Gender in game industry marketing : Exploring the role of gender in Sweden’s game studios and marketing agencies

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines gender in gaming and how social identity theory and gender bias affect the targeted audiences of marketing campaigns. Women gamers make up about half of all gamers, yet receive less attention from marketers. Additionally, when marketers do focus on women, they are marketed stereotypically “girly” games, such as “casual”, “cosy”, and domestic chore games. Women are often viewed as less capable, less competitive, and less serious about gaming. Video games have historically been perceived as masculine, placing them into male gender roles. While gender is a social construct and is something that you do rather than are, falling outside of this can lead to questioning one’s social identity. This questioning can lead some members to shed a role, such as gaming identity, to better fit into their other roles, such as gender identity. This thesis incorporates a social constructionist ontological viewpoint and an interpretivist epistemological stance. Anonymous semi-structured interviews generated qualitative research data to identify patterns in the gaming industry on gender-targeted and gender-neutral marketing. The findings suggest that larger companies are more likely to use demographic data in audience segmentation, whereas smaller companies often rely on community engagement and comparisons with similar titles. Despite claims of gender neutrality, marketing decisions frequently remained influenced by genre conventions, historical industry norms, and assumptions regarding gaming audiences. This study contributes to the literature on gender, marketing, and digital technologies within the gaming sector by demonstrating how gendered assumptions may persist within marketing decision-making through established industry practices and audience construction processes. The findings further suggest that reliance on established marketing conventions may reproduce gendered industry norms while limiting opportunities for competitive differentiation.