Women in eSports.(@tempusrob/Twitter)

There’s a sort of misconception that a female who plays video games can fall into the archetype sometimes referred to as “gamer girl." However, working under the “gamer girl” misconception leads to a divergence in what a female gamer is.

For instance, after 2014, some women involved in the gaming community are now associated with Gamergate due to the high volume of media coverage devoted to the Gamer Gate topic and its effects on female gamers.

Some other associations with "gamer girl" are the sort of sexy fan girls or the overweight anti-social gal. Before a dense list is made, it should already become apparent that a female gamer is not one type, just like male gamers.

Female gamers have a diverse background and differing levels of interest or involvement in games—from casual to hardcore. Therefore, “gamer girl” is something part of the gaming community’s lingo but doesn’t define what a female gamer is. She could potentially stand behind none of the aforementioned personas or many of them. 

Take for instance Sam Brown: she is a female gamer but also has worked on developing games. Brown recently graduated from USC studying Psychology and Video Game Design and she currently works as an eSports coordinator for AzubuTv, a company that streams competitive video games news and analysis.

Brown is heavily involved in video games, and like many people who play video games her interest began at a young age. “My first introduction to video games was a brand new Nintendo 64 that my mom bought," said Brown. Once Brown's family bought a computer, her interest in gaming increased. “From then on, it was all PC games for me.” 

Brown, like many female gamers, dislikes the term "gamer girl."

"A Google image search of 'gamer girl," is pretty degrading—you’ll see images of effeminate women playing games in their underwear, sometimes playing intensely, or often playing the game wrong," said Brown. “I personally don’t identify with the term or call myself a ‘gamer girl’ because I think it separates women from men in the space, which can mean discrimination for females." 

Rather than focusing on defining what a female gamer is, it seems more constructive to discuss women’s involvement in video games since the number of female gamers is growing.

Firstly, women’s involvement in playing video games is substantial. According to the Entertainment Software Association’s  (ESA) 2014 study, women make up 48 percent of game players, up 4 percent from 2013. These numbers demonstrate that nearly half of the people surveyed as playing games are female.

Although the majority of the games played were casual and social games (like Farmville) usually associated with casual gamers. 

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Even though more women play video games, there are very few female competitive gamers. Brown attributes the lack of professional female gamers to not identifying women as gamers.

“It’s probably true that most people, generally speaking, do not expect girls to be hardcore, competitive gamers, and when they see one, they are very surprised. To be fair, though, there aren’t very many out there."

Brown also references Scarlett, one of the few female professional StarCraft II players. “I think the expectations people have about women who play games are slowly going away."

In 2014 a panel of professional eSports women was assembled called The New Meta: Women in eSports. The panel featured various female competitive gamers from diverse genres of gaming who discussed their experience as a woman in the world of competitive video games.

The panel demonstrates how women such as Scarlett are becoming more common even in the competitive spectra of video games. 

Another facet that can make it seem as though female gamers are sometimes ostracized is gaming web culture.

"If we’re talking purely about the community as shown on the internet, it’s a vastly different experience—4chan and other forums parody a lot of the efforts made by females and undermine them," said Brown. "It’s really sensationalized on the internet. I don’t think it’s as bad in-person. Once you declare yourself an activist to the public, you get a lot more hate."  

As Brown points out, internet gaming culture can lead one to believe that women have no chance of ever losing the stigma attached to being a female gamer"—especially when reading the recently sensationalized Gamergate stories.

The Gamergate stories may be true but they don’t tell the story of every female gamer out there, just like the term "gamer girl" cannot be applied to every female gamer. 

“It’s hard to say where females stand in the video game community because there are so many different sub-communities," said Brown. "In the League of Legends community, for example, there seems to be a growing number of females and Riot is really setting the stage for equality and positive player behavior in their game, with zero tolerance for sexism.” 

Generalizing all female gamers' experiences is not ideal since there are so many types of women, genres, cultures and interest levels that make up gamers. However, as more women become involved in video games, the experiences of women such as Sam Brown can give an idea of what relationship women have with the video game community. 

"I see game developers taking women into consideration more in their game designs," said Brown. "I don’t mean we’ll have more Kim Kardashian: Hollywood games, but I think we’ll have more games that have the woman in mind, whether that be in the narratives or game mechanics, or in the representation of female characters. The growing number of female players will surely continue to change the ‘boys’ club’ attitude of gaming”.

With the start of 2015, the ESA is due to publish their 2015 survey of game players and there is the potential for more female gamers to come forward. Even more likely is that active women involved in the gaming community such as Sam Brown will continue to work past the “gamer girl” framework and show that there is more to female gaming than just being a woman. 

Contact Staff Reporter Nico Flicker here and follow her on Twitter here.