Sisters are doing it for themselves. A new Canadian startup called Silicon Sisters has launched and has plans to tackle the videogame market with its own unique brand of entertainment. The most interesting thing about the company is who is at the top of the pile.
Silicon Sisters was formed by industry veterans Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes: Gershkovitch is the former COO of Deep Fried Entertainment, head of the Vancouver branch of Women In Games International and a member of the GDC Canada panel; and Forbes formerly served as executive producer at Radical Entertainment.
While Silicon Sisters does want to create casual and social games that a female audience will like, Gershkovitch insists that it does not want to "pinkifying games."
"We’re not interested in 'pinkifying' games, which is how girl games are typically designed," says CEO Bailey Gershkovitch. "It’s no coincidence that the games I and many other female gamers are most drawn to have had women involved in their development."
"Girls and women game differently than boys and men. Silicon Sisters has studied these differences so we can make games that truly appeal to and resonate with the female audience," she added.
Forbes adds that women are adopting PC, social and mobile gams in "droves" and that it is time for the industry and female developers to get "serious about delivering quality games into this burgeoning market.."
We wish them much success.
Comments
Re: Wonder Women: Canada's Silicon Sisters
Cool ^_^ I will be curious to see what they come up with.
Though they will have to be careful about building a monoculture in the OTHER direction. One classic problem facing developers when trying to build gender inclusive games is lack of historical templates. Developers in general tend to write games that they themselves enjoy (thus, as Gershkovitch points out, development teams with a good percentage of women on them tend to result in games that appeal to more women then pure male or token female teams).... one trap this can lead to is the same one you say in FPSes for many years.. "I like this, my team likes this, therefor all gamers must like this!".
The same basic problem could happen here.. overgeneralizing personal tastes and assuming 'all women want this, because we women want this'... it is very easy trap to fall into.
Re: Wonder Women: Canada's Silicon Sisters
Well, this is certainly a more productive solution to the gender disparity in the gaming industry than just bitching about said disparity on your blog. Kudos to them for actually taking some meaningful action. We need more feminists like this, and fewer of the other kind.
Re: Wonder Women: Canada's Silicon Sisters
Everyone is going to mistake this for some kind of adult entertainment involving silicone implants.
Pwnage of Empires
Re: Wonder Women: Canada's Silicon Sisters
On the one hand, I hope they're successful. On the other, I hope this doesn't turn into yet another festering hive of feminazi BS, which is unfortunately common here in Canada.