Testronic launches mentoring programme to foster women in the games industry

QA and localisation firm Testronic wants to inspire more women to join the games industry and has launched the Testronic 50% Initiative.

This new mentoring programme is the initiative of Testronic head of games business development and industry veteran Ann Hurley, who wants to ncrease the number of women in the games industry.

The Testronic 50% Initiative has three ambitions, the announcement said:

• Encourage more young women to consider a career in the games industry by offering advice on the many roles available across the market
• Nurture their careers via mentoring and self-development
• Fuel their ambitions to help them become the games industry’s future leaders

It is unclear at this point what actions the firm will be taking to ensure the success of these three goals.

Hurley explained the thinking behind the programme: “We’ve called this the Testronic 50% Initiative because, despite females accounting for half of all gamers, in the UK – and many other regions, too – just 14 per cent of those working in the industry itself are women [according to figures from games industry trade association TIGA]. We believe that figure should be closer to 50 per cent.

“At Testronic we buck the trend in some areas – 40 per cent of our management team based out of London and Warsaw are female, while 42 per cent of our localisation QA team are women. But there are other areas we need to work on, and it’s the same for many other companies in the business – whether publishers, developers or service companies.”

Localisation QA manager Gaelle Caballero continued: “Here at Testronic we are actively recruiting more female testers, highlighting that a job in QA is often a stepping stone to a career elsewhere in the games industry. We’re excited to be further pushing this commitment to closing the gender gap with the launch of the Testronic 50% Initiative and invite our publisher and developer friends to join us.”

Testronic’s operations director, Chris Bewick, added: “We’re delighted to be launching the Testronic 50% Initiative. One of the biggest challenges in the industry is the lack of female role models; we’re proud at Testronic that many of our management team are women, and look forward to helping nurture a new generation of female leaders.”

If you’re interested in finding more about the Testronic 50% Initiative, you can get in touch via email at women@testroniclabs.com.