Name: Ensuring That Women Win At Gaming
Uploaded: 2025-05-21
Duration: 20 min 10 s

The global video game market is estimated to grow by $111.7 billion over the next four years, and the sector has particularly exploded in Saudi Arabia, where gaming and esports are predicted to contribute more than $13 billion to the country’s GDP by 2030. However, while almost half of all gamers worldwide are women, 95% of professional gamers are men. A conversation about the role of developers in closing this stark gender gap and ensuring that the future of gaming is as inclusive as it is profitable.  

Ensuring That Women Win At Gaming

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OK, we're going to completely change tack now and talk about eSports and gaming, which are massively popular here in the Middle East, as I'm sure many of you know, particularly here in Saudi Arabia, where they are predicted to contribute $13 billion to the country's GDP by 2030. Also in Saudi, women make up 48% of Total gamers, which is pretty incredible when we think about it being a traditionally male sport, and this contributes to an increasing global trend of women taking part in eSports. With us to discuss this phenomenon is Rain Abas, the founder and chief executive officer of Wixel Studios, which is Lebanon's first gaming startup. And she's also from Spykotech. She also works at Speakertech, a company that teaches kids how to create games, and I'm sure she's going to tell us more about that. She will be joined on stage by the chief operating officer of Scope Le, Eunice Lee, and my colleague Fortune's Emma Hinchcliff. 344. 5. So let's see, um, but, you were one of the first female game designers in the Middle East. What was the industry like when you started for women and where is it today? When I started, it was uh Non-existing for any species, men, women. Anyone It is non-existing. No one knew that we even can do video games, and what that's why everyone thought you're crazy to open a video game company from Lebanon, especially, you know, in Lebanon we don't have even infrastructure for video games. So, uh, yeah, so I think I'm proud also that I created the first step to have video games, the production in the region. What made you confident that it would work when there was nothing? No, I was not. I was panicking, but I was bored because I was working, you know, with US companies doing games for them and for me I can really tell a lot of stories. I can change a lot in my company and my country, I mean, and all over the region. So I think one game it gave me this power. I did a political game, street fight game between politicians online. Because I was, I remember I was stuck on the road, you know, people were fighting each others, young people, so I thought I can't change anything if I do a video game, maybe I will take these young people from the streets and put them online and they can, you know, fight with these politicians to turn around if you want to turn to change the reality, and it was so successful that everyone's playing from all over the world, millions of players, and I said, you know, I need to quit my job. go to Lebanon, create my own company and to do games that can change my reality and others' reality, and I was crazy, but you know, I think this successful game gave me this power to start. Sometimes you need. Um, well, Eunice, tell us about the market for gaming in the Middle East and in Saudi Arabia specifically. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to do that poll because I'm betting there's actually way more folks in here that I would count as a gamer. Um, I think you know what's interesting in all of mobile gaming is probably 50% of, you know, people say I'm a gamer, um, or I play games, you know, but here in Nina, the, the, the percentage of folks that identify as a gamer is 89% of the population. Like that's kind of insane. Um, but you know, often in the west or whatnot you get these ratios that are different, um, and so a lot of people who play, for example, a lot of our games that are super popular like Scrabble Go or Yai with buddies, folks play that but they don't. Think of themselves as a gamer when they're playing that mobile game um if you've ever touched something like Candy Crush or some of those titles I just said Monopoly Go, one of ours, um, you're a gamer, but I think there's an opportunity to really change how who identifies as a gamer and to feel proud to say that you're a gamer. There's sometimes a bit of a. Uh, uh, an old school notion of what's identified as a gamer, um, and it's like a high school teenager in, in the basement of their parents' house playing a, you know, video game all night long, um, and I don't think that's the case anymore and what I love about the MA region and what I really love about Saudi Arabia is how proud both women and men are to be like I'm a gamer and I love, um, you know, playing games whether that's on my mobile phone or on PC or on console. Um, so it's sort of a very exciting place to be. Definitely, um, Ren, tell us about what you've seen in terms of a rise in female gamers. How, how have women as gamers changed, especially in the Middle East, and how has that changed gaming? Are there new games being built for them? Is it changing the way the industry works? No, we have, we have more female gamers, but still for me, the games are developed or produced for females are, you know, I think they think it's not worth it. And uh for me as a decision maker, publisher, designer, developer, my mission was to create games that uh you know. AAA maybe games or really adventure games, real games, and to really attract these females to play these games because if you see the data, yes, we have more females, but the games they're playing, you know, are not the games that are competing on the market or really can change. So as a decision maker, I made sure that the games I produced from my studio will generate more gamers such as racing games, adventure games, action games. And for me this will change. So again, if the females are decision makers, developers, game designers, producers, will change the industry and the games are produced for everyone again and we will have more females and really games that are again, you know, changing or, you know, competing on consoles PC online. And it's again I'm really proud that from our region we have more gamers and we have more developers, but I think we have to do more work to have, you know, to have more numbers or to raise these numbers. You know, why does that matter? Like, is gaming an economic opportunity for women that we are missing out on? Yes, of course. Um, you know, a single game can, uh, the theme of a single game can be, you know, from different industries and from different skills and major. You have like game designers, developers, artists, storytellers, narratives, you have marketing development, business development, sound, it's a big production even for a small game. And yes, it will create more job opportunities that really can, you know, make a difference in the economy of any country, you know, the games are the biggest industry in the world, and yeah, to have more females in this industry will affect the economy. It will affect, it's a triple, it's a ripple effect. And it will change also, uh, may I say the toxic uh gameplay also it's really important. There's a lot of big companies, they are struggling because they reach a place where their games are toxic and this starts from the, you know, non-ethical design. So now they want to go to the ethical gameplay and ethical design. So also when you have more female involved in the narrative and the game design, it will also make a nontoxic, uh, you know, ethical design. What are some of the problems then, uh, non-ethical design, um, you know, it will lead to, uh, non-ethical gameplay or non-ethical play means that you have bullying, you know, people, you know, they. They bully each others also when you also punish the players, they punish the players. So if they don't play for a time, for a specific time, they lose their reward, they lose their achievement, and this will trigger the players and it will affect, you know, especially online game multiplayer games, and when they play like open word they play each other. So this is really important to go back. To ethical, uh, game design or ethical design because it will lead to successful business. So Eunice, what is Scopely doing and what should other companies be doing to reach more female gamers? Yeah, I mean, I think we're blessed in mobile gaming in particular where actually 50% or more of our gamers are women, um, often, so there's a huge opportunity there again. They may not all identify as gamers, um, but I think touching upon what you were saying um we at Scope we we take it pretty seriously, and I think you know it's super important first and foremost to make sure that you have inclusivity as sort of a principle in terms of how you're gonna make gains and the culture in which you have employees um so that everybody can kind of bring their different voices. The table, uh, we at Scope we have created an inclusive design committee and it's exactly what you were describing, um, but it's to ensure that for example our characters truly are representative of who they're supposed to be. So it's not somebody writing in the voice of somebody else that they have not walked in the shoes of or necessarily understand or almost comes across as a caricature of a culture. Um, and we have a senior director, Tule McNally who we hired from Electronic Arts who leads up all of our inclusive game design, um, and one cool example of that is in one of our games, Marvel Strikeforce, which takes all the characters of the Marvel universe um into its game. The team actually created a new Marvel character that did not, does not exist in the Marvel universe from the. Comic book side um that was the first Navajo Native American um character Spider Weaver um and Marvel blessed that character and we were able to put it in the game so there's interesting ways where we can also inflect back into pop culture and vice versa, um, and so I think that's just one tiny example but these things are happening every day, uh, increasingly in gaming probably not fast enough, so the more we can do this and the more that. Um, whether it's gaming or other industries where there's product creation and creativity, the more you have inclusive voices and you come at this principled, you know, inclusive design approach, you know, the better the outcome's gonna be and the better audience reach you're gonna have ultimately. Definitely, um, well, I'll come to everyone for questions in a moment, so if you have any, start thinking um. Ren, when you, we talked about the, you know, economic opportunity for women on the career side, but what about on the professional gaming side? What are women missing out on? I mean, the overwhelming share of professional gamers are men. A lot. Uh, I, I said today I don't want to nag on the stage. I want to, you know, to find solutions. Um, there's a lot of missing, but for me, we. You know, when I started, uh, again, I did not think that I'm a girl or a woman working in this industry, although I remember I was the only female on the team when I started. I did not think about this for me, um, any species again, if you work hard, uh, you're motivated, you want to do it, uh, you know, uh, do well, you know, to, to want to learn everything, you have to be open to learn. Uh, you can reach, you know, uh, high levels in any industry, and, uh, but, you know, education and how we are raising, uh, uh, girls, you know, they start so, you know, with a lot of dreams and they reach an age, they think they are limited, and I think, um, you know, uh, like platforms like today, uh, public speaking, uh, you know, conferences. Lectures, recruitment will help women, you know, step forward and believe that they can be executive, they can create, they can they can win millions of dollars as professional gamers, of course, of course. So you have gamers and producers. These two are important because they can't be non-connected. So these teams are playing games and these games are made by, you know, other people. So again, uh, these two should be connected, should be linked, should be pushed in different ways, should be, you know, uh, talked about in a different way to, uh, you know, to make a difference and to encourage these women to to do whatever they want. You know, I'm again from Lebanon and this is a really a difficult country. I did all these, uh, you know, games, uh, successful games. I did not think about again, I want to do. Something to say that I'm a woman doing games, but also I'm a mother for 3 kids that are game producers, of course, and I'm their hero, uh, because, you know, I worked with the biggest names. I was on stage with their, you know, idols from Roblox, Fortnite, you know, all these big names. Um, so I did it with, I had a difficult also, you know, um, you know, roadmap if you want a journey. Um, but for me, if I want to do something, I will do it. So, and again, in any industry, in any field, we, we should not stop nagging, but we, we, they should know that we should not be in lists. We should not be in only women's conferences. We can compete again with any species. And we can reach, you know, there's no limits. So just believe it and you know, don't listen to anyone, you know. So again, as a mother, entrepreneur, I had a lot of, you know, judgment around me. She's pregnant, she's sick, so everything will stop. So I had to do double effort. I have to tell everyone it's OK. I'm a CEO founder, but nothing will stop. So this extra effort, I know we should not do it, but again, you know, disconnect, do whatever you want. You will have more females and leaders and and especially with the games and can I add really quickly to that I would just, yeah, I just wanna make sure we have time for if anyone has any. OK, we have one right here. Um, yeah, I think the microphone should be to you in a second. I can hear you. Now I'll say less loud. So hi, this is Prashay. I'm the founder and CEO for Crispi Data. We do all things AI. Um, but in gaming, and excuse my, um, awareness on the gaming industry in general, but I have a very basic question if that's OK with you guys, um, like when I was an engineer 30 years ago, I did AI 30 years ago, people always thought like I'm this person sitting somewhere in the basement to earlier comment and you know, building stuff in my garage with AI and stuff like that. Now I think people are more popular like AI is important, but in gaming, how can Um, the perception like the gaming is you with your computer or you with your phone doing the game. How do you see or have you seen gaming to be a unifying factor to bond the community, any species again together? Like what is the forward thinking around making gaming industry as a unifying society and a community? Yeah, that's great. And I mean scope. In particular we're very focused on community building and making experiences um and sometimes people you want that time to be alone right and you wanna have that solo experience and escape the world um but we have found that when uh folks connect their gaming experience with whatever their social graph is and their social networks and communities there's 3 times the engagement um in that game. So I think gaming inherently is um something even if you're playing solo you end up going out in the world and talking and finding people who share that joy who share that passion who you wanna be in community with and talk about and dissect the game um but we really want games that actually bring people together and have mechanics in it that bring community and social um communication. Um, and so you know, we, we really wanna inspire play every day, um, and with others, so that's really important to us at Scoly and I think to a lot of the gaming companies out there. Ren, what community have you seen in among women in the Middle East, among game designers, how have you built that? Yes, it was difficult at the beginning to, you know, to join these people together, but I think games are the best medium to do anything, any change, any link, and to bring people together. Like she said, it's an escape word, um, and if you play on the fellowship and the engagement between players, it's more powerful, and I think games can really change a lot as education games, you know, uh, informative games, casual games. It's a big responsibility to bring messages, to bring these people together like I said, with ethical design. It is a big and strong medium to change again and to empower, you know, women, girls, youth. We did a lot of games. To help, uh, teenagers to survive, you know, their age, difficult age like my kids, you know, it's a disaster, you know, now 3 teenagers, you know, oh my God. So I'm, I'm I have a mother gamer and, uh, you know, a game designer because we use manipulation, good manipulation for players. You need, I need you to be in the game, you know, to stay in the game. So this is a power for me to to deal with my teenagers, but yeah, it is a powerful medium. That's why it's a big responsibility to bring people together and to empower them to change their, you know, their mindset, to promote the health, um, you know, health mindset again. Uh, that's why you have 22 words now in video games. You have video games that again non-ethical, you know, they play on triggering the players and you have really good games that based on great mechanics, fun, there's a lot of, you know, messages inside like environment, educational, or, so yeah, you can change a lot, but you need the right people with, you know, the ethical mind to do that and the right games. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you.