The image of the typical gamer as a lone teenage boy in his room is gone – female gamers have increased over the past six years and today 48% of gamers in the US are women, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

That helped drive total consumer spending on gaming worldwide to $21bn in 2013. But games companies are still routinely failing their female audience.

Four out of the five top-selling video games of 2013 globally were rated “mature” in content, meaning that the game may contain intense violence and sexual imagery, and Target has refused to stock the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia because of its degrading depiction of women.

Only 4% of the main characters in the 25 top-selling video games of 2013 were female and more often than not we see hyper-sexualised representations of women used as foils in games plots where the heterosexual male is hero.

The events of #GamerGate (GG), which started as a protest against corrupt journalism and ended as a vehicle for sexism targeting women speaking up about the issues, may have split gamers worldwide, but in Sweden games companies stood united.

They denounced the actions of those backing GG and, well aware of the lack of women in the sector, industry organisation Dataspelsbranschen, helped set up a network to promote equality and diversity in gaming. Microsoft’s Xbox is one of its early members.

In a project funded by the Swedish government, Dataspelsbranschen is also looking into a possible certification process for games developers to ensure diversity in games.

Per Strömbäck of Dataspelsbranschen is careful to point out that they’re not looking for a new labelling system for consumers.

“We don’t believe in creating a consumer label, some kind of seal of approval saying that this content is free from sexism or that is good for diversity,” he says. “You can’t simplify the question that much, there are so many layers of interpretation.” Strömbäck adds that some games, like puzzle games, don’t even have characters and so they would be impossible to label.

“Instead we want to look at what companies have already learned from their working processes around design and product development. A classic example is [looking at] if there are playable female characters in the game or not and you could create a checklist around that.

“The important thing about investing [money] in this way is that not one sole company gets a competitive advantage but rather the opposite; we want to improve the conditions for the entire industry.”

He hopes it will help attract more diverse talent – something industry experts agree is desperately needed. Women are under-represented at all levels of the industry. Only 14% of employees in the British games industry are women, a huge imbalance, which naturally results in less diverse games.

Brianna Wu, head of development at video game studio Giant Spacekat, saw some of the worst backlash from #GamerGate and yet she feels hopeful about the future. “I think we’re in a period of strong industry evolution,” she says, adding that hiring more women is key to progress. “If you add our voices, most of these problems solve themselves.”

She says, however, there is a dearth of role models for women like her. “I’m in my mid-thirties, and I look around for women who have survived the industry long enough to give me advice. I can count them on one hand.”

Dmitri Williams, associate professor in communication at the University of Southern Californa and chief executive of Ninja Metrics, says a high dropout rate from science and technology education among 10- to 12-year-old girls in the US means female programmers are hard to find.

“Young girls clearly need more support so that they have more opportunities,” he says, adding that proactive outreach and awareness, especially around hiring, is important.

But Wu says it is the gaming culture that keeps women out: “It’s not that women aren’t interested in engineering, it’s that the culture pushes us away at every point. The other problem is the men in the industry that are sexist and don’t realise it.”

Strömbäck from Dataspelsbranschen blames slow progress in reforming the culture on industry-wide sluggishness. He says the industry has been catering for the stereotypical male gamer for too long. “Now we have to make games for those that aren’t like us. It’s a pretty big change.”

One company that starts the gender-neutral approach to gaming early is Swedish children’s games developer Toca Boca. Rebecca Crusoe of Toca Boca says: “We create apps that allow children to be creative, inventive and have fun, but we feel a responsibility in that we are placing a good product in the hands of families. We want to show diversity and not limit [children].”

It is an approach that other games can learn from. Gamers are changing and it’s time the industry does too.





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