While there are ample famous male designers in the game industry, I find it hard to name more than a handful of women who can be strongly identified with games - celebrity designers, not just celebrities. Reiko Kodama is one of them - she works at Sega's OverWorks studio in Japan, responsible for the Skies of Arcadia title on the Dreamcast, now expanded to be Eternal Arcadia on Nintendo's GameCube. The Dreamcast game, which I've almost solved, is a witty whimsical pirate adventure RPG with fun, memorable characters.

There's not much information available online in English about Ms. Kodama but she has been interviewed briefly in the Denver Post: Girls joining the industry mix, by Dave Thomas, the Post's Games Columnist. (link found on the grrlgamer.com forums).