Kelly Vero on women's overlooked contributions to games and tech

• Kelly Vero's new book Breaking Through Bytes profiles pioneering STEM women from ancient Egypt to the modern games industry.
• The games industry has evolved from having very few visible women, to greater acceptance, with career progression becoming faster and more accessible.
• Women in games bring unique interdisciplinary perspectives that are increasingly valuable in today’s homogenised industry.

March was Women’s History Month. As it draws to a close, we chatted with Kelly Vero about the book she published this month, in which she celebrates the lives of 18 women who have influenced the world of science, tech and games. We asked her to talk us through her research for reference book Breaking Through Bytes: Women Shaping the Digital World. 

Vero is a games industry veteran, having worked at Core, Jagex and SYBO in her time, and is the founder of NAK3D, the metaverse fashion company. You will have seen her take to the stage at many Pocket Gamer Connects conferences, most recently in London, where she spoke about AI assets, and moderated a panel about the growth of the VR and XR space.

Her book profiles pioneering women from ancient Egypt to modern times. It includes interviews as well as historical research, providing portraits of women around the world who have been part of STEM, computing and games.

Other games industry figures in the book include Thea Baumann (technologist and artist), Claire Blackshaw (VR programmer and technical director of Flammable Penguins Games), Kate Edwards (another regular PGC presenter, IGDA advisor and game localisation expert) and Dani Bunten Berry (legendary game designer behind one of the first multiplayer games).

We caught up with Vero to discuss how her games industry experience shaped the book, what surprised her during her research, and what lessons today's game developers can take from these trailblazing stories.

PocketGamer.biz: As someone who's worked in game development yourself, how did your own experiences in the industry influence the way you approached this book?

Kelly Vero: I started working in the games industry at a time when there were just a handful of games and no mobile or handheld platforms. There were always so few women at game studios that it wasn't until I started working at Jagex that I thought, “Wow, there are women in our industry after all”.

I've spent so long telling women the importance of working in our wonderful industry that I'd become almost desensitised to the lack of representation in the industry. Working on a game somewhere far, far away from the fens in 2015, however, I was marginalised, and that really made me think that we're not doing enough to either support each other as women in the games industry nor are we doing enough to support women entering our industry.

So when I came to write about the games industry from the perspective of my subjects and myself in the book, it was a moment of understanding that women who join the games industry are doing it because they really have something special to bring to this industry that we often overlook. It's not grit or determination, though that helps. It's an infinite curiosity.

In researching Breaking Through Bytes, what stories surprised you most about the women you wrote about and interviewed? Any favourite stand-out moments you can share?

Most people think that tech is new. The first entry in my book lived in Egypt in 1900 BCE. She was a princess who was trying to write code. 

But the main driver for my book came from when I read about Betty Snyder. With the other women of ENIAC, she was omitted from history for ages (not as long as Aganice of Egypt, but still!). 

The assumption that because these performed physical tasks, they wouldn't somehow be intelligent was a complete untruth. Betty Snyder [worked] on complex mathematical problems that gave us the machine code, which in turn built the computer I'm writing on today. 

In discovering women like Betty Snyder, I was able to explore the relationship between women and digital technologies in this book. All the stories of women in this book, myself included, have this very intimate relationship with technology, as though it's our muse. Every one of them has a surprising approach to tech, from video games to sewing patterns. It can't just be about Ada Lovelace. Sorry, Ada.

You profile Kate Edwards in your book. Like you, she’s spoken at Pocket Gamer Connects many times. Can you share what makes her story particularly significant for today’s games industry?

I have to say that I was awestruck when writing about Kate.

Like a lot of us in the games industry, she brings a cortex full of otherness. When I say otherness, I mean that a lot of us, men and women, did not train to be in the games industry. There were no universities specialising in games degrees or 3D art degrees.

You studied computer science at school, you went to art school, you were an architect (only game designers get this) – but seriously Kate is one of these people. She studied her craft first, and then she brought it into our industry and shone a light in a dark corner.

The ability to be able to take that thing that only you are good at, and bring it to a dev team, is such a rare gift these days. The homogenisation of video games comes from a place of saying “yes” – there are so few people (like Kate) who have based their careers on questioning, researching and investigating.

We won't see the likes of people like this in our industry again. So I hold onto people like Kate, and I celebrate them.

How do the challenges faced by women early in the history of technology compare to those faced by women in today's industries? Do you get a sense of progress? 

I get a sense of acceptance now.

The leaps between jobs and titles are much smaller. In the past, someone who was two years into a job would never be a senior game designer unless they owned the studio. But today, the meritocracy is such that [there’s] almost a Moore's Law of career progression.

The more game studios there are, or the more games we make, the less you need to learn and the more you need to lead. Is that unfair? Not really. It creates more opportunities. Back in the early days of technology it wouldn't be unusual to work with someone who had been a mid-level programmer for 25 years. That's how technology works. It's more ubiquitous now.

What do you hope games industry professionals will take away from Breaking Through Bytes?

I want games professionals to remember where they came from. I want them to enjoy the journey of the book and understand that just because women can have babies and wear killer heels, that's not just who we are. We can be who we want to be, and we can grow into the roles that we carve out for ourselves, not for the roles that others expect us to take.

I also wanted to explore the possibilities of technology: Thea Baumann creates art inside of game engines, and Valerie Thomas accidentally developed AR from Landsat satellites.

I want to show the best of the games industry but also tell the reader the personal story of how we got there.

We have been called witches, we've been tried for treason, and we've been ignored from history. For what? The women I spoke to, especially the ones from the games industry in my book, see technology as a progressive tool that they can apply to anything they god damn want. 

Breaking Through Bytes: Women Shaping the Digital World by Kelly Vero is available now from Taylor & Francis.

Vero was a guest on the PocketGamer.biz podcast last year, where she spoke to Peggy Anne Salz about digital assets, games and fashion in the metaverse. She also recently spoke about her work at NAK3D on our AI-focused newsletter AI Gamechangers.

The next opportunity to see us speak live with industry insiders on stage will be at our GameExpo Summit 2025 on 7-8 May at the World Trade Centre in Dubai.