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The Ideal Female Video Game Character
There are approximately 212 million gamers in the United States, as of 2023, according to Statista. Of these 212 million gamers, 49% in the US are female, and 51% are male.
Despite almost half of video gamers being female, new research published in the Journal of Royal Society Open Science found that just 29.37% of characters in video games are female, from an analysis of 13,000 characters in 50 video games. To add to this, the research found that 94% of games had more male dialogue than female dialogue.
The gender imbalance in the video game industry has been a prevalent issue for years, with research finding that female role models in video games are rare, and if they are present, they are often highly sexualised. Here at Emucasino, we wanted to delve into this further, to understand what gamers are searching for when it comes to female video game characters.
Research into female gaming characters
We took a look at blogs, forums, and articles to identify the 40 most popular female video game characters in the industry. Once we had this data, we searched these female video game characters with particular keywords to identify what terms were being searched for the most, and this revealed some interesting results.
The below table shows the 10 most searched female video game characters with the term “sexy”. Our research shows us that the two most searched characters are Chun Li and Princess Peach, with an average of 1,000 searches every month.
| Keyword | Avg. monthly searches |
| chun li sexy | 1000 |
| princess peach sexy | 1000 |
| lara croft sexy | 720 |
| widowmaker sexy | 590 |
| jill valentine sexy | 260 |
| rosalina sexy | 260 |
| ada wong sexy | 210 |
| bayonetta sexy | 210 |
| tifa lockhart sexy | 170 |
| 2b sexy | 140 |
The next highest searched female video game character is Lara Croft, with an average of 720 searches per month for “Lara Croft sexy”.
From this data, we searched different body parts such as arms, legs and waist along with the highest searched female gaming characters in the above table to find out what people are searching for the most. We utilised this data to create an image that combines the top searched female video game characters and their body parts for the ideal female video game character.
Using MidJourney, we combined the most searched body parts to create a depiction of the ideal female video game character. The character is made up of the arms of Lara Croft, the legs of Chun Li, the face of Princess Peach, and the chest of Lara Croft.
The ideal female character according to gamers
The female gamer we have created using AI is in line with research from the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, demonstrating the stereotyped gender representation we have typically seen in video games. According to their research, male characters are hyper-masculine, while women are hypersexualised.
The male characters in video games, according to the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, fit an alpha male stereotype of being strong and aggressive physically. The male characters often wear extensive armour, sometimes twice the size of their body, and hold generally disproportionate weapons.
In contrast, the research shows women in video games are typically represented as fragile, and hypersexualised. In video games, the Institute found that the characters are voluptuous and thin, and their clothes bring attention to their bodies with prominent breasts, accentuated behinds and provocative clothing. In fact, according to research by American researcher Beasley who reviewed video game characters wearing a top with visible cleavage or pecs, over two-fifths of the characters had abnormally large breasts.
Commenting on the character depiction, Mike Greenberg, General Manager at EmuCasino, said: “We wanted to investigate into the hypersexualisation of female gaming characters within the video gaming sphere. We know that women are typically stereotyped in video games because they have been created with male players in mind, so we decided to use real-life search volume data to identify the most searched-for female characters.”
“By cross-referencing our data with popular search terms and body parts, we were able to utilise the AI tool, MidJourney, to create the ideal female gaming character. This character is in line with the research we have conducted, with gamers searching the most frequently for Lara Croft’s chest, Princess Peach’s face, Chun Li’s legs, and Lara Croft’s arms.”
“As a contemporary and fun-themed online casino within the gaming space, we wanted to use our resources to highlight the stereotypes we see in the industry. We hope that this research will give people food for thought the next time they sit down to play a game.”
/Stewart Coggin News editor
