Something I always wonder when topics like this come up, maybe someone has some industry data to illuminate me. According to the article, "22 percent of the people who make video games are women." What I wonder is, for a given open position at a video game company, what percentage of the people who apply are women? My gut tells me that it's probably substantially less than 22%.
That's not to say that there isn't a problem or that women don't want to work in video games, but I feel like the blame for there not being more women (or more appreciation for women) in the games industry lays heavily on the studios. I think seeing the ratios of applicants vs the ratios of hires would be an interesting way to see how the industry actually feels about women.
Even if your gut was a valid source of data, the proportion of applications is a bad metric - you need the proportion of applications from strong candidates. Women applying for jobs in a field where there is a perception of sexism might be deterred from applying in the first place, especially if they feel they don't have the skills to outshine the men who apply; men may be more likely to apply even if their skills are only marginal for the role, because the industry has given them a disproportionate confidence in their abilities. So you might see a 16% female application rate, yet have women make up 30% of competent candidates, but still wind up at 22% women hired, which would not be the evidence of positive discrimination you suggest at all.
The way sexism in hiring decisions works is subtle. Development is a team sport. When a candidate comes to you and tells you 'I worked on this highly respected game,' you are impressed, but need to try to figure out what their contribution was to the team. Did they solve the really hard shader engineering challenges that gave that game its unique look while maintaining 60fps? Did they just do a bit of coding on the menu system? Did they do nothing but make the coffee? So you ask, but your prejudices color how you hear the response. If you tend to assume that girls just don't do quaternions and stuff, you hear 'I worked on the water simulation' and if it's a guy you assume they did a bunch of stuff with physics and navier stokes equations, but if it's a woman you interpret it as 'I made the sparkly bits when things go splash'. If you're gender-blind you allow the possibility that the person in front of you might fall into either of those camps regardless of their gender.
And it goes beyond hiring, into work assignments. You've got two pieces of work that need to be done: one is going to involve hard math, the other is building tools to help the testers QA stuff. Unconsciously, you let your prejudices about gender roles play in and assign the math work to a male coder and the tool to a female coder. Subtly, you push the women to less prestigious roles that limit their career options, while giving men opportunities to advance theirs.
And then when your studio goes belly-up and those two coders are applying for work elsewhere, which one has the more impressive resume and is able to get in the door somewhere else?
That's not to say that there isn't a problem or that women don't want to work in video games, but I feel like the blame for there not being more women (or more appreciation for women) in the games industry lays heavily on the studios. I think seeing the ratios of applicants vs the ratios of hires would be an interesting way to see how the industry actually feels about women.