Siggraph: Where are the women?

EA's head of European talent acquisition, Matthew Jeffery, believes that the teams that build games "are still overwhelmingly male," and that this is hindering the development of the industry.

In a talk at the Education Summit at Siggraph he pointed to the perception of the industry as being "the traditional preserve of the young, geeky, socially inept bedroom programmer," something which doesn't do much to attract new talent.

The reasoning for his beliefs focus on two main areas in which he feels more women in the industry would lead to fresh ideas.

"Firstly, in game design and production, women are more in touch with their emotions and a key driver for gaming is to have emotionally believable characters."

"Secondly, in project management, women are more attuned to equity in working practices, especially work-life balance."

Jeffery then went on to outline what he sees as a need to make sure that games are accessible, citing controllers such as the Wii remote as a driver to broaden the appeal of games to wider audiences.

He finished by stating that EA as a company would love to hire more women and ethnic groups, but that the applications aren't forthcoming.

"Visiting universities it is clear that the future pipeline of female talent is shrinking as fewer females enrol in traditional technical degrees like computer science, maths and physics."