I really enjoyed sneaking out of my house with my sister and going to the arcade. Playing ‘Tekken,’ ‘Street Fighter,’.

Laila Shabir

Categorized in : Tech

The list of things that I couldn’t do, or shouldn’t do, was much longer than the things that I was allowed to do, so there was a lot of conflict inside me, because at home my parents were constantly telling me that I should dream big, and shoot for the stars. And they put all these incredible role models in front of me like Margaret Thatcher and Benazir Bhutto and I was supposed to be like them. But the minute I stepped out of my home, I was told the exact opposite. That I was dreaming too big, that if I wouldn’t stop looking at the sky I would stumble and fall on my face.

We quit our jobs and moved all the way to California to start an educational game studio, and when I started going to conventions and having these conversations, the general idea that emerged was girls don’t play as many games as boys do. And I was really upset by that.