Female Developers Discuss What It's Like To Make Games In Japan

By Ollie Barder 

In a nice, though somewhat short, interview with two Nintendo developers both ladies touch upon what it’s like to work in games.

The ladies in question are Aya Kyogoku and Risa Tabata (shown above), who are working on Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and Chibi Robo: Zip Lash respectively.

Talking about how and why they entered into making games in the first place they also discuss about what it’s like to be a woman in what is often considered to be a male dominated industry.

They admit that when they started out that their presence was a rare one but these days it’s fairly even in terms of the gender split.

From my own experience of working in Japan there are considerably more women involved making games than in the West, so what both these ladies are saying definitely ties in with what I have personally seen.

Considering that Japanese gaming culture and especially its games industry have both been dismissed as being backward and sexist in recent years, it’s clear that this is far from true. If anything those criticisms are more aptly aimed at the Western side of things really, from what I have seen at least.

Both of these ladies are also quite senior, so again their gender doesn’t seem to have been a hindrance.

Personally, I think you need as many disparate viewpoints and skillsets as possible in making a good game. So you should absolutely have a balanced split of genders across a team, it is clear Nintendo and a slew of other Japanese games companies have already arrived at this eminently sensible conclusion.