I enjoy gaming so much, and I’m such a hard-core gamer, that I
didn’t understand why other women weren’t. That’s where it really
started. I always thought it was an untapped market, and (I wanted) the
ability to share my passion with other women and also the ability to
grow the industry.

Sheri Graner Ray, currently content lead on SWG, is interviewed by GameSpot and it’s a pretty interesting read. While I enjoy a gun-laden slaughter fest as much as the next guy there’s no doubt this industry needs more women.

We recently discussed at work why more women don’t play games and the conclusions are pretty interesting, I’ll just quickly skim over them here. Primarily, while most women in the discussion said they actually enjoyed playing some games, they just weren’t anywhere near the top of their financial/time spend list compared to movies, clothes shopping, going out for a few glasses of wine with friends and so on. For teenage girls in particular I think there’s also this pressure whereby it’s such a guy thing to play games, so even if they played on their brother’s Nintendo as a kid they’re reluctant to continue once they get older. I’ve two cousins, a boy and girl, who are always fighting each other for a turn on the PlayStation, it’ll be really interesting to see if they’re still both gamers in a decade, I personally hope so.

Getting more female designers in the industry is clearly one solution, just look at the wide appeal of The Sims, but maybe the problem isn’t just the games but society itself. Maybe that’ll change with time, just like society’s view of games in general. I think what is clear to me though is that girls aren’t inherently non-gamers like some seem to think (cue any girl gamers reading this going "Well duh"), the reason most girls don’t play games much is more a multi-faceted perception issue that very much lacks a quick solution. But then I’m a guy, what do I know?