Zynga, SuperGaming, Gamestacy, now.gg, and Gamezop companies are now recruiting women to equalize the workforce and reaffirm their commitment to inclusivity and representation. Given the fact that the number of female gamers has spiked over the past year since the pandemic, companies are now planning to drive up the representation quotient and employ more women.

Women are being hired in a multiplicity of departments; be it game design, quality assurance, game development, and product management. “More than half of the players who play our mobile and casual games are female, and that needs to reflect in our workforce as well,” said Bhavna Talwar, senior director – HR at Zynga said to economic times. 

With around 600 employees in India, the company is taking on a two-pronged approach: inspiring female students to consider the gaming industry as a career by pairing them up with game designers and developers within Zynga for mentorship and engaging with female techies through hackathons and gaming networks. 

While Pune-based SuperGaming where 15% of the employees are women, they are actively endeavoring to increase the number through referrals. Makers of MaskGun and Silly Royale games are also on a hiring spree, employing more women. In the coming months, SuperGaming is looking at rolling out an initiative to have its CEO Roby John mentor women employees for leadership roles, she said. 

Bengaluru-based Gamestacy is recruiting more women in roles of game design so as to create more inclusive games. “Designing games was something not really done by women in the past, which explains all the shooting and killing in older games,” Danish Sinha, founder of Gamestacy, told ET. “Now, we want more women to lead our ideas, design, and narrative teams on creating more inclusive games.” They have teamed up with design campuses to rope in more women artists and illustrators. 

now.gg, which encourages gaming communities to play games on any device or operating system, has specifically hired women employees who had to take a sabbatical or given up their jobs for family reasons and trained them to kick-start their professional journey.

Gamezop is also gearing up to equalize the interview panel and make it more inclusive so that women candidates have the opportunities and platform to express themselves in interviews.

 “Currently, almost 42% of our workforce is made up of women, and our focus is on making the work environment more inclusive to retain female talent,” said Gaurav Agarwal, cofounder of the Gurgaon-based company told ET.