I've been having an argument the past few days, thought it was going to be a discussion, but the other participant made it clear he had a set view of the industry and every time I disproved his view he finally broke down to name calling, bullying, and sexist remarks to me even claiming I was a social justice warrior. Triple A developers have tried for years now to attract women to the industry, but most of the attempts fail. I think the problem is in the angle of the attempts. Every angle I have seen has been "how do we get women to be interested in the industry", but I think the biggest question we need to ask is "how do we remove the misconception of the industry being sexist and rampant with sexual harassment".

Let me put it this way, if a city in the US has the reputation of 2,000 women going missing and never being seen again. What woman in her right mind would go near that city? Unfortunately the misconception of this industry is the same idea, with all these stories of women being mistreated with the publicized backlash from men and gamers. What woman in her right mind would come into an industry where she is worried her well being is in danger?

Now, I'm not naive, I'm sure there are cases of sexism and sexual harassment in the industry because no industry is immune to it. During my discussion I saw two viewpoints that scared me. One was that it was all made up and just a feminist movement to smear the industry. The other was that since they (one of the other participants) hadn't seen it firsthand so therefore it didn't exist.

After the discussion it got me wondering, what can we (as indies and hobbyists) do to help the Triple A developers remove this misconception that the whole industry is sexist so that more women aren't scared to join? With events like 1ReasonWhy, Anita Saarkesian, and Zoey Quinn and the unfortunate (and completely unneeded) backlash, I fear this is just making the misconception stronger.

So, yeah, the whole point of this rambling is mainly the question that started the paragraph above:

What can we (as indies and hobbyists) do to help the Triple A developers remove this misconception that the whole industry is sexist so that more women aren't scared to join?

Right now, pretty much fuck and all.

There is no discussion going on, there are just N sides shouting their point of view and how the other side is wrong and even the side which is on The Right is playing the 'tar everyone with the same brush' game and not trying to make rational points (go on, try and point that maybe not all gamers are like the idiots making threats etc, I'll wait for you to get back from the burn ward...) just simply shouting back.

To give an example, a little while ago I woke up to find that as a gamer I'm apparently a massive sexist who is the source of all the bad things in the world and that I'm "over" - yeah, thanks for that... I'll add it to the list of other things bad about me (white, male, not poor) and apparently make me a massive problem.

It's got to the point now where I'm avoiding twitter as a day wouldn't go past without someone posting something which, despite good intentions, made me angry simply because they were playing the 'tar everyone with the same brush' game which, if applied in reverse, wouldn't go down well I'm sure... or indeed I would see people retweet a frankly crazy point of view from someone as support on the matter (or related matters). Hell, when people post links on FB now I don't even bother looking.

Yes, there are problems.
But shouting obscenities at the other sides isn't going to get things sorted.

Until someone can sit down and take the rational view point that maybe, just fucking maybe, the people making all the noise are a vocal minority and start tackling them directly (instead of the buckshot 'this group' method I've seen thus far) we'll get no where.

Equality for all is great, but right now the only tactic that seems apparent is pulling down one group to raise another.

Fuck.
That.
Noise.

Me... I'll be over there, playing games, writing code and accepting that some people are going to think I'm part of the problem and that those people can go fuck themselves for judging me.

You're only looking at a small part of the picture here.

Yeah, I was just hoping there was something would could do to help, but I was fully aware that this was more a delusional fantasy rather than a real option. I still figured I would at least ask even with the bleak hope I had. Thank you all for being honest, taking me serious, and not instantly closing it as I also realize the risk of asking this question and talking about this topic.

No offence taken. Not the first time I've been called naive and unless I kill over with a health problem I'll be called it for another good 40 years. I'm confused though, are you saying that there is no misconception about the game industry?

I was hoping there was something we could do, but sadly it appears there isn't anything. I'm just a hobbyist anyways so that definitely adds to my being naive. Just hate sitting around seeing all this fallout, but I think it would be better to bite my tongue from now on rather than spending days arguing it.

Thank you for your honestly swiftcoder.

At every place i've been, both inside and outside games, there has been a similar ratio of females. The number is low, around 10-20%, but it has been consistent. Female programmers in games, female programmers in broadcast media software, female programmers in presentation software, female programmers in business data warehousing, female programmers in web development, female programmers in graphics research, female programmers in neural networks development.

In all the different workplaces, across multiple industries, there usually isn't a female in the programming team until you hit 5-10 programmers, then it seems to continue at a one in every 5-10 developers.

In fact, many game studios have a higher percentage of women than other tech businesses in my experience because they hire so many non-programmers. Yes, there's the one or two in ever team of programmers, but I've worked with lots of women in roles of producers, designers, modelers, animators, writers, studio leadership, QA, finance, HR, ... come to think of it, I think the only role I've not seen any women in is audio, and I assume that is just because the position is so rare.

I've always felt sad when I talk about games and people immediately jump to the guns, guts, sex, and glory style games. While those are the big summer blockbuster equivalent, they are only the tiniest sliver of games. I recall some stats (too lazy to google) that the violent games made up around 3% of the ESRB ratings, and they made up less than 0.1% of the mobile games. Among games I've worked on, I think about the most sexualized role of women was in The Sims. There's not much sexualization in golf, or in pet simulations, or in board games, or in card games, or in tile/block games.

Yes, among the action adventure superhero blockbuster games the women in the game are treated much the same as the action adventure superhero blockbuster movies. While those few are highly visible, they represent only a small minority of what is out there.

And as for the feminists who are calling for removal of sexualized women in games, I think they are in the wrong. The games represent a fantasy world. In this case, a fantasy world aimed for teenage boys and young men. That's what they want. Women want the harlequin romances, the romantic TV dramas, the philanthropic billionare who support women in their crusades against the world. That's the equivalent. But even in those romance TV shows my wife has me watch, yes, the women are strong characters in their fantasy lands yet often they do what they want all day while their men go to work to pay the bills. Either that or the men appear as handsome, wealthy props in the female fantasy.

Really, all it means is the marketers should look for opportunities to make AAA fantasy games aimed at females while keeping the games aimed at males. There is room enough for all gamer fantasies.

I'm not exactly in the industry, but from a short stint contracting in games, plus game meetups and general programming jobs, I would say that women are fairly rare. I don't think anyone is disputing that. There is often a boys' club feeling, e.g. a culture of obscene jokes and drinking and commenting on women's appearances. I think the average non-boss type is mostly limited to calling people out when they act out or hiring decisions are too biased, making subtle suggestions on extra characters or locations in the game, etc. Maybe spin a few things marketing-style about how potential customers will be annoyed by decision XYZ and the female market is expanding. I guess I see it like global warming or any other big problem. 99% of people can just do their little bit which will hopefully add up, and the 1% with influence can potentially do more.

Beyond that, I would avoid the gamer label for a little while. I would be happy to talk about things like being an indie game developer (which if pressed you can point out "like Zoe Quinn" etc), or that you like specific games or genres. You don't have to claim to speak for the whole of gamerdom, which (let's be honest) has some unsavoury characters.