A Feminine Touch: Influential Women in the Games Industry
It might come as a shock to you, but there are women in this industry of gaming. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ve either played something they’ve designed or marketed, learned something important about the reality of the industry from them, or got massacred by a team of them during an FPS battle.
Over at Next Generation, they’ve decided to take an accounting of this and made their own list of 100 most influential women in the games industry, and you might be surprised at what they’re doing. Since we can’t go over all 100, let’s take a good cross-section of the women featured, and give you some insight into just how important they are for games in general, and the future of the industry in particular. Click on the Full Article link below and read on!
It might come as a shock to you, but there are women in this industry of gaming. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ve either played something they’ve designed or marketed, learned something important about the reality of the industry from them, or got massacred by a team of them during an FPS battle.
Over at Next Generation, they’ve decided to take an accounting of this and made their own list of 100 most influential women in the games industry, and you might be surprised at what they’re doing. Since we can’t go over all 100, let’s take a good cross-section of the women featured, and give you some insight into just how important they are for games in general, and the future of the industry in particular.
Of these 100 women, perhaps the one we’d notice the most is Patricia Vance. For those who don’t know, she’s the head of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), which tries to rate games for their content. More importantly, she probably has to endure calls from Jack Thompson on a daily basis, so you might as well call her the patron saint of responsible gaming.
Outside of actual gaming, we can safely say that the creation of ideas that become games, and the fleshing out of stories is an equal-opportunity workplace. To that end, Christy Marx is one of the people who can teach the next generation of gamers what it takes to write for a game. She’s written for games, cartoon shows, live-action television, graphic novels, and other sorts of scripts, and even wrote a book that can help newcomers to the writing industry out, called Writing for Animation, Comics and Games. If you’re ever going to learn about the world behind the creative process, she’s probably the best person to ask.
Next up is Lucy Bradshaw, who’s a big boss at Maxis. She’s VP and Head of Production and Development there, and if you’ve ever played The Sims, she’s probably had a hand in its creation. She’s currently working with Will Wright for a new game Maxis is cooking up, so you can be sure it’s going to be good.
“ea_spouse,” on the other hand, is well-known for her essay that talked about the quality of life in the world of game developing (and boy, are game developers and programmers overworked and underpaid). Her true identity is Erin Hoffman, who is a game designer and co-founder of gamewatch.org, which watches companies to ensure that quality of life of developers are good.
Lastly, who are we to forget actual gamers? If you’ve ever played an FPS, this woman has probably beaten you or your team with her crack squad of trained killers. She’s Morgan Romine, aka Rhoulette, and not only is she a community manager for Ubisoft, she’s also the leader of Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls, the all-girl gaming squad.
You can read about the rest over at Next Gen. Personally though, they forgot to include my mom, who taught me the value of going to sleep before World of Warcraft ate my soul. I less than three you, Mom!
Via Next Generation
