Meet A Woman Games Programmer From Sony Written by Sarah Thomas

Careers in Technology
Female Games Programmer


What do you see in your mind when the words ‘Games Programmer’ are said to you? Male, aged 20 to late 30’s, intelligent, trendy, creative, sitting at his mac, earphones on? Let me change that vision for you. How about Female, 20 to late 30’s, intelligent, trendy, creative, earphones on sitting at her mac?

When I put these words to friends and colleagues they responded thinking of a male games programmer first. I think the keyword here is ‘games’. There is no doubt the games industry is thought of as a male domain but more women are moving into this role.

One of these women is Charu Gupta has been a games programmer at Sony Entertainment Europe for a number of years, working on the award winning game Singstar for the Playstation 2. I asked Charu about her Career as a Games Programmer;


Sarah: How did you get into games programming and were you always interested in games?

Charu: I played games a lot when I was very young on the old Commodore 64 but as I grew older I went through a long period when I wasn’t interested and did not play them. I went to University and studied a degree in psychology. I then took a year out and went travelling, after returning I decided to do a masters degree in Computer Aided Engineering at a post graduate university called Cranfield.


Sarah: What was the course like and what sort of subjects did you study?

Charu: The course was very engineering orientated, for example, we learnt about the stresses and strains on certain materials in a car engine, but it also contained a lot of subjects on computer programming.


Sarah: How did you get the job at Sony?

Charu: I completed my Masters degree and registered with a number of recruitment agencies and I got the interview with Sony very quickly.


Sarah: And how was the interview?

Charu: I had two interviews; one where I was tested on my technical skills and the other with the studio manager, which was a lot less scary than I thought it would be. I got the job and started within 2 weeks.



Sarah: That’s really quick, what was the first project you worked on?

Charu: Yes it was, they needed a person to start working on engineering related subjects straight away. The first project I started working on was the basic prototype for the Singstar technology on the playstation 2, which at the time was a very new machine; it had just been delivered to the studio. We were the first people to start developing for the playstation 2 within the studio.


Sarah: That is really good, looking back that’s quite an achievement

Charu: Yes, I didn’t really appreciate it at the time because I had never worked on the first playstation, so while a lot of people were doing that and finishing off games for the first playstation, I started straight away on the playstation 2 and that was quite daunting.

Sarah: Were you mentored by someone?

Charu: Well I was hired to work on a prototype which was a different technology, I had a technical manager who I could turn to but he was working on different projects and I was working on a new technology and he was not an expert in that field but I could turn to him for guidance.

It was a great learning curve as the technology was not something we actually studied at university but it was engineering related, it was not my area of expertise when I started at the studio and neither was there anyone else with that kind of knowledge.


Sarah: Have you found that your career has progressed?

Charu: It has but we tend to work together on projects as a team effort


Sarah: With Singstar do you go to seminars and travel, are you a spokesperson for it?

Charu: I’ve done a few things and have had the opportunity to travel, I went to E3 which is a large games exhibition in Los to help demonstrate the Singstar game and to help the game’s producer who talked about the evolution of the game.


Sarah: Do you work long hours?

Charu: It can be long hours but this depends on how much work needs to be done. It also depends on what stage we are at with the project; towards the end of the project we tend to work longer hours.


Sarah: How many people are in your team?

Charu: About 10 to 15 but we also borrow heavily from the music licensing and audio departments at Sony as Singstar is such a music based game.


Sarah: I notice on the game you actually use current popular music such as the Sugar Babes music

Charu: Yes we use original recordings and we source the original videos to use in the game.


Sarah: Are you working on any other games?

Charu: No, people in our studio tend to work on one particular project, when this Singstar project ends we will start on the next release.


Sarah: It was very hard to find a female games programmer for this interview, Are there any other female games programmers within your team?

Charu: I am the only person at the moment but in other departments there are.

The Cranfield course was 50:50, males to females. I do have female friends who are programmers; they work more in the engineering programming fields. This is the route I would have taken if I had not got the job at Sony.

Singstar Pop Hits the latest in the Singstar series is due for release in April 2007

Sarah Thomas © 2007