How do you make great games for girls? Anat Shperling set out to answer this question when she founded the women-led games studio Toya.

From an adventure based on gorilla expert and conservationist Dian Fossey to an empowering farming sim, the studio has created experiences that challenge expectations in two of the biggest apps in the world: Minecraft and Roblox.

Toya’s greatest success, Miraculous RP: Ladybug & Cat Noir, is based on the popular animated series with female lead characters. To date, it has racked up more than 800 million visits in Roblox.

“Feminism is a business opportunity, and I wish more people would understand that,” Shperling says. “Women are 50 per cent of the population. We also have some money to spend. Why not think of us?”

It was this opportunity that led Shperling to Roblox and Minecraft. “They’re massive, so everything you do – if it’s good – will get huge exposure.“

Toya is majority female, with an all-female board and majority-female investors, which is a rarity in the games space. The studio’s demographics “didn’t happen by chance,” says Shperling. “I dedicated a lot of time and thought to this and it’s proven the right course of action.”

“Once you have a studio where you have 50 per cent women around the table, with a female CTO (chief technology officer) and software engineers and product managers, by default you think about the end user as a girl,” she says. “You don’t have to keep mentioning it because it’s obvious.”

The approach has paid off. In early 2025, Roblox named Toya a Brand Creator Partner – one of a select group of what Roblox calls “visionary developers”.

Shperling and her team have identified three key elements that encourage girls to play.

“The first is female characters. That’s a must-have,” she says. “The second is the ability to invite friends and meet the challenge together. The third is self-manifestation.”

In the case of Miraculous, that meant keeping the experience true to the series and inclusive of traditional game mechanics. In addition to dressing up and exploring the world as the franchise’s two female superheroes, players can join multiplayer mini-games, compete in races, take on “obbys” (obstacle courses), solve puzzles and battle baddies.

“If we’re not inclusive of everyone as players and only continue to cater to and serve girls with stereotypical content, they will not be able to experience the full spectrum of game mechanics,” says Shperling.

With feedback from Toya’s Discord community, Ladybug and Cat Noir are designed to be customisable with different heights and skin colours. “Customisation was extremely important. Players want to mould themselves into the games they’re playing,” Shperling explains.

Toya also made the majority of the mini-games in Miraculous playable with friends.

“Female players, we’ve found, really enjoy playing with other people,” says Shperling. “For girls to want to play an obby, for instance, they would only do it if their friends would join them and they could play together. If girls can do that, they’ll be motivated to complete it.”

This is part of a growing trend in Roblox. While fashion-focused experiences are still big with female players, hits such as Adopt Me, Brookhaven and Livetopia are filled with a variety of co-operative activities.

Toya’s journey began in Minecraft, with games designed to highlight the life and work of inspirational women.

Touchdown Battle and Football Camp were developed in conjunction with pioneering coach Jennifer Welter, the first woman to coach in a men’s pro American football league. Coach Jen greets players with words of wisdom, voiced by Welter herself.

“We interpreted her real-world action, approach and feminism and re-created her training camp in the game,” says Shperling.

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei – the first woman to scale Mount Everest – takes centre stage in My Snowy Journey. In this world, you plot your own route to the summit, interacting with Tabei at various checkpoints where she talks about her own journey and experiences.

Toya created the Roblox experience My Farm after Shperling noticed a dearth of women characters among the many available farming games. In My Farm, players interact with several female farmers, each representing a different ethnicity or nationality.

“When you’re downloading a game you’ll feel more comfortable (as a female player) when you see a leading female character, because you can identify with them,” Shperling says.

Shperling is seeing a shift in how girls think about video-games. “Gen Alpha and Gen Z are changing things,” she says. “The way they behave, think and communicate is going to be a game-changer and it’s already happening.”

Ultimately, Shperling says, the goal isn’t to be remarkable: it’s to make girl-focused design ordinary.

“My purpose is actually not to be outstanding,” she says, jokingly. “If we can think of ourselves as not needing to be exceptional to succeed, it will reduce the pressure that blocks us. That will be an indication of an equal society.”