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Rebel Girls Level Up: 25 Tales of Gaming and the Metaverse

Rebel Girls Level Up: 25 Tales of Gaming and the Metaverse — page 3
4 Hi Rebels FOREWORD When I was a kid I loved computer games I'd build elaborate theme parks in Roller Coaster Tycoon and create families in The Sims that I kept going for generations My best friend and I would play the third Harry Potter game together with one of us using the keyboard to control where Harry or Hermione walked and the other using the mouse to control their wand Even though I'd sit at the computer in my family's basement until my eyes itched and it was dark outside I didn't really think of myself as a gamer My brother though he was a gamer He played sports games and action adventures on PlayStation To me that seemed like the right way to be a gamer playing on a console and playing as a boy When I started working on this book I did a lot of research on gaming and tech and I realized how much of the gaming world is geared toward boys and away from girls And when you look at the teams behind a lot of games you start to see one reason there are not many women in this industry I can't tell you how many times I looked up a popular video game and scrolled through the developers directors writers artists and producers only to see male name after male name listed Why were there so few women in this world Why was it possible for entire games to be made without the involvement of a single woman And what did that mean for the games themselves What did it mean for all of the girls and women out there playing them According to some surveys women make up 48 percent of gamers in the United States and 40 to 45 percent of gamers in Asia Yet only 24 percent of people working in gaming are women At the highest levels a whopping 84 percent of positions are held by men And when you look at the games themselves the numbers get even more discouraging only 5 percent of video games feature female main characters