From gamers to developers, women play a big and important role in the gaming industry. Some are awarded for their efforts while others are threatened.

Women are an integral part of the gaming industry. From video gaming to mobile gaming to i-gaming, you’ll find success stories of women who have risen to high positions in big-name gaming companies. However, along with the success stories you’ll find some Gamergate horror stories, too. The bottom line: while some women have been awarded for making vital contributions to the industry, others have been tormented for taking an active role in it.

Just how involved are women in the gaming industry? For starters, before we even address the business aspect in regard to women in game development, let’s take a look at everyday gamers. When you think of the term “gamer”, what’s the first image that pops into your head?  If you’ve just pictured a young male in his late teens to mid-twenties holding a console controller, you’re not alone, as this is the most common stereotype associated with the word. However, the reality is that when it comes to today’s gamers, just as many women play games as men.

According to Pew Research Center study findings on Americans and gaming, which were published in December 2015, 50 per cent of men and 48 per cent of women surveyed said they played video games on a console, PC or handheld device. Yet, interestingly enough, despite this fact, men are still more likely to self-identify as gamers than women. Pew researchers discovered that 60 per cent of Americans, including both men and women who play games, assume that gaming is a male activity. In fact, 15 per cent of men surveyed considered themselves gamers compared to only 6 per cent of women.

It’s likely that these gendered assumptions about gaming are reinforced by marketing and culture. Female protagonists in video games are still in the minority and playable female characters typically remain an optional extra by game developers and publishers, for the most part.

Aside from the fact that women easily make up half of the gaming audience, and that there are more women in the US playing video games now than at any other time in history, the number of women who work in the games industry is minimal.

According to a survey conducted by the International Game Developers Association in September 2014, the number of women working in the game industry doubled since 2009 to 22 per cent of the workforce. While this was quite a leap forward, 76 per cent of game developers are still men.

That being said, the $76bn global video game industry owes some of its success to some incredible women, such as Kristen Duvall, who is the Business Development Director at Everyplay Unity Technologies. Duvall has worked in the industry for over two decades, has been a product manager at Electronic Arts and has also worked at Microsoft Game Studios. At Unity, Duvall develops and manages partnerships with mobile game developers. Fortunately, Duvall’s success story is one of many for women in the industry.

Yet, although there are more women playing games and working in the games industry than ever before, and although women are being recognised and awarded for their contribution in the sector (e.g. the Women in Gaming Awards and the Women in Games Awards), there is still harassment toward female gamers and women developing games.

This has been the case for Zoe Quinn, a game maker who made news headlines in the summer of 2015 after she was forced to move to Seattle from Boston after the Gamergate controversy made her and those close to her the target of online threats and harassment. For over a year, Quinn was threatened by anonymous gamers online who vowed to rape and kill her. Brianna Wu, another game developer, and cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian were also notable targets of Gamergate and they, like Quinn and other women, were harassed, tormented, threatened and bullied online for their involvement in the games industry.

Although gaming is a part of mainstream culture, with easily half of players identifying as women, the fact is that women in gaming – as gamers, characters and creators – are still overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, times are changing and hopefully the games industry will break away from gender stereotypes and evolve for all people who play games.