Women In Games Jobs (WIGJ) works to recruit more women into the games industry by promoting role models and giving encouragement and information to those women seeking to work in games. It also campaigns to make the games industry a more attractive field for women, both for new entrants and to retain women already working in the industry.

Women in Games Jobs was incorporated as a “not for profit” or Community Interest Company under the UK’s Companies Act 2006 on 2 June 2011.

ABOUT WOMEN IN GAME DEVELOPMENT 

Developing Video games is increasingly being seen an exciting and rewarding career for women.  Whether you come from an artistic, technical, creative, marketing or managerial background there are jobs in the games industry to suit you, offering interesting career progression and a stimulating and passionate work environment. 

Traditionally a male dominated industry, game development is increasingly diverse with many companies now actively seeking to balance the gender ratio on development teams. Consoles such as the Wii and DS have massively increased the numbers of women playing games and many games are now targeted specifically at women, with the developers looking to include more women on the teams making the games to help introduce a female perspective to the development process and increase the appeal of these games to women.

In addition to opportunities to work on more female friendly games there are now far fewer barriers to women wanting to work on the more traditional FPS’s, RTS’s and RPGs and less stigma attached to those that do.  Most employers will look for a passion for games when recruiting and obviously the skills to do the job but are gender neutral and the traditional view of dev teams as sexist enclaves of pepsi swilling and pizza obsessed men is usually very out of date .  Some of the most senior executives in the games industry are women and women are increasingly entering the world of design and programming in addition to areas such as art, animation and production which have historically been more appealing to women.

Women in Games Jobs has appointed an Advisory Board to plan the first pan European conference for Women in Games.

Board members in alphabetical order are: 

Ali Bergstrom-Allen, Production Lead, Sony Computer Entertainment

Barbara Bernad, Lead Animator, Maverick Media

Alison Cressey, Open Sauce Marketing ( former European MD, Activision)

Geraldine Cross, HR Manager, Blitz Games

Antonia Cullum, Producer, WIGJ

Jo Goodson, Jo Wood Consultants (former European MD, Broderbund)

Helen Kennedy, UWE and Women in Games

Louise Murray, Head of Fable Franchise, Microsoft

David Smith, Founder, WIGJ

Fiona Sperry, Studio Director and VP, EA Criterion Games

Giselle Stewart, General Manager, Ubisoft Reflections

WIG Jobs welcomes suggestions on further development. Any comments or questions, please email Samantha Ambridge, Event Manager, samantha {@} wigjobs.com