How women and girls are changing gaming

Gaming is one of the biggest industries in the world. In fact, in 2024, the revenue from the worldwide gaming market was estimated at almost $US455 billion. For context, the gaming industry is now generating more revenue than the movie and music industries combined.

And it’s only expected to grow.

What’s also interesting is that women are increasingly investing in gaming across various platforms. In 2024, women made up nearly 50% of the gaming population worldwide.

But it’s not all gold coins and power ups. Historically, the gaming industry has had problems when it comes to women.

Research last year found that about 56% of women players had experienced one or more types of sexual harassment during online gaming—that number increases here in Australia, with 83% of female players experiencing or observing some kind of abuse while gaming.

It can mean something that should be fun becomes toxic. And that could be to do with what happens behind the scenes.

In 2024, men still make up over two-thirds of game developers, while in Australia, women working in gaming sits at 22% with only 4% of employees identifying as transgender, non-binary or gender diverse.

Dr. Lucy Sparrow has made her career researching game design, the ethics of multiplayer digital games and “apathetic villagers and the trolls who love them.”

And on this, International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we’ve asked her about some of the big issues in gaming in 2025.

What drew you to research games and gaming?

Gaming has long been (and still is) my primary hobby. I have fond memories of playing Doom with my older brother, long before my fine motor skills had fully developed.

He would control the character’s aim and let me press the “fire” button to take out our enemies.

As I got older, I became more academically interested in the fascinating world of multiplayer games. I started to think more carefully about the interesting ethical conundrums associated with these digital, playful spaces.

It struck me how multiplayer games were both “real” and “not real”—they bring together very real people and foster strong bonds between them but often have quite different norms compared to the “outside” world.

These days, I have a wide interest in many kinds of games, from first-person shooters to story-based roleplaying games (RPGs) and everything in between.

A great deal of my free time is currently being taken over by the action RPG Horizon Zero Dawn, while a great deal of my work time is dedicated to exploring new ways of moderating in-game player chat and behavior.

What are some of the big trends we’re likely to see in gaming over the next few years?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in many industries right now—and gaming is no exception.

As AI rapidly develops, it’s likely to have a big impact on gaming in multiple ways. It can assist developers in generating levels, maps and art, as well as help review code to speed up the development process.

There is also considerable scope for non-player characters (NPCs)—the computer-controlled characters you might see bobbing around in games—to become more and more sophisticated in their interactions when driven by AI.

I recently led the GAIM (Games and AI Moderation) project, where we found that while players and industry professionals see AI moderation as potentially more efficient in identifying and removing problematic players, they also saw it as largely punishment-driven, confusing and lacking transparency.

Problematically, many players didn’t even know that AI was already being used to moderate both in-game text and voice chat, with one player asking; “Is that even legal?”

We are currently co-designing an AI moderation tool as part of the AI Ally project which focuses on supporting, educating and empowering girls and young women aged 14–25 to manage online harassment—a group particularly vulnerable to abuse in games.

AI is not without risks, and with AI on the rise it’s more important than ever to pay close attention to the ways in which it’s deployed.

Gaming is still talking about having a ‘problem with women.’ Is that your experience?

Researchers, industry professionals and players have long discussed—and pushed back against—gaming’s uncomfortable (and sometimes dangerous) relationship with women, gender-diverse people and many other minority groups.

This relationship is intertwined with a variety of cultural and technological developments over the past few decades.

From the sexualization and objectification of women characters in games, to the under-representation and treatment of women game developers, there are many ways that the “problem with women” is expressed in gaming.

One especially pressing issue is that of gendered harassment and abuse in multiplayer games.

It’s not uncommon for a woman to “reveal” her gender in a game and immediately be sexualized or demeaned by other players.

This is certainly something I have experienced and it can be deeply unpleasant.

Women cope with this kind of abuse in many ways, including not using voice chat, disguising their gender or avoiding playing certain games altogether.

Women suffer the harms of online abuse and miss out on playing games they would otherwise enjoy. Games lose a segment of their player base.

But it also means that women are rendered more invisible in gaming—the less we see or hear women in games, the more it looks like we simply don’t want to play them, which (if we look at the stats) just isn’t true.

Some of the culture of gaming and gaming communities has attracted criticism. What needs to change?

I believe very strongly in the power of game design to help shape gaming culture.

For this reason, I think game design must incorporate ethical considerations as crucial elements of the design process—not as afterthoughts, but as guiding principles.

This might, as in the AI Ally project, mean stepping beyond more punitive systems of moderation and exploring how we can employ different models of justice in the governance of gaming communities.

Instead of only punishing “bad” players, what if we educated them when they break the rules, or supported targets of abuse?

It also might involve thinking more carefully about how game design can impact the ways players relate to each other.

More than 15 years ago, American social scientist Nick Yee noted how “social architectures” in games can lead to behavior change in the massive multiplayer online RPG Everquest.

For instance, he claimed that making death a riskier endeavor in the game inspired more acts of trust and altruism.

If we are more mindful about how games foster certain values and relationships, we are in a better position to make positive change—from the ways we depict people and animals in games to how we structure the social environment.

What would you say to young gamers—particularly young women—about the future of gaming?

The future is bright. There are still problems to overcome, but there is much to be hopeful about too.

Many development teams are diversifying. We’re seeing games with novel characters, stories and mechanics, and women and gender-diverse players are becoming more visible.

All the problems that women have encountered in gaming so far have clearly only made us stronger and more resolute.

Play is a fundamental human activity—the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child even defines it as a fundamental human right.

There is—and must be—space for all kinds of players in the world of gaming. The more we create this space for ourselves and others, the more unique and wonderful games we will get to play and create in the future.