Are Games Losing Men? Why There Are So Many Women in Video Games Now

The announcement of God of War: Laufey has sparked a new wave of discussion about there supposedly being too many women in games now, and that they're allegedly pushing men out. After all, the "feminization" steamroller has reached one of the industry's biggest symbols of masculinity and brutality — the God of War franchise itself.

I, the author of this piece, decided to dig into whether there really are more women in games now, why the industry has changed, and who's actually responsible for this feeling that "the agenda" is somehow to blame for everything.

Yes, but not as many as you might expect. All the available data and statistics indicate that male characters and protagonists remain far more numerous. The most objective figures come from Steam's own statistics on games tagged "Female Protagonist." While that count has grown nearly tenfold over the past 10 years, to over 2,260 titles, that's still only about 10% of all releases on Valve's store in 2025.

For comparison: according to a 1989 study, male characters appeared in nearly 60% of arcade games, while female characters appeared in just 2%.

We analyzed the 120 best games of 2025 according to Metacritic and got similar results: 38.3% had male protagonists, 15% had female protagonists, and another 33.3% either let you choose your character's gender or featured a mixed cast of heroes, as in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Assassin's Creed Shadows.

That said, this isn't purely, or even mainly, about raw numbers. Over the past decade, the number of genuinely significant female characters has grown, and their portrayal and positioning have become the subject of intense debate and sparked plenty of conflict. Put simply: women haven't just become more numerous in video games — they've become far more visible.

First, the number of blockbusters and major projects with female protagonists has grown. This includes both new IPs like Horizon or A Plague Tale, as well as "female" sequels and spin-offs of traditionally male franchises. Sequels that swapped the protagonist's gender existed before too — Super Princess Peach or Silent Hill 3. But there are incomparably more of them now: in 2025 alone we got Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Silent Hill f, and Ghost of Yotei. Even more importantly, studios increasingly explain such decisions not as a desire to "refresh the formula," but as a pursuit of greater representation and gender equity. We gathered the most significant heroines of this kind in our selection: best games with female protagonists.

Second, there's a noticeable trend toward more female characters in genres and franchises traditionally associated with a male audience: action games, strategy games, shooters, horror, and so on. For instance, GTA 6 will be the first game in the series with a female protagonist (read more about Lucia in our material about GTA 6).

In Civilization 4, only 4 of the 34 faction leaders were women, while in Civilization 6, 17 out of 56 leaders are women. That can fairly be called a deliberate move toward gender balance.

Third, the heroines themselves and the narratives surrounding them have changed. Where images oriented around the "male gaze" once dominated — extremely sexualized appearances, passive roles, subordinate positions, an absence of any unique internal conflicts — games are now increasingly shaped by a feminist lens.

The most telling example here isn't even Western projects, but the evolution of Nintendo's heroines. Princess Peach in the early Mario games is a maximally cartoonish damsel in distress. In the new feature films, she's a warrior and a fully-fledged hero with no less screen time than Mario himself.

Alongside this, games are paying increasing attention to women's themes, problems, and conflicts. And this isn't only about feminist storylines centered on inequality, discrimination, and resisting imposed roles. Stories about motherhood, growing up, family relationships, and similar topics are increasingly entering the mainstream.

This doesn't mean such themes and conflicts weren't represented in games before. Metroid 2, in its own peculiar way, already plays with the theme of motherhood. But now such heroines and ideas appear everywhere, even in pointedly masculine projects. Sadie Adler is Arthur Morgan's closest ally, and Arthur himself, in RDR 2, among other things, helps organize a suffragette rally. Thira in Doom: The Dark Ages ultimately ends up in a damsel-in-distress situation, but you certainly couldn't call her weak or dependent.

At the same time, despite all these feminist trends, video games remain a pluralistic and diverse medium. Male protagonists haven't disappeared, and neither has fan service. Plenty of projects build their entire marketing around radical sexualization — from hyper-successful titles like Genshin Impact or Stellar Blade to thoroughly niche ones like Waifu Tactical Force, where a huge share of the polygon budget goes toward realistic animation of an enormous bust. And Kratos isn't going anywhere either: God of War: Laufey is just a spin-off. If you're into dynamic action games with charismatic heroines, here's a selection of the best action-adventure games.

So why does the discussion around women in video games attract so much attention? Why are "FemStation" memes so popular? Why do we feel like there are too many women in video games now?

The contrast effect and the violation of a norm. The simplest explanation is that it feels like there are too many women in games because there used to be far too few of them, to the point of being nearly invisible. In psychology, this cognitive bias is called the contrast effect: a phenomenon is perceived not on its own terms, but relative to prior experience. If a male protagonist was the default setting for decades, any noticeable increase in the number of heroines feels like a sharp imbalance.

On top of that, for a significant portion of the audience, the dominance of male characters and the male gaze is perceived as the norm, as the natural state of things — simply because that's what people are used to. And humans are, by nature, conservative, inclined to defend the familiar order and to perceive any change as a threat. This partly explains the feeling that modern female characters are "ruining games," that developers are pushing an agenda, and that men are being oppressed. This perception is further fueled by the sheer volume of low-quality projects, terrible writing, and cartoonish heroines out there.

Culture wars and games as a "strawman." But the main reason is that women in video games have become a site of ideological conflict and part of a global culture war.

For many left- and right-wing politicians, opinion leaders, and bloggers, games have become a convenient strawman used to mobilize audiences, identify enemies, and promote agendas. Because the gaming audience is massive — over 3 billion people. Because it's a developed industry that's always in the public eye. Because games let you appeal to personal experience and nostalgia.

And this culture war shows no signs of stopping, because it's maximally beneficial to everyone involved. Politicians and public speakers win voter support by criticizing "ugly" or "overly sexualized" heroines. Elon Musk, for instance, has been known to do this — not always successfully.

Thanks to this war, Sweet Baby Inc. lands contracts to help create more equitable and representative heroines, while feminist advocacy organizations secure grants to study inequality in video games. Bloggers stoke the fire with videos titled "I'm so sick of the agenda," then collect donations or social media payouts (for instance, X pays creators based on engagement around their posts — views, replies, and reposts).

What we're effectively watching is the existence of two information bubbles, whose audiences keep growing more radicalized, trusting outright fakes and conspiracy theories. On one side, the same stereotype keeps getting repeated endlessly — that gamers are exclusively right-wing, sexist, and chauvinist. Even though plenty of research proves otherwise, and "woke masterpieces" like TLOU 2 and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 have sold in the tens of millions. On the other side, people spread lies — for instance, that journalists were pushing Concord (despite it sitting at 64 on Metacritic) — and circulate conspiracy theories about Sweet Baby Inc.

The case of Space Marine 2 is illustrative: while some accused the game of pushing a "modern agenda" simply because it featured a single female commander in the Imperial Guard, others criticized it for a lack of "tolerance."

The reason, unfortunately or fortunately, isn't a reptilian conspiracy trying to deprive us of testosterone, a shadow government, or feminists who hate masculinity. It's all far more mundane and far more complicated than that.

Women represent potential profit. Like Lara with her triangular chest or Eve in her unzipped jumpsuit before her, today's "woke" heroines are created to make money. According to ESA data, 212.3 million people in the US play video games at least an hour a week, of whom 53% are men and 46% are women. A similar picture holds across most other Western markets, and in Russia, according to some estimates, women now make up as much as 49% of gamers.

At the same time, women who play games:

This means that for the console and PC market, women represent a massive audience that's still nowhere near fully tapped, and one that has proven its financial viability (mobile games are the most profitable segment of the market). It's logical for companies to do everything they can to court this audience, including by adding more female characters. The trouble is that, in their efforts to attract new audiences, they often end up neglecting existing ones. For example, Electronic Arts executives demanded that BioWare make Dragon Age: The Veilguard more lighthearted, casual, and colorful in order to attract gamers unfamiliar with the franchise — reasoning that existing series fans would buy the game regardless. We covered this episode in our material: "Anthem with Dragons": BioWare Devs Reveal What Went Wrong with Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

What's more, mass culture has proven over and over that feminism, inclusivity, and equality sell extremely well: Taylor Swift's and Beyoncé's platinum albums, Barbie's billion-dollar box office, popular shows like The Handmaid's Tale or Fleabag.

And, to repeat, no matter how hard anti-woke commentators try to convince you using the failures of Concord and niche indie titles, the gaming world isn't nearly as patriarchal and masculine as you'd think. What's more, research shows that, contrary to stereotype, gamers tend to support inclusivity and progressive ideas at higher rates than society at large.

First, there are more women working in the industry now — 25% of all developers. And alongside them, new heroines and themes have entered games — not because someone "handed down an agenda from above." Creative work tends to function in such a way that authors most often write about their own experiences and the issues they personally consider important.

Second, many developers hold progressive and left-leaning views. There are plenty of quotes to back this up, or you could remember how Activision Blizzard employees staged walkouts protesting harassment, discrimination, and unequal pay.

Finally, you could simply look at where game studios are located. Surprised that Sony has turned into "FemStation"? Well, the offices of its leading studios — Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studio — are all located in California, one of the most left-leaning states in the US.

Third, women have become something of a stigma point for the gaming industry. After Gamergate, Anita Sarkeesian's video series, harassment investigations, and various scandals, a narrative took hold that games are a medium that has cultivated the oppression of women, inequality, and masculinity for decades.

Given the popularity of feminist ideas in Western societies and the personal views of developers themselves, many studios actively try to distance themselves from that image, to compensate for "decades of oppression," to prove that the industry and the creators themselves have changed. Hence the taboo around any fan service, the push to diversify franchises with female characters, and the impulse to weave themes of equality and discrimination into virtually every storyline.

The problem is that this kind of compensatory approach and self-censorship represents yet another constraint on creativity. The end result is often that, instead of a living character or an interesting story, we get a performative declaration: "Look, we're not like that anymore."

The gaming industry, like film, literature, or television, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It reflects the society that produces it, and the status of women in the world has changed dramatically over the past several decades.

This isn't only about the cultural shifts we discussed earlier. Women have become more economically independent and more actively involved in politics, business, culture, and media. In the European Union, the gender pay gap narrowed from roughly 18% in the late 2000s to 11.1% in 2024. In American politics, two of the last three Democratic Party presidential candidates have been women — Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Even on the opposite end of the American political spectrum, within the right-wing MAGA movement supporting Donald Trump, there are plenty of influential women. And isn't the fact that women hold leading positions even within anti-woke circles itself proof that ideas of equality have won out? These trends are most pronounced in Western democracies, but they've touched most countries in one way or another.

In closing, I'd like to add something of my own: diversity is great. I love it when games tackle complex themes, refuse to please everyone, and offer unexpected protagonists — from a Japanese schoolgirl with a mental health condition to a customs officer in a totalitarian state. But diversity needs to be for everyone: not just diversity of identity, but diversity of fantasy, of worlds, of characters and stories. Games with "strong, independent" heroines are no less important than games with brutal men, aggressive aesthetics, and adolescent energy. Because plenty of people love both.