The incorporation of women into the video game sector improves after seven years of stagnation

There is still a long way to go, after all, according to the latest studies, almost half of the people who play video games in Spain, 48%, are women, but it seems that their professional incorporation into the sector in our country is getting better. It is still low, 23% in 2020, but the boost compared to 2019 is four points and seven points compared to 2016, something, without a doubt, positive after several years with stagnant female employment figures. “We cannot continue to be ignored,” Valeria Castro, president of the Spanish Video Game Development Association (DEV), said with conviction about figures that, although they have improved, are still below average across the planet, which around 30% of workers in the industry.

The data comes from the ‘White Paper on Spanish Video Game Development 2021’, an x-ray of the sector that DEV publishes every year, with the support of ICEX Spain Export and Investment and Games from Spain, and which was presented this morning at the headquarters that the ICEX has in the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid. The report, which is now in its eighth edition, once again puts on the table that, at least on the surface, the video game industry is going from strength to strength in Spain. It is estimated that Spanish video game development companies had a turnover of 1,105 million euros in 2020, an increase of 20% compared to the 920 million of the previous year. “If this growth rate is maintained, it is expected that the Spanish production industry will be on the verge of billing 2,300 million in 2024”, pointed out Jaume Esteve, one of those responsible for the study.

But billing is not the only positive point that can be extracted from the white paper. Often one of the great weaknesses of the industry in our country has been the fact that development studies were very young and that they hardly lasted over time. In this sense, it seems that the panorama is strengthened somewhat. “65% of the Spanish studios already established are between two and ten years old, which implies that there is a certain change in trend and that the studios are beginning to be more long-lived and stable in their economic activity,” explained Esteve.