I want to go up to the 100-mile mark. What's happening in games right now in terms of representation is fundamentally no different from what happens on television or in books. We know that these gender and racial imbalances already exist. The majority of children's books feature young white boys as protagonists. The same thing happens with television programming. The same thing is happening in gaming.
One study of television, for example, which can logically be extended into this realm, shows that when children watch television programming or when they watch any screen programming, all children with the exception of young white boys, leave feeling drops in their self-esteem, whereas young white boys feel empowered by this media that they're encountering.
I think that's important, because it doesn't matter, honestly, whether a child is reading a book, being read to, looking at a movie from Disney, or playing a game. I think this is why representation is so important.
In the absence of representation, though, the next most vital thing to do is give children media literacy. Teach them that what they're consuming should be healthy or how they should be thinking about themselves and their relationship to the world.
While gaming is vitally important as an entry point into STEM in general, from the perspective of the messages that they get about themselves I think it's just a new version of an old problem.