I've played wow (MMOs tend to be popular with women, my guild has several women), overwatch, and am playing diablo now. Call of duty just looks kinda boring to me.
I also play alot of single player games.
I almost exclusively play single player games or multiplayer games with friends I know in real life. I've had some bad experiences with online gaming and they are often way too stressful for my liking.
My wife loves her Nintendo switch and so does my daughter. I also played Diablo 4 with my wife which is amazing. I'm all for more women playing games. I don't have to hide by myself in a room playing video games anymore. It's just a normal part of my family. There are many benefits to women playing games beyond what I just mentioned obviously.
The comments: No way, women don't play games. I never see them.
Yeah no, they might not be on your games. But having seen the sheer lust for Link, I'm not surprised switch is popular.
And the crazy thing is, the industry really doesn't do a good job at this. The numbers could really be higher, especially mobile, but the sheer number of male fantasy waifu games out there is ludicrous. (Although, unsurprisingly, the dollars earned from whales are overwhelming male, especially internationally where the wage gap is higher, so that's what drives that).
I can say from my experience most women I know are gamers. I'd say the biggest difference is they tend to play more single player experiences. My older sister has always been a big jRPG nerd, and my younger sis was always into Bethesda games, especially Fallout. Meanwhile a lot of my friends are into life sim games like Stardew Valley, the Sims, and Animal Crossing, and we tend to play the latest big nintendo game together.
I am probably the only person in my group of friends that does anything remotely multiplayer, unless it's local or coop.
This is one example of what happens when women are not involved in a space. It allows for casual misogyny, because men do not tend to call out other men for bad behavior, which further isolates women in the space and keeps new women from joining. Both as consumers as well as producers.
Having a more even spread across genders means that we should eventually see more content created for and by women, which in turn will make the whole thing more accessible, and may ultimately tamp down on some of the incel garbage that many online gamer spaces have allowed to fester.