As we know sexism against women in the gaming world is rife. But now a government funded agency in Sweden is looking to add labels on to their video games that would act to alert buyers to whether the game has a sexist potrayal of women, or indeed not, within them.
Swedish video-game trade organisation Dataspelsbranchen is carriyng out a major study of the female characters in video games in order to determine the most gender-diverse ones. The study, that was commissioned by government-funded innovation agency Vinnova, are now looking to award certificates to games that portray equality within them.
‘I do not know of any other project in the world asking this question and of course we want Sweden to be a beacon in this area', said Anton Albin the project manager of the research. 'Games can be about fantasy, but they can be so much more than this. They can also be a form of cultural expression — reflecting society or the society we are hoping for. Games can help us to create more diverse workplaces and can even change the way we think about thing,’ he continued.
The organisation will also be looking at how they can help to make the industry more equal; at present only 16 percent of people working in the huge Swedish gaming industry are women. And in the US only three percent of video game programmers are female, while designers make up only 11 percent.
With all this in mind, we think Sweden is on to something - and hope the UK follow suit.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.