2. Accepting More Demographics Into Our Community Is a Good Thing
People often ask the question, "Why should we be appealing to a wider female audience?" It's a fair question and one that is complicated to answer. Our community has never needed to rely on women gamers in the past, so why should we start to worry now? I understand what is being said here. Video games are classically for guys and has done well with that overwhelming demographic in the past, so why do we have to change? There are two reasons why we should start inviting the women into our medium, which lets be honest, hasn't always been the most inviting in the past. The first reason is that more women are starting to play video games. It is growing in popularity, especially with the explosion of the casual games. Eventually they may choose to venture into MMOs or AAA titles to see what the medium is about, and as it stands, there isn't a lot of content there that is aimed at them to keep them playing. It is a huge potential consumer base for companies to sell too. With more money in the industry, the bigger we get and the more we can invest in interesting projects. The second reason is more cultural. In all artforms there has been a point where the art falls out of the hands of the people who monopolised it, and often for the better. In paintings, the rich classical renaissance portraits are great, but they are also juxtaposed by the works of poorer and lower-than-working-class artists, like the expressionistic Van Gough or the cubist Picasso. By inviting more demographics to play, be catered to and design games, it helps push the the medium forward. Instead of just having the majority designed by white guys for white guys, we can get exciting games designed by people from all sorts of societies, backgrounds and indeed gender. As they say, variety is the spice of life.