Gamer Girls
25 Women Who Built the Video Game Industry
written by Mary Kenney
illustrated by Salini Perera
RP Teens, 2022. 148 pages.
Review written January 9, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
Wow! I had no idea so many women were fundamental to developing the video game industry. Yes, there are 25 featured women, but each feature has at least one “Side Quest” about a woman who achieved similar things to the featured person, and often more than one. So if anybody has any doubt that women can do great things with video games, this book completely obliterates those doubts.
Each story was fascinating. Many of the women are contemporaries with me, and so I watched most of these innovations to video games happen in my lifetime. We’ve come a long way – and I’d had no idea how many women were responsible for that. Oh, and I also loved that the author included more than one trans woman, without making a big deal of them, but including them in this book featuring accomplished women, where they belong.
Yes, there’s a lot about how innovative ideas – for example, actually making video games targeted to women, who’d have thought? – led to huge popularity, and how women overcame prejudice and stereotypes in their own creative lives. So this is especially a book to inspire girls who love computers or video games, but it’s also for anyone interested in the history of how video games developed.
I have two peeves with the book itself. The first is the horrible use of a neon orange font for headings and for the Side Quests. So terribly hard to read! I had to use a ruler slid down the page to read it at all. Maybe just a problem for my old eyes.
My second peeve is that I still have no idea why the women are presented in the order they are. It’s not alphabetical. It’s not in order of their births. It’s not in order of when they worked in the industry (which is part of the headline for each woman). I’m thinking it can’t possibly be random, but I still can’t figure out what the reasoning is, and that was distracting.
I read this whole book very slowly, a few pages and one profile at a time. It was very enjoyable that way, though perhaps if there was an overarching organization, I lost sight of it. The women did start to run together in my mind because I hadn’t figured out how to organize the information in my own brain – but mind you, I was super interested as I was reading each page.
Here’s how the author summarizes her goals for the reader in the Epilogue:
You might not remember every name, studio, and game featured in this book, and that’s okay. What I hope you do remember is this: A profound sense of joy and purpose. The knowledge that there is work to be done in this beautiful, messy field, and that you could be part of it. I hope this book dispels your fear. I hope you see a future that is growing brighter with every new developer who decides to make games. And I hope you realize that developer could be you.
I think she’s hitting those goals with this inspiring and interesting book.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/gamer_girls.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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