#female developers

They are out there, and closer than you think.

Most major urban cities will have some sort of meetup or group of women developers.  In tech centers, like San Francisco or New York, you even have your choice of female coding groups.  

But for the rest of the country, females who share your passion for coding can be much harder to find.  They are out there of course.  If there is 100 developers in your town, then 5 to 22 of them are going to be female.  So how do they fine each other?

By using the local web and a “slash” such as localweb.is/women.who.code women can find and connect to other female coders where ever you happen to be.  In populated cities where such groups already exist on meetup.com and independently, /women.who.code often serves as a more informal place to express your gripes or opinions as the local web doesn’t require your real-name identity.

Statistically, you are more alike to the people around you than you might think.  However finding them has always been a challenge.  The local web makes this much easier.

We are building the local web and sharing a new way to use it each day

Signup at localweb.is

Hello,

I am a long time reader of wired, and a game developer. I recently read this article 

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/ 

and was shocked to see gamergate mentioned? Not sure how it is relevant, and it is used to drop the atrocious wording of : "GamerGate makes a political movement out of threatening with rape any woman who has the temerity to offer an opinion about a videogame" What does that even mean? What in the world makes this ok? I am a woman and I have been threatened COUNTLESS times by people against gamergate. 

I have had my career threatened for saying "oh hey consumers are upset lets see what this is all about".I think that regardless of if you feel a large group of consumers are wrong, you should not write articles that dump on the whole gamer identity as a whole. 

Why is that wrong? 

What is wrong about that?

 I am labeled as "Gamergate" for this, and I have had attempted boycotts of my work and my business. You don't even have to be gamergate, anything now that remotely criticizes anything in the press is automatically labelled as such so what are those people supposed to do when your writers are calling them RAPISTS. Do you have any idea the kind of thing that could do to a persons life? Do you care? 

I have been an independent developer for 13 years, and never have I received such vicious threats and nasty comments as when I criticized the games press. I don't support gamergate because I "support rape" I support it because it has been viciously smeared by the media when 99% of them are good people, and they are the ones reporting the 1% that aren't. Most of them genuinely just don't want journalists using women as clickbait and want to know if friends are being reported on and I agree with that.

Stop acting like that god awful gossip rag Gawker, and do some real journalism. Actually talk to these people, see what they are about. 

DO YOUR JOB.

Maybe one day when you get accused of being a " rape gater" because you "had the temerity" to disagree with someone on twitter you will understand what this feels like.  

These are human beings, they are not your toys to crush under your feet as you please. 

Stop talking about Anita Sarkeesian. Stop talking about Zoe Quinn. Let's talk about some actual women in the gaming community that bridge the gap without being controversial. This list includes players, developers, and any woman related to the gaming community.

Sasha "Scarlett" Hostyn - Competitive Gaming (Starcraft II)

Sasha Hostyn (Scarlett) is a competitive gamer on the Starcraft II seen. She's well known for managing to best high-tier Korean players in competition. She was deemed champion of the Red Bull Battle Grounds tournament in the North America region in the 2014 Summer championship. Sasha is also one of the few well known transgender female players in the competitive community.

Kellee Santiago - Developer

Kellee Santiago is a video game developer, a cofounder of Thatgamecompany, and has worked on several well known console games such as Flower, Braid, and Journey. Kellee was a primary developer of the game Flower which was ranked one of the top 10 Playstation games for two years running. 

iHasCupquake - Let's Player

iHasCupquake is a female Let's Player with a focus on Minecraft and assorted indie games. She also implements baking into her videos. She is one of the first female Let's Players to break 1,000,000 followers. 

Carol Shaw - Developer

Credited as one of the first female game developers, Carol Shaw worked on several Activision titles and later Intellivision. She worked on such titles as Polo and River Raid. She's considered a pioneer for women in gaming.

Mary Demarle - Writer

Mary Demarle was one of the co-writers of the acclaimed Deux Ex as well as Myst. Demarle also worked in design and story development, and has conducted interviews on the complex ethical questions in the Deus Ex. 

Barabra Dunkelman and Lindsay Jones - Entertainers

(Pictured from left to right: Lindsay Jones, Michael Jones, Gavin Free, Barabra Dunkelman). Employees of the highly popular video game themed entertainment channel Rooster Teeth, Barabra Dunkelman and Lindsay Jones are among the most present women on the team. Dunkelman is present in many of RT's podcasts and skits, and Lindsay Jones Tuggey was the first woman to be considered a member of the Achievement Hunters. They also are both voices in Rooster Teeth's short series RWBY. 

Kiki Wolfkill - Producer

Kiki Wolfkill, aside from winning the award for "Most Metal Name of Any Game Producer Ever" is a executive producer behind the wildly popular Halo 4. Wolfkill has also worked on other famous titles such as Fable, Gears of War, and Mass Effect.

Rieko Kodama - Designer (submitted by lumforjustice)

This wonderful lady has worked on multiple games with SEGA. Most notably is a game she made herself; Phantasy Star. She also continues to work on the PS series.

Rinmaru - Developer (submitted by lumforjustice)

As a hobbyist, Rinmaru does not directly work within the gaming industry, but she does make her own dress up games on her website. Other than dress up games (and this is the important part!), she has made a visual novel called “Ascension”, which you can play the first chapter here. Right now, she is making a sequel to Ascension called “Ascension: Echoes in the Dark,” and RPG-style game. Unlike the first Ascension, you’ll have to pay for this one. So, I suggest you buy Ascension ETD when it comes out!

Tsunako - Character Designer (submitted by lumforjustice)

Tsunako is best known for her character designs for Date a Live, as well as the character designs and illustrations in Hyperdimension Neptunia.

Christie Golden - Writer (submitted by cyadine)

Writer of many Starcraft and World of Warcraft books - Her books cover so much of the story that is left out of the games and gives so much rich history! Also a writer for few Star Trek and Star Wars books.

Kayo "Kayo Police" Satoh - Competitive Gaming (submitted by she-who-defied-fate)

Kayo Satoh is a transgender model, TV personality and competitive Street Fighter player. She wrote a book about her experiences as a transgender youth called Re-Born. She's become well known for defeating some of the best SF players in Japan.

Soyo Oka - Composer (submitted by thatspazinthehoodie)

Soyo Oka worked as a musical composer for Nintendo from 1987-95 on games like Ice Hockey, Pilotwings, Super Mario Kart and Wario’s Woods.

Kim Swift - Designer (submitted by thatspazinthehoodie)

As a graduate of Gigipen, Kim Swift and her team developed Narbacular Drop, the portal based game which would lead to her being hired by Valve and creating Portal. Swift was the leader of the Portal team, and a level designer for it. She was also involved in both Left 4 Dead games on the development team. She left Valve in 2009 to join Airtight Games where she would lead a team and develop the game Quantum Conundrum.

Amy Hennig - Designer/Writer (submitted by thatspazinthehoodie)

Hennig started work in the game industry back in the late 80’s. She assisted development of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain after moving to Crystal Dynamics in the late 90s. She would the work as directorand writer for Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2 and Legacy of Kain: Defiance. She left Crystal Dynamics to become creative director of Naughty Dog where she began her most notable work as the head writer and creative director for the Uncharted series. She has since left Naughty Dog for Visceral Games to work on Star Wars games.

Roberta Williams - Designer/Writer (submitted by jake-from-state-farm-school and like a bunch of other people)

Co-founded On-Line Systems, later Sierra On-Line/Sierra Entertainment, with her husband. Essentially created the graphical adventure game with Mystery House, later designed the King’s Quest series (all eight of the classic series), the first animated graphical adventure game and pioneer of the open world, which led to Sierra, along with Lucasarts, basically being -the- names in adventure gaming. Also wrote and designed Phantasmagoria, which is not only one of the few good FMV games from that era, but would probably cause Sarkeesian to scream misogyny. 

Jane Jensen - Designer/Writer (submitted by jake-from-state-farm-school and also a bunch of other people)

After working on other Sierra games, including co-designing King’s Quest VI, Jane Jensen her first solo outing with the Gabriel Knight series, still my favorite adventure game series and the second game, The Beast Within, also managed to buck the usual trend of FMV games. Has also worked on other fairly good adventure games recently, such as Cognition. 

Janett Carr - Entertainer/Producer (submitted by dmranything)

This is Janet Carr, gamer, executive producer and creator of Australia’s only gaming show, Good Game. The show has become a big hit with gamers all across Australia, and both the hosts (Steven “Bajo” O’Donnell and Stephanie “Hex” Bendixsen, another great woman in gaming) and the crew are gamers who love what they do.

Karen Traviss - Writer (submitted by sunbleached-jacket)

Karen Traviss, who wrote many Star Wars and Gears of War books, including the entire series of Star Wars: Republic Commando.

Jade Raymond - Director (submitted by failedturingtest)

Jade is an executive director for Ubisoft Toronto, working as a producer for the Assassin's Creed series. She has also worked for EA. Currently she is on the Board of Directors for for Women in Film and Television International, an organization designed to help advance women in media and entertainment industries. 

DexterityBonus - Entertainer/Journalist (submitted by justwestofweird)

DexBonus is a Let's Player and commentator, making several videos covering popular gaming events, and several series including Newz (which covers gaming news) and Swords and Stitches (which demonstrates gaming related crafts).

Suzy Berhow - Entertainer (submitted by justwestofweird)

Aside from being a model and animator (seen on her channel Meeperfish), Suzy is also a member of Game Grumps. She is featured in many Game Grumps videos and is a returning member of Table Flip which focused on tabletop games. She has advocated for mental health awareness, making a video about her experiences with ehr own manic depression.

Holly Conrad and Jessica Merizan - Cosplayers (submitted by justwestofweird)

Both popular cosplayers at PAX and other gaming conventions. Jessica was also a community manager for Bioware.

Carmen Kennedy - Executive

Founder of Imagery Media, along with her husband Robert, Carmen was among one of the first to begin designing simple flash games for the Internet professionally, as well as educational programs for e-learning initiatives. The company has designed flash games for Cartoon Network, FedEx, and Canon.

Have anybody to add? Do so! It's strange to me how people suddenly care about female developers when they make the news because of some controversy, typically one they themselves caused. But are quick to ignore the many women who gladly go about their position with grace and poise.