Mobile Gaming industry can no longer ignore Women

Studios are closing, successful teams are being laid off, budgets are being squeezed. The market is oversaturated.

At least, that’s what we’re being told.

What if there was a massive opportunity lying right in front of us?

What if we could tap into an audience and generate profits like we did a few years ago, when gaming was at its peak?

I believe it’s possible, and games that embrace female players will be the biggest winners.

Here’s how we’ll tackle this: looking at the rise of this audience, observing the UA problem, talking about the disparity in leadership, and the blue ocean lying in front of us.

The rise of women in mobile gaming

Like in most industries, we lack the data and granularity to properly assess the state of women players in mobile gaming. As highlighted in Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez, datasets are often not split by gender, leading to assumptions that what applies to men applies to women. But as a data person, I know that each audience behaves differently.

Nonetheless, recent reports provide some insights.

The ESA’s Essential Facts about the US Video Game Industry 2024 report shows that the gap between male and female players is closing. In 2004, around 40% of players were female; by 2022, it was nearly 50%.

Looking at gaming platforms, more women play on mobile than men – around 84% vs. 74%, respectively.

This is significant because 85% of mobile gamers do not identify as gamers (Mediakix).

Surprising? Not really. It feels like imposter syndrome all over again.

When I asked ChatGPT to generate images of gamers, guess what appeared? A white man, on his computer, wearing a virtual reality headset (yet, VR is the least played platform among all).

Looking at the data, a casual or mobile gamer is more likely to be a woman. In people’s minds – and even ChatGPT – a gamer is a man.

Not only a big audience… a great audience!

So, we get it: more women are playing games than ever before.

But what about engagement?

It turns out women engage more deeply than their male counterparts.

Women play mobile games for an average of 21.4 minutes per day (Mobile Games Index 2024 by adjoe), 17.4% more than last year. Their highest engagement time is in adventure games: 27.1 minutes a day vs. 24.4 for men.

What about retention you might ask?

While specific retention data is scarce, we can look at Candy Crush Saga as a case study. Levvvel’s 2023 report on Candy Crush shows that 54% of players are female, with the core market being women aged 35 and over. Even in 2024, Candy Crush remains in the top 5 grossing mobile games, 12 years after its release (Social Peta).

According to Udonis, Candy Crush has 87.9M monthly active users and 53.8M daily players. Players open the game 4.2 times a day, with each session averaging 15.8 minutes. My interpretation? Candy Crush players, mostly women, are incredibly loyal.

The User Acquisition problem

Despite strong engagement and high-value users, User Acquisition (UA) campaigns are failing women. While King (Candy Crush) has remained relatively clean in its UA efforts, other studios are using sexist, misleading, and misogynistic ads to acquire female players. Games like Gardenscapes, Project Makeover, and Gossip Harbor rely on problematic UA campaigns featuring:

• Misleading gameplay (bait-and-switch mechanics)

• Sexist storylines (e.g., women being left by their partners and needing a makeover to win them back)

• Shock-value marketing (abuse, betrayal, humiliation as clickbait)

Despite backlash, these tactics work as these games currently rank in the top 20 grossing games in the US.

There is growing pressure to regulate these ads and hold ad networks accountable. Sky News recently covered this issue: Help the Girl: How Mobile Games Profit from Misogynistic Tropes.

The bottom line?

UA campaigns are not designed by & for women.

In gaming teams, there are few women and even fewer of them are decision-makers. As in many industries, women remain a minority in executive and creative leadership roles. This affects the type of games and campaigns that get approved. The result? Games are designed by and for a male audience.

Women are underserved, with most mobile games focusing on casual, puzzle, and simulation genres.

The shift is happening slowly but surely

No major AAA female-oriented game comes to mind. Sure, games now have diverse characters, but most AAA studios have ignored female players. However, casual and cozy games are leading a quiet revolution.

Recently, Infinity Nikki, a dress-up open-world RPG, launched on all platforms and has been a massive success, with over 10 million downloads since late 2024.

One Reddit user summed it up perfectly:

“I’ve loved games like GI, HSR, WUWA for years and I enjoyed the open-world exploration and storylines but the over-sexualization of the female characters always bothered me. I studied media, I know in depth about the male gaze and how they’d use camera angles and voice lines to sell them as sexy for the male players, but I always felt so uncomfortable and degraded as a woman playing these games”. – xiaomoonies on Reddit.

Cozy games are also booming, driven by economic and political instability. Players are looking for comfort and relaxation. 72% of women say they play games to pass the time or relax, a trend reflected in the success of Monument Valley, Stardew Valley, and Tamagotchi-style care apps.

The opportunity is there, but who’s going to invest?

The gaming industry is saturated… or is it?

It’s saturated with male-focused games. But what about the other half of the population?

As competition for the same male-dominated audience intensifies, reaching female players presents a beautiful avenue for growth. But change starts internally. The industry must start investing in innovative projects, in diverse team, and put women in leadership positions. They need to rethink marketing campaigns, and focus on the values we should share instead of clicks. The industry must design games for women, and not through the male gaze.

The industry can no longer afford to ignore women.

Women already drive mobile gaming’s biggest success stories.

And I strongly believe that games that embrace this audience will be the biggest winners in the next decade.

Companies that adapt early will dominate an evolving, underserved, and highly engaged audience.

So, what are you waiting for?