Development of a conceptual framework for supporting gender inclusivity in games

Despite the dramatic growth of gender and games research, many challenges remain in designing a more gender-inclusive game. This paper addresses the problem of how to support gender-inclusivity in games by incorporating existing theories in games and gender. Existing research in games and gender tend to focus on finding out how each gender plays and their preferences in games. However, there is little evidence that researchers have approached the issue of gender inclusivity in games with the intent of building a cohesive understanding of gender inclusivity in games and the relationships that exist between the different dimensions and components. This research sought to identify emerging themes and components for supporting gender inclusivity in games based on findings from games and gender research. Consequently, the aim of this research is to develop an integrative framework that can support gender inclusivity in games. Analysis of existing research findings in games and gender produced 2 unique components lists with a total of 8 themes and 32 components relevant to gender inclusivity in games. Further classification and synthesization demonstrate that the proposed framework can be determined by 3 dimensions and 12 components. On-going research is being planned for experiments to validate the framework through expert evaluation, game experiment and game design projects