Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of arcade shooter Centipede.  Away from its popularity and influence, Atari's seminal release was noteworthy for a very specific reason.  It was the first videogame in the world to be programmed and co-designed by a woman.

Dona Bailey's work on the game began to draw in a new demographic: women who had not previously shown a great deal of interest in the medium.  Now, three decades later, the ratio between the genders is rapidly levelling, with recent statistics suggesting that around 40 per cent of gamers are female.

Yet the industry often seems somewhat stuck in its ways.  It's largely male-dominated, and many titles hold on to their masculine focus - particularly away from the family-friendly, pick-up-and-play realm that Nintendo has come to inhabit.  At last year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, author Heather Chaplin scolded a room full of game designers and developers for being "adolescent," and criticised the industry for being "mired deeply in guy culture."  Are games failing a huge portion of their player base?  And is game design and development still an exclusive gentlemen's club, keeping the needs of almost half its audience on the periphery, even 20 years after Dona Bailey's important breakthrough?

A pair of recent studies haven't looked to supply any definitive answers. But the papers, concerning the demographics of videogame characters and the representation of women in games, do pick up on some interesting surrounding areas.  "Females in videogames," reads one of the studies, "had... smaller waists and hips than the average American."  The other talks of the "overrepresentation of males, whites and adults" in games being at the expense of, among others, a virtual female population.

Missing A Trick

Atari's Centipede: the first game to be
programmed by a woman.

Dmitri Williams, co-author of the studies, is concerned by the results found. "For gender, representation is a matter of setting the norms as much as it is about sales," he explains.  "Females now make up almost 40 per cent of game players, yet they were only 10 per cent of the characters.  This suggests a large disconnect, and a missed opportunity."

The paper, entitled 'The Virtual Census: Representation, gender, race and age in video games', documents a wide-ranging study across a number of games and gaming platforms.  It shows that, along with those of Latino origin and in stark contrast to white males, women are significantly underrepresented.

Such findings pose potential answers as to why so many games are still seen as the domain of a male audience, and point towards a possible circular effect in play.  "It is speculative," says Williams, "but it is possible that a lack of portrayals for any group might make that group less likely to enjoy, buy and use entertainment.  In the case of games, it's more than likely that the people who make the games are the ones who enjoyed them when younger.  So there is a potential cycle at work here: if there were more female gamers, there might be more female game makers, and more female characters, leading to more female gamers."

Despite the increasing numbers, there remains a relative lack of female players.  The reasons for this, however, remain hazy at best.  "Do women play less than men because they are less interested, or because they are not represented?  Or do the genders not care if they are represented?" ponders Williams.  "These are questions are data can't address directly, but are certainly raised by the large disparities we found."

The other study, entitled 'A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games' and headed by Nicole Martins, perhaps surprisingly found that breast sizes in games were not generally exaggerated, and were in many cases smaller than American averages.  It did, however, find that female characters in games were often portrayed as ultra-thin, far moreso than their real-world counterparts.

A Sizeable Problem

In a time of such media emphasis on body shape, such findings are worrying, and could well be one of the reasons why many females are still put off by gaming, despite the growth in numbers.  Perhaps it's even worse.  "Our data don't speak to the effects of these images," says Williams, "[but] prior work in other media shows that, for example, exposure to thin-ideal images in magazines and on TV shows can make women feel worse about themselves and lead to eating disorders."

This, of course, remains speculation.  It's easy to draw parallels between different media and their suggested effects on their respective consumers, but it's likely that more work needs to be done in order to ascertain any concrete answers.

Dmitri Williams

In the meantime, it certainly seems clear that there's an amount of work to be done.  And according to Williams, there's an obvious - if slightly cynical - route ahead.  "I don't think that game developers or their financiers are going to pay attention to a moral argument, so it's better to simply focus on the business side," he says.  "Females and Latinos are two very large demographic groups that are underrepresented in game characters.  If increasing their representations leads to more sales to those groups, that improves the bottom lines of companies."

The content of the videogames currently flooding the market is doubtlessly significant, and there's hefty evidence that changes need to be made.  But what about behind the scenes?  Since Bailey in 1980, a number of noteable women have taken up roles in the games industry.  It began quickly with the Blue Sky Rangers, a group of female developers working anonymously on Intellivision games in the few years following Centipede's innovation.  And recently, high profile core franchises such as Assassin's Creed and BioShock have seen women contributing to the design and development in senior positions.

Is there still a long way to go in ensuring gender equality in game development? Or are we in the middle of a transitional period, during which we're likely to see female developers becoming more prominent, and gender barriers becoming less of an issue?

One female developer, new to the industry, has her reservations about certain aspects of games and gaming culture - but she still thinks we might well be on the right track.

New Developments

"In terms of other areas in the games industry, I think there's much more equality in development."

Those are the words of Emily Knox, a young artist and PR representative based in Middlesbrough, England.  Her company, Assyria Game Studio, is currently preparing for the launch of Future Racer, its first game to be released for Apple's iPhone.

"My boss attempts to squeeze in jokes," she admits. "I'll be the only person in the office on Friday. I asked what I should work on and he said 'cleaning the office'. But I'm not the only girl here and we give as good as we get. I feel treated as an equal, which is fantastic."

Future Racer, Emily Knox's first commercial
project with Assyria Game Studio.

Aside from her gender, Knox's route into the games industry is, perhaps, an unconventional one.  With no prior experience working for a videogame company, she found herself involved in the establishment of an independent studio. Assyria was founded by a group of students at Teeside University, where Knox had studied programming modules and, later, art, design and production classes.  "It's been fantastic so far in many ways," she says, "but there are also some big challenges to overcome, sacrifices to make, and such a broad skill set to acquire and improve so you can work smoothly as a group."

Alongside her work at Assyria Game Studio, Knox regularly writes about video games and the games industry. As well as being a contributor to popular online publication Play.tm, she authors a column about her entry into development at Ready Up, a fast-growing games blog penned by a refreshingly large proportion of female writers.

"I had the chance to get involved in games journalism when I was approached by a site seeking a female writer, which I gladly took up," she reminisces. "Other opportunities have since presented themselves to me for the same reason - as well as, I’m hoping, some writing ability!"

Still, Knox is unsure whether the distinction between male and female writers is always an important, useful or even reasonable one to make. "I understand the idea that, amongst a team of male writers, perhaps a female writer will offer a different perspective," she says. "But I'm fairly certain that's a perspective I can't offer. I'm a stubborn tomboy, and naturally turn my nose up at games that I think are targeting women."

But as far as playing games goes, Knox occasionally feels turned-off as a female gamer. "I stopped playing Halo 2 when attempting to play a capture-the-flag match on Xbox Live. My team members clicked on to the fact that I was female and decided to all kill me. The game offers a wonderful feature to kick these offending players from the match, but having removed my entire team there wasn't any point in continuing. I also recall watching the chat window in Age of Conan fill up with advertisements to join a guild offering 'real female players.' What's the point? Avatars can be and act male or female regardless of who the person in front of the monitor really is. If you want to meet people with a specific set of X/Y chromosomes, then real life is a safer bet."

Equal Measures

Emily Knox

So Emily Knox's reasons for feeling put out by certain games are perhaps different to what might be expected of a female gamer.  With all the talk of exaggerated breast sizes, unrealistically trim waists and overly sexualised characterisations, the main sticking point for many has been the fashion-magazine portrayal of the fairer sex.  Knox, though, has spotted a similar trend in male characters.

"In the past I'd get irritated by female characters that were ridiculous and blown out of all realistic proportion," she says, "but you have to step back and see that male characters are no different."

Additionally, Knox has spotted a few titles that seem to show promise, in their presentation of characters as real, tangible, equal personalities.  "I'm a huge fan of Metal Gear Solid, and the series has presented players with a set of female characters that are just as calculated and capable as the men. I wasn't keen on Metal Gear Solid 4's angle of throwing a virtual glamour model into a suit and tacking on a short and forgettable section of dialogue as a back story after each victory, but prior to this each character was as interesting and engaging as the next, regardless of gender."

Perhaps there is indeed progress being made, then.  While studies by Dmitri Williams and others continue to show exaggerated proportions and unnatainable feminine images, and the amount of female gamers continues to outweigh female protagonists, the industry seems to be wising up.

Knox agrees with Williams' suggestion.  "Getting into development links back into upbringing," she says. "If you weren't playing games as a youngster and aren't playing them now, where's the interest to move into games development? With a greater portion of men playing games, there's going to be a greater portion of men taking the hobby further and moving into game development.

"But the Wii and the DS, coupled with specific titles, have demonstrated that videogames can draw in mass numbers of females," she continues, "so perhaps women will frequent games development far more in the future."