The Architecture of Empathy: How Sophia De Pauw is Gamifying the Fight Against Sexism
“If you never go around creating stuff, then what are you really doing?”
For Sophia De Pauw, creation isn’t just a career path; it’s the very pulse of existence. A Game Design Intern at Spring ACT based in Belgium, Sophia speaks about her craft with the kind of gentle intensity that only comes from someone who has found their “why.” She isn’t just building mechanics; she is building bridges between difficult social realities and the transformative power of play.
Sophia’s journey into the world of pixels and polygons began at age six, a hobby that eventually ignited a realisation: if games could shape her life so profoundly, they could surely shape the world. Now a student at Howest (Digital Arts and Entertainment), she has brought her talents to the Comeback CatZ project, an initiative dedicated to dismantling sexism through interactive storytelling.
During our conversation, I was curious about the transition from “gamer” to “changemaker.” I asked her if there was a specific lightbulb moment where she realized games could be a tool for social change.
“There wasn’t exactly a single moment,” she reflects, her voice warm and thoughtful. “But I realized how much games simulated experiences I hadn’t lived. The most important part about teaching stuff to anyone is them having fun while learning. Especially when tackling hard topics like sexism – it must be taken seriously, but it can still be an engaging experience.”
At Spring ACT, Sophia spends her days in a constant state of “rhythmic brainstorming” with her colleague Vahit. Their mission? Finding the elusive “golden ratio” between education and entertainment. It’s a delicate dance she calls “learnifying the gaming versus gamifying the learning.”
“Finding that balance has been really difficult, but we’ve been getting there. If you lean too much into making it incredibly fun, the player might lose the skills we want them to learn because of the distraction. When we figure it out, it’s that golden moment of: ‘Oh, how didn’t we see this in the beginning?’”
This drive to solve complex puzzles extends far beyond the screen. Outside of the digital realm, Sophia finds her grounding in the physical world – hiking the Alps or mountain biking, passions inherited from her father. For her, reaching the summit of a mountain is a metaphor for the creative process: “Just the sight when you reach the top of a mountain and you know you earned every single step up there.”
Perhaps her most profound project, however, is herself. As a transgender woman, Sophia speaks candidly about her journey through social isolation and self-discovery. “I am my own project,” she says with a quiet pride. “Working on myself, overcoming anger, and depression, has been a major achievement”. For Sophia, self-improvement is the foundation for everything else; if we don’t feel good about ourselves, we cannot offer our best to the world.
This same philosophy of “process over perfection” follows her into the studio. Professionally, she takes immense pride in her robotic puzzle game, “Use Your Head“. The project required her to go through four intense, two-week sprints of pure ideation – brainstorming, prototyping, gathering feedback, and iterating – before fully developing the best concept. “It was a long and difficult process that really drained my brain,” Sophia admits, “but it felt so incredible to look back and see all the work I had put in to get to the end result.” While she knows she could build an even better game today, she credits that grueling, rewarding process as the catalyst for her growth as a designer.
Ultimately, Sophia wants us to stop looking at games as “unserious” or “childish.” She sees them as a high-tech vessel for the oldest human necessity: Empathy. Through her work on CatZ, she is proving that while standing up to sexism is hard in real life, learning how to do it can be an empowering, even joyful, adventure.
“Gaming is a medium just like film and books,” she concludes. “It can teach people skills that they would otherwise spend years of their life trying to learn.”
To see more of Sophia’s creative world and her journey in independent game production, you can explore her work at https://sophiadepauw.com/
NewsBytes: The Heart Behind the Code
In this edition of NewsBytes, we sit down with the creative minds fueling our “Tech for Good” mission. Today, we feature Sophia De Pauw, a Game Design Intern who believes that the secret to solving the world’s hardest problems might just lie in how we play.
De Pauw is currently based in Belgium where she studies independent Game Production at Howest (Digital Arts and Entertainment). At Spring ACT, she is focused on blending game design mechanics with education to help people stand up to sexism.
How would you describe your day-to-day mission as a Game Design Intern for the CatZ project?
“It’s a lot of brainstorming and bouncing ideas off my colleague to find that perfect balance. We ask ourselves: ‘How can we make this entertaining while still being deeply educational?’ It’s about prototyping little games and art to see if the ‘look’ is too goofy or just right for the message we’re sending.”
Why do you believe video games are the right tool to tackle a heavy subject like violence against women?
“Games allow you to live through stories and experiences without actually being there, which is a powerful way to teach. The ultimate goal in any teaching situation is for the person to have fun, because that’s when the knowledge actually sticks. We want to make the difficult skill of fighting back against sexism something people want to engage with.”
If you could change one thing about the world overnight with a magic power, what would it be?
“I would want everyone to have the perfect ability to be able to know what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes. You’d look at someone and know exactly what it feels like to be them for a day and what struggles they go through. If we had that, we would work towards solving issues like sexism and inequality much more readily.”
– Written by Mustapha Lawal
