The Wall Street Journal did a big interview with Laura Miele, who runs EA's entire video game development studios operation now that Patrick Soderlund left: https://www.wsj.com/articles/electronic-arts-is-on-a-quest-for-more-women-in-videogames-1540864990
The article is behind a paywall, so here are a few question excerpts.
Excerpt 1:
WSJ: You're one of just two women in the C-suite at EA, a company in a male-dominated industry. What's that like? Have you experienced any gender bias?
MS. MIELE: I don't think about my position through the lens of gender, and I haven't encountered any bias, but I'm not turning a deaf ear to it. I passionately believe in women's rights and started a women's networking and mentorship group at EA about four years ago. I've had some amazing mentors here, and I wanted to pay it forward. And I think we're making strides, both internally and in the representation of female characters in games.
For example, women are running meetings and they're being heard. We also have a pretty large project called "A Diversity Framework" that we created to understand how women are represented in our games. How many female roles are in them? How many lines of dialogue do they have? When are they the antagonist, the protagonist? So we have this pretty amazing audit, or framework if you will, that we run all of our games through. I'm not being prescriptive about it. I'm not saying there has to be a minimum level of dialogue for female characters or there has to be this many women in a game. But any choices that we make are deliberate. And I think that is what I want most for the content that we create and for the players that we create the content for.
Excerpt 2:
WSJ: The majority of console and PC gamers have historically been male, though the gap has been shrinking. Why do you think that's the case, and what can be done to attract more female gamers?
MS. MIELE: Our statistics show that 50% of our players are women. Mobile gaming has been, for some women, a gateway into more immersive, high-definition gaming on their TV sets or PCs. And those games are developing richer, more diverse stories, so they're becoming more appealing for female players. We've learned with our Sims [life-simulation] franchise over the years that opportunities for creative self-expression and cooperative play are especially appealing to female gamers.
Excerpt 3:
WSJ: Players haven't always reacted positively to the inclusion of female characters in games. EA recently faced criticism on social media for featuring female soldiers in its coming Battlefield game set in World War II, which some players called anachronistic. Do you have any regrets?
MS. MIELE: I was surprised and a little disappointed at how strong the reaction was, but there wasn't even a single question about us backing off from it. This is representative of what many players want—the option to play the game as a female soldier—and of what happened. There were women in World War II, and they played a significant role in intelligence and in the battles. We stand behind how we're designing the game and bringing the game to market.
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For the overall industry, from the article:
The article is behind a paywall, so here are a few question excerpts.
Excerpt 1:
WSJ: You're one of just two women in the C-suite at EA, a company in a male-dominated industry. What's that like? Have you experienced any gender bias?
MS. MIELE: I don't think about my position through the lens of gender, and I haven't encountered any bias, but I'm not turning a deaf ear to it. I passionately believe in women's rights and started a women's networking and mentorship group at EA about four years ago. I've had some amazing mentors here, and I wanted to pay it forward. And I think we're making strides, both internally and in the representation of female characters in games.
For example, women are running meetings and they're being heard. We also have a pretty large project called "A Diversity Framework" that we created to understand how women are represented in our games. How many female roles are in them? How many lines of dialogue do they have? When are they the antagonist, the protagonist? So we have this pretty amazing audit, or framework if you will, that we run all of our games through. I'm not being prescriptive about it. I'm not saying there has to be a minimum level of dialogue for female characters or there has to be this many women in a game. But any choices that we make are deliberate. And I think that is what I want most for the content that we create and for the players that we create the content for.
Excerpt 2:
WSJ: The majority of console and PC gamers have historically been male, though the gap has been shrinking. Why do you think that's the case, and what can be done to attract more female gamers?
MS. MIELE: Our statistics show that 50% of our players are women. Mobile gaming has been, for some women, a gateway into more immersive, high-definition gaming on their TV sets or PCs. And those games are developing richer, more diverse stories, so they're becoming more appealing for female players. We've learned with our Sims [life-simulation] franchise over the years that opportunities for creative self-expression and cooperative play are especially appealing to female gamers.
Excerpt 3:
WSJ: Players haven't always reacted positively to the inclusion of female characters in games. EA recently faced criticism on social media for featuring female soldiers in its coming Battlefield game set in World War II, which some players called anachronistic. Do you have any regrets?
MS. MIELE: I was surprised and a little disappointed at how strong the reaction was, but there wasn't even a single question about us backing off from it. This is representative of what many players want—the option to play the game as a female soldier—and of what happened. There were women in World War II, and they played a significant role in intelligence and in the battles. We stand behind how we're designing the game and bringing the game to market.
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For the overall industry, from the article:
