Today is the international women’s day. Time to talk about women in the gamedev.
Like in every field, girls are quite fucked from the beginning. In the society in which we live, they usually learn about the glass ceiling very quickly. In the technology area it’s even more weird because the virtual ceiling is there despite the fact that women are appreciated in game development: with 88.5% of young males, girls sure have a real attract on them.
Jade Raymond is the obvious case of why international women’s day unfortunately still means something. Two years ago with Assassin’s Creed launch she had been draw as a cocksucker surrounded by men with sperm on her (yeah it’s rude to read it like this but I juste describe the picture) by some so-called humorists, meaning that she only had this power on the game you know how.. It went big on news etc. Jane from GGA put it in the best way possible:
“It is dangerous to be a beautiful woman in the games industry. Oh, it’s difficult to be a woman, period. But if you also happen to be attractive, you are doubly cursed. On the one hand, yes, when you’re at a conference where you are among a handful of women, you are remembered, and that is advantageous. But for every break you may get for being female and attractive you get a chorus of voices telling you that you don’t deserve it because, well, you are attractive, and obviously you can’t possibly have gotten where you are without seducing men along the way.”
I would add that you don’t have the choice but seduce people when you’re not like them, either passively or actively. I bet Jade choose the first one because she doesn’t need to play actively this card I mean:
She’s smarter than you. Also, you’re jealous.
At the end it’s always the same shit called double standard and it’s fucking annoying because it ruins the basics of human relationship: trust and honesty. When people can do, they just can period. Whatever the face they have. Pushing a woman in the dirt sort of give me the proof that a lot of people can’t handle something normal (ie a woman doing her job well and yeah, I see what you did there). It’s sad.
But they are here. A bunch of women in games are actively doing the main tasks of the gamedev, not just QA and PR (which are fine).
Sophie Houlden is one of them. She does master Flash (like this 48 hours real fun game she did alone), she does visuals, code game design. I want to marry her.
She’s stronger than you. Plus you’re not her type.
Erin Robinson is an indie game developer. She does adventure games. For example this one is called Little Girl in Underland and has been made in four weeks. She did all the art with a laptop no scanner and her talent. She also did this big game with a little help. Just wow.
Watching their works I think demakes and game design research are way more useful to the medium that pure technical iteration of ten or twenty years old game designs.
She’s motherfuckin’ more soulful than you. In fact you’re not in the same league.
Heather Kelley. She’s a game designer doing a lot of things -even music- since 1994. She co-founded Kokoromi collective (damn I love these people).
She did make me think a lot with her Lapis project. In 2009 it would still be a flying saucer on the market but I love the idea. I can see how to make the audio fit for that project but I digress.
Game design challenge + social empowerment = deep change, large mind shift.
We’re still afraid about that because it’s much more powerful than every kind of entertainment.
Or maybe we’re lagging because we don’t have enough women in the industry :)
(more women in dev pics on my flickr Hall of Game set)