Attracting Women to Game Development
Roundtable Discussion
Sande Chen and Michelle Sorger
(The Famous Pineapples make an appearance as door prizes. Too bad, splitting them up like that.)
We are not going to debate the merits of diversity in the workforce.
We may be discussing some sensitive issues, so everything will remain anonymous.
Some facts:
* Less than 10% of game developers are women.
* Companies that don't actively recruit women are missing the boat (of higher profits).
* Women are underrepresented in the game dev workforce, and in products produced.
Q. How is the industry as a whole affected by lack of female developers?
(F = Female Speaker, M = Male Speaker)
F. Lack of women in the industry makes it hard to recruit women. It's a viscious cycle.
M. Without women in the design staff, you get very one-dimensional games. Because the products are made primarily by men, women don't have the same incentive.
F. When (a big game company) recruited at my school, they seemed very interested in women, but when they ask what games you play, if you don't name the right games, they lose interest. It wasn't until I mentioned playing World of Warcraft that they showed interest again. Other friends have seen the same thing, with (a big game company) looking only for a particular type of person.
F. The most lacking issue is marketing. There is a huge gap. Maxim-type magazines have lots of ads for FPS games. Most marketing to women is word-of-mouth. The most important thing is getting communication between the game industry and the market of women.
F. I make easy little games that you play over the net. The cost of an ad in Vogue or Cosmo is more than the budget of the game. The $40K budget could make the game or get an ad in Elle.
M. Marketing budget of (a big game company) can get a superbowl ad, and that's just a small fraction of the total budget of the game.
F. May be the case right now, but if game dev teams were more balanced and we were designing more balanced play, if we were designing gender neutral games, we could be making video games that would have larger marketing budgets.
Q. How do we recruit female developers?
F. I think part of it is being a woman and getting into games later than men do. My own interest in games came in college, and I switched to Computer Science. Now when I go get ready for an interview, I don't have that same background of having done mods and hacking since I was a pre-teen. How in 2-3 years can I do as much as someone who has been at it 10 years?
M. I work in MMO's. Massive anonymous communities that are 80%-90% male. The problem for women is that their game play experience is very different. It's hard for them to get the experience because they can get turned off by the behavior of the men/boys playing, trying to get their attention.
F. The problem is also the schools. The ratio at school was 1-to-7 (women to men). Being the only girl in the classroom, it was a different experience. "Oh my god, you're a girl who plays video games!" It's like a freak show.
M. The challenge of getting experience, but where do you get it? This is a major hurdle of both men and women. You have to get together with other people and work together. It's easier if you get together with people who complement your skills, and then do a demo. Shoot for "not terrible" and show you can finish something.
F. I am academic advisor for women in CS/E. We are working on a game dev project. The women love to play DDR and puzzle games online. We're trying to create a community to create a project they can put on their resume.
F. Speaking of schools and things, the way schools recruit for video game courses is male centric. When looking for interns, women were shuttled toward art school or marketing. The last 2 years I have been mentoring high school girls to get them into game dev. The big thing I stress is: Math, the more you take, the more you make.
F. The key problem with attracting women to games is their own representation. They don't want to play an oversexualized character.
M. I'm an instructor at (game dev school). The "woman issue" is discussed a lot because most of our students are male. A problem at a school I was before, was also wanting males to get away from doing "job stable" work. Women were pushed toward a "job secure" field. So it isn't just that women shy away from it, but that the institutions move them away from it.
Q. Is gaming a stable environment for you to raise a family in?
M. I'm starting to work with a college to create a game track. It's hard to get stability, but schooling is changing. The career is being shown as viable, a safe job.
M. Are there female entreprenuers looking to create female-centric studios? Market might be right for that type of studios.
M. The quality of life (QOL) in game dev report said that a male developers lasts 5 years. Blah blah blah.
Q. What about women that do enter the game dev market? How do we keep women? What are some of the problems that women face?
F. I got into games early in life. My father's mid-life crisis was to play video games--as many as he could. I wanted to explore as many aspects of game dev as I could. I've been an artist, and I've taken programmer courses. (Game dev school) really encourages women to get in. As far as education goes, I wouldn't have known (game dev school) existed if I hadn't told my father I wanted to make games. Lots of venues are trying to encourage women.
M. That's not only just a women's issue, it applies to minorities as well. Marketing needs to address minorities too. Marketing to get into games needs to be stepped up.
M. I'm hearing the women here talking bout perceived barriers. I suspect that those barriers don't exist, or exist only in our minds. I've had a lot of success hiring women in (city). In (other city) I have to stuaff up the design dept. It's currently staffed full of guys. Some women, but mostly guys. You can't have guys plotting stories of romance and family life. The barrier is trying to find women who will do the work.
F. Part of it is the recruiting methods.
M. It's frustrating that there are no female design candidates. I'm looking for women with a CS background for the design dept.
F. What would you say they would need?
M. Our experience, and we have 30% women out of a crew of 150. We have a few very outspoken women and had a backlash about a glass ceiling in the company. The end result was...some of my leads are women... (he wasn't clear at this point) ...We have a person who owns 50.1% of the stock...he's the ceiling, and he makes the decisions.
F. We hae the opposite. Our president is a woman and we have a very balanced crew. As a new person I found it very enlightening. I feel like I'm safe working there. I have a role model.
F. It's a serious step back to make games for girls. If we want games to appeal to the largest audience, we need to make games genderless, appeal to both genders equally.
F. I'm pretty sure that there will not be a glass ceiling where I work because women are already up there.
F. When the company I work for needs to get a certain number of people working, they actively recruit women. They don't hire women just because they need to fill the job, they insist on the right skills.
F. There are good companies and bad companies. What differentiates them is have a history of (something). My other point is it is difficult as a woman to get into the projects they work on. I'm a designer working on a male-centric game. working in a "boys club" environment. I try to pick my battles. So long as I'm 1 out of 5, probably stay that way. How we're evolving is important.
F. (Company) has a lot of women. Just seeing women there was encouraging. My boss was a female, and I was on majority female teams. Had a completely different mindset. I think it's really important to have mentors.
M. Lot of women that go into CS get intimidated. For example, everyone blasts the girl in Half-Life 2. Some of the girls are scared to express they're smart.
M. I would encourage anyone to continue in game dev. I think the "boys club" is changing. Proper management is coming into play and ensuring good environments.
F. I've seen a nice balance, with women in management. The great part is that part of the trickle down there is also an emphasis on QOL. Movement is there. And companies out there do promote QOL.
M. GDC had something like this in 1999. I've seen the growth of women in game dev. Seeing more women take that step up, growing along with the industry.
M. I work in the mobile space, which is driven by women consumers. My studio is run by a women, but not many women in development. I would love for women to come up to us and apply.
M. We get 300 applications to our school program, this year 7 of those were women. We don't how to increase the female involvement. Women are uninterested it seems to me.
M. IMO, I hire whoever fits the job, but we can have someone come in with no skills to fill unskilled positions. There are so many eager young men who will work ridiculous hours in ridiculous conditions, that it's not that we don't hire women. We just have 8 eager young guys ready to take the position now.
F. I was quite popuular when I wanted to work 14 hours a day. As soon as I said wanted to have a life, I was out.
M. Getting my doctorate in game-based learning. I have a background in serious games, military training. The challenge to using games to train (anyone) is that the kids get it, but the teachers don't. Many women teachers are intimidated because they are unfamiliar with video games. Working to create a game to teach gaming: how games work, how to use them for teaching, etc.
F. Recruitment has to be done a different way. Regular way doesn't work. We need to present that games is an industry, a business. A girl engineer's first choice will be to go someplace else.
F. People have commented that if you put in your ad "women and men" you get more responses. Other reports have said that "passion for gaming" is intimidating when you compare hours played by men vs women.
F. Once the women get in, there's still an intimidation factor. You're working with mostly males. Companies need to do whatever they can to reduce that intimidation.
F. I think a big part of the intimidation factor is that the "passion for games" listed in ever job listing is perceived to be "passion for hard core games". The idea that you're not in game dev unless you're making hard core games is a shift that needs to happen.
M. Game dev needs to mature to being a real business. (Blah blah blah, standard male apology for the industry.)
F. About intimidation...anhyone can get intimidated. You have to speak up.
F. I wasn't going to say this, but I have been sexually discriminated against in the business. I come in from the acting and directing side. I have 60 titles under mby belt. I was called into a meeting, and they just shot me down, for a being a woman game developer. Discrimination does exist. People do judge you.
M. A third of our team is women. We volunteer to teach clases at community clases. We pull women as interns from the community college. It was a good way to evaluate the skills of the programmers before hirinig them.
M. It's very interesting to talk to presidents of companies. Very focused on particular games (standard core games). It seems to me that women play other games. And we should know more about those games. Our industry is based on the bottom line.
RM's Comments: The challenge with a roundtable is keeping it on topic. With an issue like this one, which is in close proximity to issues like sexuality in games and making games that appeal to women, is particularly hard to keep on topic. Overall, though, I think the discussion did stick to the issue of attracting, recruiting, and retaining women developers. Or at least it provides a few things to consider.
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