Mario Brothers, Meet the Silicon Sisters

Decades after the last dusty game cartridges hit the dumpster behind the Salvation Army Thrift Store, Vancouver's Silicon Sisters Interactive has emerged as the first female-owned and -operated video game company in Canada.

The Sisters, industry vets Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes, are on a mission. They want to "explore opportunities to get women and girls involved" in the game development process, and to create games to entertain a predominantly female audience.

They aren't just a couple of geeky girls with blind ambitions. Both women have championed "making games that resonate with the female audience" throughout their careers thus far. Gershkovitch, the former COO of Deep Fried Entertainment, currently chairs the Vancouver chapter of Women in Games International and sits on the advisory board of the Canadian Game Developers Conference (GDC). Forbes has advocated for girl gaming preferences through her work as executive producer of Radical Entertainment, where she delivered 11 top-selling games.

It's a man's world

Long before the Silicon Sisters, of course, came brothers Mario and Luigi, pinnacles of cartoon masculinity. The men's colourful coveralls (the practical choice for drainage professionals) and stereotypical mannerisms left their moustachioed mark on a generation of gamers. In late 2007, a Harris/Decima survey found that Mario, the cartoon Italian plumber, was more recognizable among Canadians than Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Super Mario Brothers and subsequent games in the Mario franchise hold the rank of best selling video game series of all time. For those who haven't played: the typical storyline in each game puts the player in Mario's shoes as he attempts to rescue the damsel-in-distress, Princess Toadstool (later given the less fungal name "Princess Peach").

As a young girl, I was an avid, glassy-eyed player of Super Mario Brothers and many of the games that followed. Despite the male protagonist and the highly passive role of the main (only) female character in the game, being Mario appealed to me just as much as it did to my older brother. Mario was a character to become, and the Princess just an objective to reach.

Not reinventing the wheel

The Silicon Sisters are "not interested in 'pinkifying' games." Despite what some current "girl games" offer, research shows that the interests of female and male players aren't all that different; after all, girls who game became interested through products designed primarily for boys and men. Instead of building adventures around Barbie, the developers -- with 18 years of game-industry experience between them -- are "drawing on research" such as that done at the University of Michigan, "that investigates the preferences of women" to make games that are subtly geared toward female players.

Gershkovitch allows that a "certain style of game that is predominant" in the industry. Bestselling games such as Halo 2 and Call of Duty are both "first-person shooter" games with violent goals. This isn't to say that female players don't enjoy pumping an enemy full of lead -- many relish the experience -- but there are ways to optimize games for girls, to make the already-good offerings of the industry even better.

"For boys, the usual structure of a game gives the player a break or a pause after achieving an objective," says Gershkovitch. "When girls were asked to design their own game," as they were in the University of Michigan study, "they built games that were objective-oriented but that also included humour. They did so more often than boys."

Gershkovitch also emphasizes that girls are more inclined towards cooperative games than boys are. "They're more likely to grab a friend when they go on an adventure," she says.

What's wrong with pink ponies?

So what does a well-designed, girl-oriented game look like? "It drives me crazy when developers superficially throw some pink in there, a few sparkles, and a pony," says Gershkovitch. Instead, she and her partner are working on two games -- one for PC and one for mobile platforms -- that take into account female gamers' penchant for puzzles and problem solving.

As part of the development process, they're involving as many women as possible, including their own daughters. At ages 11 and 14, the girls are the perfect demographic for product testing. It isn't a "coincidence," she points out, "that the games that I and many other female gamers are most drawn to have had women involved in their development," says Gershkovitch. "As more women have opportunities to build what they want, we'll be able to see what exactly that is."

In designing games for girls, the Silicon Sisters are aiming at a major portion of the market. According to the Entertainment Software Association, women currently account for 40 per cent of the overall gaming audience in North America. The association has also found that female gamers are one of the industry's fastest growing demographics.

"Games are just about playing out fantasies," says Gershkovitch, "we're interested in what those fantasies look like from a female point of view."