Confirmed:

So what games have women been playing all these years, now that we know they haven’t just been wasting time trying to get their Facebook friends to give them free lives on Candy Crush?

Casual computer games, mostly. The report ranks online and mobile puzzle games, board games, trivia games, and card games as coming in second to the boom in social games, which more than doubled in popularity between 2012 and 2013.


https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/adult-women-largest-gaming-demographic/

deleted

Ok, I searched for that study, and if it's the same you're referring to, the results were 36% adult women, 35% adult men, 17% boys, which leaves 12% girls. So that would actually mean around 50:50 for adults. It's still kind of curious to me, and that has nothing to do with women hiding their identity on the internet, but with the people I know in RL, friends and family. Which I realize is a weak argument against a statistic, just makes me wonder.

But you're right, I kind of misunderstood and was jumping to conclusions. For example, these statistics say nothing about how much time is spent on gaming, probably just whether someone (occasionally) plays games or not at all.

Anyway, sorry for derailing the thread! It's an interesting topic of its own.

Not sure it fits the criteria since combat is QTE based but "The wolf among us" has very interesting female characters (specially Snow White).
The main character is male but I think you might enjoy his overall relationship with Snow.

At the Bethesda conference Todd Howard mentioned that 100 million people have played the Fallout Shelter app thing, which is more than all their other games combined. So I find it totally believable.

I wouldn't say it is just casual, and neither is the segment restricted to adult women. For example:
https://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find-that-female-pc-gamers-outnumber-males/
(The link has further links for your own research)
That shows that in the US, women play more PC games than men, and that they specifically play more RPGs (on the PC) than men.

Also:
Most hilarious unexplained statement in thread.

I bought Shadowrun Returns the other day and I think it could qualify, if you haven't played it yet.

I'm not super far into the game but all the interactions between myself and the other characters have me hooked. I like that the game let's me play as a sympathetic person towards people and their problems through the dialogue choices the game offers you. Any game that let's me make empathetic choices through dialogue is always a big plus for me, and I think a game that let's you show empathy towards people, especially marginalised/downtrodden people, counts towards showcasing feminist themes. The game is also wonderfully diverse so far (there's at least one LGBTQ character who sells you stuff) and I've enjoyed the interactions I've had with non-enemy characters. I bought the DLC earlier and I'm really itching to keep playing, haha.

The combat is also really nice, much nicer than Baldur's Gate, in my opinion. It's turn-based in the way that I wish Baldur's Gate was. It's an overhead perspective but it does so in a much more clear and useful way than Baldur's Gate does, and you can take as much time to decide what to do for each character actions. There's also no level up system in the traditional way. You just earn karma points and spend them on attribute/skill upgrades/unlocks. The character customisation at the start is a bit simple but there's a nice variety of classes and I think the attribute/skill upgrade system is fairly open-ended.

Hope this helps and that you find what you're looking for!

Like they say, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Here's a decent link talking about the study
www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/17/women-video-games-iab

In the link originally posted, notice how they chose to massage these statistics into claiming adult women are the biggest demographic for games.
First, one has to diminish the true #1 demographic factor, 99% of all children up to age 17 have played a game, more than any other age group. One does this by choosing one's age ranges carefully. If you split groups to 8-17 and 18-74, of course the 18-74 becomes a bigger demographic because there are so many more eligible people in that group.

But to see what that study was really talking about, these quotes put it in perspective...
"54% of survey respondents cited their phone as their favourite gaming platform – 25% of whom admitted to playing games on it every day. Smartphones were followed by computers (51%), consoles (45%) and tablets (44%)"

Now don't get me started on how we have 194% for choices of favorite gaming platform...

And the favorite video game genre is Trivia/word/puzzle (33%); Action/adventure/shooter (18%); Role playing/strategy (10%); sports (10%); gambling (10%); Simulation (8%); Racing/driving (5%); Fitness (3%) and Music (3%)

Trivia/word/puzzle being obviously a strong phone demographic.

I guess you want something about the experience of being a woman? This isn't a common theme, so most of my suggestions will be a bit of a stretch.

1. The closest game I can think of is Unrest, where one of the playable characters is a young woman facing an undesired arranged marriage. This section of the game is quite short. 2. Another one is Night in the Woods (a fantasy only in that all the characters are talking animals; otherwise it is indistinguishable from a modern setting). The main character is a female, and the game is arguably about her failing to have the traditional female traits and so not fitting in, but it may be just about her being a more general misfit. 3. The game Battle Chef Brigade doesn't really dwell on a theme much, but it does purposely toy with the standard fantasy gender roles: it has a male orc who is a chef and a dad, while his wife is the warrior of the family. 4. Jotun is about the main character fighting to earn her afterlife after a dishonorable death. It doesn't really say anything about being a woman, but the main character is a female Viking. A lot of people remain unaware that there were actual female Viking warriors, so the character can spark an interesting conversation. 5. Pillars of Eternity has a few plot-lines, but a major one is the widespread birth of soulless children. There are several characters dealing with this in the game, including pregnant women and midwives you can run into. You can play a woman in the game and sleep around to experience the risk of pregnancy with a soulless child (NOTE: the risk is never directly brought up by the game). You can also play a barren woman by selecting a Godlike as your species. This is actually mentioned directly a few times in dialogue! 6. Fran Bow is a point-and-click about a little girl who probably has schizophrenia. It is about the inner workings of her mind, but there isn't as much Jungian symbolism as you would expect (?).

Outside of fantasy, you may be interested in the Shelter games, which are about mother animals protecting their cubs. Also, the Saints Row games have amazing character generators, so you can have any shape, color, or size of woman running her own inner city gang!

The Longest Journey, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: Chapters - trilogy of adventure games that talke palce in Arcadia (fantasy world) and Stark (cyberpunk world). Yes, it is only half-fantasy, but it makes up for that with huge focus on feminism and SJW agenda in general.

I don't know that much about the subject, but I'll see if I can help. There's the original Baldur's Gate. It throws away the age old idea that women are too weak for combat. A lot of them are actually very powerful. You have female leaders, female heroes, female villains. Skyrim and Oblivion also have these themes.

Twilight Princess for the Wii/Gamecube might be another one. Zelda and Midna aren't just damsels in distress. They take an active role in Ganon's defeat. That's all I can think of for now.

I think you should learn more about modern feminism. Pandering is pandering, regardless if it is justified or not. Also, as many people have already pointed out, if you break down demographics by genre, most "adult women" audience is not in action AAA games.

Where I come from there is a saying. "ask a silly question, get a silly answer." Feminist games tend to be terrible and they never sell enough copies to pay for the cost of development as the market is so narrow. If you don't believe me, look at all those videos that Anita did on games and imagine what games would be like if people actually made games based upon that guidance. They'd be awful.

Part of the problem is that the initial post is of such low quality. Most of the detail needed to possibly answer the question just isn't there and the whole thing is more or less a lightening rod for trollery.

True, and it wasn't even the first D&D game with women holding their own with the men in their adventuring group. At least as far back as 1988 with the Silver Box series and Heroes of the Lance you had Goldmoon in your group. Obviously, Baldur's Gate is a better example because it's a much better game overall and has way better character building. Though Curse of the Azure Bonds from the Gold Box series had a badass heroine that your group was basically just trying to keep up with, and it was from '89.

I'd recommend ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West, because it's awesome and I always recommend it for basically everything. Trip is a great character, and the fact that neither she nor Monkey have what it takes to get through on their own, but together can overcome basically anything, is the sort of coequal narrative that drives a solid story.

bcz many understandly view it as provactively antagonicstic