Challenging misconceptions of the games industry – the FT

I read an article in the FT on the Square/Eidos merger that started “Unloved by investors, demonised by the tabloids, sidelined by the government but adored by teenage boys”.

It was sufficiently cliched that I was upset, and decided to write to the FT about it.

My points:

• 42% of Tomb Raider’s audience is female (Source: GameVision)
• 40 per cent of all game players are women (Source: The Entertainment Software Association)

In essence, I want to refute the suggestions that games are only for teenage boys.

(To be fair to the FT journalists who wrote this article, they have written frequently and supportively about the games industry; I don’t think that this article represents the line that the FT takes about the games industry, although the same is not true for many of the other mainstream news outlets)

You can read the letter in full on the Financial Times Letters page.