Open Forum #64 Women in Games and Apps: Innovation, Creativity and IP

Summary

This discussion focused on women’s participation in the video game and app development industries, as well as policies and tools to support their involvement. The panel featured industry leaders, policymakers, and experts who shared insights on the current state of gender diversity in gaming and technology.

Speakers highlighted the growing importance of the video game industry, noting its significant economic impact and cultural influence. They emphasized that while gaming audiences are diverse, with women making up a large portion of players, the industry still lacks gender parity in development roles. Several panelists shared personal experiences of breaking into the male-dominated field and the challenges they faced.

The discussion addressed the need for policies and initiatives to encourage women’s participation in tech and gaming. Examples included mentorship programs, targeted funding for women-led businesses, and efforts to improve education and skills training. Speakers also stressed the importance of creating inclusive work environments and addressing issues like online harassment that can deter women from the industry.

WIPO representatives outlined various resources and tools available to support game and app developers, particularly focusing on intellectual property protection. These included educational materials, online courses, and networking platforms designed to help developers navigate IP issues throughout the game development process.

The panel emphasized the value of diversity in driving innovation and creativity in the gaming industry. They noted that including more women and underrepresented groups in development roles can lead to more diverse game content and expand the industry’s reach. Speakers concluded by encouraging aspiring women developers to pursue their passions and take advantage of available resources and support networks.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The video game industry is a major economic force and cultural influence, with growing diversity among both developers and players

– There is still a significant gender gap in tech and gaming, with women underrepresented, but progress is being made

– Policies, education, funding and support are needed to increase women’s participation in gaming/tech

– IP protection and resources are important for game/app developers, especially women and startups

– Addressing online toxicity and harassment is crucial for making gaming more inclusive

Overall purpose:

The goal of this discussion was to highlight the achievements of women leaders in gaming/tech, discuss policies and tools to support more women entering these fields, and emphasize the importance of diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry.

Tone:

The tone was largely inspirational and optimistic, with speakers sharing personal success stories and emphasizing the progress being made. There was also a sense of urgency about addressing remaining challenges. The tone remained positive and encouraging throughout, focused on opportunities and solutions.

Speakers

– Ryszard Frelek: Moderator

– Kristine Schlegelmilch: Second moderator from WIPO

– Kate Edwards: 31-year veteran of the video game industry, geographer, former executive director of the International Game Developers Association

– Tami Bhaumik: Vice President of Civility and Partnerships at Roblox

– Alaa Abdulaal: Chief of Digital Economy Foresight at the Digital Cooperation Organization

– Meaad Aflah: CEO of Starvania, an award-winning game studio in Riyadh

– Julio Raffo: WIPO economist leading work on the innovation economy and innovation and gender research

– Michele Woods: Leader of WIPO’s Copyright Law Division

Additional speakers:

– Christine: Online moderator (likely the same person as Kristine Schlegelmilch)

Women’s Participation in the Video Game and App Development Industries: A Comprehensive Discussion

This panel discussion brought together industry leaders, policymakers, and experts to explore women’s participation in the video game and app development industries, as well as policies and tools to support their involvement. The conversation highlighted the significant economic and cultural impact of gaming whilst addressing the persistent gender gap in tech and gaming sectors.

Current State of the Gaming Industry

Kate Edwards, a 31-year veteran of the video game industry, emphasised that gaming has become the world’s largest form of entertainment, surpassing film and music combined in terms of revenue. This underscores the industry’s massive economic and cultural influence. However, despite the diverse player base, which includes people from all walks of life, there remains a significant lack of gender diversity in development roles. Edwards noted that women comprise only 15-20% of the video game industry workforce, highlighting a stark disparity.

Julio Raffo, a WIPO economist, corroborated this point by presenting research from WIPO’s World IP Report 2024 on women’s participation in inventions and creative activities. While there has been an increase in women’s workforce participation over the past 20-50 years, gender parity specifically among inventors is projected to occur only around 2061, indicating a long road ahead for achieving equality in tech and innovation.

Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Gaming

The panellists discussed various challenges faced by women in the gaming industry, including:

1. Underrepresentation in development roles

2. Online harassment and toxicity in gaming communities

3. Balancing creative passion with business considerations

4. Complexity and cost of game development

Despite these challenges, speakers highlighted several opportunities and positive developments:

1. Emerging technologies like generative AI lowering barriers to entry

2. Platforms like Roblox enabling easier game creation and publishing

3. Growing recognition of the value of diverse perspectives in driving creativity and innovation

4. Increasing efforts to combat toxicity in gaming communities, with Kate Edwards emphasizing the importance of community management

Policies and Initiatives to Support Women in Tech and Gaming

Alaa Abdulaal, Chief of Digital Economy Foresight at the Digital Cooperation Organization, highlighted the need for policies to encourage women’s participation in tech and gaming. She cited a UN report showing that only 33% of jobs in the top 10 technology companies are held by women, emphasising the importance of empowering women to transition their businesses online.

The discussion touched on several initiatives and resources aimed at supporting women in the industry:

1. Mentorship programmes

2. Targeted funding for women-led businesses

3. Education and skills training initiatives

4. The Digital Cooperation Organization’s “We Elevate” program and digital economy navigator tool

5. Industry efforts like Thriving in Games to combat toxicity in gaming communities

Intellectual Property and Resources for Game Developers

Michele Woods, leader of WIPO’s Copyright Law Division, stressed the importance of intellectual property (IP) protection in game development. WIPO provides free IP resources for game developers, including:

1. Educational materials and online courses

2. The “Quest for IP” project, which gamifies IP learning

3. A LinkedIn community for IP in video game development

4. An upcoming eSports project

These resources are particularly valuable for women and startups entering the industry.

Personal Experiences and Cultural Impact

Meaad Aflah, CEO of Starvania, an award-winning game studio in Riyadh, shared her personal journey in starting her game studio. She emphasized the need to balance creative and business aspects of game development, including IP management. This balance is crucial for the long-term success and sustainability of game development studios, particularly those led by women.

The panel agreed on the significant cultural and economic impact of the gaming industry. Kate Edwards described games as cultural artefacts and a form of artistic expression. Tami Bhaumik, Vice President of Civility and Partnerships at Roblox, highlighted how games can be used to tell diverse cultural stories. Julio Raffo noted the substantial economic activity generated by the gaming industry globally and emphasized the importance of international collaboration in game innovation. Meaad Aflah discussed Saudi Arabia’s emerging gaming ecosystem as an example of the industry’s growth in new markets.

Future Outlook and Unresolved Issues

While the overall tone of the discussion was optimistic and focused on progress, several unresolved issues were identified:

1. Achieving gender parity in game development, which is projected to take over 40 years at current rates

2. Fully addressing toxicity and harassment issues in gaming communities

3. Balancing creative passion with business considerations in game development

The panellists encouraged aspiring women developers to pursue their passions and take advantage of available resources and support networks. They emphasised the value of diversity in driving innovation and creativity in the gaming industry, noting that including more women and underrepresented groups in development roles can lead to more diverse game content and expand the industry’s reach.

In conclusion, the discussion highlighted both the challenges and opportunities for women in the gaming and tech industries. While progress has been made, there is still significant work to be done to achieve gender parity and create a more inclusive environment in these sectors. The panellists’ insights and recommendations provide a roadmap for continued efforts to support and empower women in gaming and technology.

Ryszard Frelek: the event together with Christine, who’s joining us from Geneva Online, and Christine will take over the moderation after Ala will speak. It’s a great, again, it’s a great pleasure to be here, and congratulations, of course, to all the organizers of the IGF for putting in place all of these excellent arrangements. This session is hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, in short WIPO. For those who might not know yet, we are the UN agency that serves the world’s innovators and creators, ensuring that their ideas travel safely to the market and improve lives everywhere. We do so by providing services that enable creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs to protect and promote their intellectual property across borders and acting as a forum for addressing cutting-edge IP issues. Our IP data and information also guide decision-makers the world over, and we, of course, as well have impact-driven projects and technical assistance to ensure that everyone, everywhere, benefits from the intellectual property system. Now, we, of course, in the opening session, as well as throughout all the past days and upcoming days, the issue of the gender divide was echoed across. We are very happy to be here with our amazing speakers from across the world, and who will be speaking about, first of all, the inspiring stories they have as women leaders in the gaming and app development sector. Second, we will also showcase the different policies that can help others join these innovative and creative industries, and we’ll tell you also about our IP tools from the World Intellectual Property Organization that can be used by anyone in order to successfully manage your intellectual property in the gaming and software sector. Finally, if time allows, of course, we’ll be happy to pick up any questions you might have from the audience, both online as well as on-site here as well. In order to save time, we will not be giving the full bios of all the amazing speakers. It will take an hour each for all the CVs that we have here gathered with us, but in this case, allow me just to very quickly, already now, turn to the first speaker, Kate Edwards, who, for those who are in the gaming space, does not need any introductions. She’s a legend in the industry, and Kate, over to you. Okay, well, thank you very much. It’s

Kate Edwards: great to be here, and thank you for coming to our session. I’m going to take this off while I’m speaking because I don’t want to hear myself. So, yeah, so basically, I’ve been working in the video game industry for 31 years, currently finishing up my 31st year. I’m a geographer, and I’ve been doing what I call culturalization work on games. So, I started doing this work at Microsoft many, many years ago, in which I found a way to apply my skills, both as a geographer and cartographer, helping initially on mapping products at Microsoft, but then as the games started being developed there, I worked on all of their games, and I basically helped make sure that the game developers are not making cultural and political mistakes that get them in trouble, and therefore limit the distribution of their IP, limited the distribution, and also that, you know, their IP could be actually tainted by a political or cultural issue that they got wrong. And that happened a few times over the years, and so that was my main job. I left in 2005, and I’ve been self-employed as a consultant in this area ever since, but in addition, I became the executive director of the International Game Developers Association, and ran that organization for five years, which is the world’s largest association for people who develop games, when it has chapters all around the world. And then I also, at one point, also was the executive director of the Global Game Jam, which is the world’s largest game creation event. It happens every January, happens right about a month from now, in which we have about 50,000 people in over a hundred countries making games at the exact same time, around the same weekend, all around the same theme, which gets announced every year. And then I do a lot of other stuff. I’m on the board of TakeThis.org that deals with mental health in the game industry. I’m on a Girlsteam Institute organization board as well. And so basically, there’s a lot of work I do that is about the cultural adaptation of the content, and then there’s also about the culture of the industry. How can we make this industry more inclusive? How can we make it more diverse? Because one thing that we know very well is that, you know, this industry currently, if you look from place to place, it generally is 15 to 20 percent of the workplace are women working in the game industry, and we would like to see that be vastly improved. Because we know that essentially, you know, the people who play games today are pretty much anybody. It is the world’s largest form of entertainment. It makes far more money than film and music combined. A lot of people of younger generations, their eyes are looking at our screens, the game screens, more than they are looking at television, more than they are looking at film. And so that is a huge area for influence. It’s an area for inspiration. So I travel about 75% of the year. I visit a lot of places around the world, including a lot of emerging markets, and I meet phenomenal talent from all kinds of walks of life, and all kinds of backgrounds. I meet a lot of women, a lot of other underrepresented groups who are working on games and making games, because for them, games are their favorite medium, and it also is an artistic form of self-expression. So they’ve chosen to look at games as a way to express themselves, express their own story, express their own culture stories, which is something where games are really unlocking for a lot of people the ability to tell the story that’s local, that people have never heard before. And that to me is very exciting. We of course see that in other creative media. We’ve seen it in film and TV and other forms, but games are very personal. You often have like one or two people working together, making a game together about, say, something based on their local mythology, or based on their own personal life journey. And we’ve had this over and over again. And so it’s something that has been very inspiring, and we see it as a gateway that a lot of people, especially young women who are interested in getting into tech and getting into the creative fields, they see games as, I guess, one of the easier paths to do. Because oftentimes in a lot of locations, if you want to become like a software engineer or a, you know, software developer, the path to get to that point is, it can be tough. And I don’t mean tough from a schooling standpoint. I mean tough from a cultural standpoint. Because of course in a lot of markets today, the parents may say, no, that’s a job for boys. It’s not a job for girls. They may discourage their daughters or discourage their girlfriends or others from going that path. And yet, we’ve seen the talent. There are so many fantastic examples of young women I’ve met around the world who have chosen that path, and they’ve been very successful at it. I know AI engineers, because we use AI quite prevalently in video games, to control non-player characters and other aspects of the game world. I know a lot of people who are software engineers. They’re artists. They’re amazing writers. And these are people, a lot of women, who come from different backgrounds from around the world. And so, it’s this assumption that we make, oftentimes, that the typical game player is like this young teenage boy, in their parents’ house, who’s yelling at the screen. But that has not been true for many, many years. Because the fastest-growing demographic of games, on a global average, has been 30 to 40-something women. They’re the ones who are playing the games more than the young teenage boys. And why is that? Well, because games are a great distraction from everyday life. I mean, especially mobile games, especially the easy kind of like casual games, as we sometimes call them. Because we often don’t have time to sit down and play a game for six hours at a stretch. I would love to do that, but I’m too busy working on games. So, a lot of times, we’ll play something really simple. Like, I play Pokemon Go every single day. Because why not? It’s something I can do very quickly. So, I think it’s really important that we realize that games are a cultural force. They’re a cultural artifact. And more and more governments that I talk to on a regular basis are starting to understand that that’s what games really are. They’re not just a toy. They’re not just a form of entertainment. They are an artifact of the culture in the same level as literature, art, film, television. They are an artifact that we now need to embrace. And so, it’s encouraging to me that more and more governments are starting to see games that way. But more importantly, they need to see who are actually making the games and make the investment in the young people, especially the underrepresented young people, especially women, and give them a chance to get into this space. Because, as I said, we know that pretty much everyone today is playing games of some form. And the challenge is that we want those who make games to better represent those who play them. And the only way we can do that is to open more doors and allow young women and people who are underrepresented to have an opportunity to have the chance to make games. And so, that’s essentially what I will end with.

Ryszard Frelek: Thanks so much, Kate. and you’re one of the people I could be listening for hours and hours. But time is flying, so thank you so much. And let me now kindly move to Tami, who is the Vice President of Civility and Partnerships in Roblox. Tami. Yes. The floor is yours.

Tami Bhaumik: Thank you so much for allowing me to participate with this amazing panel of women. So I lead an area at Roblox called Civility. And what we do is we work on closing the education gap between the generations. We want to empower all of our community in order to have the tools and the knowledge to be able to thrive, not just on Roblox, but online in general. I’ve been at Roblox for eight years, and I’ve seen tremendous changes in terms of the community, not just the players, but also the creators and the developers on the platform. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working and talking to a lot of girls and women who have found Roblox to be their creative outlet. They have chosen to spend time on Roblox because it’s a connection point for their friends. They just have fun on it. Roblox, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it’s a technology platform that allows you to use free tools to create games and experiences and publish it out to millions. We now have close to 90 million daily active users on our platform. We have six million active developers and tens of millions of games on Roblox. And the experiences that are created are really inspiring. I’ll tell you a little bit of a story of one of the developers that I came to know that was just, it really inspires me. She started to play, her name is Mistra. She started playing Roblox when she was 12 years old, and she was full of energy, creative ideas, and she just, she kept seeing all of these different games, but it wasn’t quite what she was interested in. So she started making friends on Roblox who were developers. She started becoming really inspired and started designing clothes, digital items, that started to really take off. And this was quite a few years ago. This was about six years ago. Over time, she taught herself to program on Roblox. She started to develop games on the platform that took off, that now have close to a billion plays. And so she has inspired, she has now become an inspiration for other girls on the platform. She’s created her own studio with girls and women, inspiring them to create. Her latest game was a game about mermaids. And it was, it just, it again, was such an easy, safe place for girls and women to come to be able to be together. And I think that’s such an important goal of these experiences. When people think of games or programming a game, I think that it can be very, very intimidating. I think that many girls think that they have to learn how to program, they have to be good at math, and it sometimes can intimidate them. But now I’m very optimistic, because with the advent of generative AI, you don’t have to become this expert programmer. You can really, really use your imagination to be able to create worlds and experiences without the cumbersome fact of learning how to program. So what I’m excited about is it’s going to bring so many more people into the ecosystem from developing countries, from underrepresented communities to genders. And it’s not the typical, as you say, Kate, the traditional, you know, boys that you think are creating games. It’s really going to open up and diversify the storytelling. I’m also on the advisory board for the Gina Davis Institute, which is an institute, are you familiar with the Gina Davis? So I’m on the advisory board of the Gina Davis Institute. And it’s all about storytelling. It’s all about inserting the narrative of women and telling a story in film, in entertainment, and in gaming to make sure that the story of women are truly inclusive and representative of what women really are. So again, there are tools, there are playbooks available that teach developers how to create experiences that are truly gender inclusive.

Ryszard Frelek: Thanks so much, Tammy. And I’m definitely also another person I would love to continue on listening to, but time goes on and now we are coming back to Riyadh and I would kindly like to ask Matt, who’s the CEO of an award winning studio Starvania here based in Riyadh. And I think my next game I will be playing will be Bahamut. Over to you, Matt.

Meaad Aflah: Thank you so much for having me today. I feel actually very humbled to be among veterans in the gaming industry. It’s my pleasure to be here. I personally started game development since 2013, where there was no gaming industry back then in the region, like purely self-learning. There were like few developers out there, but you have no idea where to find them exactly. So it was very hard to start a gaming industry at that time because no one was taking this industry seriously and it was very hard to take this even as a career path. So I wanted to build my own game studio long time ago, but I couldn’t. My boring job as a project manager in a tech company was taking a huge part of my time and effort. And sorry for all the project managers out there, don’t take it personally, please. So my job was really taking a huge part of my time and effort and I couldn’t really focus on building my studio. Then at one day, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology actually launched their very first gaming incubator and accelerator program in Saudi. And once I saw this glimpse of hope, I immediately went to my boss, resigned from my job for the sake of my passion and basically being fully dedicated and focused on building my dream. At that time, I even relocated to Riyadh because I’m originally from Jeddah. Back then, I remember I told my parents, hey, I resigned from my job and I’m relocating to Riyadh to start my business. It was all of a sudden. The good thing was my parents was very supportive at that time and I even told them, just give me one year and if it didn’t work out, I’ll just come back. And since then, I never came back and officially settled in Riyadh because a lot of things happened since then. It was a very risky step for me at that time because I wasn’t quite sure what’s hidden for me, where the industry in Saudi Arabia is actually going and how would it be in the next few years. But I also believe that sometimes you need to take some brave steps in order to make a change in your life. And I feel like that was one of the best decisions that I’ve had, honestly, because a lot of things happened since then. So I joined the program. It was over a year long and I’ve been mentored under experts from Nintendo, DigiPen Institute of Technology, and they even elevated my experience and knowledge in the gaming industry in general from both the game development aspect and also the business side of it. So I graduated from the program and at that time, I founded Starvania with my other co-founder. I joined another program, which is also an incubator program. It’s a global one by GameBCN. It was also collaborated with MCIT, the Minister of Communication and Information Technology. I finished the program. I jumped to another accelerator program, which is GameFounders, where I met Kate actually for the first time. I was literally jumping from one accelerator to another because I was trying to expand my knowledge and experience in the gaming industry as much as I can, maximizing my opportunities and connections, and also accelerating and growing my business as fast as I can. At that time, I started to feel that like after joining three accelerators, one after another, I started to feel more confident and I felt like, yes, I can stand by my own. I can stand with my feet on my feet. And then at that time, Neom came and invested in us. And they only picked four companies out of like over 20 to relocate to the Lion City. once it gets ready and I was very proud to be part of this. We were the first cohort and now, by the way, they have the second cohort as well. And we grew a lot since then. We only started with four members and currently we are 15. We traveled around the world to participate in many global events. We have been in Germany, UK, in the US, Dubai, Jordan and many other countries as well. So I feel like we really grew a lot since the investment of NEOM. And even though we only started like two years and a half ago or almost three years now, but I’m very proud to see that my studio and myself started to be recognized very fast among the local and the global gaming industry. Like the games, our games have been featured in multiple game awards, media and press releases started to talk about the game and the studio. And we recently even awarded the best game startup award in the MENA region. And I was very proud of this huge achievement and recognition. And also the game awarded a Defcon Indie award. And that was a very big global recognition. And I felt like that was an achievement, wasn’t like for the studio or the game specifically or myself, it was literally an achievement for the entire Saudi ecosystem that we started to hit the globe, right? Within a very short period of time. And even when they handed me the award, they were saying we were the first gaming studio from Saudi Arabia that is being part of the Defcon Indie award. And I was very proud to represent my country with this huge achievement. So, and that’s literally what we’re trying to do in Starvania is to really build high quality games that can resonate and meet the global standards and show the world that we can actually develop games that can compete within a global scale. Because in the gaming industry, it’s all about like creating great IPs, right? Like I always say that we believe in creating an entertainment experiences beyond the horizon. I know this might sound a bit cliche, but like what I mean by beyond the horizon is that, you know that feeling when you finish a game or a movie, it’s called post game or post movie depression. You feel so happy and satisfied that you have finished a good experience, but at the same time you feel sad and empty that you have finished it and you feel like so what now? Now you need more, but there’s actually no more. That’s exactly what I mean by the horizon. The horizon here is the game itself. It’s the original IP. That’s what you are seeing immediately in the horizon. And what’s beyond that, we build a very rich content that can be used with different entertainment mediums using the original IP. So as a longterm vision, we don’t wanna only make games. We wanna grow and build our IPs by creating comics, animation and merchandise to support the game itself, to deliver a complete and extended entertainment experiences through the games that we make or through the original IP. So yeah, at the end, I would say, as you can see, the industry is growing massively in Saudi, and I’m very proud to be part of this wave, especially to be one of the pioneers in the gaming industry in Saudi as a woman-led studio. And I hope that I could inspire other women like me to pursue their passion, even dream big and go crazy. So thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, Med. This is really excellent and inspiring. And I was also, by the way, joking with some of the participants here that one of the good ideas is I would love to have announced that after our event, you will have the possibility to play Roblox, you will have the possibility to play Bahamut, and you will have the possibility to play Indiana Jones in that case with Kate. But we have to move on. In this case, we have the next part of our event, which is going to be focusing on policies. And here, if I could kindly turn to Alla, who is the Chief of Digital Economy Foresight in the Digital Cooperation Organization. By the way, congratulations to the Secretary General for the amazing speech in the beginning opening of the IGF. And of course, for all the great cooperation we also received from DCEO. Alla, the floor is yours.

Alaa Abdulaal: Thank you so much. I’m very honored to be here in this panel beside amazing women with such an achievement on different level and specifically related to technology by itself. At the Digital Cooperation Organization, our mission is making sure that there is a fair opportunity for everyone. And when we say everyone, including women, definitely. And when we look at the numbers, it’s really disappointing. Based on the UN, one of the UN reports, we only find that 33% of women are in jobs in technology in the top 10 technology companies. 33 is a very disappointing number. And I know for a fact, someone coming from a very technology background, and I know around me, there is a lot of amazing women who have their computer and science STEM in them, and they are going into that field. So having that reflection really make us look at what is the problem. Looking at that there is a one trillion, if I’m, yeah, one trillion of missed opportunity from a GDP perspective for omitting women and not making, giving them that opportunity to participate in the digital economy. This is a loss, a loss for the globe overall. And this really makes us, even in the organization, really think behind what, why. Why is this happening? What do we need to do? On different levels, not only from policy perspective, but policy, education, skills, funding, that full enablement and empowerment to make sure that women is part of this growth of the digital economy. One of the things that we recently, not this year we have launched, we worked on a unified framework for women participation in ICT and through ICT. The objective of this unified framework is to enable and empower not only countries, but businesses, to really start creating impactful initiatives. We are seeing a lot of initiatives that are targeted for women, but again, we always get that, what can we do? Where is the need? How can we measure it? How it can be, those initiatives can be tailored in a very impactful way. So we created this framework. It’s like a tool that will help in the creation of actionable initiative, looking at different categories, different sectors. For example, which region are you targeting? Is it a country? Is it a region? Is it a specific group age? Is it for people, women who are employed or unemployed? Which sector exactly? We are talking about women who are already have education in the ICT sector, or how can they use the technology to empower them in the industries that they are already working in? Whether they are lawyers, whether they are doctors, we believe that technology would be a huge enablement and empowerment for those women who are working in those industries. So this framework will really help in creating those tailored, targeted initiatives that also will be helping in, how can we measure their impact later on? This is one of the things that we have launched at the beginning of the year. Another thing, we said, okay, let’s put our hands on the ground, and let’s actually not only providing toolkits, but let’s have an initiative to really enable women. And we have what we call We Elevate. It’s a full program to help and empower women to transition from regular businesses to be there online. And this would open a full horizon. We are making them not only execute or work in their national jurisdiction, but going and being open and available online. It means cross-border. It mean in this world of digitalization. And you can see how this would not only have that economic impact, but even reach and showcasing those women-led businesses. And we already started. We are targeting to have 300 businesses in, we started launching in Rwanda, targeting having by next year 300 businesses to transition them fully online. And not only that, we are supporting them by giving them the right skills with specific training to help them be, there is a full supply chain, full knowledge that they need to have to really operate online. This is, so we are taking it a full fledge from giving the education, giving the opportunity, giving the fund, giving. them the floor and platform to be there online. Again, there is also a lot of our Secretary General, she always, to be honest, since she’s a woman, she really likes to empower women, and in every country where we go, she has those lead meetings, mentorship sessions, where she talks to women, shares her story, and and this is always open a new horizon, and when you listen to other women, their successful story, like my colleague beside me, we really see that, yes, the numbers are disappointing, but there is a lot of hope. Only just by giving the floor, having such a session to share the stories of amazing women, led by businesses, and even them being in the field, this is really inspiring, and this is even what we are trying to do in DCO in different occasions. Also, we have launched our digital economy navigator. It is a tool that helps in assessing the maturity level of the digital economy, and one of the major aspects and indicators that we are capturing, and we believe that it is really one important aspect, is gender equality in different sectors, in different levels, in the private sector, and even in the government, and we captured that indicator as part, a key component in this tool that we have produced, and when we look at the numbers, and we see how much we are behind, it shows us how much we need to work together to make sure that we are giving the opportunity and empowering women in every level. Again, I don’t think that this is something that women can do alone. If we do not have also the male empowerment from the other side, then we are not looking for, we will not achieve this success. I wish, as a woman, to have that day where we don’t need to talk about this issue. We don’t need to talk about women empowerment, because it will be our nature, it will be the common sense. So, again, as the digital cooperation organization, I believe there is a lot to be done from a policy perspective, building the right initiative to support the empowerment of women, having the right incentives in place, having the right funding to fund the businesses led by the women, having targeted programs to give them the right skills to be in this digital world. It’s still a big journey and a big number that we want to see increased, and we hope by the cooperation between different stakeholders and different sectors, we will achieve that soon.

Ryszard Frelek: Thank you, Ella, and if I can say that the inspiration, the hope is very, very condensed in this room, and thank you very much for providing all the support that you have in all the different areas of your work. Now, let me perhaps then turn to our second moderator, to Christine, who is joining us online. I see Christine, I see you. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hear you. Hi, everyone. I can

Kristine Schlegelmilch: hear you. Go ahead, Christine. Thanks so much, Richard, and a big thank you, Ella, for opening us up on the part of our session where we are discussing the policies and tools that are crucial to understanding and helping to close those gender disparities in the tech sector that you just mentioned. I’m really pleased to introduce my colleague, Julio Raffo, who is WIPO’s economist leading work on the

Ryszard Frelek: innovation economy, as well as our innovation and gender research at WIPO, and Julio, we’re looking forward to learning from you about your team’s research into understanding the gender gap in innovation and IP, as well as your recent analysis of the video game industry. So, right over to you. Thank

Julio Raffo: you, Christine. Thank you, Richard. Thank you to the IGF for organizing this very important session and event, so I’m very happy to be here. And as mentioned, I’ll be talking today about our World IP Report 2024, we can see here in the background, which has a full chapter dedicated to the innovation capabilities in the video game industry. The video game industry, I think it’s not gonna be a surprise for most of you, is a significant contributor to global economic activity, and you may know it generates almost double in revenue than the movie industry, so that can give you a little bit the measure of how big it is. More importantly, video games, as I think Kate was saying a bit earlier today, it’s no longer that person hidden with a computer, especially a teenager, but actually they span in many platforms. We have mobile, console, PC, and browser games, to name a few. Some of the titles are really big budget, right, they’re blockbusters, and they compete with the blockbuster films that we are, you know, more used to, especially if you are my age, they are more used as a figure, as an example. The industry also offers high-paying jobs, with workers sometimes earning up to three times the average wage in many countries, for instance Finland, Japan, Poland, US, to name a few that we have discussed in our report. And of course, very importantly, we have three billion people around the world that plays video games, and actually in many places, basically half of them are women, which is a very important link that we’re trying to establish here in this session. So this means that diversity actually is an intrinsic part of the video game industry, and this is what I’m going to try to discuss a little bit by relying on that chapter I mentioned before, and then bring back of why it’s very important that we have women, but also diversity incorporated into the gaming industry. So I’m gonna say some trivial things, but especially for the non-gaming community, it might be important, the video game industry includes game development, publishing, hardware, eSports, but also the community of gamers around them. So it’s a very diverse community, and if you want to look at the video game supply chain as a whole, the key players are of course the developers in terms of creativity, they are the ones who create the games, but also the other key players are the publishers who finance and promote the games and bring all those games to the market, a very important element in innovation, right? It’s not only the creation, but also the commercialization so we can have access to them. We are noticing that as games become more and more complex, which they are if you have been playing games, Richard was mentioned a few just some minutes ago, and they’re becoming more complex because both the development costs and their development risks are increasing over time, and this means that we need to be very creative, but also very diverse in terms of the skills of how we tackle them. For instance, just to give you a very concrete example, they’re going to be linking to gender later on, the average development team size has doubled in only one decade, right? And this is a clear connection to the higher cost and complexity that should develop a new game is required. So it’s not surprising that in response to that many publishers have actually virtually integrated, right? The big publishers have been acquiring smaller studios to streamline operations and manage expenses. As such, also the industry is increasingly relying on sophisticated skills like graphic design, software development and storytelling, just to name a few, but of course many of these they overlap with other sectors like computing and entertainment, right? We have an industry that is increasingly using the talent from many other industries, it’s merging that talent in a very creative way, but also in a world that has less and less resources. It’s important also to note that innovations in virtual reality and artificial intelligence and mobile technology have enhanced the gameplay and accessibility of games all around the world in a very impressive way, and also this means that we have trends like cross-platform playability that have expanded to many markets now. In the past, games were developing in a very few countries and for a very few countries, now it is a global endeavor. The global supply chain of video games demonstrate also this significant interdependence, right, of different industries. We see also talent going from one industry to the other industry, and at the same time we observe also that things that arise from the video game industry, they can go all the way to entertainment. We see many films now, many movies being done from video games. So, diverse capabilities are the fuel of this industry. We have a lot of evidence suggesting that international collaboration in game innovation is a key to successfully developing new technologies. We know that there is a lot of interdisciplinary collaboration. We know that either for 3A titles, right, the blockbuster titles, but also the indie games, the sector will encompass diverse roles such as programmer, artists, marketers, and user experience experts. So, diversity is a key of this, and this diversity has expanded over time to meet consumers’ expectations for sophisticated cross-platform games, the ones I was mentioning before. So this means that innovation in related fields, for instance, artificial intelligence or virtual reality, they continue to expand the industry. Now this is a sector that is extremely interconnected with other industries also driving innovation to them or from the gaming industry. So the success in one segment of this very complicated supply chain or global value chain expands poor growth in related areas. We can see game development success developing hardware sales or vice versa. Or one example is we have the virtual reality headsets, which initially they were just niche products. Now they’re essential for some gamers’ experience, but also they can export to other fields. For instance, the industry’s complexity is also very evident in the ability to create synergies across disciplines, let’s say from art to technology, but also from technology to medicine, just to name a few. So let me link this back to gender so I do not pass too much of my time. First it’s important that we ensure equal opportunities for women in innovation and IP, because it’s not only a matter of fairness, but also essential for tapping into the full potential of our human resources. Women bring diverse perspectives that drive creativity and problem solving. In WIPO we have been researching this, particularly on the IP participation, but not only, and we have noticed that there is an increasing workforce participation of women, especially in inventions or other creative activities over the past, let’s say, 20, 50 years. However, it’s very important that we say also that gender parity in inventors is only projected to happen in around, let’s say, 2061, so in at least 40 years. This participation of women, of course, varies a lot by region and by industry. The highest inclusion, for instance, usually is in life sciences, and the lowest in some very traditional engineering, like mechanical engineering, but ICTs and the gaming industries are not far from life sciences, which is the good news, however, they are very far from parity, and this is very important. So I would like also to highlight that women are rarely part of a team of inventors, sorry, women are rarely the majority in an inventors team, right, they often work actually on male dominated teams, very unlikely they’re going to work in all women teams. So in order to tackle this, we need to have the inclusion of women, and unfortunately, a lot of the improvement that we observe in the women’s participation in inventions, it has to do that we’ve mentioned that the teams are growing, and more men are participating, more people are participating together, which increases the likelihood of a woman participating, but we observe that very unlikely for a woman to participate in women only or women dominated teams, they always stay one extra venture in a team, which is not enough. Let me start concluding here before Christine tells me that I’m running out of time, which clearly I am. So I would like just to say that the video game industry’s evolution illustrates the complexity and the reliance on technology and creative innovation, but it’s only through talent and entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary collaboration is that we’re going to be able to see vibrant gaming hubs, and of course, increasing gender balance and diversity will certainly be part of the key to success for this vibrant and innovative industry, and I would like to stop here.

Kristine Schlegelmilch: Thank you so much, Julio, and thanks for helping us kind of get a sense and understanding for the importance of starting to look at developing IP indicators that can contribute to how women are getting involved in the tech sectors and growing that involvement. That is really going to be key to informing strategies and actions for improving women’s inclusion in the digital economy, as Alaa mentioned earlier. So let’s turn now to Michelle Woods, who leads our Copyright Law Division at WIPO, and Michelle is going to share with us the growing range of tools and resources that WIPO has created to assist video game and app developers with everything from understanding relevant IP protections to using IP to help your business succeed. So over to you, Michelle. Thanks a lot, Christine, and everyone. So I’m going to try and quickly run through some of the tools we have here at WIPO for

Michele Woods: women gaming and app developers. One of the key messages is there’s really, at least in the area of IP, no need to reinvent the wheel. There’s lots of great tools and information out there, in many cases developed by our experts to help you get started or up your game on the essentials of IP for gaming, going through all stages of development of video games and model apps. So I’m going to do a quick tour of some of what we have available here, and I know that Richard is going to share some links at some point, and would definitely suggest exploring our website because there’s more there, but we can only do so much in the short time we have. So first of all, I want to highlight a very exciting project that Richard and others were involved in that wrapped up last year, but where we have all the materials on video game development, the Quest for IP, and this is a five-stage quest to build IP skills through all levels of video game development, concept phase, development phase, launch phase, investments and acquisitions phase, and then a special module on IP in eSports, which as I’m sure you all know is a growing area of gaming with growing importance economically and in terms of overall participation. So in each level, we have podcast interviews with leading gaming company representatives, plus we have checklists with key IP takeaways for each stage of game development, and there’s a network of game developers from all over the world that developed in the course of this quest going strong, and so people are really working with each other, mentoring each other, helping each other, all as part of this quest. In addition, we have a number of other publications and resources, including a training tool on business and legal issues for video game developers called Mastering the Game, a study on the legal status of video games done for our Copyright Standing Committee. Then if we look at mobile apps, there’s also been a lot of work done here, including in the development context. We have a committee on development, and that committee has asked for some work on mobile apps. So there are useful tools for three phases of the app development lifecycle from the IP point of view, covering conception, development, and commercialization, monitoring, and enforcement. And we also have an IP toolbox for mobile app developers that covers all areas of IP and enforcement of rights, which of course is a lot. And once again, this does have a specific development focus, and this one can pick and choose those parts of the toolbox that are most useful, or of course, look at the whole thing. We also have a reference handbook on IP in mobile apps. And then we have a course on, oh, sorry, we have a role, a publication on the role of mobile apps in the game industry, covering basics to new challenges, the metaverse, AI, all of these interesting areas that we’re all working in, plus there’s a short course specifically on IP law for app developers. So if you need guidance on starting and growing your startup business from the IP angle, we have six stages of navigating IP as a startup, an infographic, very detailed, and then IP for startups, more detailed publication in our IP for business series. We have some IP resources for women innovators and entrepreneurs as part of a development project for them on increasing their role in innovation and entrepreneurship. We also have an IP diagnostic tool, a self-assessment tool where you put in information about your business and the tool is designed to identify IP assets you may want to focus on and monetize, tailoring the resources to your situation. This can also serve as a tool for an IP audit. A general version of this IP diagnostic tool is available now, and a more specific version

Ryszard Frelek: for video gaming and mobile apps is underdeveloped. and should be issued soon, along with the project I’m pleased to be working on, on eSports. So we have an extensive project mapping the eSports landscape and producing a toolkit covering all major regions and of course the involvement of women developers. So that should be issued this year. I understand that Richard will kindly share a slide with all the links. I know that’s a lot I just ran through, so please go check them out. Back to you, Christine.

Kristine Schlegelmilch: Super. Thank you so much, Michelle, for walking us through some of the important considerations and resources that are available for protecting video games and apps. And it’s important to also note that WIPO’s resources are free and they are all easily available on our web page website. I thought I’d also mention two more resources that might be useful for those who are interested in IP, learning more about IP for a game and app development. WIPO has an online learning academy that offers a lot of IP related courses, not necessarily specific to gaming or app development, but that could be coming in the future. And then also I wanted to mention there and encourage you to check out the IP for video game developers LinkedIn community where developers, entertainment lawyers and others in the video game industry can network and share resources and learn more about IP by and for video game developers. And Richard, I think you played a big part in starting that group up and I saw this morning there

Ryszard Frelek: were nearly 950 members in that community. Thanks, Christine. Yes, exactly. We’ll be reaching 1,000 very shortly and I’m sure that will be a great opportunity to celebrate. Now, if I could now have that moment, if there’s any questions to our amazing speakers, both those who are online and I’m looking around the room. Yeah, I’ll give you my microphone, I think.

Audience: Hello, it’s a nice presentation by everyone and it’s very inspiring to know each one of yours story and the courage and the braveness each one of have put in into the new industry and it’s very inspiring. I don’t have much question but like I would like to know all the the LinkedIn, the last LinkedIn page that mentioned, I couldn’t note it down if that could be repeated would be very nice. Now it’ll work. If you will go to the link which is up there, video games HTML, from there you will also have the link directly to the LinkedIn group and I highly encourage it because it’s becoming a very active even more in the recent time. So we’ll be definitely also looking forward to your participation. Thank you so much. Please. Hello, my name is Ahmad Karim, I’m from UN Women regional office for Asia and the Pacific and thank you so much for the inspiration and the great work. My question is mostly related to also technology facilitated violence in the gaming industry and how have you been dealing with this with the, you know, before there was a very long attacks on female gaming players and how from your perspective in the design process have you been going through that area where

Ryszard Frelek: you can encourage female players to come into the gaming industry? Kate?

Kate Edwards: Yeah, so I can speak both professionally and personally of this because when I was running the International Game Developers Association I was one of their primary targets of GamerGate. So I existed with death threats and harassment for over two years because I was a woman running in a game association, a global game association, so I understand this very well. There’s both the community aspect which many, many companies because of GamerGate, because of that whole episode about ten years ago and that really got them to wake up to dealing with toxicity in their communities and building better community management. That’s really where we started to see community management emerge as like an actual another kind of job in the game industry that sort of existed but now it’s very formalized and it’s something that most companies have. But in addition to that they’ve been employing a lot of like AI tools and other ways to deal with this like how do we detect toxicity, how do we detect certain behaviors, but more importantly it’s not just about the negative it’s about the positive. So a lot of companies like Microsoft, EA, others they’ve got they’ve got efforts called like gaming for everyone, player inclusion and a lot of these efforts are aimed at making sure that all the games that are made on their platform or released on their platform are open for everybody. That they watch how representation is, they make sure that the community features are built in. So there is an awareness especially a self-awareness that I think that has truly arisen over the last five to ten years that just simply did not exist and to me that’s encouraging. So there is a group called Thriving in

Tami Bhaumik: Games and it was start, is this working? Can you hear me? Thriving in Games and you can probably find it online but it’s a consortium of probably 200 gaming companies some of the largest ones. Roblox was actually one of the founding companies early on with, it was used to be called the Fair Play Alliance and it was an absolute awareness, it was a wake-up call to the industry. So is it solved yet? No. But are we moving in the right direction? Yes. So Thriving in Games is all about using research to identify things like pro-social behaviors that we can start integrating into gaming, innovating in the technology to make sure that we’re identifying, we’re hearing about toxicity, we’re giving reporting abilities and then also detecting toxicity before it even starts, right? We can start using AI to start detecting patterns. So we are moving in that direction. Thank you very much Kate and Tami.

Ryszard Frelek: If I could kind of turn to each of the speakers who are here on site for their final key message within 20 seconds because we’re already running out of, we’ve already ran out of time but 20 seconds. So really quickly, please, please, please, we need your stories as women, we need your stories. So go to create roblox.com, dot roblox.com, take a look at our resources and start getting involved and start creating. And I would just reiterate what I said earlier, it’s like don’t underestimate games as an artistic and cultural artifact and not only just the games as a medium but who’s creating them and where are they being created because I travel to all corners of this planet and everywhere I go there are people making games of all

Alaa Abdulaal: kinds of backgrounds so never assume. So maybe I would like to give a message for other game developers like me because we’re very passionate about what we are doing. Sometimes we, I would say, forget about the business side of it. We are in that kind of bubble of developing our dream games and then when the game hits we figured out that, oh, we have to do this, this and that, including the IPs which is very important. So I feel like we definitely need to put that in consideration and not like overseeing the business side of the gaming industry.

Meaad Aflah: I think what I want to conclude is that the power is within every and each one of us. We hold our own destiny to really empower ourselves and not wait for other forces to change. We are the force of change and even as DCO we are committed to make sure that not only women are included but at the forefront of innovation and the only thing that will make this happen is collaboration and working together. Thank you very much and congratulations to everyone for the

Ryszard Frelek: great present. And for those who would like to we are inviting you for a family photo.

Agreement Points

Importance of women’s participation in the gaming industry

speakers

Kate Edwards

Julio Raffo

Alaa Abdulaal

Meaad Aflah

arguments

Gaming industry lacks gender diversity

Women bring diverse perspectives that drive creativity

Need to empower women to transition businesses online

Importance of sharing success stories of women in gaming

summary

Speakers agree on the need to increase women’s participation in the gaming industry, highlighting the benefits of diverse perspectives and the importance of empowerment and representation.

Games as cultural and economic force

speakers

Kate Edwards

Julio Raffo

Meaad Aflah

arguments

Games are a cultural artifact and form of artistic expression

Gaming industry generates significant economic activity globally

Saudi Arabia’s emerging gaming ecosystem

summary

Speakers recognize the significant cultural and economic impact of the gaming industry, emphasizing its role as a medium for artistic expression and its contribution to global economic activity.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the potential of games as a medium for cultural expression and storytelling, allowing creators to share personal and cultural narratives.

speakers

Kate Edwards

Tami Bhaumik

arguments

Games are a cultural artifact and form of artistic expression

Games can be used to tell diverse cultural stories

Both speakers highlight the increasing complexity of game development and the importance of considering both creative and business aspects in the process.

speakers

Julio Raffo

Meaad Aflah

arguments

Games are becoming more complex and costly to develop

Need to balance creative and business aspects of game development

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of IP protection in game development

speakers

Michele Woods

Meaad Aflah

arguments

WIPO provides free IP resources for game developers

Need to balance creative and business aspects of game development

explanation

While coming from different perspectives (legal and developer), both speakers emphasize the importance of intellectual property considerations in game development, which might not be an obvious focus for creative developers.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the importance of increasing women’s participation in the gaming industry, recognizing games as a significant cultural and economic force, and the need for resources and support for game developers, particularly in areas like IP protection.

Consensus level

There is a high level of consensus among the speakers on these key issues, which suggests a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the gaming industry. This consensus implies a strong foundation for collaborative efforts to address gender disparities, promote cultural expression through games, and support game developers with necessary resources and knowledge.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to addressing gender disparity in the gaming industry

speakers

Kate Edwards

Alaa Abdulaal

arguments

Gaming industry lacks gender diversity

Need to empower women to transition businesses online

summary

While both speakers acknowledge the gender disparity in the tech industry, they propose different approaches to address it. Kate Edwards focuses on increasing women’s participation directly in the gaming industry, while Alaa Abdulaal emphasizes empowering women to transition their existing businesses online.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the specific approaches to addressing gender disparity in the gaming industry and the emphasis placed on different aspects of the industry’s development.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is relatively low. Most speakers share similar goals of increasing women’s participation in the gaming industry and recognizing its cultural and economic importance. The differences mainly lie in the specific strategies and focus areas each speaker emphasizes. This low level of disagreement suggests a general consensus on the importance of addressing gender disparity and promoting the gaming industry’s growth, which could lead to more collaborative efforts in achieving these goals.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of increasing women’s participation in the gaming industry. However, Kate Edwards focuses on the current low percentage of women in the workforce, while Julio Raffo emphasizes the value women bring to innovation and creativity in the industry.

speakers

Kate Edwards

Julio Raffo

arguments

Gaming industry lacks gender diversity

Women bring diverse perspectives that drive creativity

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the potential of games as a medium for cultural expression and storytelling, allowing creators to share personal and cultural narratives.

speakers

Kate Edwards

Tami Bhaumik

arguments

Games are a cultural artifact and form of artistic expression

Games can be used to tell diverse cultural stories

Both speakers highlight the increasing complexity of game development and the importance of considering both creative and business aspects in the process.

speakers

Julio Raffo

Meaad Aflah

arguments

Games are becoming more complex and costly to develop

Need to balance creative and business aspects of game development

Key Takeaways

The gaming industry lacks gender diversity, with women underrepresented in development roles

Games are becoming more complex and costly to develop, requiring interdisciplinary collaboration

Gaming is a significant cultural and economic force globally

There are growing efforts and resources to support women and diverse perspectives in game development

Intellectual property protection is important for game developers to consider

Resolutions and Action Items

Encourage more women to get involved in game development through platforms like Roblox

Utilize WIPO’s free IP resources for game developers

Join industry efforts like Thriving in Games to combat toxicity in gaming communities

Leverage DCO’s framework to create initiatives supporting women in tech

Unresolved Issues

How to achieve gender parity in game development, which is projected to take 40+ years at current rates

Balancing creative passion with business considerations in game development

Fully addressing toxicity and harassment issues in gaming communities

Suggested Compromises

None identified

We know that essentially, you know, the people who play games today are pretty much anybody. It is the world’s largest form of entertainment. It makes far more money than film and music combined.

speaker

Kate Edwards

reason

This comment challenges common assumptions about who plays video games and highlights the massive economic and cultural impact of the gaming industry.

impact

It set the stage for discussing the importance of diversity and representation in game development, given the broad audience.

Now I’m very optimistic, because with the advent of generative AI, you don’t have to become this expert programmer. You can really, really use your imagination to be able to create worlds and experiences without the cumbersome fact of learning how to program.

speaker

Tami Bhaumik

reason

This insight points to how emerging technologies like AI are lowering barriers to entry in game development.

impact

It shifted the conversation to focus on new opportunities for diverse creators to enter the field, rather than just discussing existing challenges.

Based on the UN, one of the UN reports, we only find that 33% of women are in jobs in technology in the top 10 technology companies. 33 is a very disappointing number.

speaker

Alaa Abdulaal

reason

This statistic provides concrete evidence of the gender gap in tech, grounding the discussion in data.

impact

It prompted discussion of specific policy initiatives and frameworks to address the gender imbalance in tech and gaming.

Women bring diverse perspectives that drive creativity and problem solving. In WIPO we have been researching this, particularly on the IP participation, but not only, and we have noticed that there is an increasing workforce participation of women, especially in inventions or other creative activities over the past, let’s say, 20, 50 years. However, it’s very important that we say also that gender parity in inventors is only projected to happen in around, let’s say, 2061, so in at least 40 years.

speaker

Julio Raffo

reason

This comment provides a nuanced view of progress in women’s participation in innovation, acknowledging improvements while highlighting the long road ahead to parity.

impact

It deepened the conversation by introducing a long-term perspective on gender equality in tech and innovation, prompting discussion of sustained efforts needed.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by broadening the scope from just gaming to the wider tech industry, highlighting both progress and persistent challenges in gender equality. They moved the conversation from describing problems to exploring solutions, including policy initiatives, AI-enabled opportunities, and the need for sustained long-term efforts. The comments also emphasized the economic and cultural significance of gaming, underlining the importance of diversity in this influential medium.

How can we increase the percentage of women working in the video game industry beyond the current 15-20%?

speaker

Kate Edwards

explanation

This is important to ensure better representation and diversity in game development, reflecting the diverse player base.

How can generative AI be leveraged to make game development more accessible to underrepresented groups, including women?

speaker

Tami Bhaumik

explanation

This could potentially lower barriers to entry and diversify storytelling in the gaming industry.

What specific policies and initiatives can be implemented to increase women’s participation in the digital economy?

speaker

Alaa Abdulaal

explanation

This is crucial for addressing the economic loss from women’s underrepresentation in tech and closing the gender gap in digital industries.

How can we accelerate progress towards gender parity in inventors, which is currently projected to happen around 2061?

speaker

Julio Raffo

explanation

Achieving gender parity sooner is essential for tapping into the full potential of human resources and driving innovation.

How can the video game industry continue to improve its handling of technology-facilitated violence and harassment targeting female players?

speaker

Ahmad Karim (audience member)

explanation

Addressing this issue is crucial for creating a safe and inclusive environment for all gamers, particularly women.

How can game developers better balance their passion for game creation with the business aspects of the industry, including IP management?

speaker

Meaad Aflah

explanation

This balance is important for the long-term success and sustainability of game development studios, particularly those led by women.