Out of curiosity, I recently took a look at gender distribution in the various Facebook groups for each Stonemaier game. Why? Our mission is to bring joy to tabletops worldwide, so I’m here to ensure that anyone who wants to participate feels welcome and safe.
For us, this extends beyond Facebook to this blog, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, BoardGameGeek, our newsletters, and our games themselves. Those are the platforms on which we actively engage and have varying degrees of control, and this goes beyond Stonemaier to the gaming community as a whole. If you want to play tabletop games and/or discuss them, we’re here to welcome you.
Let’s start with some data. Most of the data available to me is limited to men and women, not non-binary and transgender. As seen in the Wingspan chart below, Facebook also includes the category of “custom,” but no further information about that category is provided.
- On our annual demographic survey, 17% of Stonemaier newsletter subscribers identified as women (also, 1.5% identified as non-binary).
- On our Instagram, 21% of followers identify as women. Same for the Stonemaier Facebook page.
- Participants in these Facebook groups identify as women and comprise at least 20% of the members: Wingspan (45%), Wyrmspan (38%), Rolling Realms (26%), Apiary (25%), Charterstone (22%), and Viticulture (21%).
- The other Facebook groups are as follows: Red Rising (19%), Between Two Cities (17%), Tapestry (16%), Libertalia (16%), Euphoria (16%), Scythe (10%), Expeditions (9%).
- 50% of my full-time coworkers at Stonemaier Games identify as women (Erica, Susannah, and Christine).
- 35% of our shareholders and independent contractors identify as women (including artists, graphic designers, playtesters, proofreaders, and many others); around 1% are non-binary.
- I don’t have an exact count of how many content creators on our reviewer list identify as women (the list does not ask for gender, so I’m just going by name, which is full of assumptions in itself and also does not account for non-binary representation), but eyeballing the list, the number looks like around 15% (around 120 out of the 800+ people who have opted in).
These numbers are meaningful, but they also don’t tell the full story. For example, do 25% of the people who play Apiary identify as women? If the real number is higher, what is it about our Facebook group that isn’t as inviting as it could be? And is that an accurate depiction of how many people actually want to play a game like Apiary, or is there something we could have done to make the game more welcoming to those looking for a medium-weight, engine-building, positive-player-interaction, competitive tabletop experience?
I brought up this topic in yesterday’s livestream, and the conversation yielded a lot of different observations, goals, and aspirations. Here are a few of them:
- Diversity, of course, goes well beyond gender (to age, ethnicity, experience/ability, sexuality, nation, culture, creed, etc). Today I just happen to be talking about gender (and it’s also one of the few diversity metrics tracked by social media platforms). We have much more content on other types of diversity here.
- There are several layers to gender inclusivity in the gaming community: It’s about the game itself not having elements that actively exclude you, feeling welcome and safe in environments where people play games, and feeling accepted, protected, and that you belong in online communities focused on tabletop gaming.
- I try to avoid stereotypes about gaming preferences; instead, I try to focus on what draws people in and what pushes people away (from games and communities). For example, say you’re a company that makes sci-fi war games, and most of the people who play your game or talk about your game identify as male. I don’t think there’s value in assuming women don’t want to play sci-fi war games; rather, ask yourself if there are people who want to play or discuss your games but don’t feel welcome. You can’t control people’s preferences, but you can control your game’s art, characters, playtesters, community moderation, and more.
- Negative past experiences in online forums may make some people reluctant to give other forums a chance. This ups the ante for all of us to foster welcoming, inclusive, and positive spaces for all participants, especially those who have had bad experiences in the past. This includes clear guidelines, moderation when necessary, and setting the tone in the way we post and comment. We have found that if we do those things, the welcoming nature of the group becomes self-perpetuating by its members.
- My coworker (Susannah) shared with me that Inside Up Games, Queen Games, and Eagle-Gryphon Games are hosting a Women in Gaming design retreat at the Gamers Ranch in August. You can sign up here if you’re interested. I just learned about this, so we have no official involvement, but if you’re someone who would gain value from this experience and there is anything impeding you from attending (financial or otherwise), I can help find a solution if you contact me at jamey@stonemaier.com.
- UPDATE: There are some great comments on Facebook on this topic, and this is my favorite (from The Fourth Place): “First, “everyone is welcome” doesn’t mean “every behavior is welcome”. Every person, every identity, even every set of beliefs is welcome. That doesn’t mean that everything someone might do or say is tolerable. Second, I like the solution to the Paradox of Tolerance that points out that we don’t have to welcome intolerant behavior to be tolerant. People who make others feel unwelcome, people who aren’t tolerant, are not welcome, because tolerance is a social contract. Those who don’t participate in tolerance don’t get to benefit from it.” This ties into the cries of “censorship” in the rare cases that I remove a comment: anyone is welcome to disagree with me or others in our forums, but please find a way to share your opinion in a way that meets our guidelines: “Antagonistic, rude, or degrading comments will be removed.”
We’re all learning together, and I appreciate you approaching this topic with an open mind. These are just a few data points and concepts; I’d love to learn from you and hear your thoughts in the comments below. What would you like to share?
Also read:
- Inclusion, Diversity, and Representation in Board Games and Beyond
- Moving Beyond Gender Assumptions in the Board Game Hobby
- The Box Matters: How Publishers Can Prioritize Diversity
- Celebrating the Women at Stonemaier Games
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
27 Comments on “You Are Welcome Here: Gender Diversity in Gaming Communities”
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Thank you for this analysis. One of the most wonderful things about this Hobby is the diversity that it shows. I am looking forward to going to AireCon24 and love the wonderful mix of all ages identities and sizes sharing a common interest. Social media is highlighted to divide but it also brings together as well. The growth in the hobby and the progress and debate around design has made for a broader appeal. There is something for most in the hobby.
It would be interesting to look at gameboard covers for those areas which have fewer women (sci-fi, maybe fantasy, RPG games etc) and see how these are represented.. a group of men, main character shown as man or character with masculine features. There is some really interesting research which was compiled in a book called “invisible women” by Caroline Criado Perez which really gets one thinking about equality.
That’s a really interesting way to look at it! Of the games I mentioned in today’s post, Viticulture, Red Rising, Between Two Cities, Tapestry, Scythe, and Expeditions feature women on the cover (most in a prominent way), with only Euphoria prominent featuring a man instead of a woman.
I help run a certain official public community on Facebook (FB), so I understand its professional or official importance as both a user and a group admin. These days, though, FB isn’t as friendly and inviting as used to be. Once a great way to keep in touch or share our lives with family and friends over inconvenient distances, it has since become a domain of spam and mining of personally identifiable information (PII) for bad actors. FB has real benefits and uses once people move past “Farmville addiction,” but it requires “netiquette” – online caution and discretion. I now see a smaller percentage of women at the FLGS going online to expose themselves to spam, data mining, identity theft, or harassment and online bullying – something my late wife experienced early in our marriage that led to her disuse of FB after that.
Online or offline, we all should yield to others by being considerate and tactful, remembering the bigger picture we aren’t seeing. I learned (both as the widower of a wonderful wife, and from my university education) that my mind was wired differently than my wife’s. It’s not disparity, it’s complementary. In society, such diversity encourages all to work together to achieve a peaceful society. Together, my wife and I used that partnership to provide each other with different insights in setting goals or solving problems. It meant being open-minded to each other’s unique thinking on how we approached issues, and required me to rely on my wife’s feminine perspective and wisdom regarding social and emotional impacts from the decisions we made. Something every community can benefit from if they treat each other with kindness and respect.
JD: Thanks for sharing these thoughts about the Facebook platform. I can see what you’re saying about the downsides, and hopefully we’re both part of maintaining some of the upsides. I also really like what you said about approaching people with an open mind and a desire to complement each other.
I appreciate the positivity that tends to be found on game pages that Stonemaier Games runs. In general, I don’t feel like reading comment after comment in any group where people just try to rip something apart. Specifically in the board game world, I have left groups when there has been such negativity, especially directed towards women as game players or designers, or where stereotypes about women abound. I just don’t need that in my life. It’s possible some women don’t join game-related pages because of these past experiences.
Now that I’ve followed several board game pages, Facebook suggests them to me all the time. The algorithm “knows” I like board games, so it makes me aware of different board game groups and pages. If I had quit looking for more inclusive and friendly online communities after leaving those hostile ones, the algorithm may not have sent me to the great ones I’m a part of now. Too many negative experiences could have cut me out of the user demographics, fulfilling some of the misconceptions some people have about whether women might be interested in board games.
Also, until I joined the Wingspan group a few years ago, it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be board-game specific groups, so I wouldn’t have shown up in the demographic data back then. (I’m trying to think of how I even happened upon the group, and I can’t recall.) I think lack of awareness about game pages could be part of the picture as well.
That definitely resonates with me too, Julie. I like to see critical thinking and analysis, but I also just like seeing people share their love and excitement for things. Negativity for the sake of being negative will quickly disengage me. What you said about the recommendation algorithm makes perfect sense–in that way, each group admin has an impact on the gaming community as a whole, not just their group.
Jamey, I am confused with your data. From the tile of this post I thought gender would have included everyone. Will there be other posts for the rest of the data?
Derek: This is the data I have access to from these platforms. I can, however, add a note about other genders on the post.
Another interesting layer is how comfortable those members of the community feel actually engaging by means of questions, posts and/or comments. Joining the community is the first step, but then engagement is the second step.
I know that I personally have certain communities that I feel more comfortable posting in and responding to comments in. Part of that may be subconscious. I don’t find myself drawn to negativity- so that might be part of it, also, and gender has nothing to do with it. I feel as if some communities have more negativity in the comment sections. That may be perceived but not actually present, too.
All of this is really interesting food for thought….
Sorry- I should clarify- I am not saying that feeling unwelcome because of gender is or is not the actual reason I pass up an opportunity for engagement. Hope I didn’t make it sound like that! I was just saying that when I was self-reflecting, I’m not exactly positive of my own reasonings for passing on by without engaging– or sometimes I have felt just plain “ick” about several posts or comments in a conversation or group.
I appreciate your perspective, Kate. I can relate to that too–there are some Facebook gaming groups where the posts seem to skew much more negatively than other groups (about various games, not Stonemaier specifically), and I just don’t want to spend my energy on that.
A small correction Jamie because there is a lot of confusion and I had to learn to differentiate with modern linguistics.
Male / Female is sex and Man/Woman is gender.
So when you speak about females, this is sex, and noone can self-identify as a female as it is a physical trait. However, they can identify as man/woman/other(s).
There is still a lot of confusion about these subjects for various reasons and weather someone agrees or not, self-identification needs specificity that few can provide.
Thanks Bobby! I’m open to updating the post from “female” to “women”, but all of the demographic data we have use the term “female”, and all of those platforms allow people to select their gender. Just so I can learn more, can you share your source for this information? Thank you! –Jamey
Interesting point brought up and good question about getting a source. After seeing this comment, I found this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sex-vs-gender-how-they2019re-different
Looks like once we get old, us old women outnumber the men. Interesting. I do love that you include us in your rulebooks. Rather than always he/his. Small thing, but makes me feel as if my involvement counts also.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mary–that’s an interesting connection between age and gender (in the Wingspan group, at least).
I’m glad you’re thinking and taking about this. Any time a rulebook uses all male examples, or starts off with, “the first player chooses his pieces…” or whatever like that, especially if it continues, “on his first turn, player two…,” I’m known to sarcastically say, “oh, I’m not allowed to play this game, I guess I have to tend the [nonexistent] baby…”
Stonemaier doesn’t do this, and that is really half the battle, for me. It does matter. The number of times the guys around the table say, “they don’t mean to exclude you,” and the women say wryly, “you’re right, I’ll get more snacks,” shows me clearly that it DOES matter but not always to the people who can do anything about it.
Female art on boards and game components that isn’t all giant breasts, cleavage, and other p0rn-adjacent stuff like that but instead represents male and female characters in reasonable ways is another big chunk towards making me want to play a game, more in pushing me away when it’s bad than making me want to play when it’s all cute and pink. I’m a grownup and can appreciate mature themes, but I’m sick to death of the assumed player in any scenario being a straight cis male.
And finally, asking questions like these, never focusing only on the dominant group of players (usually male), in any venue, and valuing/celebrating female contribution to the industry – Beth Sobel was the first boardgame illustrator I knew by name, because of you! – also makes me more interested in whatever the company makes.
I appreciate you sharing this, Julia. Out of full transparency, I think the rulebook of some copies of Viticulture does use “he” in some places instead of “you” or “they”. We learned, revised, and improved, but I had to first realize the mistake.
I appreciate Beth’s work on Viticulture and Between Two Cities, and it’s been a pleasure to work with other amazing artists since then (all of whom have their names on the front of our game boxes, as artists deserve full visibility), including Jacqui Davis, Natalia Rojas, Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Clementine Campardou, Agnieszka Dabrowiecka, Laura Bevon, and Katie Khao.
Hey Julia,
I would like to share my insight about the use of “he”/”his” instead of “of “they”/”their”. I agree with the guys around the table. They don’t mean to exclude you. They may simply be unaware of more inclusive language conventions.
Many board games were not developed by native English speakers. As someone who isn’t a native speaker myself, I understand why gender-neutral language might not be commonly used. In my language, and in many other European languages, nouns have grammatical gender. For example, “player” often defaults to the masculine form.
I’ve been in this industry for about six years now and I’ve worked on quite a number of rulebooks. I’ve noticed that the level of English proficiency among writers and editors varies.
And advice from a fellow female gamer who almost never felt excluded by this lovely community. There are many ways to raise awareness on different topics. Taking offense at someone else’s unintentional actions is a choice.
Krasimira: I appreciate you sharing your perspective. One thing I’ve learned during my journey is that while intentions matter–I really do believe that–so do outcomes. So even if I don’t mean to offend, harm, or exclude someone, if that is the result of my actions, the outcome is still my responsibility (hopefully to learn from and fix). I 100% agree with the importance of helping each other grow and be better informed, paired with personal responsibility and accountability.
Thank you for continuing to highlight and bring attention to these topics, Jamey! I really appreciate that you use your platform to help further these important conversations, and that Stonemaier Games takes specific actions under your leadership.
Thanks Ira! I appreciate you framing it as a conversation, as that’s exactly what I’m aiming for. I’m a student, not an expert, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss topics like these and hopefully make a positive difference in the gaming community.
Maybe I overlooked something but isn’t Male/female not the best approach these days? I think including X/them should be done as well.
The research I found is that if you are asking for gender in a demographic survey (which I’m not doing in this post, but I did in November’s demographic survey) that the options should be female, male, non-binary, and prefer not to say. However, this is constantly evolving, so I’m open to learning the currently accepted approach if it has changed.
All good that it is on your radar :)