Few things cause as much frothing at the mouth and gibbering as the topic of women and video games. Women are increasingly vocal about how they are treated when they work in the industry and how they’re represented in the games themselves. And still the industry as a whole sits on its hands and spouts the party lines: women don’t play video games, women don’t like video games, and video games with playable female characters don’t sell.

Fact: the Entertainment Software Association’s (ESA) research shows that 47 percent of all players are female and that, today, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (30 percent) than boys aged 17 or younger.