Among the companies with a focus on cloud computing, enterprise coding and providing earlier access to computer science classes at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), there are also representatives of technology’s entertainment side.

Brianna Wu, head of development for game developer Giant Spacekat, met with Jeff Frick, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to discuss the future of gaming, the integration of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), improving interfaces and bringing more interpersonal relations to gaming.

Game accessibility

“One of the most exciting things about being here at Grace Hopper is how excited women are to be making games,” Wu said, citing figures of the rising number of women interested in videogame, and pointing to the simplicity of iPhone and other mobile gaming as an easy access point. However, as happy as Wu was to have a growing female audience shaping the demographics, she felt that there was still significant room for growth on the storytelling side of games.

“Our industry’s really failing at giving women role models,” she noted, and while examples such as the revamping of Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft character show a slow improvement on this front, there still seems to be a disconnect between audiences and their game providers. “The game industry doesn’t really understand just how many women are lining up to have ourselves represented in games” Wu said.

Agency in a story

Aside from narrative improvement, Wu was also eager to address the hardware side of gaming, with an emphasis on the incorporation of virtual reality and augmented reality via devices such as the Oculus Rift. “[AR] is going to be part of how we interact with computers in the future,” Wu stated. “I think the problem we’ve really got to figure out is interface.”

Touching on the nausea-inducing effect of AR games in which the user moves around, produced by conflicting data from the eyes and inner ear, she moved back to addressing content. “For me, the next frontier [in gaming] is emotional interaction,” she said.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Grace Hopper Celebration of Woman In Computing. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE