343 head (correctly) believes women are the future, wants more female devs and characters

Microsoft corporate vice president and 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross is on a mission to strengthen the presence and influence of women in gaming, she told Bloomberg in a recent interview.

By this, Ross means not only the caliber of female characters within the fiction itself—citing how she tore up one of the earliest drafts of Halo 4’s script for relegating women to one-dimensional villain fodder left with little to do but be slain by male protagonist—but also on the development side, too.

“It’s really important for us to get young female talent, because they are the future,” Ross told Bloomberg in a recent phone interview. “It’s important to have leadership roles across the industry that people can aspire to.”

According to Ross—who was tasked with creating 343 in order to further Xbox’s biggest franchise while the series’ original developer, Bungie, focused on Destiny—part of her mission for the studio is to keep Halo part of the video milieu for another three decades by populating it with “characters that people can identify that: heroic females and heroic males.”

“We’ve spent the last four years bringing in more characters and many of them are women,” Ross said. “It’s a very strong, intelligent set of female characters.”

Under 343 Industries’ oversight, Halo’s inclusivity is also extending to more fully developed, integral characters of color—Nightfall and Halo 5: Guardians’ Agent Locke, for example (played by Mike Colter).

“My female bosses have always tended to have a better big picture of how the studio or publisher is working,” Halo franchise development manager Frank O’Connor said of Ross—and female leaders in general.

Source: Bloomberg

343 head (correctly) believes women are the future, wants more female devs and characters