Game Changer

Maddie says that her research shows how frequently video games shortchange female players. With her parents’ permission, she downloaded 50 of the most popular iPhone game apps. Then she spent a few weeks playing them to determine the gender breakdown in each game, recording her results in a spreadsheet.

While nearly all of the apps offered a boy character, only about half featured a girl. Of those, just 6 games included a free girl character, compared with 37 games that offered a free boy character. Maddie determined that among the games selling a female character, the females cost $7.53 on average, even though the average price of the apps themselves was just 26 cents.

“It bothered me,” Maddie says. “It implied that boys and girls aren’t equal.”

Why are female avatars more likely to cost money than male characters? According to regulators in the gaming industry, some game makers provide male avatars for free because it’s widely believed that their apps are played mostly by boys. Female avatars are often grouped with other in-game add-ons and features that players can purchase, such as weapons and superpowers.

However, though males once made up the vast majority of U.S. gamers, today 44 percent of players are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Experts say that the figure has grown as opportunities to play games on mobile devices such as smartphones have increased.

One side effect of the gaming industry’s changing demographics is an increase in online harassment and threats toward some female gamers by a small group of male gamers. Officials suggest that these males feel threatened that females are stepping on “their” turf.

“The entire world around [male gamers] has changed,” Kate Edwards, director of the International Game Developers Association, recently told The New York Times. “Whether they realize it or not, they’re no longer special. . . . Everyone is playing games.”

Most gamers do think that there’s plenty of room in the industry for both genders. When the makers of Temple Run read Maddie’s essay, they contacted her with a promise—that they would stop charging for the female character. 

The game’s co-creator, ­Natalia Luckyanova, of Raleigh, North Carolina, claims any discrimination against female players was unintentional. “We realized Maddie had a point,” Luckyanova says. “It was the kick in the pants we needed to say, ‘We should fix it.’ So we did.”

Since Maddie’s essay was published, other game makers have also stopped charging for female characters. One company even created a character based on Maddie. Her avatar is a noodle-delivery girl who drives a flying scooter in the iPhone game Noodles Now.

When Maddie isn’t playing the game—as herself, of course—she’s planning other ways to research the gaming industry. She also has advice for kids and teens who want to take action when they feel something isn’t right: “Make sure you’ve got facts to back up your theory, and then make sure you’re right,” Maddie says. “After that, know that you’re right.”