--- title: Video Games Need More Female Heroes description: Teenagers don’t want what we think they do canonical: https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/ author: Rosalind Wiseman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-09T15:19:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T09:06:00.925Z article:section: World og:title: Video Games Need More Female Heroes og:description: Teenagers don’t want what we think they do og:url: https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Video Games Need More Female Heroes twitter:description: Teenagers don’t want what we think they do twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why Video Games Need More Female Heroes by [Rosalind Wiseman](/author/rosalind-wiseman/) ## Rosalind Wiseman Jul 9, 2015 3:19 PM CUT by [Rosalind Wiseman](/author/rosalind-wiseman/) ## Rosalind Wiseman Jul 9, 2015 3:19 PM CUT Spend time playing some of the blockbuster video games drawing fans to this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego and a familiar trope emerges. Female characters are relegated to supporting roles, accessorizing battlefields and racetracks in skimpy, impractical, cleavage-baring outfits. This, gamemakers say, is what young gamers want: to play as virtual men and ogle virtual women. They’re wrong. My colleagues and I recently surveyed 1,400 middle- and high school students across the U.S. about their gaming habits. What we found upends the industry’s tired stereotypes about gender. Three-fourths of the boys we surveyed were not any more likely to play a game based on the gender of its protagonist. Of those who identified as “gamers,” 55% said they wanted more female heroes. Moreover, 47% of middle-school boys and 61% of high school boys indicated that, in general, female characters are treated too often as sex objects. As Theo, an eighth-grader, puts it, objectifying female characters “defeats the entire purpose of” games like Mortal Kombat, which is to fight. And in growing numbers, it’s women who are playing video games. Of the girls we surveyed, 36% played role-playing titles like Grand Theft Auto and 26% played shooters like Call of Duty. Roughly half of all fandom convention attendees are women. It’s time for the gaming industry to stop assuming that half its market share is interested only in sex–and that the other half isn’t even playing. Wiseman is the author of Queen Bees & Wannabes and Masterminds & Wingmen ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/"},"headline":"Why Video Games Need More Female Heroes","datePublished":"2015-07-09T15:19:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T09:06:00.925Z","description":"Teenagers don’t want what we think they do","url":"https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rosalind Wiseman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/rosalind-wiseman/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3951165/why-video-games-need-more-female-heroes/","name":"Why Video Games Need More Female Heroes"}}]}] ```