The evolution of women in video games continues at E3 2017
“We’re not trying to be bummers,” Sarkeesian said on the Engadget stage at E3. “But it’s like, let’s look at the actual numbers so we can actually improve for real.”
Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency’s managing editor, Carolyn Petit, have been compiling data on the gender of protagonists in video games announced at E3 since 2015, which plenty of people in the industry dubbed the “year of the woman.” Sarkeesian and Petit weren’t convinced, so they decided to dive into the actual numbers and break down the number of games announced at E3 that actually starred female characters.
“There was this sense in the air of, things are changing and there are more games starring women announced, et cetera, et cetera,” Sarkeesian said. “But we were like, OK, but we might be getting ahead of ourselves. So we just started counting. And we came up with numbers and we decided to track them over the years, which would create a really interesting data set moving forward in terms of judging how the industry presents itself and how it’s changing over time.”
As it turned out, at E3 2015, just 9 percent of new games starred women, while 32 percent had men in the leading role. In 2016, the gap grew — only 3 percent of newly revealed games featured female protagonists, while 41 percent starred men. This escalation made Sarkeesian and Petit nervous about the figures this year, but things are actually closer to 2015 — the so-called year of the woman — than 2016.
“The important thing, I think, is that we don’t rest on our laurels,” Petit said. “We don’t say, ‘Oh, hey, equality achieved!’ or whatever when, actually, the reality is that there’s still a lot of work to be done. These trends are encouraging and great, but they’re not, hopefully, the end of anything.”
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