by Duane Gundrum

Created on: August 23, 2007

I used to work for a computer gaming company that was known as the one gaming company that made games that attracted a large segment of women. Other companies used to try to attract the same crowd of female players, but they never really got it.

Our company made city building games that eventually morphed into the most popular game ever when it comes to women. I'm sure I really don't have to fill in the gaps to state what company and game I'm talking about.

What I used to find fascinating while working for this company was that so many other gaming companies kept trying to "attract" women, and they would do this by creating female characters in established male genres. This brought about the advent of characters like Lara Croft, which caused the character builders to increase the size of her breasts to the point where it was obvious who was really attracted to this character when it came to gender. Since then, so many female protagonists have been created for computer games, but the female market has completely ignored these games that are nothing more than male violence with a woman character.

One thing our company got right from the start when attracting the female market was to actually hire women in positions to help decide what is going to be in a game. Rather than hire women to fulfill unspoken quotas and keep them in the production only stage where they are pretty much not given any influence over the game's style and direction, other companies continue to fail to figure out how to attract female players.

Not only must you hire women to work for these companies, but you have to give them the power to make decisions that aren't tied to the age-old question: Will guys play this, too? It's kind of a chicken and egg situation. They want more women to play, yet they know most game players are men, so they don't want to lose any potential market, which means the circle is never complete.

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