The Women Who Shaped Gaming

For Women’s History Month, we at META wanted to celebrate some of the amazing women that have made the gaming industry what it is today. From the early pioneers of game development to the women shaping the modern gaming landscape, women have played an integral role in the development of this industry, and these are just a few of those that have truly left their mark on it.

Mabel Addis

Mabel Addis might not be a name you recognise, but nevertheless, she is one of the most important people in the history of game development. A writer and teacher from New York, she was elected in the early 1960s to work with IBM on a project to investigate the use of computer simulations in schools. Partnering with programmer William McKay, Addis wrote The Sumerian Game, the first text-based computer game, as well as the first video game on an electronic computer. Her work on The Sumerian Game, a resource management game based in the ancient city of Lagash, made Addis the first ever video game writer and first female video game designer. Although she immediately returned to teaching following The Sumerian Game, Addis’ influence on gaming cannot be understated. Her vision and ideas helped to create a game which was truly ahead of its time, setting a standard for narration, writing, and game design for decades to come.

Scarlett

Sasha Hostyn, more commonly known by her username Scarlett, is arguably the most successful female esports player of all time. Growing up in Canada, Scarlett played games as a hobby, and in particular, StarCraft II, entering her first tournaments for the game in 2011. From thereon, her time playing StarCraft II as a hobby was short-lived, as she quickly rose to prominence, beating a number of highly-ranked professionals, and climbing the rankings to 21st in the world by 2013, when she moved to Korea to train and play with some of the best players in the world. The first woman to win an esports major, Scarlett has gone on to win tournaments across the world and is the highest earning female esports athlete of all time. As of February 2021, Scarlett has been a member of the then newly formed team Shopify Rebellion.

Danielle Bunten Berry

Danielle Bunten Berry, like Mabel Addis before her, was a pioneer of video game development. Growing up with a love of games, she began programming her own text-based video games as a hobby after graduating from the University of Arkansas in 1974. After producing several small games with her company Ozark Softscape, run out of her basement with her brother and two others, Berry caught the attention of EA founder Trip Hawkins, who commissioned her to develop 1983’s M.U.L.E., a business simulation game and a trailblazer in the development of multiplayer games. Following M.U.L.E., Berry developed The Seven Cities of Gold in 1984 with Ozark Softscape, a historical strategy game which received excellent reviews and became Berry’s most successful game, with 100,000 copies sold. Berry continued to develop games until she passed away in 1998 aged just 49. While her games were largely not commercially successful, they were almost universally critically acclaimed and are now widely recognised as being truly ahead of their time. Developers like Shigeru Miyamoto and Sid Meier have credited Berry as influences on series such as Pikmin, Civilization, and more, while Berry herself received the Computer Game Developers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and was the 10th inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2007.

Yoko Shimomura

If you’ve ever played a JRPG, then chances are that you’ve heard the music of Yoko Shimomura, one of the world’s most prolific and celebrated video game composers. After graduating from Osaka College of Music in 1988, Shimomura went straight into the gaming industry, fully or partly composing scores for games including Final Fight, The King of Dragons, and Street Fighter II. Since then, she has worked on the scores for titles like Kingdom Hearts, Legends of Mana, Xenoblade Chronicles, Final Fantasy, Super Smash Bros., and many more, while her music has been performed by the Stockholm and London Philharmonic Orchestras. She is still working in the industry and continues to compose scores to games, featuring on three titles released in the last year.

Jade Raymond

Canadian Jade Raymond is one of the most influential video game creators of the last 30 years. After graduating with a degree in computer science in 1998, she worked with Sony as a programmer, helping to create Sony Online’s first research and development group. It was after moving to EA in 2003, however, where her career in gaming really took off, working as a producer on The Sims Online, before moving to Ubisoft where she was producer or executive producer for series such as Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, and Watch Dogs, as well as managing director for Assassin’s Creed Unity and Far Cry 4. She was recognised in 2018 as one of the 500 most influential business leaders in the global entertainment industry and joined the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. In 2021 she founded Haven Development Studios, where she is working with Sony to develop a new original IP for PlayStation.

Amy Hennig

Writer and director Amy Hennig has been the brains behind some of the most engaging storylines in modern gaming. A student at the film school of San Francisco State University, Hennig’s work as an artist on the 1989 Atari game ElectroCop gave her the realisation that her future lay in gaming as opposed to film. She dropped out of film school and worked for EA and Crystal Dynamics as an artist, and later as a designer and director. Her most celebrated work came after joining Naughty Dog, where she was the creative director for the Jak and Daxter series, before becoming the head writer and creative director for the Uncharted series. She led a team of over 150 developers on Uncharted 2 and 3, and began work on Uncharted 4 before leaving Naughty Dog. Since 2019, she has headed up the New Media team at Skydance Media where she is currently partnering with Marvel Entertainment to create a new action-adventure game set in the MCU, while she was also a writer for the upcoming Square Enix game Forspoken.

The Future

This is just a small selection of the talented and passionate women that have made the games industry what it is today, and there are so many more that we could have included. We’ve come a long way since Mabel Addis and The Sumerian Game. Many women still face difficulties in the gaming industry, through sexism, unfair pay, harassment, and much more, but thankfully, more women than ever are entering the industry and becoming industry leaders, paving the for way greater equality in the industry, and setting up the next generation of incredible women to make their mark on gaming.