We in Games

Gender in Play – Representations of Gender in Games

A project to diversify the gender roles and worldview of games

Gender in Play project examined the character development and world-building in games made by Finnish games studios from the perspective of gender equality, representation and gender-based violence, shared information about gender-based violence in games, and offered tools for game companies to diversify game characters and eschew gender-based violence in games.

Gender in Play was a project by We in Games Finland and The National Council of Women of Finland that looked into character development and world-building within Finnish games studios’ games from the perspective of gender equality, character representation and gender-based violence. The project ran from January 2021 to June 2022 and was funded by the Ministry of Justice Finland.

The Gender in Play project shared information about gender-based violence in games for game developers and the public, and offered tools for game companies to take into account gender-based violence in games and diversify game character representations.

Download the summary of the Gender in Play project’s results here:

About the Gender in Play project

The first part of the study unfolded the overall situation of game character diversity in digital games made in Finland between 2018 – 2020. The study investigated the game characters’ gender representation, sexual orientation, skin color, age, and possible religious symbols and disability. Results were published in the article “Gender in Play – large-scale content analysis about the character representation and diversity in Finnish games“.

For analysing more in-depth the gender-based violence in games and to better understand character representation, the framework created by game culture researcher Usva Friman was used to analyse six selected games further. The first part of the publications from this analysis focused on the representation of women characters, the second on the representation of diverse casts and other minorities, and the last on gender-based violence against women characters.

In the second part of the Gender in Play project, interviews with Finnish game developers were accomplished in order to understand the process of character creation and the reasons and obstacles for diversifying game characters. The project results were summarised in the article “Best practices for creating diverse characters“.

The project had visiting writers from a producer Maria Maunula, who shared the results of the internal study about character diversity in their game company. Gamer Nova Liiho discussed the game character diversity from a player’s perspective, and MA Jenni Varila summarised her thesis about the importance of women characters’ diversity.

All articles written in the Gender in Play project can be found below. They are also collected in the PDF that can be downloaded here.

Project Publications

30/06/2022

Best practices for creating diverse characters

Taina Myöhänen

The article summarises the best practices for creating more diverse characters from Finnish game studios’ interviews conducted as a part of the Gender in Play project. Image credits: Tuuli Hypén...

22/06/2022

Gender-based Violence in Games: Game Developers’ Perspectives

Taina Myöhänen

This article provides insight into how game developers reflect on gender-based violence in games. It is based on interviews conducted as a part of the Gender in Play project among...

08/06/2022

Diversity matters because you matter

Jenni Varila

“Strong, independent men are the perfect fantasy boys — the untouchable is always the most desirable.” This exact quote has never been given. We don’t hear this kind of description...

30/05/2022

What is gender-based violence in games?

Taina Myöhänen

Video game violence has been the topic of intense discussions for a long time, but gender-based violence has not been a part of this debate. That was reflected in comments...

21/04/2022

In games I can be free to express myself

Nova Liiho

I have played video games for most of my life. It’s a way to relax, to unwind, and forget about the rest of the world for a while. As a...

16/12/2021

Gender-based violence against women characters

Antonio Rodrigues, Nevena Sićević (two authors’ equal contribution)

As our large-scale analysis showed, violence is a common feature found in Finnish action games, just like in most other contemporary video games of the same genre, so it shouldn’t...

29/11/2021

Make game characters more interesting, unique, diverse, and approachable

Maria Maunula

It is easy to miss the good news around these days when the information flow is massive, but one of the recent Bloomberg’s posts by Jason Schreier got my interest...

24/11/2021

Gender in Play: character diversity

Antonio Rodrigues, Nevena Sićević (two authors’ equal contribution)

This article is the second part in our blog post series on representation of women characters and character diversity in Finnish games (click here for the first part and the...

24/11/2021

Women character representation and diversity in Finnish games: a qualitative analysis

Antonio Rodrigues, Nevena Sićević (two authors’ equal contribution)

As the Gender in Play project continues, after our large-scale analysis of Finnish games released from 2018 to 2020, the next step was to take a closer look at several...

23/06/2021

Gender in Play – large-scale content analysis about the character representation and diversity in Finnish games

Antonio Rodrigues, Nevena Sićević (two authors’ equal contribution)

Following the publishing of the literature review about character representation and diversity in games, the next step in the analysis phase of the Gender in Play - Representations of Gender...

07/04/2021

Review of Character Representation and Diversity in Games Research

Antonio Rodrigues, Nevena Sićević (two authors’ equal contribution)

In 2021, We in Games Finland and The National Council of Women of Finland will implement a project “Gender in Play – Representations of Gender in Games”, funded by the...

Project working group

Project lead: Taina Myöhänen, We In Games Finland

We In Games Finland’s  project members: Emilia Machuca

The National Council of Women of Finland’s project members: Karoliina Pakkanen, Aino Hiltunen, Liisa Ketolainen, Terhi Heinilä

Project steering group:

  • Researcher, M.A. Usva Friman, The Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies at Tampere University
  • Project Manager, Lic.Soc.Sc., D.A Louna Hakkarainen, Turv@verkko project by Women’s Line
  • Specialist, Ph.D. Nina Järviö, Council for Gender Equality (TANE)
  • Head of HR, a member of the Leadership team, M.A. Heini Kaihu, Rovio Entertainment Corporation

Researchers:

  • B.A. Antonio Rodrigues
  • B.A. Nevena Sićević

Project images: Tuuli Hypén

Project layout: Nuppu Vehmasalo

Contact

If you wish to learn more about the Gender in Play project, please contact Taina Myöhänen, taina@weingames.fi.

In Collaboration

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Special grants was received from the Ministry of Justice for the implementation of Gender in Play project.

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