Image: Nintendo
Here are some of our favourite games with women leading their development.
Women have been a part of the games industry from day one. Take Mabel Addis, who was not only a teacher, but the very first video game writer of all time. She wrote and designed The Sumerian Game in 1964, a project which is now credited as the first narrative game ever made. She marks just one example of the pivotal role women have played in shaping the history of this industry, but she’s far from the last.
It’s important to note that most video games are not made by a single person. The games industry is filled with teams of passionate people working in various facets of game development. All of these roles – from QA testing to sound engineering – are absolutely crucial in making a video game happen. That being said, here are five games that would not exist without the prolific women who led their development:
Celeste (Maddy Thorson)
The critical darling indie game Celeste originated from a four-day-long game jam between Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry, who both sought to create a PICO-8 (a virtual game engine) game about climbing a mountain. Upon its completion, however, the duo decided to take their fledgling game back into development as a full-on video game. Maddy only came out as trans a few years after the game was released, but its LGBTQ+ themes resonated with players within the queer community regardless.
Celeste is a fantastic, and sometimes brutally difficult, video game about a young woman named Madeline fighting against all odds to climb Celeste Mountain. It’s arguably one of the best indie games ever made, with gorgeous retro pixel art, a memorable soundtrack by Lena Raine, and addictively fluid platforming controls.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Amy Hennig)
The first three instalments of Naughty Dog’s action-adventure game franchise Uncharted were either directed or co-directed by Amy Hennig, whose name is well-known in the games industry at this point. Hennig created the Uncharted franchise, after all, and had previously worked on games like Jak 3, Soul Reaver 2, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, and more. She moved on from the Uncharted franchise to work on a now-infamously cancelled Star Wars video game known as Project Ragtag. Her next project is Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra.
The Uncharted franchise is widely-hailed as some of the best adventure games ever made, but Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was arguably its biggest step forward. With extensive motion capture work, a bigger emphasis on in-game action sequences, and a multiplayer mode, the game was seen as highly ambitious for its time. It still holds up to this day, both as one of Nathan Drake’s greatest adventures, and one of PlayStation’s most iconic exclusives.
Portal (Kim Swift)
Kim Swift is a video game designer who is perhaps best known for her work at Valve, back in its heyday of game development. Swift first acted as project lead for development on Portal (2007), before also working on games like Left 4 Dead, Half-Life 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. After working with Valve, Swift moved to work on various game projects within companies like Amazon, Electronic Arts, and Google Stadia, before taking her most recent role as senior director of cloud gaming at Xbox Game Studios Publishing.
Portal, and its successor Portal 2, are seen as two of Valve’s greatest single player games of all time. The first game’s inventive mix of puzzles and platforming mechanics, which had players shoot portals into various surfaces strategically to overcome obstacles, earned Valve multiple game of the year awards upon release. It’s a pretty great game to say the least, and how about that robot?
Cities: Skylines (Mariina Hallikainen)
Game development studio Colossal Order was originally founded in 2009 with a team of just five people. That team expanded to 14 people by the time the studio’s most successful game, Cities: Skylines, was released – led by CEO Mariina Hallikainen. Hallikainen has been with the studio since its inception, seeing the release of Cities in Motion, Cities in Motion 2, and the Sim City-like game Cities: Skylines. The latter title was hailed upon release for its scale and ambition, having launched in a noticeable dearth of city builders.
The game’s later sequel, Cities: Skylines 2, is a little more controversial in the eyes of fans, due to its many gameplay and performance problems at launch. However, that doesn’t make the original game any less great; for many fans of city-building and simulation games, it was the source of hundreds of hours of cosy gameplay. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to keep your city’s population from being poisoned by raw sewage, or fending off angry comments on the in-game social media platform Chirper, you’re always having a good time. Or you will, at least, once you figure out that sewage thing.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Aya Kyogoku)
Aya Kyogoku is best known for her work on the Animal Crossing franchise. She began work on the franchise as a sequence director on Animal Crossing: City Folk in 2009, after which she was tasked with directing her first game: Animal Crossing: New Leaf. She broke tremendous ground with the latter game, becoming the first woman to direct a game at Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD) team. She, along with New Leaf producer Katsuya Eguchi, also ensured that half of the game’s development team was made up of women.
New Leaf is now seen as perhaps the best game in the Animal Crossing franchise, but there is no doubt that Nintendo truly struck gold with Koyogoku’s next game: Animal Crossing: New Horizons. New Horizons launched in a dark time for a lot of people (2020, ‘nuff said), but that’s not the only reason it eventually became Japan’s best-selling game of all time. Thanks to Kyogoku’s direction and emphasis on expanded representation, both within her projects and the teams making them, Animal Crossing has broadened its appeal considerably. The results speak for themselves.
