Austin (TX) - The Austin Game Conference ran at the downtown convention center in Austin, TX, on October 27 and 28, 2005. Devoted to hard-core gaming developers for console platforms as well as the PC, game-focused recruiters, tool and platform vendors, and other services such as software testing or packaging aimed at the gaming industry, this affair brought together over 1,500 attendees from around the world.

Over two dozen gaming companies were present, along with an equal number of companies drawn from the makers of testing tools, development environments, software packaging and order fulfillment, recruiting and staffing companies, and other supporting technology players, such as graphics hardware giants ATI and nVidia.

As is sometimes the case, the big "main" conference here attracted two "side conferences" during the week of October 24 as well. Both a "Game Writer's Conference" and "Women's Game Conference" were held in parallel, and overlapped with the main conference. Each of these side conferences started and ended a day before the main conference did likewise. Attendees at all conferences were free to cross tracks and investigate each other's offerings to their hearts' content.

The Women's Game Conference sought to illuminate issues related to women in the gaming industry, but also devoted considerable attention to understanding and meeting the needs and motivations of female game consumers. Sessions on recruiting and retaining women, as well as discussions with gaming industry professionals stressed the need to attract and retain qualified women employees in the trade, particularly in development and design positions where their talents are often in high demand. Gaming development organizations and online game delivery companies alike stressed increasing levels of interest, activity, and expenditures from women interested in buying games, or subscribing to online gaming services or communities.

Interestingly, while industry representatives are uniformly positive and enthusiastic about increasing the role of women, particularly in technical and design positions, current employment statistics indicate that most companies still have a long way to go before they can achieve parity. In an informal survey of all gaming companies present on the show floor at the main conference, we learned that some of these companies have as few as 3-4 percent women employees, and that the company with the highest percentage of women on staff peaked somewhat shy of 30 percent. The industry average as reported in a recent international survey of the gaming industry (7-8 percent) agreed exactly with our own tally from the show floor as well. Most companies report only a handful of women or less on staff (which shows the preponderance of smaller companies in this industry), of which half are in administrative or support positions, rather than in technical or design jobs.

While companies of all sizes, from the smallest boutique outfits to the largest mass-market gaming companies, all professed a willingness to hire qualified women, all indicated that such women were hard to find. There was a concerted effort underway at all companies and from all the recruiting companies to find and hire more women for all kinds of jobs, but especially those having to do with game design and implementation. All appeared to be undertaking genuine, concerted efforts to woo more women onto their rosters.

Why is this the case, many readers may wonder? Recent industry experience with "gender neutral" games - those games that are as friendly to and supportive of women players with concomitant support for female roles or less violent and more constructive play scenarios - has shown that there's a huge consumer appetite for them. Enough so, in fact, to motivate many game developers to seek the talent and mindsets necessary to participate in this once-neglected segment of the $30 billion yearly gaming market. What that means, of course, is that game development companies are now actively recruiting women. But they're also finding that they must invest in programs and activities that will steer women at all phases of their careers into a more positive outlook on working in and around the gaming industry. This has to run the gamut from primary through graduate school, and across many different aspects of art, design, and software development training and enrichment programs.

Given the numbers for return on investment on gender-neutral games and also for the kinds of games that attract more female players, it's great to see the "invisible hand" of market forces doing what a few practitioners of diversity have long also done. It seems that by widening the audience for games, and creating customization and play scenarios that women can relate to and enjoy, gaming companies are discovering that the traditional all-male shoot-em-up market is really only a small fraction of the global gaming market for players of all genders and ethnicities. Now that those who serve the gaming market have discovered where the money and opportunities really lie, look for employment of women in the field, and women willing to shell out their hard-earned cash to play video games to grow by leaps and bounds in the decade ahead. Guess what? Women like to play, too!