Canada’s first women-owned video game company, Silicon Sisters, created in Vancouver

by Blaine Kyllo on July 20th, 2010 at 12:54 PM

Silicon Sisters Interactive says it’s the first female-owned and -operated video-game-development company in Canada.

The studio, being set up in Vancouver, plans to create games for a predominantly female audience.

Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch is Silicon Sisters’ CEO and Kirsten Forbes is the company’s COO, according to a press release issued today (July 20).

Bailey Gershkovitch was formerly COO of Deep Fried Entertainment, and Forbes was an executive producer at Radical Entertainment.

Both women are advocates for female developers and gamers.

In the release, Bailey Gershkovitch said, “We’re not interested in ”˜pinkifying’ games, which is how girl games are typically designed. It’s no coincidence that the games I and many other female gamers are most drawn to have had women involved in their development. Girls and women game differently than boys and men. Silicon Sisters has studied these differences so we can make games that truly appeal to and resonate with the female audience.”

“The video game industry is experiencing a rebirth of sorts,” Forbes said. “PC online gaming is up, social networking has become pervasive, and mobile platforms are ubiquitous. Women are adopting games on these platforms in droves. It’s time to get serious about delivering quality games into this burgeoning market.”

Silicon Sisters will have a mostly female staff, and is already working on two projects for PC and mobile platforms.

Comments

9 Comments

James Frizell

Jul 23, 2010 at 5:48pm

Fantastic. I can't wait to see what kind of games come out of this!

Teri Thom

Jul 24, 2010 at 12:04pm

KrabbitSoft has been around since 2000, was incorporated in 2003, has distributors, released KrabbitWorld titles, features strong female characters and is primarily female owned. Krabbitonline.com reveals much of the history and content and links. New releases and updates are in the works.

pepper

Jul 24, 2010 at 2:15pm

As an aspiring female game company CEO myself, these kinds of articles and project are especially encouraging! Looking forward to hearing more about Silicon Sisters!

Jamie

Aug 2, 2010 at 9:19am

From the article:

"Silicon Sisters will have a mostly female staff..."

Now, what that means is that the owners have publically said that they are going to be discriminating against job applicants based solely on their gender... ie, being male. No one sees anything wrong with this? Imagine the uproar if a company owned by males (or anyone else) publically declared that they were planning on excluding female applicants... or Chinese... or whatever. Where's the human rights legislation on this one? Why aren't people the least bit concerned with this unethical and glaring double-standard?

@Jamie

Jul 10, 2012 at 4:59pm

Most games companies are owned and operated by males.
Perhaps instead of a company finding and hiring worker drones at minimum wage to complete 'International Soccer Game MMMDLXXXVII' this company is finding employees that embody the actual ideals & direction of the company. Perhaps that happens to draw more females than males.
There are a lot of people out there who are "passionate" about making video games but how many of those people work on (or care to work on) projects that align with their own person values?