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Even though 50% of the 3 billion gamers worldwide are women, they only represent 22% of employees in gaming studios. Women In Games (WIG) is a not-for-profit industry body seeking to get more women working in studios, which believes this representation gap is why female characters in games are often hypersexualised and clichéd compared to male characters. Working with BETC Paris, Women in Games sought to address the industry’s gender gap by creatively playing on the gaming community’s love of hacking, ‘modding’ (short for modification) and subversion. Together BETC Paris and Women in Games hacked the game files of dozens of mainstream video games, including Metal Gear Solid V, The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, Mortal Kombat 11 and Bayonetta, swapping the animations used for male and female characters. 

The intervention, titled Gender Swap, portrayed male video game heroes like their female counterparts, with humorous and often baffling consequences. Gamers could download and install the modified version of the game to experience gender-swapped play for themselves. On the r/GirlGamers subreddit gamers shared analysis and reactions, praising the project and even appreciating the merits of Batman’s newly “juicy’ butt”. “Omg this is honestly amazing, Batman had me cryingggg,” one user posted. Judges awarded Gender Swap two Graphite Pencils for digital storytelling and educational gaming, and it made the shortlist for awards in Gaming and PR. We spoke with Marie Glotin, Art Director at BETC Paris, to learn how they orchestrated the intervention.

With no allocated budget for media spend, Women In Games’ brief demanded ingenuity and creativity from the get-go. “The most challenging element was to make sure everyone understood the concept in two seconds, no matter what language they spoke,” explains Marie Glotin, Art Director at BETC Paris. This ensured that language wasn’t a barrier when reaching a global community of gamers. For Glotin, the most effective way of showing the consequences of underrepresentation in the gaming industry was to embrace the medium of gaming and all its signature quirks – such as modding. Modding, a creative and subversive, gamer-led tradition dating back to the 1980s, allowed the team to create a dynamic, fun conversation already embedded in gaming tradition. By assigning movements that were initially designed for female characters to their male counterparts, gamers experienced the likes of Batman performing distractingly sexualised dances, having submissive romantic encounters, getting into suggestive postures and wearing comically skimpy wardrobes.

Gender Swap’s modding contributed to wider conversations about double standards and sexism within gaming, but it also lent an appealing sense of open-minded play and non-binary thinking to game play more generally. “This confirms to me that we need more flamboyant animations for guys in games,” commented one user in the r/GirlGamers subreddit. Others discussed the “180 [turn] from sexist to wholesome” of modifications that threw previously heterosexual characters into new gay romance storylines that made for more interesting and broadly representative play. The takeaway? Everybody stands to gain from games designed by a more diverse workforce, not just women.

“We knew that the best way to get [gamers’] attention was to be entertaining,” says Glotin. “Because the swapped files could be downloaded, gamers could even play as themselves, and experience the potential of our campaign.” Gender Swap gave gamers a humorous, novel and downright weird new perspective within their favourite games, demonstrating that serious issues like underrepresentation and inequality have a wider and more entertaining reach when delivered with a dose of playful creativity. After the splash of the campaign, major video game studios signed partnerships with Women In Games, committing to support the organisation’s work.

It can be all too easy for creative and clients to fall into the ‘us and them’ trap during projects, but Glotin advises creatives to involve everyone in the process – and look for talent in unusual places. “Work with the clients, and anyone at your agency who can help you make the project even bigger,” she says. “We asked our IT department for [hacking] advice and we were lucky that women from Women In Games already work in the gaming industry and know how to code. Both of them, the clients and our IT team, spent hours hacking their way into the game files of dozens of video games.” As such, the creative process that led to Gender Swap was, perhaps unsurprisingly, as open-minded and collaborative as the resulting modifications. Glotin believes the project wouldn't have happened without the clients’ coding skills and expert knowledge of the gaming world. Her final words of wisdom gleaned from this project? “Don’t think alone and look for talent everywhere.”