Beauty Brand Dove Launches Video Games Diversity Initiative

Dove has teamed up with Epic Games, the Women in Games organisation and studio Toya on a campaign to tackle the representation of women in games, and to support girls with self-esteem education.

Some 1.3 billion women and girls make up half of the global games community, with 60%playing video games before the age of 13. Yet new research from Dove - endorsed by Women in Games and the Centre for Appearance Research (CAR) – reveals that 60% of girl gamers feel misrepresented and recognise a lack of diversity as a key issue in video games. 

The research also revealed that 35% of young girls feel their self-esteem is negatively impacted after seeing a lack of diversity in characters and avatars.  To help combat this, Dove has launched ‘Real Virtual Beauty", a series of initiatives to shatter beauty stereotypes and equip the next generation of young creators and players with the tools to build self-esteem and body confidence. 

These include:  

Real Beauty in Games Training – an education course in partnership with Epic Games’Unreal Engine, which invites game creators to help reflect the diversity we see in everyday life and to avoid contributing to stereotypes and biases in design 

Real Virtual Beauty Avatar Library – an online character art collection hosted on EpicGames’ Art Station platform that will help raise the standard for the authentic, diverse, and inclusive representation of women and girls across the stages of avatar development  

SuperU Story - the world’s first Roblox games experience designed to deliver self-esteem education, enabling young girls to customise their own avatars allowing them to experience more representative versions of beauty