Game development bosses are keen to recruit more women but are struggling to do so as the amount of females applying for jobs in the industry is on the decline.

NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil told the BBC: "It bothers me, the number of applications from women we receive is very low. We're trying pretty hard right now to attract more into the company."

With more women playing games than ever before many studios believe it makes sense to recruit more female designers.

Ian Goodall of specialist games recruitment agency Aardvark Swift said: "The studios actually want to employ more women. They recognise they need that input to make games that appeal to women and to make games that appeal to families."

In July, the 2010 Tiga-Hewitt Games Software Developers' Salary Survey found just 6.6 per cent of the UK games industry's workforce to be female, highlighting "an extraordinary gender imbalance", according to Tiga CEO Richard Wilson.

Meanwhile, a University of Liverpool study published last month suggested that women make up just four per cent of the UK games workforce - and that the number is shrinking.

A number of females within the industry cited long hours, inflexible working practices and unsatisfying childcare provisions as reasons they intended to leave the sector.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... ?id=268252

Some of that reads like, 'Right love, you're in charge of the cute output, we'll be over here working on a FPS'

I spent a large (frankly, too large) part of my disposable income on games and I really really really couldn't give a flying one whether the people who make them have a 'Y' chromosome or not.

Jon

Maybe women don’t want to make games which feature mass slaughter and über violence… Just saying.

It sounds like the women have cottoned on to something that the men are yet to realise...

...i.e. that for a lot of developers working in the industry isn't actually the lovely experience many think it will be.

There are any number of games that don't feature those things, or indeed any violence at all. Puzzle games, sports games, casual games, driving games... there are even companies like thatgamecompany who specialise in abstract, arthouse games that contain nothing even approaching reality. If women don't want to work on 'Macho bald space marine 3' they don't have to.

Jon

The hours might be one issue, but childcare provisions should be better for all concerned. Why cant the kids be taken to the fathers work creche? Also there are many areas where women can make an impact and still have regular fixed hours. It just requires the boss to actually think a bit about how it is done.