Attracting Women to Game Development
Sande Chen and Michelle Sorger
(Note: Roundtable discussion. I maintained anonymity by only indicating the gender of who said what. This is not an exact transcript.)
Michelle: The first session (on Wednesday) talked a lot about diversity in the workplace and what that means to the bottom line. Money is being left on the table by not being inclusive. We discovered that the march is on. Diversity is happening in the workplace, even if it’s really, really slow. More diverse products are entering the market. Workplaces are becoming more diverse. Some say fewer women are joining the industry, but we believe this will turn around.
In the second session (on Thursday), we discussed the workplace in the future. There is/will be a mixture of on-site, telecommunication and flexible work schedules. These are necessary for a more diverse work force. Flexibility is important for women (and men) with families. Also, on the flipside, how can women acclimate themselves into the workplace of today? Women should “be themselves”. Most recruiting happens in regular places, like GDC and universities, but we need to go to non-traditional places: the Girl Scouts, other magazines, where women & minorities are.
Once you’ve recruited women into your workforce, how do you keep them there? Suggestions from yesterday included diversity training, which is common in some industries.
(Various quotes and statistics offered to show the growing strength of women in the video game marketplace.)
IGDA study showed that 11.5% of the whole industry, but only 3% of executives, are female.
What causes women to leave their game jobs?
What can we do to educate our employers about retaining female employees?
Male: The slide said that 35% of console gamers are women. Are those original purchasers or just in the household?
Michelle: In the household.
Male: If you could graph the number of women playing console games by age, girls are playing in much larger numbers. Mobile gaming doesn’t require going into the homes to see people playing them. You can see them on the street, in malls, etc. Time alone is going to make it a little bit easier as girls grow up to be women.
Female: Obviously, more women are playing games. My frustration is having myself as a targeted market. I make games targeted at myself. I’m not in the industry for marketing, but game design. I have a mentorship program, and have tried to keep it at least 1/3 girls. That’s been very difficult. Even when recruiting young people that have grown up playing games, we are having a hard time attracting women to the program. Our plan is to start at the recruiting stage. I don’t think we can just rest on our laurels and say “it’s because they weren’t playing games when they were little.” Girls have always been playing games.
Male: I’m a huge believer in recruiting, but I want a better understanding of where we go from there. I have no idea what it’s like to be a women in the workplace. I know my frustrations, but I don’t know what a woman’s frustrations are. A woman I know mentioned that there seems to be a lack of respect from the design department. But how much of that is attributable to sex or race? I want to break down the question a bit more. What is it that we can do?
Male: Our experience is at odds with the two key studies. (mumble mumble) I don’t know if it’s an anomaly or if different companies are have different situations.
Female: I’m a female Computer Scientist, coming from an academic background. This is a very well-studied problem. If you are the only woman/minority in the class, there is a reluctance to speak up. You have to have a group. If you’re the only one, your’e the stereotype of your type.
Male: Used to work for NSF…they called it the science pipeline. Early on, interest in math and science is roughly equal. Why do women over time become less interested?
Male: I still want the question on the table about retention. I’ve been a game developer my entire career. How are other industries ratios different from game development industry?
Female: I have software development background, previous to games, banking, where I was also a minority. But I found that nobody “typed” me. Nobody asked me, “Is it OK to have a woman make the banking software?” Me and my female co-workers would like to make other types of games.
Male: I’ve been guilty of that. I made a deliberate choice, to hire females to get a different perspective. But they didn’t care, they just wanted to make cool games.
Female: I have my own team, plus work on other game teams. On my team, everyone knows me, and I’m not special because I’m a girl. When I go to meetings with other game teams, though, people worry about offending me. I don’t want to be an outsider. I don’t want to feel uncomfortable, and I don’t want them to be uncomfortable. We make the mistake that we get women on our teams and we try too hard to keep them that we make them outsiders.
Male: How can I facilitate that kind of comfort level? As a manager?
Female: If there’s more than one woman on your team, even just two, it’s better. If I’m alone, and I say something stupid, now all the women on the team are stupid. Even just one other woman provides a way around that. It’s important for women to be a part of the team. I’ve heard all the things that are going to offend me and I’ve over that.
Female: My company has one project that is female targeted. The company specifically put a male producer on that game. I’m working on a non-female game.
Male: When I was designer, we had a good mix of programmers, artist, gender-wise, but any time someone new came in, a guy who didn’t know the rules, we had to teach them. If they want to tell a joke that wouldn’t be funny when a woman is in the room, we made sure the new guy knew that it was never funny. There’s been a resurgence of reports about female financial analysts going into companies where it’s traditional to go to the strip clubs for entertainment. Women aren’t happy with that. What’s it like outside the game industry? There are other places doing it “as wrong”. What are we doing at our own studios that might make women uncomfortable?
Female: Having been in “regular” industry and academics, one thing that comes up as a woman in the room is that communication styles have an effect. Women’s communication styles tend be somewhat different from men’s communication styles. Women seek consensus, generally, finding common ground. Women need to learn how to better run a meeting. If an idea comes up, you put it down right away. But that’s not just a gender issue, that’s running a meeting well.
Michelle: Would diversity training help with that sort of situation?
Sande: Are there initiatives companies could do that would be useful?
Female: I’ve been talking to women about their satisfaction in the game industry. I think it’s something that most industries deal with. One thing that might help is having more women leaders, as role models or just as someone to go to. I don’t want to just hire women to be leaders, so only if they’re good.
Female: I was lucky growing up, and always had strong female mentors, even when getting my masters in Computer Science. I’m now one of 30 women in my company. I had role models that I could go to talk to. That’s helped me.
Male: We need to address the problem from day 1. Like when bringing men into the team, asking sensitivity type questions. Maybe something like the scene in Blade Runner, gauging the robot asking odd questions. Sensitivity shouldn’t start after you’re already hired.
Male: We have a team of 15 that includes 7 women, 2 of them in charge of departments. In terms of recruiting women. I have 8 rules posted on the front and in the office. One rule is that as soon as you enter our workplace any subdivision of people (like race or gender) isn’t allowed. I’ve actually had to burn two people out because they didn’t listen. When we design games we aren’t targeting a gender but an audience. We treat workers as “part of this team.”
Male: What we found that allows you to retain more women is to have more women in the studio.
Michelle: When you get more women in the studio you don’t have to be the only girl in the studio.
Female: Something that keeps coming to mind is that it’s important for women to be OK being women. I appreciate signs like “we’re all the same people”, but you realize those signs are up “because of me” and you feel a little bit weird. We do have different communication styles, but we don’t want to look at women trying to be men. We want to see improvements from having a woman’s touch. It’s great when you can take advantage of being a woman and feel that you’re improving the workplace.
Male: It has to start somewhere, and putting it in people’s faces is a good way to start.
Female: I think it’s important where the preferred method of communication is a woman’s style.
Female: A lot of women go into the workplace thinking they have to act like a man.
Female: It seems so much like you’re saying that people should open it up to having different types of things happening, instead of sticking with the traditional way. They can appeal to men and women and different types of men. It’s diversity, through action instead of just rules.
Michelle: From our research and other talks, I feel like it’s important that we go to these non-traditional places and try and reach not just women but more diverse populations. Thinking, “When did you first get interested in a game career?” as a place to start.
Male: A lot of the problems we’re identifying could be solved at the recruitment side. It’s my experience that women leave because they’re the only woman at the studio. There are not huge numbers, but a few women have achieved prominent positions. My experience is that the female producers have been better than the men. Some of those are studio heads now. If there was a way to get that information out there, that women are doing the job, enjoying it, and being successful it would help our recruiting efforts. Plus it would educate other companies.
Male: By the time we get to recruitment, we’ve lost. We are not having more women coming into the industry because we’re not getting women coming out of college with the qualifications. And they’re not going into college to get qualified. If we’re not getting qualified people, we have no pool to pick from. Middle school is where we lose them, and we need to target outreach at that level. I’ve noticed that when I run into a minority in computer science, my immediate response is to that they are really kickass at what they do, from having to deal with a lot of crap and having had to prove themselves. To not give up through all the crap is an indicator of the quality of the person.
Female: This is my story. I’m the only woman and the first in my company. For some reason I played adventure games in 7th grade and the experience made me want to make games. But no one told me I needed to go through Computer Science. I got used to being around men. I learned to blend. Not to become a man, of course, but to blend. I worked in non-game software for a few years, 3 women out of a team of 30. No issues there. This game company, though, I was the first woman, and I blended in. Now I don’t think that blending is helping things. In meetings I tend to shrink. I’m the only woman and I don’t feel comfortable saying something if it’s going to be stupid. I don’t have a mentor. People I work with are good people, but what I would like is to be myself, a woman.
Female: As a computer science student, I got used to being one of less than 5 girls in the class. And it does help to have even just one other woman in the group. I think one thing we can do to reach middle school girls is to have an organization that will reach out, like the society of women engineers. When I go to groups, seeing lots of women is so encouraging.
Male: One thing I think people should keep in mind is that women are not one group. We have one woman on the programming staff. For the most part, she doesn’t hang with the art staff, which is like programmers in general. Your groups are already divided (art, sound, programming). So what you might consider as separation by gender might just be separation by task. I’m not concerned about the programmer feeling isolated, but I’m aware of it and looking for it.
Michelle: Being vocal about these kind of issues might be different from being vocal about programming stuff.
Male: I’m not worried about this programmer.
Female: Many women do not know that they are isolated until they drop out of the industry. All they know is that they’re not having fun anymore. Also, there is a good book about women in computer science called “Unlocking the Clubhouse”. A CMU study looked at men and women in their habits, over the course of time, etc. The end result was that they changed a lot of things in the program and got up to 35% of women in computer science. The kind of things they changed that made a difference included recruitment.
Male: I have concerns about the cultural impression the industry gives out. Marketing presupposes a male audience.
Michelle: If you don’t specifically put in your game design that you’re targeting diverse audience, the default standard is to market for young males.
Male: Has anyone seen an ad in the US with a female player protagonist?
General Response: No, not really.
Female: The Sims advertising has had both male and female players.
Male: In games for kids we don’t have a problem of games skewing male or female.
Male: As a developer, I don’t write the checks, so what can we do to facilitate the change in the advertising? How can we get the teenage girls before they “drop off”?
Michelle: I think it’s getting more women into your workforce.
Female: I hear a lot of people say advertising is offensive. I don’t think a lot of men realize that hypersexualized women are on the front of women’s magazines too. Maybe we worry about that too much. Maybe the question is not how can we change regular gamer advertising, but how can we advertise differently?
Male: How can we convince the big execs to change their approach?
Michelle: We show them how much money is being left on the table.
Female: Sometimes I have access to ads before they go out and I’ve found that the execs are responsive. There is an awareness and a desire to hit a bigger audience.
Female: Women don’t even consider WOW unless they are dragged into it. Nobody seems to be using all the data being gathered from the MMO space. The data is available. There is feedback from channels that could change the processes of design, development and advertising.
Male: I don’t consider magazine advertising as offensive because the female readers aren’t reading it.
Michelle: Are girls are dropping off from 12-14 because they don’t know they have options they would be interested in?
Female: The “women won’t see it” advertising still creates a culture. When that’s all that’s being presented you’re telling an entire community that you don’t consider them important.
Male: The answers to all these questions are obviously, “Yes”. Let’s change the question mark into an exclamation point. Let’s change the round table into a war rally. Instead of asking the same questions over and over, perhaps it’s time for a more active role. You have to approach the people to get them to respond.
Male: In my personal experience, there were a lot of female gamers around me when I was younger. It was always just people playing games. As I grew up, older generations like to pass on standards down below.
Male: I was approached by a LAN center about running a summer camp. At one point we talked about having a “girls camp” for a safer environment, maybe sprinkle in career talk.
Michelle It sounds like what we need to do is setup a mentoring programming. We need to go outside of our normal box where we recruit people. We need to seek strategies outside our normal zone.
Male: When I speak at career events at high schools, there always a good mix. But then they drop off. Those girls don’t go into the college fields necessary.
Female: For a woman that runs an organization, looking to keep the people I already have. If I have one lone woman, how do I encourage greater sensitivity?
(Note: Ending on that question, asked by a woman, seems to underscore the nature of the issue, neh?)
-David
