WOMEN IN GAMES | GENDER SWAP | 2022
Butt-shaking heroes made the scale of the problem impossible to ignore / WOMEN IN GAMES "GENDER SWAP"
Male heroes swinging their hips, dancing seductively, striking provocative poses. Taking the movements that have long been treated as "normal" for female characters in games and transplanting them directly onto male characters suddenly makes them feel deeply strange.
The problem
As of 2022, one in two gamers worldwide is a woman (over 1.5 billion people), yet women make up only 22% of employees at game studios. As a result, the way female characters are portrayed in video games has become excessively sexualized and stereotyped compared to male characters. Most AAA video game titles are designed for a male audience, producing overly sexualized characters—and sexism has become so deeply embedded in gaming culture on such a large scale that players have stopped noticing it. Founded in 2017, Women in Games aims to double the number of women working in the gaming industry over the next ten years.
The insight
To show just how big the problem was, the team hacked into the game files of dozens of mainstream video games and swapped the animations of male and female characters. A familiar sight doesn't register. But flip it around, and the strangeness becomes impossible to miss. Morgane Falaize, President of Women in Games France, said: "Some of these scenes had already been shared online, others hadn't. But put them all together, and you see just how big the problem really is."
The idea
Working with BETC, the team created #GenderSwap. Using numerous "mods"—some found online, others newly created for the campaign—they directly edited game files, assigning movements originally designed for female characters to male ones. Butt shaking, sensual dancing, provocative poses, exaggerated sexual expressions—things that normally looked "normal" suddenly looked bizarre once applied to male heroes. By swapping animations across 14 game titles, this experience made a structural problem instantly understandable through the simple feeling of "something's off."
What happened
To build awareness and spark discussion, #GenderSwap was also rolled out on Twitch. On February 15 and 16, 2022, selected streamers played the modded video games on their own channels and discussed them with their audiences. Without any media spend or paid influencers, the trailer racked up 1.35 million views on social media within 24 hours, becoming the most discussed and shared gaming-related campaign in France in 2022. Five out of the top ten trending streams on Twitch were related to the campaign. 74% of new members who joined Women in Games' Discord were women. Visits to the organization's job listings page increased more than 35-fold. Most importantly, the campaign led to partnerships with major game studios including Ubisoft. It won multiple Lions at Cannes Lions 2022, including Gold in the PR category, plus Silver and Bronze.
Afterthought
That feeling of "something's off" is one of the most powerful tools for making people notice something. Rather than lecturing, this campaign used a simple trick—flipping things around—to make viewers pause and think, "wait, that's weird." And that moment of "wait" is the first step toward change. The words of Vice-President Harmonie Freyburger capture the heart of this effort: "It's only by having more women working in studios that we can arrive at diverse, less stereotyped representations of female characters. Diverse teams lead to better creative ideas and better products for everyone." I'd love to do work that flips someone's "normal" upside down too.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2022
