Although women are said to compose 47% of the gaming community, they are often undervalued and unrepresented in both the community and gaming industry itself. This isn’t exactly new as prolific and talented female game designers have been frequently swept under the rug for years.

Retro

Take Carol Shaw. She’s considered to be the first female game designer, responsible for Atari’s 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe in 1979. She also created River Raid and worked on Super Breakout. And it’s no surprise – she holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering as well as a master’s degree in Computer Science. Dona Bailey created Centipede, one of the first games to utilize artificial intelligence, and was the only woman in Atari’s coin-op division for the two years she worked there. She was quoted saying that people insisted “either it was a fluke or I didn’t really do it, somebody else did it … I felt sick of fighting,” she said “so I really just disappeared, and I haven’t had contact with the industry for at least twenty years.”

Reading Material

More recently, we have characters like Jane McGonigal, the mind behind the memetic Halo 2 ARG I Love Bees. She also wrote Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, in which she argued that games can contribute to human happiness and motivation, and create communities – a decidedly optimistic and supportive view. Sheri Graner Ray wrote Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market in 2004, was awarded the International Game Developers’ Association’s Game Developer’s Choice Award in 2005, and is the executive chair for Women In Games International, an organization she co-founded. It all started with her question: “But … what if the player is female?”

Games As Art

Amy Hennig has been a staple of the gaming industry, starting off on the NES as an artist and animator but growing into directing, producing, designing, and writing. Basically, if you need it done, she can do it. She’s written, among other contributions, the Legacy of Kain franchise, and has written and directed the Uncharted franchise. All this writing credentials is probably due to her Bachelor’s in English literature, and her belief that graphics are only secondary and “our medium will mature to where it’s no longer about simulation, but expression.”

Rhianna Pratchett, who worked on Heavenly Sword, 2008’s Prince of Persia, Bioshock Infinite, Mirror’s Edge, and most recently the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot (all titles with prominent female roles) stated that her goal is embracing storytelling and interactive narratives in games. Kim Swift, the lead and level designer of the massively-popular first Portal game, also found an interesting way to weave story into gameplay – as well as addressing gender in gaming by simply and quietly having both the hero and villain be female.

Kellee Santiago, now-former president of Thatgamecompany, which produced Journey, a story-driven game with a unique multiplayer function, told gaming websites that she wants to “create games that push the boundaries of video games as a communicative medium,” and hopes to influence the rest of the industry into also seeing games as a creative medium.

Modern Era

The list goes on and on. Alyssa Finley was the executive producer of Bioshock, which was written by Sarrah O’Connor, who also wrote for its sequel, Far Cry 2, and the Tomb Raider reboot. Kiki Wolfkill was the executive producer of Halo 4, after working as a graphic and cinematic artist for games including Fable, Gears of War, and Mass Effect. “I think that female gamers are becoming more comfortable saying that they’re gamers,” she says, “and that has a huge impact on the industry’s perception.” We can only hope that she’s right.

[infobox title=’About Author’]J Todd has been an avid gamer since she first got a Gameboy and hopes to write for games one day herself. You can reach her on Google+ here.[/infobox]

Photo Credit: Photographer Mustafa Sayed | source via Flickr