It's what you make of it.

Juliann's DVD artwork for her MDS' game

Once a very male-dominated industry, women are now slowly making their mark in the 3D and games industries. From an education viewpoint, the amount of applications and graduates coming out of schools with 3D- or games-focused degrees is growing. From an industry viewpoint, women bring a fresh approach to the Art. Specifically in game development, they are a source of new ideas and in order to create a more diverse range of games to attract a wider audience, the demographic in the studios and industry needs to reflect that diversity. Thus, to create better-targeted and suited games to the growing female gamers community, more women need to be part of the industry.

Juliann Lum trained at Media Design School in the graduate diploma of game development and is now a technical artist at Sidhe Interactive, a New Zealand based game studio. She used to be one of two women in the studio but Sidhe has just hired another three women; two will work for their quality assurance (QA) department and one was employed as a texture artist. This is bringing the grand total to five women amongst their employees. Juliann recognises they are only few women in the industry and she believes there is a need for change. “There is still this divide that girls do not play games and guys do. It’s still known as a guy thing. I think as attitude changes in regards to this, then you will see a lot more of women in the game industry”, she says.

Juliann, technical artist at Sidhe

The change needs to operate on two levels – both the Industry and women need to open up to these new opportunities. And for women wanting to work in a more technical field, this is opening a new career option to them. “There are a few stereotypical girly games out there like the Sims for example. [...] more women [are] playing now, especially with games like SingStar or RockBand”, says Juliann. With more women actually playing games, there are more women choosing game development as a career. And more women have now leadership roles in big companies such as Ubisoft, Vivendi Games, Eidos, Blue Fang Games, and producing, designing, publishing games like SingStar, Tomb Raider, Zoo Tycoon 2 and much more.

International associations like women in games promote the need to change the gender imbalance and aim to focus on giving women in the industry a voice and helping networking opportunities for both men and women. Moreover,the International Game Developer Association (IGDA) held at GDC San Francisco 2009 a networking event to bring women in the games industry together.

And Juliann to conclude, “it’s definitely getting there”.