Will Luton discusses the ethical issue of sexism in the games industry
Games development has a problem that is pretty hard to ignore. It’s so hard to ignore that likely you can look up from this page and draw your own conclusion.
My friend Gemma is an excellent female game designer who recently linked to an industry sausage count with a sorrowful conclusion. The responses to her post meandered between coffee morning ‘how awful, dear’ and total, utter wibble.
One gentleman, who shrank at the idea of being quoted in print, commented that the core skills required to code were most commonly found in the male brain. So the lower number of female coders was to be expected. This, he claimed, is science.
Now, I flunked out of a physics degree to pursue a considerably less taxing life choosing the colours of a flying teddy bear’s head. However, having read some Ben Goldacre I have the misplaced sense that I am a fully qualified amateur peer reviewer.
What fellow bad science spotters like me will have already noted is the classic hypothesis confusing correlation and causation. That little chestnut.
It is almost impossible to separate the influence of nature in these debates. You cannot draw conclusions on gender based purely on perceived physiological differences because the environment of any subject has a heavy influence on it.
Let me give you an example: I had a brilliant childhood with my parents and two sisters.
When I hit age ten, wanting to pass on his technical inclinations, my dad took me to an electronics store and bought me a bag of components, wire and a screwdriver. We started at the basics, soldering and plugging, culminating in the construction of a radio.
One day my sister walked over to the table and asked to join in. “Electronics isn’t for girls,” dad said. Wow. Electronics is secret boys stuff. In your face stinking, idiot girls.
Now, childhood is a rollercoaster and this boy power up didn’t last long. Some time later, looking at the make-up on my mum’s shelf I recalled a documentary on the production of wounds for the TV medical drama Casualty.
Mum wasn’t pleased for my ambitions to become a make-up artist. Make-up wasn’t for boys. I felt stupid.
This isn’t the fault of my parents; they subscribed to society’s misconceived notions of gender and wanted nothing more than for us to fit in. The misconceptions were never considered for question.
I have met excellent female programmers and awful male ones (me). How, then, can we conclude that the female mind is inferior in a subject which society tells them they cannot succeed in? We cannot, because so few ever try.
Some people are just bad at coding, no gender or race or nationality is. Just people. Often people are never encouraged to try. Dad also told me he’d met some programmers in the ‘70s and they were odd.
Negativity towards females is in our industry. Female players are derided and abused in online games (Google ‘Fat, Ugly or Slutty’ for saddening proof) and I have spoken to female executives about the casual sexism and loneliness they’ve experienced.
This societal discouragement is bundled up with a dearth of positive representation. More often women are the babes at our booth or the strippers at our game launches than our coders, designers or artists.
This can create a self-perpetuating loop which will drag us deeper and deeper into bad representation that we don’t realise or refuse to acknowledge, justified as tradition, or defended as harmless.
All of this makes it even harder for women to realise the games industry is a place they might like to be, let alone take first steps in. And yet we have a great opportunity to redress the balance.
Already games market demographic is now much more diverse than it was 10 years ago. We have over three female to every two male players in our gender-neutral game My Star. However, the team behind it was entirely male.
The next step is breaking notions of gender in production like we have in consumption. Women need to see more women working in games before more feel like it is a career path for them.
Right now we’re leaving half of the potential talent at our disposal untapped. Gender equality is moving quickly and the companies that close their eyes and ears to it will be left behind.
Diverse workplaces create diverse solutions to previously unseen problems, meaning amazing products, which drives bigger audiences and more success.
I truly want to leave this geeky boy’s club and instead join the geeky people’s club. I hope you do too.
Good article, thanks Will & Develop!
Great article and very true. Having worked in the games industry, I witnessed first-hand so much "casual, harmless sexism". Playing online games is often an horrific and alienating experience. I'm also a guitarist, and once got told by a guy that girls don't have the "correct brain" to play guitar, but can be good at bass. SCIENCE!
Even watching the Double Fine Kickstarter Countdown a few weeks ago, there were fans typing things like "tell the hot blonde to step forward" and other such goading little remarks that, although these guys often think they're just harmless, actually reinforce the idea that women are there to look good and not to actually make the games. It just turns it into a bit of a meat circus (no pun intended) when every woman in the industry either gets called hot, a slut, or accused of having the wrong sort of brain...
I'm female and just starting out in the games industry, and despite being a completely game obsessed tomboy for most of my life, and also working in a very female friendly company, I still feel alienated and lonely at times.
I'm fortunate enough to avoid most of the "harmless" sexism that some of my friends in the industry put up with, but I do get left out of a lot of things, and male members of staff often react badly when I do something better than them, or if I'm asked to do something in their place. I'm "welcomed" where I work and in the industry in general, but I don't feel like I'm taken seriously at all, i.e. it's good to have me around, but God forbid I do anything more serious than an assistant/receptionist's job. My hopes of getting to be a senior game designer or producer seem completely futile.
I've been convinced by colleagues and fellow industry professionals to shelf my desire to be a game designer and focus on being a producer instead, because as a female, I'm much less likely to get the former job (women make up a lot of project management in the industry, but not much creative, according to a recent issue of Game Developer).
This makes me really sad, because there are few people more committed to the medium of games than me, so if I can't even make it in the industry, how will the wider female talent pool trickle in? I used to be more hopeful for a change in this industry, but I'm starting to consider leaving it, because I don't want to sacrifice my own development on a wistful hope for change.
This is a great article, I hope lots of people read it, because the "women in games" discussion appears to be accepted but ignored for the most part. If only the UK tax breaks could have included some sort of help for the issue.
"I've been convinced by colleagues and fellow industry professionals to shelf my desire to be a game designer and focus on being a producer instead, because as a female, I'm much less likely to get the former job."
This took my breath away..those people should be ashamed of themselves. Fight for what you want to do (I realise it's easy for me to say being a white male). There are plenty of people in this industry who value talent over a persons gender - you just need to get your C.V in front of them.
As Chris says, fight!
What the games industry needs is a woman loud and proud saying that this isn't acceptable.
I have female peers who I have heard horrific stories from. But this mainly is the old world of games - dinosaurs in old, dying companies.
FJ, if you are good enough (and I have no reason to believe you aren't), you will get that job. If not at your current company, then somewhere else.
Companies with inherent sexism will leave great talent on the shelf, which will hurt their output and ultimately their pocket.
Ditto what Chris and Will said - though I can't exactly talk from experience! I'm still trying to get in on this, an industry which can sometimes remind us all just how fledgling it really is.
FJ - if you aren't already aware of it, I thoroughly recommend seeking out Women in Games Jobs (@WIGJ). They hold meetups every few months for women in all walks of the games industry, and the vibe there and online is very positive. Best of all, it's inclusive - because of course there's nothing to be gained from us isolating ourselves. I'd almost given up myself, until I attended.
It's certainly a topic which shouldn't be ignored, though. I echo the thanks to Will and "Develop" for promoting this. :)
Its a shame some women have had disheartening experiences in the industry. Not all companies are bad - I was a senior/lead game designer at various places for 10 years before setting up Lady Shotgun. Eidos (now Square Enix) and Creative Assembly were particularly nice places to work.
