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It’s a fact: The women who helped shape the video game industry often go unacknowledged, hidden from history by popular narratives and male-centric scholarship. Mary Kenney, a narrative writer and game designer at Insomniac Games, aims to shed light on some of those overlooked pioneers by highlighting key women who’ve made major contributions to the industry in her upcoming book, Gamer Girls: 25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry.
In Gamer Girls, Kenney profiles 25 influential women dating all the way back to 1960 who wrote, designed, programmed, and composed for video games. Consider Mabel Addis Mergardt, the first female game designer, who designed the text-based strategy game The Sumerian Game; Yoko Shimomura, the composer of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, all of the Kingdom Hearts games, and Final Fantasy XV; and Muriel Tramis, the first Black female video game designer, who co-created the puzzle-adventure game Gobliiins.
“First, [Gamer Girls] is a work of education. This is our actual history versus our perceived history. And second, it’s a celebration that I hope will really encourage young women who want to be in games to enter the space,” Kenney told Kotaku.
Gamer Girls began when Kenney had a conversation with her agent Eric Smith. Kenney and Smith had assumed there was more than one book profiling women in the gaming industry, but when they discovered there weren’t, she decided that she should write one herself.
More here
Shame that many went unaccredited.
In Gamer Girls, Kenney profiles 25 influential women dating all the way back to 1960 who wrote, designed, programmed, and composed for video games. Consider Mabel Addis Mergardt, the first female game designer, who designed the text-based strategy game The Sumerian Game; Yoko Shimomura, the composer of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, all of the Kingdom Hearts games, and Final Fantasy XV; and Muriel Tramis, the first Black female video game designer, who co-created the puzzle-adventure game Gobliiins.
“First, [Gamer Girls] is a work of education. This is our actual history versus our perceived history. And second, it’s a celebration that I hope will really encourage young women who want to be in games to enter the space,” Kenney told Kotaku.
Gamer Girls began when Kenney had a conversation with her agent Eric Smith. Kenney and Smith had assumed there was more than one book profiling women in the gaming industry, but when they discovered there weren’t, she decided that she should write one herself.
More here
Shame that many went unaccredited.
