The video game industry is now worth more than $300 billion (for comparison, that's more than the GDP of Finland or Chile) and affects more than 500 million users around the world. In other words, this industry is now more important than the film and music industries combined. It is therefore an understatement to say that we are facing a behemoth of economic power but also of soft power... But what is the place of women in this " game " ?
A clear glass ceiling
47% of French players are female players (SELL). On a global scale, the same gender balance among gamers can be observed. There are some geographical variations: it is in China that there are the fewest female gamers (27% compared to 73% of men at the helm), it is in Finland that there are the most (49%).
Let us now talk about the number of employees in the sector. In France, women make up only 22% of the people who work in this industry. However, the trend is towards progress in gender diversity : 5 years ago, there were only 15% of women in the sector's workforce.
In detail, women are well represented in publishing positions (50%). On the other hand, they are in the minority in development positions (22%) and downright rare in the management of companies in the sector (11%).
Finally, here as elsewhere, we find a good old pyramid of the glass ceiling combining problems of gender diversity and difficulties in women's access to positions of responsibility.
Feet in the dish of sexism
Closely watched by many observers concerned about the real or supposed influence of video games on mentalities (especially among young people), the sector was more quickly than others questioned on the issue of sexism.
Representations of women as sexual objects in games, macho commandos organizing stalking raids from player forums targeting not only female gamers but also journalists, feminist activists or simple users of social networks, expression of contemptuous stereotypes on streaming platforms etc., there has been no shortage of opportunities to associate video games and violence against women in the media conversation.
But the industry has also seen figures of denunciation of sexism emerge more quickly than others. In 2012, that is to say well before #MeToo, before the gluers and other modern forms of the fight against violence against women, the gamer Mar_lard published on the blog Genre ! A series of articles dedicated to the machismo of the geek community. At the same time as his words earned him violent cyberharassment campaigns accompanied by rape and death threats, they were taken up by many media outlets that further investigated the different dimensions of the problem: the objectification of women's bodies in games, the uninhibited misandry of players, the laissez-faire attitude of the economic actors involved (game publishers, forum hosts, etc.), the lack of inclusion in the production and development professions. On the other side of the Atlantic, the media coverage of the Zoe Quinn case in 2014, which led to the Gamergate controversy , highlighted tensions that went far beyond the field of entertainment, including the suspicion that masculinist, supremacist and alt-right groups had infiltrated gaming communities.
The mobilization of the video game world
In 2017, the professional association Women in Games was founded with the support of the sector's unions and the support of many companies, including about twenty studios, publishers and game distributors. The association produces resources to objectify sexism and violence against women in the industry, gives visibility to female experts likely to speak in the media, deploys skills and self-confidence development programs for women aspiring to pursue a career in the sector...
It is a partner of Afrogameuses, an association created in 2020 that aims to raise awareness of inclusion issues among all stakeholders in the video game world, from training for young people on the prevention of online harassment to the real-time moderation of interactions on gaming platforms and actions with studios to limit bias in the writing of the scripts, the graphic design, the grammar of the symbols used...
Although, like any other sector, video games have not escaped the #MeToo wave with several high-profile cases of sexist acts and sexual harassment in studios, the latter are demonstrating, with the schools that train in their professions, a growing desire to strengthen the quality of life at work for all with a specific emphasis on non-discrimination... And to a lesser extent, to act with their customers by offering more inclusive games and by dissociating themselves from a " geekism " that is too sexist and sometimes racist.
Behind the case of video games, the question of the condition of women in the counterculture
But why this greater reserve from studios when it comes to raising awareness among gaming communities? Because, documentary filmmaker Thomas Versaveau tells us, the industry comes from a counterculture and cannot, even from a marketing point of view, break so easily with the expectations of communities that experience playing as a freedom apart from social shackles.
It remains to ask the question of the troubling recurrence of a right to " uninhibited sexism " in countercultural movements. It is indeed troubling to observe that artistic and cultural movements based on the inversion of norms and values blindly adopt the heterosexist norm (even though it is among the most confining) and indulge in misogyny and ordinary homophobia with such uninhibited attitudes.
However, it would be wrong to see the counterculture as a single block of machismo (or something else entirely, for that matter). Rap or street-art, for example, have been singled out for the sexist expression of certain artists, but Madame Rap's collections as well as the Feminist Gluers movement show how the counterculture can also be a space appropriated by women... Perhaps more easily, in the end, than traditional cultural institutions.
