John-ShepardWomen are on the rise in the video game industry.
And publisher Electronic Arts promotes the idea, as COO Peter Moore talked about the importance of diversity and inclusion during a recent Fortune interview.
Moore cites a time when women were nothing more than prizes to be won in games, and now they're helping create the products:
"We've gone from the personification of what we believe women should look like in a video game, to actually involving women in making video games, to today where at Electronic Arts we have some of our most powerful franchises overseen by women who manage hundreds of men."
Moore went on to mention Gamergate, saying it "made us all pay attention to this issue." And he added that "D&I" (Diversity & Inclusion) is "never far from our minds when we make hiring decisions." Moore also said their teams working on mobile games and The Sims franchise featured a large number of female developers. For the future:
"At EA we're encouraging girls to think about programming as a career as young as high school, even before you get into college and focus on where you go for computer science degrees."