Refuse, Remediate, ReFIGure: Making Games Sustainable for Women

The digital games industry is and has been male-dominated for decades. This panel reports on the midway progress of a large-scale, five year project, initiated in 2015, which has as its goal the construction of new pathways and structures for equitable, safe, and rewarding participation in gaming. Funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the “ReFiguring Innovation in Games” (ReFiG) initiative takes an inter-sectoral approach, involving students, academics and industry partners towards the common goal of a more equitable and innovative game culture and industry. There is currently no research or project of this international and longitudinal scale that is taking up the challenge to systematically ameliorate the persistently and pervasively inhospitable conditions for women in games across multiple domains.

Dividing the panel according to the thematic streams addressed by the project (Informal Learning; Formal Learning; Games Industries; Games Culture), we discuss insights we’ve made, resources we’ve developed, and obstacles we’ve encountered. These include: i) the institutional and logistical challenges associated with administering an international, feminist research program -- one which functions very much as a platform rather than a typical project; ii) the contexts and communities in which feminist initiatives have been most welcome, and the domains in which we continue to struggle to find grounds for meaningful collaboration; iii) the tools and techniques we have developed and implemented that enable feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and politics to travel across localized gaming contexts and disciplinary domains.