Ismini Boinodiris Roby and Phaedra Boinodiris are not who most people might peg as “gamers.”
For starters, they’re women.
But the two sisters, founders of WomenGamers.com, mean to change all that.
Their Web site — founded with the goal of trying to create a female-friendly area for articles, reviews and networking — has also lead to the creation of a game consulting division that specifically addresses the needs of women gamers.
But it’s not really the case that Roby, a graduate of N.C. State, and Boinodiris a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, are trying to draw women into the scene.
According to their site, almost 49 percent of PC software consumers and 51 percent of console consumers are women.
The women are there, they say, and their site is simply trying to get the industry to notice.
Technician caught up with this dynamic, digital duo shortly after their panel discussion at the Goldsboro Gaming Expo.
Technician:When did you first get into gaming?
Ismini Boinodiris Roby: Ever since I could remember. It started with Pong — which kind of dates us doesn’t it? Then the Colossal Cave Adventure game.
Phaedra Boinodiris: It was even before that, because there was the ColecoVision with the Atari add-on that we had. That was our first console.
Ismini: We also had an 8086 PC that had some really early titles, a lot of the text-based games and some educational titles that I remember getting for mathematics. I can’t even give you a date.
Technician: (To Ismini) Tell me a little bit about your first job in the gaming industry.
Ismini: Well it depends if you consider EB Games as being in the gaming industry, because that was my first gaming-related job.
It’s actually a kind of interesting story because when I walked in and handed them my resume, the woman — it was actually a female manager — took it and was like, “OK.”
I started to walk out and some guy came in with a problem with his laptop and I helped him out. She was like, “Wait a minute come back here.” I was pretty much hired for helping out this guy with his laptop. I couldn’t have planned it better — (laughing) not that I planned it!
Then I got a job at Interactive Magic. I saw an ad in the Technician — I also happened to have a friend that was working at the company. So I had an in, which also helped.
Technician: How is being a woman gamer different than being a male gamer? Is there a difference?
Ismini: Well there are a couple of differences — number one, we don’t drool over the thong-clad, leather …
Phaedra: Bustier … (laughing)
Ismini: (She mentions games like Quake III)To give you an idea of how sucked in I was in that game, I ended up on academic probation at N.C. State.
Phaedra: (laughing) Do you want that in the paper?
Ismini: (laughing) I don’t know about that.
But it was a good learning experience. I had to learn how to balance my gaming. I don’t think the genre is necessarily the locking point as to why women play certain games versus other games. It’s more about the marketing and the fact that it feels more like a boys club. It’s hard to say you’re a gamer when you’re in a room with one other woman and hundreds of guys — it’s hard to accept that.
Technician: Why do you think gaming has become such a male-dominated industry?
Ismini: That’s a good question considering that it started off with some of the really old Atari ads where it was very family-oriented advertising.
Then the industry started narrowing in on the 13 to 25 male age range. From that point on, it just sort of snowballed into kind of “Girls don’t like games. We’re making games for these boys and that’s just the way it’s going to be.” Then Roberta Williams came out with King’s Quest IV — which had Princess Rosella as the lead character. At first, her colleagues were saying, “Don’t do this. Nobody’s going to buy it. It’s got a female lead. That’s not our audience.” But it’s the best-selling King’s Quest game of the series because it started drawing in a different market that people had not previously thought about.
Technician: Do you think women are overlooked in the gaming industry?
Ismini: In the past seven years, I’ve seen a growing interest to get them, which is great. But in the beginning, they were definitely overlooked. To the point where I would be leaving numbers at different publishers and developers mailboxes and they would never get back to me. “We’re not interested.” “WomenGamers.com, what’s that?” Then as time has gone by I’ve been getting more requests from them saying, “Hey, we have some games we want to get reviewed.” And it’s not just that, we’ve been seeing people wanting to do more advertising, more consulting to figure out how to tap that market.
Phaedra: Gaming executives are looking around their ranks, saying, “We want to target women, we want to target the casual gamer as well. Who here amongst my staff can help me out?” and there’s nobody. So they’re looking around saying, “OK who can we hire?” They’re looking to the universities now big time — looking for graduates in these gaming programs. It’s a good opportunity.
Technician: How is the gaming scene changing for women?
Ismini: What’s happening right now is that they’re realizing that their image is a boys club and by “cleaning up the floor” of E3 [the Electronic Entertainment Expo] they’re going to help try and change that image to say, “Hey we’re not just a boys club. This is also an industry with women in it too — professional working women.”