given that games generally as an activity apply more to men, it is only more independent minded women that will play them, just the same way it is only more independent minded men who will freely admit to liking children or frankly discussing feelings, indeed to a great extent the masculine sterriotype is as damaging as the feminine one and much harder to break out of though that is a very different topic.

Getting back to games, one very bizarre thing I have noticed for some odd reason is that there are far more women on the audeasy mailing list than this forum, which i absolutely can't explain .

Hi Tom.

One thing that struck me recently is just how socially loaded certain terms are. The term "game" for example implies competition. As a none competitive person who always played computer games for the exploration, I myself never particularly cared, but given that most women are not encouraged to be competitive I do wonder how much simply the term "game" is off putting.

Last night for example I spoke to a friend of mine who is heavily interested in plays, stories and acting. I found out she has an Iphone 4 and described the choiceofgames to her, sinse I'm fairly sure as someone who enjoys acting and stories she'd enjoy those as I do.

She replied she hadn't checked the games section of the ap store at all.

This was a case where something would! have appealed to her interests, but I'm fairly sure the word "game with it's usual connotations of some sort of competition rather than as with the choiceofgames an interactive story completely put her off.

This is why I have tended to find the women I've met who play traditionally masculine style games such as rpgs, or fps tend to also not particularly be overly bothered about female sterriotypes, indeed among my roleplay group, which comprises myself and three other married couples (although one chap's wife had to quit the game), the girls tend to have as much interest in rpgs, while my russian friend, who is about as far from being sterriotypically female as you can imagine freely admits to having played through gears of war cooperatively with her other half and enjoying stomping all the competition underfoot .

Contrastingly, I have met men who play computer games who I would considder very sterreotypically male, liking guns and shooting and sport and not wanting to lose etc, although most of those don't tend to be what I'd considder really hard core omnivorous gamers with a wide interest.

So sometimes I do wonder if the term "computer game" should be replaced with  something like "computerized interactive recreational  program" accept that that is a little silly, and I can't really imagine getting any visitors to audiocomputerizedinteractivereactionalprograms.net .

Well to remain politically correct, gamers would have to be replaced with computerized interactive recreational program engineers.

Lol. Dark, that is way too funny. I don't know how many people would visit a site like audiocrapp.net, but I do agree with your basic point. Certain terms like "game" are fully loaded and it implies a level of competition that may not even exist in that program.

As we mentioned before in another topic there are virtual reality programs where you can adopt a dog, cat, or some other animal and take care of it. While considered a video game there really isn't any competition in it to speak of. You just feed the animal, brush it, take it for walks, etc just like you would in real life. There are a lot of those sorts of virtual reality simulations dealing with anything from adopting a virtual pet to raising children which are classified as games, but would probably appeal to some women.

My ex wife had one, don't remember the name of it, but she could adopt a baby and then care for it. Change its diapers, feed it, put it down for naps, rock it when it was fussy, whatever which goes to show games aren't all about competition. Some are as you call "computerized interactive recreational programs" and are as far from what we normally think of as a game as can be.

That said, thanks to the technical revolution I think new technologies are being invented or created faster than language can catch up with the changes. Before computer games existed all there were card, board, and puzzle games. Not surprising they were among the first to get ported to computers along with new types like interactive fiction and arcade games. However, now days there are a number of games that might be better classified as recreational programs because they aren't games at all in the typical meaning. As we move towards the whole virtual reality type experience there are flight simulation programs that simulates flying an aircraft, there are tourism type programs where you can explore a town or city, virtual pets, virtual babies, and other simulation games that emulate some aspect of real life but are not a game as we understand the term. So we need to find some new terms to describe these more recreational type programs.

My boyfriend got me to actually click on this topic and take a look. I thought it would be something completely different. He's a computer science student, we have a female friend who works for a major computer company, and I myself am a female gamer/nerd. Our spiffy friend is big into women in computing.

To me, with no statistical data whatsoever to back this up, it seems that the accessible gaming market is slightly more evenly matched than among the mainstream games, and yes, I think that all the accessible arcade/card/puzzle options contribute to that slightly more balanced ratio. It's more acceptable to play a card game? It takes less brain work to play a card game? Card games are easy and sociable?

Maybe already being blind sheds a little of society's normality, allowing female gamers to feel more comfortable in this arena. It seems that the point is true as well that female gamers are either RS people, or serious hard core gamers. How many females do we see playing Super Liam or Dark Destroyer or Tank Commander? OK, we have a decent enough population in Swamp it seems, but that feels more like a community unto itself than a strictly gaming environment. Maybe most women don't have the urge to go nuts at the keyboard and be a top notch button masher to kill that Q9 boss. What do I know? I'm far from normal.

I have zero knowledge about gender study and gender makeup. I know that often times, women are more goal/task oriented than men. Keep the schedule going, clean the house, make the week's grocery list, clean the kitchen, get this and that little thing done and planned out on time. that doesn't really leave much time or energy left over for gaming. I know I have fifty trillion details going through my head in any given day, and though I like to RP on the mud I play, I don't have the energy or attention for it if I've had anything like a stressful busy day. Maybe it's a brain/personality thing across the genders?

We have come to know sims as sims, or apps or games. In fact, "program" will soon be replaced with app and many games become plugins for apps like facebook.
I think for FB, more women play than men. I totally see 80% more women on those games than I see men.

Good point about socialization, Dark. both the card/puzzle games and the RPG's at the opposite end of the spectrum are social games involving community. the more mid-range shooter games are single player, and thus more isolated. whether because of hard-wired personality, environment, or whatever, women generally tend to want/need that more community-based environment, and that extends beyond gaming into life itself.

Despite blindness, gender roles are still defined by the binary marketing in media, I think. I grew up with partial vision. I played boy video games alongside my dad, but guess what toys I was given? Barbies and baby dolls. I liked playing with cars and legos, but those weren't the toys I was given. I imagine that blind female children are given those same stereotyped toys a lot of the time, and are still effected by the marketing to children everyone else complains about.
Barbie commercials are voiced by women, and spaceship lego death war commercials are voiced by men.
Barbie movies are full of women, and Jimmy neutron (a sciency cartoon in the early 2000's) had male main characters.

that separation continues on into high school. I came from a crappy little town in the south. we had the typical extra curricular stuff-- drama, art,choir, sports teams. You could take some classes at the alternative high school like autobody repair and drafting, but I never heard of a girl being in those classes. I took choir, where the number of girls swamped the number of boys. there was no science club for me to get into so I could nurture my love of science. No technology club where I could learn more about computers. the only options were pretty  gender stereotyped.
Also, we have track team, and girl's track team. football, and girl's softball team. girls don't go out for the football team r wrestling, because it just isn't done. I guess the point of this ramble is that there weren't a lot of gender nutral options like tech or science club.

also, what do we call girls who like sports and getting dirty? Tom boys. that name in and of itself creates a gender separation.

So in short, I think that blindness in all its awkwardness does lower that divide somewhat, allowing women to feel more comfortable being themselves. having a disability, there's all this empowering ra-ra cheering about being strong and individual, so that plays into it. But I think we're all, for the most part, neatly separated by society's definitions of gender.

with technology taking over the world though, I think these lines are slowly starting to blur.

I agree on socialization Cinnamon and what toys children are given, though equally it seems to depend upon conservative background, for example I grew up with a fairly liberal outlook, was never discouraged from anything because I was male or encouraged to be interested in say sport because it was "appropriate for a man", indeed I remember being five and my dad patiently explaining that he was male, and wasn't a doctor but a nurse.

I don't think however your correct about the social aspect being the key similarity between the hard core and casual groups of female gamersMost of the hard core female gamers I've met play single player rpgs rather than multiplayer ones, indeed the ladies I know who tend to be interested in social gaming prefer (as I do), to roleplay in real time with a human gm off the computer rather than playing games like World of warcraft etc.

Also, fps games these days tend to be social, indeed a friend of mine was recently complaining that he'd bought the new titan assault game (an fps with giant mechs), for his Xbox, and resented the fact that there was no single player mode.

Most fps games these days like team fortress tend to actually be online community affairs with player vs player or in some cases cooperative gameplay, much as swamp and road to rage have. That is why I rather suspect the difference in fps is the purely social aspect of the shooting than anything else, sinse while I've met women who shoot real guns for sport, I've not met women who would have the necessary casual interest in guns to play a lot of sort of casual low key fps games. Then again, I probably don't have that interest myself and wouldn't play a game just because of it having a theme of guns or military significance if I didn't think it had some interesting mechanics, though interestingly enough I have met a lot of women who enjoy horror as a genre and play games like resident evil for that reason, indeed it was chiefly the atmosphere that attracted me to shades of doom in the first place so I do understand this attitude which might also explain the large number of ladies playing swamp.

On technology illiminating stereotypes, well your probably correct as far as women are concerned sinse though the term "tom boy still exists in literature I've never heard it used as a pejorative in reality, although I don't doubt there are some conservative institutions, environments and individuals where it still would be. Of course for men this is another story, sinse in a lot of ways men are far more limited in behaviour and outlook.

As regards to whether the audio gaming community is less gender sterreotyped I'm not sure. One thing I've noticed is that the more cleaque orientated, institutionalized blind people tend to have more serious gender biases, likely because at least some of the specialist institutions do. Certainly my specialist school did, despite the fact that with only 32 pupils in the entire school if you only talked to boys your own age for example you'd pretty much be limiting yourself to about two other people, meaning I at least and certainly a couple of the other boys interacted fairly freely with the girls, ---- something which actually got me into trouble on at least one occasion  (bare in mind this was a junior school and I was 8-10 at the time).

I have also noticed however that that sort of blind person is highly unlikely to play audio games. I suspect therefore it isn't so much that the Vi gaming community is less gender biased so much as the less gender biased blind people tend to be the ones who play games.