Girl gamer

A girl gamer is a female who:


 * Works in the game development industry, or
 * Regularly engages in the practice of playing video games, role-playing games, or other games (colloquially referred to as "gaming"). This can be from the most casual interest to the most serious professional gaming, where female players often draw extra attention due to their rarity.

The role of women in the games industry -- as professionals and as consumers -- has received extensive academic and business attention because women represent approximately half the population but buy a small share of all video games. Finding the reasons for (and potentially changing) this demographic drives most of the research and professional initiatives in this field.

The great majority of the people who work on game development teams are men, particularly in the technical fields such as programming. Various reasons for this have been debated (see external references below), but some companies have made a concerted effort to recruit more women to create more balanced teams. The motivation behind these efforts is sometimes ethical, sometimes culture-based, and sometimes based on the desire to create games that will appeal more broadly to both men and women.

The average age of game buyers has moved from the late teens to the late twenties from 1995 to 2005 and household penetration of game systems has grown dramatically. Along with these changes has also come a rise in female consumers. All of these factors have increased the financial stakes in video game sales, and focused even more attention on the remaining untapped female gaming market.

In recognition of the importance of this issue, the IGDA (an association of companies and individuals in the games industry) has formed a SIG on Women in Game Development (link below).

This is a very active field of discussion and the topic of dedicated conferences. A browser search on the words women games conference will produce a list of recent and upcoming events.

According to a study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2005, women now comprise 43% of all gamers. Despite this large and growing number, many gaming companies and also many gamers fail to accept and acknowledge females as gamers and as consumers or employees in the gaming industry.

Pioneering women in games

 * The once-secret Intellivision game development team, referred to as the Blue Sky Rangers, included several of the first female game programmers in the video game industry. During the 1980-83 prime of the first video game Console wars female programmers on the Intellivision team included:
 * Julie Hoshizaki (Thin Ice)
 * Judy Mason
 * Minh-Chau Tran (Pinball)
 * Ji-Wen Tsao (Shark! Shark!)
 * Roberta Williams (King's Quest)

Notable female gamers

 * Sheri Graner Ray, a game designer for the last 16 years, a veteran of Sony Online Entertainment and the Cartoon Network, and a keynote speaker at the Sex in Video Games conference. An article on her can be found here: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39274581,00.htm
 * Amber Dalton: Leader of PMS Clan: "As one of the most known female faces of professional gaming, Amber Dalton (a/k/a Athena Twin PMS) has helped create a decidedly female mark in the traditional male-dominated gaming arena. (from Women's Game Conference - press release . Besides being featured in major media like Entertainment Weekly,MTV,G4TV and AOL, she is also one of NEXT Generation's 100 Influential Women in the Gaming Industry,as well as Electronic Gaming Monthly's (EGM Magazine) #1 most feared gamer in the world (October 2006).
 * Frag Dolls

External references

 * Bryce, J. and J. Ruttner, "The Gendering of Computer Gaming: Experience and Space", in S. Fleming & I. Jones, Leisure Cultures: Investigations in Sport, Media and Technology, Leisure Studies Association, 2003, pp. 3-22.
 * Bryce, J. and J. Rutter, ‘Killing Like a Girl: Gendered Gaming and Girl Gamers’Visibility’, in F. Mayra (ed.) Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings, pp. 243–55. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2002.