The Sims 4

VentureBeat: The frustration and progress of women in video games, as viewed by The Sims 4′s Lyndsay Pearson

Venturebeat

Video games have a problem when it comes to the inclusion of women in game design and the depiction of females in video games.

lyndsay-pearson-of-sims-studio

Dean TakahashiLyndsay Pearson of EA’s Sims Studio

It’s not quite like the 1950s. But women in positions of leadership like Lyndsay Pearson, the lead producer of The Sims 4 at Electronic Arts’ The Sims studio, are still a rarity.

The Sims Studio is an island of diversity in an industry that is sorely lacking when it comes to gender balance — but it still lags. The percentage of women in EA’s The Sims Studio, based in Redwood City, Calif., is just 20 percent. That’s high for most game studios, but it’s nowhere near parity, given the population and the roughly 50 percent female audience of The Sims games.

Some may view the gender-balance issue with frustration, while others may see so much progress in characters like Ellie in The Last of Us or Jodie in Beyond: Two Souls in 2013. Like it or not, women like Pearson are role models. So we asked her about that. Here’s part one of our interview with Pearson.

CONTINUE READING

About the author

Jovan

Reticulating splines as a webmaster for Sims Community over the last 11 years. You can find me here writing articles and doing reports on your favorite life sim games, among other things!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Keltboy
Keltboy
11 years ago

wow, fishkebab commented on this article damn fast.