‘Gaming Has Been A Boy’s Club, Still Is, But It’s Changing’: Women In Gaming Talk About Their Journey, State Of Sector

We asked two gaming professionals to tell us how they got into video games, how they inducted themselves into the industry, and what they think of the current state of the overall sector.

Among female gamers in India, 77 per cent are truly committed, playing an average of 53 minutes per day.

Source : Getty

India boasts nearly 507 million gamers, out of which 43 per cent are women, as per data from Lumikai’s State of India Gaming FY 2021-22. The country’s gaming market hit $2.6 billion in FY22 and is poised to reach $8.6 billion in FY27. Among female gamers, 77 per cent are truly committed, playing an average of 53 minutes per day. Even in esports, the number of female athletes has seen a 356 per cent YoY growth in FY22. 

Now, while the data does capture the ever-expanding size of the gaming industry and its women players, it doesn’t really express the stories of how different women had their first tryst with gaming — and how they eventually decided to have a career in this sector. 

So, to truly capture their journey, we asked two non-gamer ‘women in gaming’ to tell us how they got into gaming, what were the first games they played, how they inducted themselves into the industry, and what they think of the current state of the overall sector. 

Hina Saiyada

Saiyada is the Head of Games at Oddjoint. She won the Unreal Engine Women Creators’ Program fellowship in 2021. She is currently working on a feminist Utopian game called Ladyland. 

"My tryst with gaming started with the iconic title, Doom, and I was really into the first-person shooter around that time in the '90s. After that, I was also interested in strategy games. I played some Minecraft and also continued to play some FPS shooters till it led to some fatigue where I was tired of hero-based, violent games like GTA or Mortal Kombat.

I really started gravitating more and more towards story games once the indie game space opened up. What Remains of Edith Finch was one of my favourite games and I loved it when it came out about 10-15 years ago and that was the basis of why I wanted to get into gaming design.

I am actually a film producer–editor–writer–director. Mainly an editor, so I am a story-loving, technical-minded person. I liked keeping abreast of technology. Along with working for films, I was always an avid gamer. Over the course of the lockdown, I was developing a film idea, as an animation film and then in that period I realised that I wanted to develop that into a game and that would be much better the story which was played immersively by a player who would enter this world because the idea was to create a Utopian world which was about nature and conservation and it felt much better to do it as a game rather than a film.

With that began my journey. I won a fellowship with Unreal Engine in 2021, it is a women creators programme, where they trained us on Unreal Engine and it was an intensive two-month fellowship which we had to finish with a short two-minute film which we had to make on our own on Unreal Engine workflow.

In that process, I made a trailer for my game and it was a huge learning experience for me so I really want to thank Epic Games for that experience. I really understood from that experience, what it's really like to make a 3D game the way I wanted to make it since I wanted to make it a certain way. My vision became very realistic because of that training and also I met a lot of amazing women creators alongside.

With that journey, I also realised that there weren’t many women in this world of game design so it was very hard for me to put a team of women together, to make a feminist Utopian game that I was making called Ladyland. It is a game that I started developing in 2020. 

In the past year, I have made the demo and I’ve got the Unreal Mega Grant, with which money I am now developing the first proper demo of the game with a great team. All this while, the previous year, I was working alone as a game designer, then Pyare kindly came on board as a narrative designer, and my partner Q has been a great support and backbone of this project.

We have a company called Oddjoint, based out of Goa. I am constantly seeking alliances and collaborators and it was very difficult to find women in this space. I was supported by the gaming community because they believe in my game. That really helped because I am somebody with no experience in game design but a lot of passion and vision and of course the experience of working in the indie film world. 

Producing Indie films in India is a peculiar beast that teaches you a lot. We have been pretty successfully running our company over the last 10-odd years. 

I have my fingers in many projects and roles, that are in the alternate art space. The game [that I have been working on] seems to be a natural culmination of all the things I have learnt in my journey so far and it's super exciting. I am going to the game design conference in San Francisco in March and really looking forward to learning more. It’s a whole new space for me. At this point in my career in films, I really feel it’s been very interesting to diverge into Game production and managing teams has been super eye-opening and learning.

The Indian game industry is 90 per cent male but it’s really opening up. I went to IGDC in Hyderabad and it was great to see that a lot of producers and a lot of people who work in funding are women. The numbers are low but percentage wise they are higher and it's growing every year. Really, the aim would be to increase the number of women in these rooms, who are making decisions, who are making games, who are making stories from female perspectives.

My aim really is to be a flag bearer of that, in whatever little humble way that I can. To create a team of women who are making kick-ass games for women.

They could be everything; they could be FPS games, they could be role-playing games, the same games that even men are playing but there is room for different kinds of voices. Even for non-binary communities to feel that they are represented in games. 

The game that I am making is entirely about being an outlier, about being somebody who does not fit into the mainstream space. But there is room for everyone to make their creative voices be heard and social media has really helped that and a lot of women are coming into this. Gaming has been a boy’s club, still is, but it’s changing.

In 2022 I became a mentor for other women creators to help them create on Unreal Engine. It was eye-opening as the participants were from countries all over South Asia. There were women from Afghanistan, Srilanka, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan and of course India. 

The concerns of women from all over are very similar. Where they feel they are locked out from decision-making rooms, places where there are technological breakthroughs, where people are sharing information, sharing decisions and technological advancements in gaming, women feel like they are left out of that loop often. 

Malaysia and Singapore are much better, and India also than most other countries, but some don’t even have access to the Internet and workspaces and gaming machines. Like the brother will have the smartphone to play and the sister has to peep over his shoulder. 

We want to really change that, we want to let women have the power and play games they really want to play, seek out the games, and provide a variety of options, games that are there for women, even if they are masculine games.

I feel there are masculine and feminine energies in all of us but there is more attention given to masculine aesthetics in gaming, and that needs to change. I think it is changing.

Mala Sen

Sen is a game developer and an artist who specialises in 2D art ranging from characters, environment, and animation. She is the director of Niku Games, working on The Palace on the Hill, a narrative adventure game about a poor boy who dreams of studying art. 

"I began my professional journey as a traditional artist (focussing on textile art) and a teacher of drawing to design students. I had just moved to Bangalore to further expose myself to the art world.

It was around this time that a close childhood friend of mine, Mithun Balraj, organised a game developers group in Bangalore and invited me to their monthly meetups.

Meeting so many wonderful people in the Indian game dev scene, from the passionate solo dev to the small, talented outsourcing studio inspired me and made me realise that there was a place for me in game development. I really was excited about the idea of creating a world filled with my art where a player could get lost in, interact with and live in. 

During one of these game dev meetups, I met Mridul [Kashatria] who was looking for someone to collaborate with and start making games. We hit it off and I took the plunge to quit my teaching job and also changed career tracks from traditional artist to game developer. 

Since then, we created Niku Games and embarked on a journey with a steep learning curve. We made several prototypes of games in different styles and genres and they were always made from an Indian perspective with a strong focus on story, art and culture. These themes are integral to the games we want to produce.

Though games were a recent addition to my life, I have been an avid reader since childhood. I love books. The way they suck you in and make you experience life from someone else’s shoes has influenced me in the way I think about game design. The story, characters, and setting are very important to me. 

One of the first games I played and completely fell in love with was Psychonauts. It really opened my eyes to how expressive a game can be. It remains my favourite game even now.

It didn’t take long to realise that life as an indie dev was a lot to take in. In bigger studios, there are dedicated people for every little thing which makes up a game. But because we are a team of two, we had to handle every aspect ourselves. Aside from our core fields which were programming and art, we had to learn about game design, writing, animation, sound design and even marketing and social media. 

Some days I feel like we have bitten off more than we can chew. On other days I feel like there’s nothing else I’d rather do with my life. Luckily a few industry veterans saw what we were making and reached out to us to offer advice and much-needed moral support.

We want our games to be relatable to Indians but also have a global appeal. India hasn’t seen much original IP in the field of indie game development and that makes it harder for us since we don’t have many role models to look up to who are in similar circumstances as us. 

The great thing is that more and more Indians are playing games on their mobile. It is a wonderful platform to create a market for rich gaming experiences. 

There are some wonderful women in game development, Poornima Seetharaman is a great example. She has built a lovely, supportive Women in Games India community which currently has 143 Discord members and more coming in every day. 

The Digra India group is a group of people who study games academically. They hold riveting conferences where they present their papers. Many of them even have PHDs in game studies.

It’s very clear that there are many people in India who are passionate about games. There is a huge reserve of talent which needs to be supported financially for games to become an affordable, mainstream form of entertainment for everyone to enjoy. 

Both Saiyada and Sen are from the talent pool of Animela, India’s first-ever international festival on animation, VFX, XR, and gaming, set to be held in Mumbai in November this year.