An office prank to replace a framed picture of a scantily-clad female Hawken character with a scantily clad male character in the office of the CEO of Hawken publisher Meteor Entertainment has a surprising result. The prank, detailed over at The Hawkeye Initiative, explains how some Meteor Entertainment employees decided to replace a picture of a female character with a male character.

GTFO, a documentary about sexism and harassment in the video games industry and within the gaming community has surpassed its funding goal of $20,000. With four more days to go, the documentary has managed to raise $23,829 from just 882 backers on Kickstarter. The documentary is being put together by New York-based filmmaker Shannon Sun-Higginson, who describes herself as a casual gamer.

Four coding schools just for young girls and women are trying to change the number of females that program (and give girls more STEM-focused educational opportunities) in the United States - as highlighted in this ReadWriteWeb feature. The start-ups catering to women and girls aspiring to learn how to code include Girl Develop It, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, and Girls Learning Code/Ladies Learning Code.

Filmmaker Shannon Sun-Higginson has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a documentary on sexism and harassment in the video games industry called GTFO. The New York City-based filmmaker is looking to raise $20,000 to continue work on the film, with money going towards shooting expenses, travel costs, money to pay crew members, post-production expenses, licensing rights for any gaming footage or images appearing in the final film, and to create promotional materials.

Women in Games International (WIGI) and the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) are now working together to create the first video game patch for Girl Scouts. Scouts can earn the patch by taking part in a special program put together by both the GSGLA and WIGIIGI using various tools to create a game.

According to data from the 2012 Game Developer Salary Survey (which was published in the March issue of Game Developer Magazine) the number of women working in the games industry is growing, but salary gap between the sexes is still apparent.

According to the data women only had higher salaries in one of seven categories: programming and engineering, but programming and engineering also has the smallest number of women working in those professions at four percent. Women were also hard to find in the audio sector of the industry at around four percent.

Media Molecule co-founder and studio director Siobhan Reddy has been named Australian Woman of the Year in the U.K. for 2013. The award is sponsored by Qantas Airways and the networking organization Australian Business.

Reddy was born in Sydney but migrated to the United Kingdom in the 1990s. She is in charge of the Guildford, U.K.-based studio that developed the LittleBigPlanet series and is hard at work on its latest IP called Tearaway. She was honored with the award last night in London.

On this week's show, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the first Tropes vs. Women video, "Bronies" and if rights holders should be a little kinder to fan projects, and the nightmarish launch of SimCity this week. Download Episode 44 now: SuperPAC Episode 44 (1 hour, 6 minutes) 60.4 MB.

Women in Games International today announced its plan to present a panel at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco later this month that focuses on the need to encourage more youth participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects. The panel brings together leaders from video games, government, and media organizations to discuss the issue and to raise awareness. The panel is called "Responsibility to Youth and Staying Competitive in the Global Marketplace" and will take place Wed., March 27 from 2 - 3 p.m.

In a recent article in Forbes (as reported by Gamasutra) Electronic Arts executive vice president and chief talent officer Gabrielle Toledano said that blaming sexism for a lack of women in the video game industry is a copout and unreasonable.

In a six minute interview with Joystiq, Irrational Games boss and lead on BioShock Infinite Ken Levine talks about why it is important to not be afraid of using topics that some might consider controversial as vehicles for a story. In BioShock Infinite, Levine has weaved a narrative around a number of belief systems and ideals, and all of these things come together in the floating city of Columbia to create tension and drive the narrative.

In what has to be a record take-down of a questionable piece of marketing, Square Enix pulled a Facebook app promoting Hitman Absolution two hours after it was deployed after a scathing report from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The company later apologized for the app. The trouble began after RPS wrote about how "Hire Hitman" app allowed users to target and assassinate their Facebook friends, complete with death threats to your intended target.

Yesterday, Jean-Maxime Moris, co-founder of the studio behind Capcom's upcoming action game Remember Me, explained to CVG why the game's protagonist is a mixed-race female.

"We wanted [Remember Me lead] Nilin to stand out.  I think these sort of issues become self-fulfilling prophesies; people saying that only white males sell so then everyone only does white males."

Kotaku has a short article chronicling the Twitter hashtag #1reasonwhy, which has served as a rallying point over the last 24 hours or so on what women in both the video games industry and their female counterparts in games journalism have to put up with and why there are not as many women in both fields.

Some poor guy that dressed up like Master Chief to give a presentation on behalf of Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch in Israel called games other than Halo - and no doubt other than Halo 4 which releases today in regions around the world - girly. Besides being a poor choice of words that will likely be construed as misogynistic and sexist, Master Chief may not realize that a good portion of the military in Israel is comprised of women. Oops.

A new print ad from Sony Computer Entertainment France is getting some attention for pushing the boundaries of sexism to promote the company's PS Vita hand-held. The ad (pictured left and courtesy of MCV) shows a female body with four breasts and compares those four breasts to the PS Vita's front and rear touch screens.

The tagline for the ad is "Touch both sides, twice the sensations."

Some are chalking the ad up to what is acceptable in French advertising and cultural standards.

EA Sports is warming up to the idea that female athletes deserve more time in the spotlight. The company has already taken steps towards supporting more women athletes, announcing that its next hockey title NHL 13 will feature women's hockey stars Hayley Wickenheiser and Angela Ruggiero. EA Fans are also doing their part to further convince the company that women deserve more exposure in their games: FIFA fan Fernanda Schabarum has started an online petition to ask EA to add female characters to the series. And since EA is being receptive on the topic, it listened.

While it's not much of a shock, it is still a good sign that Madden as a franchise is strong at retail and as popular as ever with consumers. Electronic Arts claims that Madden NFL 13 has managed to sell-through 900,000 units in its first 24 hours of release. The company said that the number represented a 7 percent year-over-year increase on HD platforms. Madden NFL 13 also set a day one online usage record with a 28 percent increase in peak simultaneous users over last year’s first day.

The official Twitter feed for the country of Sweden, @Sweden is being handled this week by Naseer Alkhouri, a game developer who describes himself as a "homeopathic swede" that "develops games for a living." Sweden has a policy of letting its citizens "guest-star" every week to speak their minds.

While having a super casual mode for your game is a great idea, what you call it in private can sometimes seep out and cause you a headache if you are not careful. That is exactly what is happening to Gearbox Software this morning after a Eurogamer report called a new super easy skill tree in Borderlands 2 "Girlfriend Mode." The offense comes from the inference that "girlfriends" are somehow not very good at games (or not very bright) and need a special skill tree to help them along. Gearbox is basically being accused of using a misogynist term to describe the mode.

Speaking to IGN, Sony Santa Monica Design Manager David Hewitt revealed that God of War: Ascension will not feature violence against women. Hewitt said that the development team listened to some critics who pointed out that the game's E3 trailer was ultra violent.

Zynga is loaning several of its developers to create a social charity game on Facebook. Development on a "social action" game based on the book Half the Sky by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is well underway according to GamesBeat.

The book is about "turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide." The game will be released on Facebook on November 13.

Way back in June we detailed the trouble Anita Sarkeesian ran into after launching a Kickstarter for a video series called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." Despite the negative and frankly inappropriate feedback to the Kickstarter, the project generated $158,922 in funding. The original goal was $6,000.

Feminist Frequency, a web series run by Anita Sarkeesian that explores “representations of race, gender, sexuality, class and ability in popular culture,” launched a Kickstarter campaign a few weeks back for a new series of videos entitled Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.  The project will examine and comment on female video game character stereotypes throughout gaming’s history.

The White House Council on Women and Girls will host a Girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) event tomorrow (April 24) moderated by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The panelists will share their experiences and encourage young women to follow in their footsteps or blaze a trail of their own. The event will also include the first public screening of "Girls in STEM," a video featuring girls who participated in the 2012 White House Science Fair.

We're not sure if it's right or wrong, but Nival Interactive says that it plans to offer female players discounts and incentives to join a team and play its upcoming online strategy game, Prime World. This kind of gender preference is usually exclusive to things like dating services, and bars that host ladies night... Female players will pay less for virtual characters, and teams formed of men and women will receive bonuses.

Sony Online Entertainment sent along a reminder to let anyone interested in applying for the fifth annual Gamers in Real Life (G.I.R.L.) Game Design Competition, that submissions are now being accepted. The G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition is an annual initiative to promote higher education among women and encourage their inclusion and participation in the video game industry.

Sony Online Entertainment is accepting applications and submissions today for its 2012 Gamers in Real Life (G.I.R.L.) Game Design Competition. In its fifth year, the G.I.R.L. program grants scholarships to four winners through the Game Design Competition.

Deborah Thomas, CEO and President of Silly Monkey, LLC (a training company specializing in training games and business simulations) and President of the Georgia Game Developers Association (GGDA), plans to launch the first chapter of Women In Gaming International (WIGI) in the Eastern United States by convening the first meeting at Battle & Brew Food and Games, 279 Powers Ferry Road - Suite H, Marietta, Georgia on January 16, 2012.

Women in Games Jobs announced that its inaugural European Women in Games Hall of Fame awards will be launched at the European Women in Games Conference taking place on September 22 at the NH Harrington Hall Hotel in London, England. The awards are sponsored by Electronic Arts and honor the contributions of women to the European game industry. Women in Games Jobs (WIGJ) is a not-for-profit company that works to recruit more women into the games industry by promoting role models and giving encouragement and information.

Nominees for the inaugural Hall of Fame award in 2011 are: