Since the beginning, the game industry’s been about personalities. Richard Garriott. John Romero. Shigeru Miyamoto. Maybe because the medium itself can be so sterile and technical sometimes — all ones and zeros, physics engines, inventories, and stat bars — we gravitate toward the human faces for a dose of context and reality.
But what if the celebrity developer in question is a woman? Gender’s still an incredibly thorny issue in the industry, and while game studios are hiring more women than ever, the male-to-female ratio is still markedly uneven. According to 2005 report by the International Game Developers Association, women represent just 11.5 percent of the game-development workforce.
But according to some prominent industry women, things aren’t quite as bad as they seem. In fact, some say there’s never been a better time to be a woman in game development.
