Women who are gainfully employed in the games industry are becoming more and more common. The assumption that video games are a man's domain is finally becoming outdated. Women are playing and working with video games in astounding numbers. According to the ESA in 2006, 38% of game players are women. While the percentage of women working in the industry is still small, these women are paving the way for equality in this environment as well. More and more young women are going to technical schools and getting hired by game developers who see the value of a female perspective when creating video games.

So, how did these women get started and why do they do it? Those are the questions I want answers to, so I ask. This will be a continuing series of profiles of the women who have broken stereotypes and taken jobs in the video game industry.

Theresa Pudenz works for Flying Lab Software as Public Relations for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Here's what she had to say:

Name: Theresa Pudenz
Title: Public Relations
Company: Flying Lab Software

What's your earliest memory of video games? Did you grow up on games or did you find them later in your life?

I started playing video games when I was a little kid. My mom lifted me up to play arcade games at three years old and I grew up playing console and PC games as a casual hobby with my dad, uncle (49ers > Giants in Super Tecmo Bowl on the Nintendo Entertainment System) and sister (my sister, Angela, was always Luigi in Super Mario Bros. – I still feel bad for constantly stealing Player 1 throughout our childhood). My sister and I often played Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System too. Once I hit age 14 I played Quake online, via the good ‘ol 28.8 modem, more than anything else. I’ve played video games on a regular basis to this day.

What kind of education do you have and has it prepared you well for this industry?

After high school in Iowa, I basically moved straight to Los Angeles, California and started working in the video gaming industry. I’ve taken classes specifically geared for my career and they’ve helped immensely. I’ve made a personal commitment to continue taking time throughout my career to attend classes, because I believe it really makes a difference.

What type of work did you do before you got into the industry and what jobs in the industry have you held?

I was pretty young when I landed in the gaming industry, so before that I had the great job of painting houses and barns in the summer. I had a paint spray-gun, which was both really fun to use and extremely helpful when I was up eight stories high when hornets attacked. I was known to yell, “Eat paint, hornets!” while spraying paint everywhere. Painting: not exactly my forte.

The jobs I’ve held in the industry have been mostly in QA, or Test departments, although my career-path is starting to lean towards public relations more and more. Through contract positions, full time positions and volunteer work, I’ve had the pleasure of working at Disney Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Angel Studios / Rockstar, The Behemoth, Ubisoft, Inside the Game, Penny Arcade, Microsoft and now Flying Lab Software.

Was your entry into working with video games planned or chance? What initiated your interest in working in this industry? How did you get started in the industry?

My entry into the industry was all chance. A friend of a friend suggested that I should hop on over to Disney Interactive and check out their contract positions for testing. When they said all I had to do was play a game and I would get paid for it, I was hooked (I didn’t know then, but now I know that this isn’t the case about testing video games!).

Coming from a small town and loving Disney as I do made the move to Southern California like rolling around in treasure at the end of the rainbow, with unicorns and butterflies made out of cotton candy at arm’s reach at all times. In Hollywood, many people I worked with made kung-fu movies, so I had more than one opportunity to play a dying person at the hands of a kung fu master. At Disney, I was extremely happy to be working on Winnie the Pooh Baby, though I grew to dislike Winnie the Pooh. For that specific job, I was required to hit the keyboard as a baby would, in order to make Winnie the Pooh and friends react on the screen. How’s that for a starting job? I gained a lot of experience switching out hardware and printers to test the performance side of the game as well.

I have very fond memories of that job, as it was my first “big city” experience after moving from Iowa. There were celebrities all over the city, I had sushi and calamari for the first time, it was the first time I saw people put lemons in water (Amazing! Delicious!) and IKEA was the best store ever.

Continue The Interview On Page 2