By Erin Hoffman

When you work in an industry characterized by acts of testosterone and populated mostly by men, it doesn’t matter what you work on or even how good at it you are; if you’re a member of the “fairer” sex, you get one question: What’s it like to be a woman in (insert industry here)?

It’s an intuitive question. According to a survey in 2005 conducted by the International Game Developers Association, the ratio of women to men working in video games is slightly over 1:10—not great odds if you’re trying for a saving throw. Considering these numbers, it might be surprising that most women who do work in the business don’t really think about gender too much.

Don’t get me wrong. The ratio is obvious. In 2003, I was the only female developer on a team of 40 working on an Xbox action game. But gender just wasn’t something I thought about on a daily basis—and neither, for the most part, do most of the female developers I’ve met.

I’m a game designer. It’s kind of like being an architect, except that while a missed calculation of mine might infuriate millions of teenagers, it probably won’t kill them. It’s art fused with mechanics, which means it’s suspended halfway between the right and left “brains”. More importantly, to make games you have to love playing them, and while video games have historically been a boyish pastime, “play” is a concept that knows no age and no gender.

Play is something we don’t generally have time for anymore. While the U.S. is known for its overworked populace, Canada isn’t far behind. According to a 2004 survey, work hours per capita increased 20 percent in the U.S. between 1970 and 2002, but a close 15 percent in Canada and the U.K. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that two studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2000 showed a corresponding increase in “trait anxiety” across children and adults.

But play, in addition to being great stress relief, is comprehensive. It’s a fundamental part of the human experience that we know anthropologically to increase with societal complexity. Wherever we find complex civilizations through history, we find games, from chess and shogi to Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario. Modern video games are stereotyped for violence, but take a look at the list of all-time top-selling video games and you’ll find Nintendogs, Wii Play, and Pokémon—hardly your Grand Theft Autos. These games tap something more fundamental, and some part of them—the game at their heart—is in a piece of every successful game turned out by this supposedly testosterone-driven industry.

So if play is so fundamental, where do these industry demographics come from? Vancouver is a city known for its thriving game-developer population, so I was fortunate to catch up with Backbone Entertainment’s Heidi Newell and ask about her experiences. “Women who want to work in games do.” Newell, a game producer with over a decade of entertainment-industry experience, is hopeful for the future. “The industry is growing into many new marketplaces, and gaining more visibility and access to women consumers than ever before. When the kinds of games are there that appeal to women, more will be interested in joining the industry.”

Bryna Dabby, a producer for Vancouver-based Genius Factor Games, agrees. “I think that we need to do everything possible to attract the most talented developers out there, regardless of gender. As the gaming demographic becomes broader, the developers will continue to naturally change to reflect that. Things like the Wii make games accessible in a whole new way to many people who might not otherwise play, including some women. But my experience is always that if you expose people to games that interest them, they will play.”

When it comes to women and video games, psychology, not physiology, is the barrier. As video games permeate the various demographics in society, so too does game development. When development changes, the games follow, becoming more inclusive, more representative—and more creative. Instead of asking “What’s it like to be a woman...?” we ought to be asking “What’s it like to be human?”.

Erin Hoffman is lead designer at HumaNature Studios in Albany, California, working on a play-oriented virtual environment for kids ages 9 to 12, and a long-time member of IGDA Women in Games.

See also:
For women in technology, a little mentoring goes a long way
Scholarship promotes women in video-game industry
She got game