Gram Games launches program to bring more women into game dev

Turkish game company Gram Games has launched a new initiative, The 22 Percent Project, aimed at bringing more women into the game industry via (among other things) a series of game dev workshops.

This is especially notable for would-be devs interested in attending said workshops, which will presumably held in areas convenient to Gram's offices in both Istanbul and London. The company has reportedly already held a few workshops, and plans to expand significantly in the year ahead.

"Gaming is thought of as an industry for men, so men are given that access, and the male domination of gaming is perpetuated," Gram staffer Erin O'Brien recently told PocketGamer. "The only way to break out of this cycle, is to begin to ensure that women are represented in gaming, to create a system that provides women with the same opportunities and skills required to succeed."

The venture is well in line with similar initiatives like Girls Make Games, the brainchild of LearnDistrict cofounder Laila Shabir that recently worked with the U.S. government to host a girl's game jam at the White House.

The name of the 22 Percent Project, incidentally, is derived from the fact that while women and men play games in roughly equal measure, Gram estimates just 22 percent of game developers are women.