Interview: Kirsten Forbes, COO Silicon Sisters

School 26 is a recently released game from the female development team Silicon Sisters. The game is currently available on iOS. We speak to their COO Kristen Forbes. Geek Woman: This is your first game can you tell our readers a little about your team? Are you all from Canada? Kristen Forbes: I’ve been working with creative teams for my entire career, and doing that in game development for something like 13 years, yet only twice have I been fortunate enough to be on a team with as good a dynamic as this one. Believe me when I say it’s not an easy thing to achieve – to gather a group of disparate individuals and have them function as a unified team in short order. It worked this time, in my opinion, because we had great diversity of talents, personalities and cultures – for every senior developer we also had

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Interview: Mitzi McGilvray, Game Industry Veteran and VP of Casual Games at TikGames

This time I was honored to bring you all an interview with Mitzi McGilvray who is a celebrated game industry veteran with over two decades of game production experience.  She has worked across all major platforms and genres and is an avid consumer of social and casual games. 2011 marks Mitzi’s sixth year with TikGames.  During this time, she has helped evolve the company through several industry transitions, keeping it ahead of consumer trends.  She is involved at an executive level in most aspects of the company including Business Development, Production and Marketing.  As a hands-on producer, she has led some of TikGames’ best-selling content, including the 1M + unit seller, Texas Hold’em for Xbox Live Arcade. Prior to joining TikGames, Ms. McGilvray worked as a producer for several large game publishers including Electronic Arts.  There she helped produce some of their top mega-selling franchises including NHL Hockey and NCAA Football.  Additionally, she

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Interview: Jessica Pempek, Animator and Illustrator at Toy Studio

This week the Women in Games Interview is the lovely and talented Jessica Pempek, from Toy Studio. I am happy to just let the ebullient Jess introduce herself! Well hello there! I’m Jess! I work as an animator and illustrator from the great city of Chicago. Don’t get me wrong… there are many drawbacks to Chicago; the weather, taxes and lack of parking to name a few. Thankfully I’m able to say I do what I love for a living and I’m always striving to get better at it. A few of my passions are: cartoons, drawing, animating silly things, pretending to be a photographer, shoes, Snoopy and, of course, my husband! I also like to change song lyrics, which tends to irritate most people, because they find themselves singing about badgers sitting in soup bowls after listening to one of my solos. I’m currently working for a company that

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Interview: Quinn Dunki of One Girl One Laptop

Quinn Dunki, code writer, game developer, mobile enthusiast, and not just mobile gaming gives us this interview today. She has worked on Trucks and Skulls for iOS with Appy Entertainment lately. Quinn is the founder of her own company, One Girl One Laptop. Geek Woman: I was told that you are a code Goddess. What is code and what do you do with it? (yes this question might sound stupid, but there are people who don’t know ) Quinn Dunki: Well, “writing code” is shorthand for computer programming. It’s basically just text in an editor with a bunch of syntax rules that allow the computer to convert (“compile”) it into a binary format that it can execute. That’s the really short explanation. The long explanation… well…  there’s a reason people go to university for four years to learn this stuff.  Seriously though, there’s no magic to it. The great thing

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Interview: Tonya Constant, co-founder of The Ant Firm

Tonya Constant is the co-founder of The Ant Firm, a QA company. They believe that women have a particularly keen eye for games testing and as such; I completely agree. They aim to employ more diversified test teams than competitors.  As it stands, their team is are 5 women and 2 men.  Ultimately, they would like the female-to-male ratio of testers to reflect current gamer demographics. The Ant Firm tells us that while 43% of all gamers are female, the truth is 86% of games testers are male. They strongly believe that those who test games should adequately reflect those who are playing them. Geek Woman: I get the metaphor.  It could have been bees, or crickets. Why the ants? Tonya Constant: We identify with the strong teamwork and industrious nature of ants.  And from a marketing standpoint, we thought going with ants would result in a very strong brand.

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Interview: Kinou Games Group

Spokesperson Seira of Kinou Games tells us that their group makes dual language releases, with voice actors in both Japanese and English as well as JP and English text Their goal is to encourage the inclusion of both languages in the original version of the game, and work with a Japanese doujin group called ZeroZigen who also supports including an English language version in Japanese games, and, ultimately, doing an exchange; having English-speaking game makers include a Japanese version. She also said “For our side, my group tries to be inclusive of marginalized people in our games, putting them in starring roles. Papa Pirate, Baby Bandit will be our first release and our focus for this was a strong female protagonist in many different roles, the ever-elusive brown people in major character roles, and gay relationships that are loving and PG.” Coming at the end of May will be a

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PAX East Panel: Females on Female Characters (pt. 2 – Q&A)

So yesterday I posted the first half of the Females on Female Characters panel from PAX East 2011. Today, you get the second half of the panel, which consisted of responses from the panel to the audiences comments and questions. I apologize ahead of time for the shaky-cam as I switched from the panelists to the audience members. And a reminder that there may be some more mature language in the video.

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PAX 2011 Panel: Females on Female Characters (pt. 1)

Hey everyone we have video from the Females on Female Characters Panel we told you that Trina would be on at PAX East. The panel was hosted by Susan Arendt, Senior Editor at the Escapist. The panel of five women chat about female video game characters for a half hour. The last half of the hour was spent responding to questions and comments from the surprising large audience. Here, I’ve got the first half hour ready for you to watch. I’ll have the second half hour (the Q&A) up soon, so keep an eye out.

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Study Shows Games Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Finally there is some good news to back up gamers. They don’t do enough of these studies about the good games. Not every video game is guts and gore. Some are educational, and others reduce stress and help with fitness training. East Carolina University’s Psychophysiology Lab and Biofeedback Clinic has just revealed the results of a year-long randomized, controlled clinical study that measured the possibility thqt “casual” video games reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Two groups of subjects were split into 60 controls, and participants, all meeting the criteria of clinical depression, participated in the study. They used three family-friendly, non-violent puzzle games: Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures. This isn’t the first time that PopCap Games was the underwriter of a study. Not long ago they did a study on Bejeweled. The hypothesis was then tested out with state-of-the-art technologies including psychophysiology, biochemical and psychological measurements. They found a

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Games are Good for You

Video games are starting to redeem their image. At one time video gamers were stereo typed as overweight and male only. But in recent years since the Wii and now with Move and Kinect out there there is an up-off-the-couch revolution going on in living rooms. Earlier in 2010 the industry suffered from plenty of bad press as a Stanford University study of World of Warcraft and Second Life concluded that the hyper sexualized characters and the scantily clad clothing perpetuated rape consciousness. They went on to say that their findings also made the gamers tested agree that women wearing promiscuous clothing should expect to be assaulted. This week in Arlington, Va. the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) reveals that they believe fitness technologies are going to help consumers stay motivated and keep their new years resolutions. The study called Getting Fit With Consumer Electronics showed half of U.S. online consumers

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