The encyclopedia · Software & IT · Product decision · 2022–2023
Girls Who Code taught code by having girls build the game characters games lack
A web experience by Mojo Supermarket and MakeMePulse lets girls code their own avatars in four languages; the character library is licensable to game companies.
Girls Who Code
The solution
With 77% of game developers male and only 20% of characters female, Girls Who Code saw gaming as both a cause and a classroom. The nonprofit, known for the award-winning DojaCode, wanted a new entry point for coding that also attacked representation at the source.
Launched December 5, 2022 for Computer Science Education Week, 'Girls Who Code Girls' is a desktop and mobile experience where users code and customize their own video game characters. Beginners are introduced to four coding languages and watch their avatar change in real time as they type, from hair texture to skin tone to body size.
The clever part is the pipeline: the characters users create are collected and packaged into a licensable library offered to gaming companies to inform game development. The learnings double as evidence that players want more diverse characters — the campaign's audience literally produces the fix it demands.
The experience was entered in the 2023 One Show as a Use of Technology piece, extending a run of culture-shifting work Mojo Supermarket had built with the nonprofit since DojaCode.
Why it worked
- Coding was taught inside a task girls already wanted to do — making their own character.
- Real-time feedback made abstract syntax instantly visible and rewarding.
- The licensable character library turned participation into an industry asset.
- Campaign learnings gave the nonprofit data to push game companies toward change.
What can be applied
To change an industry's output, make your audience's participation the product: user creations become data and assets that prove demand and supply the fix, not a one-way PSA.
Aftermath
Girls Who Code Girls became part of the organization's campaign portfolio that had generated over 14 billion engagements, and its agency partners extended the interactive-coding model in later work. The character-library concept kept the door open for commercial adoption by studios, positioning the experience as both education and market signal rather than a one-off stunt.
Sources
- Girls Who Code Launches Digital Experience to Change the Future of Women in Gaming
- Girls Who Code Launch Experience To Disrupt Gaming Gender Imbalance Via Mojo Supermarket
- GIRLS WHO CODE GIRLS — 2023 One Show, Use of Technology
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