As David Thomas noted, it feels a bit odd to be surrounded by so many women… While I sadly was not able to attend the Women’s Game Conference, there is an overwhelming sense of women+games coverage in the press recently (from the BBC, to CNN and news on a new female scholarship, etc).

Even the recent PBS documentary on games covered the topic of girls/games/etc, with two extended essays up at their web site (”Solving the Mystery of the Missing Girl Games” and “What Women Want“).

Aleks Krotoski did a nice job of quickly chronicling the women’s conference (day 1 and day 2), and even provided a great executive summary of her ELSPA-sponsored report: “Chicks and Joysticks: An exploration of women and gaming“.

All those positive comments/coverage aside, I did find Aleks’ commentary of day 2, wherein she describes the close-mindedness of the male developers across the hall, quite sad. It is amazing to me how often people are blind to opportunity, or are so set in their ways that they can never dream of new horizons. It is that kind of myopic thinking that leads us to “exploiting” digital vixens and hearing one of the industry’s founding fathers rant so heavily on the need for change.

Games are a cultural product. If you don’t involve a diversity of input (ie, gender, age, race, etc), then how can you expect a true diversity of consumption?