Girls Who Code taught code by having girls build the game characters games lack

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.

Teach code by having girls build the characters games lack

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.

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.

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.