It seems that times have changed in the way women are portrayed in video games. More and more developers are casting female characters as the lead in their video games. A lot of gamers out their today are women and recent studies are showing that women make up around 48% of the gaming population and some studies actually show that there are more women gamers than men (that number includes mobile gaming).     The numbers aren’t far off, so gone are the days that video games are only for boys.  I have plenty of friends who are female gamers who actually enjoy playing video games on a regular basis whether its mobile gaming or console and some even PC gaming is there preferred method. One of the reasons we don’t think a lot of women are gamers is because of the abuse they take while online gaming. How many times have you heard female players getting verbally abused via game chat while playing? I have heard it tons of time with male gamers asking for their phone number or what are they wearing or can you I see you naked. No wonder females don’t hit the game chats anymore or expose themselves on game chat that they are female because male gamers have no filters and continue the onslaught of abuse. To me that is fucked up but that is the world we live in unfortunately.   I have been a gamer for over 20 years and when I was younger video games that contained women on the most part were just to entice us young males to buy the game to just get a little T and A on the screen.   Can you blame developers for doing so? no you can’t because sex will always sell and why not in video games right. Female characters were portrayed as sex objects in a lot of fighting games such as Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat and not to mention Dead Or Alive where you have bikini wearing big chested women fighting or playing volleyball. Of course as a young gamer growing up you will gravitate to half-naked women in video games because that’s just how your hormones work. We as males are attracted to such things and especially in video games because to us that is our fantasy lady. I used to be one of those perverted kids growing up where I just wanted to see boobs in video games all the time. That was 20 some odd years ago. As you get older you mature and you see things in a different light as you become more educated.     The times are changing now though with female characters being created as a more bad ass character opposed to being half-naked. Which is think is fantastic now. I used to be that perverted young gamer kid that wanted to see boobs in video games all the time. But times have changed and I think going forward you will see more and more character leads being female.  Games like Tomb Raider, ReCore, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Mirror’s Edge are recent games that are casting female leads and frankly those games are and will be fantastic games to play. We have had strong female characters before and I hope they continue to portray women in a strong role instead of being a piece of meat for gamers to drool over.     Sex will always sell and we will never get rid of that because it is now a part of every day life but game developers now are turning the page and portraying women as a more fierce and dominate character and this is a great thing for gaming. I hope we see more of this in the years to come and more female gamers dominating the online gaming arenas!     Let me know your thoughts on the matter. Are female characters being portrayed the right way?   Cheers!