Women who play ‘casual’ games take them very seriously

One of the most enlightening things about GamesBeat Summit 2022 has been the focus on women in gaming. In a panel titled “Growth opportunity: Games by women, for women,” four panelists and moderator Wanda Meloni of M2 Insights discuss the women who are making games and the women they are making them for.

Several of the women on the panel stated that their biggest demographic is female — in fact, female audiences are a very large part of the general gamer crowd. Ariella Lehrer, CEO of Legacy Games, described the typical buyer of her company’s games as an older woman: “These women tend to like games that are single-player — they’re not as social as younger players. They like topics like mystery detective games, supernatural, true romance.”

Julia Palatovska, founder and CEO of Dorian, added, “People definitely enjoy collaborative experiences, both on the creation and consumption sides. Women in particular, they like to collaborate around content and connect around great narratives and experiences.”

Gamers are gamers, no matter what they’re playing

While these women would not call themselves “gamers,” they take their gameplay just as seriously as any other gamer demographic. During the panel, Robin Games’ founder and CEO Jill Wilson said, “I think it’s a really exciting, interesting twist to see that people can have a much more dedicated, hardcore behavior when it comes to their gameplay, regardless of what the topics are.”

Lehrer agreed, saying, “[Casual game players] don’t challenge themselves in the sense of leaderboards, but they’ll play a hidden-object game and not allow themselves to use any hints. They challenge themselves as opposed to participating in the larger context. They’re committed gamers, and they would never consider themselves gamers.”

Susan Cummings, CEO of the Petaverse Network and Tiny Rebel Games, added that the distinction between different kinds of gamers is vanishing. “We’re continually blurring the lines between what’s a game and what’s a gamer. Hopefully it starts to go away as a distinction between what’s a game, what’s for women, what’s for men.”