Women In Games

The gaming industry has over the last thirty years gone from being a garage based industry, where the game developers worked in their homes to multi-national and in some companies even global enterprises. Home based indie game developers have become more commonplace once again in recent years as the costs of running game studios increases while the game development process becomes easier with the use of game engines. Over these years, the role of females has changed in the industry (as consumers, developers and as game developers). In this essay I am attempting to evaluate the importance of females in games over the last three decades. 


In the year 1996, video gamers were introduced to a strong female character known as Lara Croft in the game Tomb Raider (Core Design). [1] Lara Croft was an important female for the gaming industry as a character because at the time, female characters were under represented in games. [2] Most people would agree that there are much less female characters in games although in recent years there has been an increase, a study suggested that 85% of characters were male according to the guardian in July 2009. [3] 

Female characters are often portrayed as busty and provocative, this is usually because it attracts more men to play the game; there are even games that use women as the main selling point for the game. [4] An good example of using women to sell a game is Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Team Ninja, 2003) where the girls featured animated breasts which would bounce with exaggeration. [5] 

In defence of using disproportionately provocative female characters in League of Legends, one of the concept artists at Riot Games explained that the characters needed to be recognisable and readable from a distance. "Let's also consider something. Readability. In the game, the characters are fairly small, nyez? So, we do often I believe have to make sure we're making sure to make sure that the figure is readable as a girl or guy. How do we do this? Well, proportion, accentuation, exaggeration, etc. Want the feminine form to read in a game? Welp, guess what, it might have to be a bit more famine and/or stylized than usual to read at the proper distance and keep readable when moving. That's just making sure we cover the basics of simple silhouette recognition. If we make her too broad, you might mistake Sejuani for a male, that'd be, ya know, not what we want." [6] 


Some of the most important female game developers include: Roberta Williams, Carol Shaw, Dona Bailey, Anne Westfall, Jane Jensen, Brenda Laurel, Amy Briggs and Doris Self. [7] 

Roberta Williams was a designer and writer of video games and a co-founder of Sierra Entertainment (previously Sierra On-Line). Roberta was inspired to create graphical adventure games whilst playing a text based adventure game, had it not been for her games, other games may not have been inspired by her creations. 

Lucy Bradshaw was the executive producer of Spore (Maxis, 2008), she had a role in developing the Sims series which has been a very successful game series. [8] 

Brenda Brathwaite was an important women in the games industry, her work led to people being more vocal about sexual content in video games, when previously it was rarely discussed. [9] 

Game designer Sheri Graner Ray has been developing games since 1990 and since then began working for Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, Cartoon Network; also Her Interactive which is a development studio focused on development for girls. Her approach to game design was based on her understanding of female gamers, she regularly does presentations at industry events where she talks of how male and female gamers differer in their play-style; she encourages discussion between developers. [10] She is an important women in the games industry because of the things she does to help the industry appeal to more females as well as educating other developers at her presentations. 

A reason why there may be not many women working in games is due to the problems they face with getting jobs, and those that have jobs may get treated unfairly at work. In November 2012, there was a trending hashtag on Twitter '#1ReasonWhy' where developers wrote about why there weren't as many females working in the games industry as there should be. [11] 


In August 2013, CNN reported that almost half of all video-gamers were female, [12] this was according to the 2013 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. Many years ago when gaming was less popular, video games were not so popular with females as they today; it was stereotypically a male only activity. 

But now with the ease of easy access to more games on many platforms, such as iPhones and Android; more girls are more likely to start gaming as a hobby without needing to invest in an expensive game console. Facebook games have also been popular with girls as they are able to play with their friends and with there being no requirement to make fast paced actions to win, they don't have to worry about being skilled at the game. Smartphone games are most popular with women, according to Sky News, the most popular game app is Candy Crush Saga. [13] 

The Nintendo Wii console has been a success with the female gaming market as Nintendo do not allow any games to contain any sexist or excessively violent material on their consoles; furthermore the ease of operating the Wii console could be another reason for its success. [14] Female gamers were also introduced to gaming with the Nintendo DS game 'Nintendogs' which was intended to attract girls to gaming. 

[1] http://30plusgamer.com/lara-croft-females-in-games/ 
[2] http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/articles/460517-why-tomb-raider-is-an-important-milestone-for-women-in-gaming 
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2009/jul/31/videogames-gender-balance 
[4] http://www.giantbomb.com/sexualized-women/3015-2362/ 
[5] http://www.giantbomb.com/breast-bounce/3015-96/ 
[6] http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=19641982#19641982 
[7] http://classicgames.about.com/od/history/tp/HistoricWomeninClassicGames.htm 
[8] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131993/women_in_games_the_gamasutra_20.php?page=2 
[9] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131993/women_in_games_the_gamasutra_20.php?page=3 
[10] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131993/women_in_games_the_gamasutra_20.php?page=17 
[11] http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-27-1reasonwhy-the-night-twitter-took-on-the-industrys-sexism 
[12] http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/08/tech/gaming-gadgets/female-gamers/ 
[13] http://news.sky.com/story/1141502/casual-gaming-most-popular-among-women 
[14] http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/06/video-games-girls-markets-equities-technology.html