Well, I’m going to bend his rules to head up the console side. First of all, a large amount of the staff for ICO were women, so much so, I can’t remember all the names! :P
Rieko Kodama has not only produced and directed several games, she’s also the creator and guiding hand behind the Phantasy Star series and Skies of Arcadia. The list of games she’s worked on at Sega is really large. She is also isn’t the only female who has led a game or a studio at Sega, but I can’t for the life of me call up the other name right now.
The tag-team duo of Ms. Yamane and Kojima are responsible for all the recent Castlevania’s music and graphical/art design respectively. That’s right, two women soak up nearly all the credit for the series’ themes, and though we know the gameplay is no slouch and superb, come on, everyone can admit Castlevania just wouldn’t stand out that much if not for the high degree of excellence of these two women’s work. Symphony of the Night is recognized as one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.
Speaking of composers and artists, Yoko Shimomura is one of the big musicians over at Square, having her hand in quite a few games and classic soundtracks, such as Legend of Mana and Parasite Eve. Yuzo Koshiro’s sister collaborated with him on a couple of games as lead artist, but not only she design much of Actraiser’s art, apparently she also contributed game design work for that classic game.
Clearly, yes, there still could be a great bit of doing with having more women in roles of video game/computer game development, but there’s a great deal of female talent already working on games out there.
Oh, BTW, on the whole Japanese developer’s last name thing, I think fenegi just knows that its considered quite rude to address someone you don’t know very well and personally in Japan by their first name, a great deal ruder than it would seem to do so in the US. I’ve known people for years that I see nearly every day that I would never call by their first name.
-Kitsune