Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore has said that the video games industry has seen an “incredible growth” in the number of female developers. Speaking specifically about EA, he said that women oversee some of the most “powerful” franchises in the company, where they also “manage hundreds of men.” In an interview with Fortune, he said:
We’ve gone from the personification of what we believe women should look like in a video game, to actually involving women in making video games, to today where at Electronic Arts we have some of our most powerful franchises overseen by women who manage hundreds of men.
I’ve seen incredible growth in the number of female game developers in the video game industry since I joined in early 1999. You can look at the last twelve months with everything that has gone on with Gamergate, that it’s made us all pay attention to this issue. When we talk about what I call D&I, Diversity & Inclusion, at EA, it’s never far from our minds when we make hiring decisions.
Moore went on to say that EA’s hiring managers are looking to bring fresh and diverse talent into the company, and that they’ve been encouraging young girls to think about a career in programming as early as high school.
Speaking about the inclusion of women in FIFA 16, Moore said that EA “invested heavily” to get them into the game.
We’ve invested heavily to get them in the game and we’ll continue to build on this moving forward with future games. We had the success with the U.S. team winning the FIFA World Cup this year, and I’d argue more Americans can name members of the women’s soccer team than the men’s. And next year the women will be contenders for the gold medal at the Olympics at Rio 2016, which will be another marketing beat for us.
Moore also said that EA will know within the first few weeks of FIFA 16‘s launch how many people are playing the women’s teams.
FIFA 16 is out on September 22, with a demo scheduled to launch soon.
