A MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO
January is traditionally a time for fresh starts and a renewed focus. In business, that often means new targets and objectives. And in our personal lives it can mean dropping bad habits, taking up good ones, and setting our individual intentions for the year.
At Women in Games, we are starting the year with renewed vigour and our own new goals. My team and I spent the last few months of 2022 planning new initiatives, honing or refreshing our existing campaigns – ultimately shaping our ambitions, values and areas of action to support our community through this year and beyond.
We announced our extended calendar of events late last year, so I hope you’ve marked those important dates in your diaries! First up is the Careers, Development & Networking Expo, which takes place on Thursday March 9th. As we’ve outlined elsewhere, this popular event has been extended to focus on Learning & Development as well as Recruitment, and we will be announcing our line-up of inspirational speakers shortly. The expo area will once again give our community the chance to meet with studios who are hiring, and we’re delighted that Team17 has already registered its intent to host a booth. Registration is open now, so we hope to see you there!
We’re also lining up a new event for 2023 – the Women in Games Investment & Entrepreneurship Forum. As our article here demonstrates, women-led start-ups are struggling more than ever to get investment and support. Our new event aims to give women the tools to better their chances of investment via a series of speaker sessions – but, crucially, will also provide them with introductions to potential investors, publishers and other organisations. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please email us via hello@womeningames.orgusing the subject line ‘Investment Forum’.
Elsewhere, the Women in Games Guide: Building a Fair Playing Field is continuing to provide guidance and support to games studios and other organisations around the world. Thanks to ISFE, it has also been translated into Italian, Spanish and Polish, with other localised versions coming over the next few months. If you’ve not yet discovered this important and useful publication, you can download it for free here.
Meanwhile, we are currently working on the Women in Games Manifesto, which will provide an over-arching outline of our key priorities, goals and ambitions for 2023 and beyond. We look forward to sharing this with you shortly.
As ever, there’s much to do! We remain passionate about supporting and encouraging women and girls around the world in games and esports. We thank our community, sponsors and supporters for helping us on our journey. And we look forward to engaging with you all over the coming months.
Here’s to a successful 2023 for all women in games!
Marie-Claire Isaaman,
CEO, Women in Games