Women fight sexism in video game industry and real life – by making their own games
Female developers are creating games to help confront ingrained sexist attitudes in the industry and the wider world
Video games are becoming part of the larger cultural dialogue. And Decisions That Matter is one such game. It comes with a “trigger button”. No, not the gun kind. It’s more of an instant-quit button, providing players with a safe way to exit the game in case it starts to hit a little too close to home. And Decisions That Matter can quickly get uncomfortable.
The game tackles sexual assault, and it asks players to witness disturbing situations that test their moral fortitude. “It’s an important topic. It’s also a topic that’s in the news and relevant,” says Kirsten Rispin, one of the producers and writers on Decisions That Matter.
Today, it’s no longer uncommon for games to reflect hot current topics. In a year that’s seen a microscope placed on the harassment policies of US university campuses, as well as a host of sexual assault allegations levied against entertainer Bill Cosby, games have proved they can and should reflect that cultural dialogue.
That’s not to say there isn’t work to do. The idea of women as second-class citizens is so ingrained in the gamer aesthetic that the recent film Pixels thought it appropriate to treat women as trophies for winning a video game battle.
Indeed, the mainstream video game sector still has to shed its reputation as a boys’ club in which guns and barely clothed women are an intrinsic part of the action. This year, the documentary GTFO aimed to expose the game community’s troubling history with sexism, and it’s still rare, for instance, to see women in starring, playable roles in most mainstream games.