More Girls Need Industry Jobs

The Guardian has an editorial up discussing the need for more women in the games industry. From the article: "The development team of the Sims Online game, for example, was 40% female, while 60% of its players are female. The contemporary life-simulation setting has attracted a non-traditional (ie female) audience in a way no other game has, says the Elspa report. Jessica Lewis, producer of The Sims Online, has said: 'I think simply because more women are involved in the designs and development, a different kind of contribution happens. Diversity ... is a good thing when making a mainstream game.'"

Games industry isn't the only place for women.

[CrazyJim1]

In my science and math courses in college, there was only one woman for every twenty guys there. My guess is that a larger percentage of guys like video games than girls, and this translates into more guys in the industry.

Nonsense

[cybereal]

I'm all for female influence in games, assuming said females are just as creatively genius as their male counterparts. However, I find it ludicrous to say that women like The SIMS because women helped make it. I know 3 very different girls who all like the game. My observations point to them enjoying the fact that the game is braindead easy, obvious, and akin to playing house as a little kid. Would you claim that those aspects of the game exist because women helped design it?

Pffft.

A few points...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

1. More girls don't need industry jobs. The industry needs more "girls" to fill existing jobs.

2. Girls? No, women. You don't see articles stating most of the industry's jobs are filled with boys.

While I have nothing against the term "girls" (my wife occasionally goes out for "girls' night out"), the workplace is not a good place for that term. It's either a reflection of a condescending attitude or leads to one.

The bottom line: avoid referring to female professionals as girls. Unfortunately, many females feel the term "woman" makes them sound old, so to be safe, use the term "chick".

Ok, I had to throw in a joke, but I meant the rest.

Re:Nonsense

[philiptan]

What's "obvious" now that the game is actually on the market wasn't "obvious" when the game was being designed. The proportion of women on the design team of the original The Sims was also pretty high. If you compare The Sims to other games Maxis had at the time, The Sims is a considerably more accessible design. It could easily have been designed as a zoomed-in SimCity 3000, but it's not; it's a dramatically different game. You're not building a house, you're playing with creatures. I'm not claiming it's better or worse, just different.

What about the aesthetics of the game? From the Simglish to the animation to the goofy furniture descriptions to the kind of music (admittedly not that different from SimCity, but still different). Can one reasonably expect that a game with a 40% female development team will look and sound like a game with a 95% male development team?

The fact that you know "3 different girls" who play the game is an example of why you'd like to have a large female component in your design team. Developers always tend to design a game they'd like to play themselves. It's possible to do it otherwise, but it takes a lot of discipline and rigor. The more women you have in your team, the more women you may be able to get to buy your game.

No one's claiming that less competent developers should be joining the industry. However, one does not necessarily need to evaluate competency on creativity. Different roles in a big dev house require different skills...managing, systematic analysis, communication, etc. A strength in any of the above, combined with a little respect for the medium itself, can be a real asset to any game developer...male or female.

I Blame Culture (and Women!)

[Shihar]

Why do few women makes games? Because far fewer women play serious video games (Bejeweled doesn't count is serious, so put thus statistics away). I would bet that any woman with average skill can land herself a job making video games significantly faster then any man could, simply because she is a woman. The industry is already biased to trying to balance out the ratios. The problem is simply that the supply of woman who want to make games is so low to meet up with the demand.

As to the why of it, I think it is just a cultural stigma. Further, I think it is a self imposed cultural stigma. My girlfriend is the biggest fucking geek on the face of the planet. We watched DS9 from session 1 to session 7 in order together. She genuinely enjoyed it and often times was the one that was pushing me to pop another one in so that we could see how it ends. This is a woman who knows all of the characters by name and their entire back stories. Put her in front of her friends and you have to twist her arm off to get her to admit she has even watched it, much less that she enjoyed it and knows the name of every character and who they slept with. The same happens with video games. With video games it is even worse. Unless the game is cute and fluffy, she won't touch it. Yet if she thinks no one is looking though, she will wander off and play Vampire: Bloodline (which is a horribly violent RPG).

Guys have gotten over the entire geek stigma. Hell, these days being a geek for a guy is just down right cool. You can wear your math club T-shirt to a fancy club and no one will look down on you for it. Having your pockets bulging with gadgets and gizmos isn't going to make anyone think less of you. Women on the other hand have a long way to go, and my personal belief that what is holding them back isn't men. I don't think there are many guys out there who would be offended if their girl friend pressed them to play Grand Theft Auto or Halo with them.

"Honey, we desperately NEED a new computer to be able to play Half-Life 3."

"Honey... come play... when was the last time we spent some quality time we 0wn3d n00bs in World of Warcraft or went pwn1g by0tch3s in UT2004?"

Well, uh, gee, don't twist my arm.

The real issue is women dealing with other women. Women can just be fucking vicious to each other in ways that my tiny male brain just can't comprehend. If only someone could just explain to them that geek is sheik...

Re:Games industry isn't the only place for women.

[Golias]

The thing is, every tech industry wants more women.

First of all, women are nicer to be around. Generally speaking, they tend to look and smell better.

Secondly, if you don't have any women on your staff, it creates the appearance that you have something against hiring women.

Thirdly, any woman who choses a career in what has been traditionally a relativley male-dominated industry is likely to be fairly passionate about the work.

In spite of all those very good reasons for hiring more women, most places don't. You know why? Because there aren't enough qualified women interested in tech jobs out there.

Parents: Encourage your daughters to become tech geeks. If they are at all competent, they'll probably get job offers in response to almost every interview they go to.