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Carol Shaw
Carol Shaw, the first female game developer and programmer, released her first title - 3D Tic-Tac-Toe - in 1978. After releasing several other titles with Atari and Activision, she paved the way for women video game developers. -
Dona Bailey
The first woman to design an arcade game. After starting as an engineer at Atari, Bailey was the main designer and writer of the classic arcade hit Centipede (1981). -
Custer's Revenge
This title is regarded as one of the most obscene video games in history. The point of the game is essentially to sexually assault helpless Native Americans, and it turns an otherwise historical figure into some kind of serial rapist. An early example of rape culture and the influence it had on attitudes in the at-the-time new field of video games. -
Metroid
The protagonist of this 1986 NES release, Samus Aran, is often cited as the first playable female human protagonist in a mainstream video game. -
Duke Nukem 3D
This title is an example of unpleasant stereotypes for both men and women. The protagonist is a muscled-up bad boy who seems to lack any major mental capacity, whereas the only presence of females in the game are strippers the player can pay to flash their breasts. -
Tomb Raider
Lara Croft enters the gaming world as one of the most well-known female protagonists at the turn of the century. Her likeness serves as an inspiration for strong women characters in gaming and across all forms of media. -
Dead or Alive
This fighting game, originally released for arcade, is infamous for its portrayal. Although, like other fighting games, it supported several female characters, most if not all of them were hyper-sexualized, sporting unfathomable figures with hardly any clothing. -
Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball
A spin off of the fighting game, this title featured women from the original title wearing bathing suits and playing beach games. -
Beyond Good and Evil
Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil was nominated for game of the year and featured a strong female protagonist that did not rely on hyper-sexualization or common female stereotypes. -
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft, released a decade ago, grew to be the worlds most popular MMORPG. Although players could create characters both male and female, many women and young girls found themselves confronted by gender stereotypes and sexual harrassment at the hands of the online community as a result of pervasive attitudes towards female gamers. -
Portal
Although a robotic voice-over rather than a female player, Portal's GLaDOS becomes an enigmatic icon in the gaming world following the title's widespread success. Until the final act of the game, GLaDOS is no more than a voice-over, but is written in such a way that creates depth and character development without using sexualization as a crutch. -
Anita Sarkeesian
In 2012 Sarkeesian founded the blog Feminist Frequency, which discusses gender and feminism in video games, science fiction, and similar forms of media. -
#1reasonwhy
After a comment by a gaming exec asking why there weren't more women in the gaming industry, Twitter responded with countless responses which pointed to discrimination, unpleasant work environments, and a myriad of other reasons why women avoided careers in video games. -
Tropes vs. Women in Video Games
Anita Sarkeesian released the first installation of her video series examining common tropes of females in video games. Key points include the "Damsel in Distress", "Ms. Male", and the use of women as background decoration. Support for her videos was overcast by internet hate, denial of service attacks, and even death threats.
