The Antisexism Game is simple in its design, but hugely profound in its application.

The Antisexism Game pulls no punches. It’s a clear and succinct experience designed to combat sexism – as you may have gleaned from its title alone – that uses everyday framing to convey its message. 

Similar to Morgan Mercer’s Vantage Point, The Antisexism game explores the workplace and the fact that individuals and organisations often fail to recognise the problem of everyday sexism, which leads to it going unchallenged. Naturally, this in turn invariably leads to toxic and often hostile working conditions. 

In the form of a game-based app, The Antisexism Game is designed to help both employees and employers understand how sexism can present itself in its many forms, why it’s wrong, and what simple measures can be taken to help prevent sexual misconduct in the workplace. 

A screenshot from the Antisexism website with text on how to recognise sexism in the workplace. These include 2 activities - one called Bubble Burst - fast paced decision focused game on statements and whether they're sexist. The second is 'Test Yourself' - a self assessment to help you discover if you've seen or witnessed sexism.

By combining academic research with contextual narrative-led video game mechanics, The Antisexism Game offers itself an engaging diagnostic tool of sorts whose overarching aim is to enlighten its players. Created and developed by Focus Games and Dr. Caroline Mitchell, an academic with over 20 years’ worth of experience researching and teaching the psychology of prejudice, The Antisexism Game helps players engage in a process of self-assessment – in turn forcing them to consider their direct actions, and their behaviour as a bystander. 

Available as a downloadable app or for free via your browser, The Antisexism Game takes just a few minutes to complete across two different game modes: ‘Bubble Burst’, which is a fast-paced reaction-heavy game that helps players to recognise sexism and sexual harassment; and ‘Test Yourself’, which is a slight more formal questionnaire-based mode whereby players answer a total of 21 yes/no questions across three surveys, which the app can in turn tell players if they’ve witnessed or experienced sexism and/or sexual harassment and how severe it was. 

A cartoon person stood in an office with speech bubble reading "Sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace are serious problems. Many employees struggle to recognise sexism and sexual harassment, so they struggle to address them. In this mini-game, you will be presented with multiple statements that are either sexist or non-sexist. These statements are in bubbles. Burst as many sexist bubbles as you can within the time limit to gain points.  

After that, The Antisexism Game provides a dashboard that collates aggregated anonymous responses that employers can access and assess any wider issues that can be addressed in the workplace. The app version of the game can then be used repeatedly to track the outcomes and impact of any potential remedial interventions – again, illustrating how this game is positioning itself as a diagnostic tool in the face of sexism and sexual misconduct in the workplace. 

Which is surely a good thing. For an app to be able to address and acknowledge serious behaviour of this nature is one thing, but for the follow-up to be so thorough and helpful, potentially life-changing in certain cases, then that’s pretty remarkable. Better still, 10% of profits from The Antisexism Game are donated to the Rape Crisis charity in England and Wales. 

Learn more about The Antisexism Game here. 

Joe Donnelly
Joe Donnelly is a Glaswegian writer, video games enthusiast and mental health advocate. He has written about both subjects for The Guardian, VICE, his narrative non-fiction book Checkpoint, and believes the interactive nature of games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform.

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