Women in Game Dev

About:

"Junko Tamiya studied in the Osaka College of Music during the eighties with several other female video game music composers such as Soyo Oka, Miki Higashino and Yoko Shimomura. After graduating she became part of Capcom's Sound Team. Her co-workers would often call her ‘Tami-chan’ as a nickname during her time at the company.

Junko worked for the company from 1987 to 1990, during which she went by several aliases, including Swimmer Tamichan, Gondamin and Gon. During the 80s, in order to prevent their employees from being offered better jobs at other companies, Capcom required their development team members to use aliases in each game's credits. This has made difficult to track down all of Tamiya's work due to her diverse style." (Junko Tamiya, Capcom Database)

On Creating Strider’s Soundtrack:

"I think, for any game music theme, the music is made to fit with the game’s world. For Strider, I was told that there would be an emphasis on emotions and feelings, so I composed the tracks with this in mind. Afterwards, I was detailed about the game image that the planner was strongly pushing for. Creating music to complement that image  took quite some time. That’s what led to the main theme and the distinctive rhythms. Once this framework was established, I made the music as I liked and saw fit. The first song was actually inspired by tubular bells." (Junko Tamiya Interview: Creating Capcom’s Incredible NES Scores, Video Game Music Online)

"Trailblazers such as Bailey often found themselves alone in a sea of men, giving them a peek at male culture that few women had access to.

'It was interesting to see how a male society functioned,' she says. 'It was kind of rough sometimes, too. It was a culture that I don't think they were thinking "there is one woman, we should modify our behavior for her sake"... I grew a thicker skin.'

She recalls a notebook that Atari had at that point, filled with ideas for about 30 game projects. The only idea that she didn't find violent was a short, two-sentence description about a multi-segmented insect that walks out on the screen and winds its way down toward the player.

'The shooting part was left kind of implied because if the multi-segmented insect is the bad thing and the player is at the bottom, you kind of have to shoot,' she recalls. 'But it didn't seem that bad to shoot a bug.'

The idea of the game appealed to Bailey, so she began work on the 'Centipede' project. She was the software engineer on the four-person team. There were no books, no tutorials, 'no place to go when you needed help,' she says.

'Centipede' came out in 1981. To play, you popped in a quarter and used the arcade's trackball to move your character at the bottom of the screen. You shoot the centipede as it winds its way down the screen, along with the occasional spider.

'I always thought it was really beautiful, like a shimmering jewel when you walked into the arcade,' Bailey says.

Bailey worked on one other game after 'Centipede,' but it never came out. Because processors were so limited at the time, she couldn't make the game look and do all the things she wanted. She left Atari soon after that, at 26." (Woman Behind "Centipede" Recalls Game Icon's Birth, NBC Bay Area)

"That same year also saw the release of Centipede, designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey - one of the few female game designers of the period. Like Namco's Pac-Man, which had been released the year prior, Centipede was considered unusual for the time as it had a substantial female fan base." (It's Time to Say Goodbye to Atari, Once and for All, Gamespot)

"Centipede was like no other game that preceded it, either in terms of action or in appearance. Displaying a palette of pastel colors, such as violet, green and baby blue, it was visually appealing at first glance. Dona Bailey was responsible for these color choices and perhaps they were responsible for the fact that, for the first time, women were just as eager to drop quarters into the slots as their male counterparts. The result was the second-biggest title to date for Atari, right behind the iconic Asteroids." (Centipede, Retroland)

On Getting into Video Games:

"I became aware of video games when I was working as an assembly-language programmer for microprocessors in Cadillac engines at a GM-Delco plant in Santa Barbara, CA. My best friend was very into new music, and he played the first Pretenders' album constantly. That album had an instrumental song called “Space Invaders” on it. I didn't typically like instrumentals, but I heard that one so much, I started really liking it. Finally one night, I asked another guy who was standing around what that song was about, what the title meant, and he got wildly excited and explained it was about this great game called Space Invaders. He said there was one in a bar close to where we worked, and I should go there with him at lunch some day to check it out. We went, he put in quarters, I got killed before I could figure out what I was supposed to do (I remember how frustrated I felt at being unable to even discern what I “was” on the screen), I recognized how much the game display looked like the climate control display I programmed on the car back at work, and that's how I fell in love with video games." -Dona Bailey (Interview: Dona Bailey Speaks On Creating "Centipete" And It's Evolution, Complex)

On How She Was Treated after Centipede's Release:

"There was a lot of surly attention after that. It's not always popular to do something [like] that - the first thing that happened, I was not ready for at all, and I still haven't figured out how to deal with this part - people just started, y'know... the typical kind of thing that people would say was, either it was a fluke or I didn't really do it, somebody else did it. I'm a very peaceful person, and I felt sick of fighting, so I really just disappeared, and I haven't had contact with the industry for at least twenty years." -Dona Bailey (The Original Gaming Bug: Centipede Creator Dona Bailey, Gamasutra)

On Games as Art:

"[F]rom the time that film began and was made available to the public - if whole segments of the public had been left out of the development [of] film - what would we think, if they'd been done that way? If we'd gotten to this point and there were movies for a specific segment, and a whole lot of people were left out of the whole thing, and we thought of movies as something just for a specific population? That would just be so strange, and so sad that that group was left out. I really think that game development has gone in that direction, and that there's whole segments that would be happier to have that medium." -Dona Bailey (The Original Gaming Bug: Centipede Creator Dona Bailey, Gamasutra)

On Being a Woman in Game Development:

"I think that there was a lot of additional pressure just by being the only female. I think I was watched a lot more than I would have been. I could have blended in a lot better, if not for that one thing. I think that my personality was quite a bit different, too. You never know what you'd be like if you were male - and I never spent any time thinking, “I wonder,” but I do think that I've always been sort of introverted and quiet, and kind of shy, and all the things that, if I hadn't been female, would have allowed me to take a place in the back, and not in the line of vision all the time.

I am an only child, and so it's kind of like that experience in my family growing up. It was kind of like the same thing there, whether I wanted to be stared at or not. I wasn't accustomed to extra attention in a professional setting, and it was definitely more than I'd ever been given! You have to do certain things to accommodate that, and I don't think I was fast at understanding how to deal with it!" -Dona Bailey (The Original Gaming Bug: Centipede Creator Dona Bailey, Gamasutra)

Other Links: Indie Tech Talk 9: Talking about Centipede +30 with Dona Bailey (Video)

"Siobhan Reddy is Studio Director of Media Molecule, the computer games developers responsible for the multi award-winning Little Big Planet. She got her first job at Spike Wireless in her native Australia before relocating to England at the age of 18, where she began work as a Production Assistant with Perfect Entertainment.

In 1999 she moved to Criterion Games, leaving to co-found Media Molecule in 2006. After winning a Production Award at the first ever Microsoft Women in Gaming Awards in 2009 for her work on Little Big Planet, she became known as one of the biggest movers and shakers in the gaming industry. She is currently a member of BAFTA’s Games Committee." (Siobhan Reddy, BBC)

"Siobhan worked hard. With women. She worked incredibly hard as a woman, as a games developer, learning her craft, honing her craft. That was her focus. Issues of diversity didn’t seem pertinent, the games did. For years, Siobhan describes herself as simply 'being in the zone'.

'I wasn’t thinking about these issues,' she explains. 'I just wanted to learn.'

But as Siobhan advanced in her career those issues became increasingly pertinent." (The Invisible Woman, Kotaku Australia)

On Casual and Hardcore Players in LittleBigPlanet 2:

"I think that, number one, people are smarter than they think they are – and two, it's better to provide a broad range of tools, rather than small and simple. And the results have spoken for themselves. With LBP2, we've really tried to retain the modularity of the different tools and we've also tried to ensure there's an entry level – and you'll still be able to hop in and create something very simply. And you'll still have to take the tutorials – like anything in life. If you want to start drawing, there's a period of trial and error. You do need to practice – and practice will help make you better.

That's also where the community is so great; people will be inspired by other members of the community. And we want people to share more. With the new microchip, you can actually share that – so if you're really great at microchips and I'm not so great at them, maybe we can work together or you can send me a copy of your microchip." -Siobhan Reddy (LITTLEBIGINTERVIEW: SIOBHAN REDDY, MEDIA MOLECULE, IGN)

On Bringing Different Ideas Together:

"It’s an ethereal thing. There is no exact science to it other than starting with some ideas and then trying to find the best way to manifest those so that we can see them, and then we can feel them and then we can play them. It’s not a linear thing, you don’t have the idea and then you see it and it’s great.

It’s more often you have the idea, you see it, you bring a bunch of ideas together, and then you look at it and you’re like, oh okay, that’s what that looks like, so what we need to do now is tweak this." -Siobhan Reddy (The creative process behind Media Molecule's big ideas, Develop)

On Adding a Atoi to Tearaway:

"She wouldn't exist if I hadn't put my foot down. It was important to me that we investigate a female lead on Tearaway. That doesn't mean that I think that every single game, book, television show needs to be for the broadest audience... but for this it was really important to me." -Siobhan Reddy (Reddy: Women in the industry must play their role, GamesIndustry.biz)

On Being a Woman in Game Development:

"[The scarcity of women in the field] is one that I'd really like to see us solve.

There are some sad statistics which are that by the time girls are in Year 8 they've been put off working in tech or in games, whether in the home or by a teacher or by friends. We really need to be looking at how we can encourage women to see games as an exciting industry... We have very few creative directors who are women. We have a lot of women within the industry who run studios and pack a mean punch, you know - the influence of women within the industry is pretty great - but we need to see that on the game design and programming side as well." -Siobhan Reddy ('It takes women working on games for games to change.', Gamasutra)

"I’ve called Rebuild the best city-building strategy game on iOS – but that’s not exactly right. It’s more than that.

Rebuild places you in the center of a zombie-infested metropolis with a motley assortment of survivors, and challenges you to take the city back one block at a time. Rebuild borrows tropes from more placid games like SimCity, but it also blends X-Com’s squad management and David versus Goliath situation into its unique formulation. It’s a game that is greater than the sum of its parts – quite an accomplishment, given the fine pedigrees of said parts. With a randomly generated map and cast of characters, Rebuild creates a sense of place stronger than most AAA console games.

The contradiction of the Rebuild story is that the game’s bleak apocalyptic vision of the world came to a developer living a life of blissful international travel. Currently touring Greece, Canadian-born developer Sarah Northway and her partner Colin have spent most of the last few years developing games from hotels and hostels in four different continents." (Tactical Chat: Rebuild developer Sarah Northway, Pocket Tactics)

On Learning to Program:

"I loved computers from a young age in the 80's and 90's, because I loved the games you could play on them. I learned shell scripting so I could run games, learned how to use BBSes so I could download games, then learned HTML so I could make websites about... I'll let you guess. I did my earliest real programming in first year college and fell in love with the world of puzzles and language that sits inside every piece of software. To me, programming is a game.

I majored in computer science, which involved far too much math and theory and circuit boards for my liking. I learned the most from working on projects that interested me, not from books or teachers." -Sarah Northway (Sarah Northway, Game Maker and Nomad, Khan Academy)

On How Travel Influences Game Creation:

"I have about 100 ideas for other games based on our travels, and no end of events waiting to go in Rebuild. I also love survivalist stuff in real life, so it’s fun and inspiring to live in the middle of nowhere with solar power or in towns where I don’t know the language or customs. Just picking up and moving every 2-3 months and having to come up with a whole new system for living, working, buying food, etc., really keeps me on my toes." -Sarah Northway (Let’s Move to Deadsville, Arcadian Rhythms)

On Being a Woman in Game Development:

"...[In] 1998 girls were rare in our CS program. I never really thought about it except in our huge, totally deserted women’s washrooms. I’ve never felt different or oppressed because of my gender. If anything it’s been a boon because it makes me a little more memorable as an indie dev." -Sarah Northway (Going Indie with Sarah Northway, Hardcore Droid)

About:

"Born in Kanagawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan on May 23, 1963, she began her education undecided between art and archaeology. She opted for art and enrolled in a trade school for advertising design. It was there, in 1984, that she met a fellow student who brought her to work at Sega and the rest, as they say, is history.

Quite a history it is, too. Kodama has been involved with some of Sega’s biggest projects, including a obscure little RPG known as Phantasy Star. She got her start doing character designs for arcade titles such as Champion Boxing (1984) and Ninja Princess (1984), as well as some Master System games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986) and Quartet (1987). She also did several characters for a smattering of other Master System games. As one of the few designers at the company, she found herself doing multiple games at once, as many as five or six games a year. Kodama built up quite a reputation as an artist and was soon given a chance to work on something big. To counter the release of Dragon Quest, Sega decided to make an epic RPG of their own. The result, Phantasy Star, was not only a major benchmark title for the industry and RPG genre but also launched the careers of Yuji Naka and Tokuhiko ‘Bo’ Uwabo. Brought on as the main designer, Kodama was responsible for creating all the character designs, the 2D maps, battle-scene backgrounds, and townspeople, among other things. From there, her career blossomed and she went on to work on some of the most successful titles Sega ever produced." (Sega Stars: Rieko Kodama, Sega-16)

"At a time when most console RPGs were your standard medieval fare, she crafted a Star Wars-esque universe with robots, space travel, and cool, credible characters." (Developer Spotlight: Rieko Kodama, In the Shade of a Wave)

On Phantasy Star's 3d Dungeons:

"As far as 3D dungeons go, if you want to make them run as smoothly as possible, then it's not that hard; all you have to do is draw all the frames for the advancing walls. However, if we did that, then we wouldn't be able to get all the frames into the ROM, and it wouldn't look as good if we dropped some frames and left others in... so, we thought, how about we make a wireframe 3D dungeon in the program itself?

That's how I ended up having [Yuji] Naka build a wireless 3D dungeon program for me. The basic idea was to take art and place it on top of the wireframes. After that we just had to experiment with which frames we could drop and still keep things smooth and pretty. Once we got it right, we found that we could run around the dungeon faster than we ever expected--several times faster than it is right now, in fact; it was almost to the point where the program, not the graphics, was the main bottleneck." -Rieko Kodama (Rieko Kodama on Phantasy Star... er, One, Video-Fenky)

On Sonic the Hedgehog's Graphics:

"It was still hard to display polygons back then, but the graphics in Sonic the Hedgehog were designed incorporating polygonal styles. I drew the whole field using CG-like images. We intentionally created the designs as if they were illustrated artificially with CG tools. To tell you the truth, we drew them bit-by-bit because the software for computer graphics had not been developed much at the time. [Laughs]" -Rieko Kodama (Birth of a Hedgehog, Nintendo Power, January 2007)

On Being a Woman in Game Development:

"Sega has always been a company that judges based on your individual ability rather than gender. As for women in game development, it's changing. Gradually, and slowly, but it's changing. I think it's a bit more common for women to want to get into this field here in Japan. Playing games as a recreational activity for young girls is much less common than it is here. But if they play games they find very enjoyable, the desire to make their own games will certainly go up. I think that as more and more people start playing games, the number of female game designers will gradually increase." -Rieko Kodama (Interview: Rieko Kodama, The Next Level)

Other Links: Rieko Kodama Interview from the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (Video)