Women gamers making small inroads

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Jennifer Canada knew she was entering a boy's club when she enrolled in Southern Methodist University's Guildhall school of video game making.

There was one woman besides Canada; the other 98 students were all guys. She jokes the ratio may be great for dating, but she sometimes got lonely.

"It's really different," the 23-year-old Indianapolis native said. "I miss having a lot of women friends."

The $10 billion industry may have entered the mainstream, but with a few exceptions, the target audience for big-budget video games is the same as it ever was: teenage boys gripped with visions of dragons, space ships and voluptuous virtual babes.

It doesn't help that the number of women developing games is also low -- less than 10 percent of all game developers, Guildhall executive director Peter Raad said. Men design games that appeal more to men.

"I believe it behooves the gaming industry to attract more women developers," Raad said. "Playing games is a primal human activity that knows no boundaries of geography, language or gender."

Organizers said the first Women's Game Conference, in Austin on Thursday and Friday, is a step toward changing some long-held assumptions about the sex of those who make and play games.

"Games are no longer just for geeks," said Laura Fryer, director of Microsoft Corp.'s Advanced Technology Group, which includes the company's Xbox console. "Half of our population probably has an opinion about what should be in video games, but it goes unnoticed because we don't have a lot of women in the industry."

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