In a recent report, British media personality Issy van der Velde sharply criticized Stellar Blade. He cited a number of experts, including Dr. Murphy from the University of Warwick. Matt Benny, noting that the game seems to ignore the potential of the female market.
Issy van der Velde cites data from the website "Woman In Games" that as of 2023, half of the world's gamers are women. In doing so, he criticized Sword Star's sales strategy for clearly pandering to heterosexual men and very deliberately excluding potential female players.
Similar concerns were expressed by Dr. Poppy Wilde of the Birmingham School of Media, who argued that it would be unwise to make games that only had a male orientation, as it would exclude a large group of potential customers. She emphasized that the presence of female gamers is not a new phenomenon and has been overlooked.
However, the data cited by van der Velde does not detail the specific types of female gamers, such as which platform (e.g., PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, mobile) or game genre (e.g., action, RPG, shooter, text adventure, puzzle, sports, management, simulation, etc.) they prefer. This has led some netizens to express skepticism about his point of view, believing that the definition of female gamers and their scope should be clarified before discussing whether Sword Star caters to female players. At the same time, some people have pointed out whether the types of games that specifically target women, such as female-oriented, BL, Tanmei, etc., also have the problem of over-catering to specific groups.
The player base of video games is diverse, and everyone's gaming platform and preferences are different. Some people may only spend 10 to 15 minutes a day playing mobile games, while others may invest a lot of time and effort in more challenging games. This difference means that we can't simply use the word "player" to sum everyone up.