3 ms·

I see from your name and profile that you're from Australia. Suppose you play a game set in Australia and there's a scene where you have snow in January. The fi

I see from your name and profile that you're from Australia. Suppose you play a game set in Australia and there's a scene where you have snow in January. The first game you play like that you might just laugh, but if every game you play has snow in January in Australia you would probably get annoyed. Having more female game devs is like having more Australian game devs who know when it's summer there. A big difference though is that unlike Australia which has less than 0.5% of the world's population concentrated in one area, women are over 50% of the world's population and are evenly distributed. You can have a lot of games without Australia but almost every game with people in it needs to have women or you'll be telling a strange story. Imagine a situation where most games have scenes in Australia but most game devs don't know it's summer in January there. That's a problem. Where it can get mixed up is that a lot of "knowing the seasons" as a woman is knowing stuff that makes men uncomfortable. A female game dev making a realistic female character can introduce everyday factual experiences about things like sexual harassment, birth control, or feminine hygiene, and some male players might say she's trying to make an activist game and she can reply, no, this is just my life. It would be like getting mad at an Australian game dev for always going on about summer in January as if it's their fault the sun spends a lot of time in the sky around that time. (This is leaving aside the economic argument that developer jobs tend to be good and therefore desirable, and it should be suspicious when any particular demographic is dramatically underrepresented in a field with mostly good jobs.)

AussieWog93 4y ago
>I see from your name and profile that you're from Australia. Suppose you play a game set in Australia and there's a scene where you have snow in January. The first game you play like that you might just laugh, but if every game you play has snow in January in Australia you would probably get annoyed. If you want a concrete example of that, A lot of media that features Australian characters are played by Americans doing bad Paul Hogan impressions. It's dumb, but didn't make me want to play Borderlands or COD instead of Overwatch or BioShock (with that damn 0126 code too - who does this!?) >(This is leaving aside the economic argument that developer jobs tend to be good and therefore desirable, and it should be suspicious when any particular demographic is dramatically underrepresented in a field with mostly good jobs.) Gamedev jobs are mostly terrible, with low pay, immense amounts of unpaid overtime and chronic, stressful "crunch time". I don't know why men stay in the industry, let alone women.
- kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago
  > If you want a concrete example of that, A lot of media that features Australian characters are played by Americans doing bad Paul Hogan impressions. It's dumb, but didn't make me want to play Borderlands or COD instead of Overwatch or BioShock (with that damn 0126 code too - who does this!?) Wrong weather and bad accents are pretty tame, I agree. Actual portrayals of women in games have been much worse. The "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" YouTube series by Feminist Frequency goes over a lot of these. Fortunately the industry has gotten better and games are now expected to include realistic female characters. That can be a tough ask for male game devs though. Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex. > Gamedev jobs are mostly terrible, with low pay, immense amounts of unpaid overtime and chronic, stressful "crunch time". I don't know why men stay in the industry, let alone women. Nevertheless there are many women in much worse jobs who would take all of those terrible game dev jobs in a second if they could. The fact that they haven't suggests some systemic problem.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    > Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex. I can't help but wonder where this statement came from. Men have sisters, mothers, daughters, partners. It's not some kind of a mysterious and opaque world, to which they don't have any access.
    - kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago
      Men have throughout history had the strangest ideas about women despite, as you said, having sisters and so on. I agree that is weird. Of course a willing male game dev could research anything necessary to portraying women accurately. Or, alternately, you could hire female game devs or at least some consultants and get on with actually making the game.
      - Tade0 4y ago
        > I agree that is weird. To be clear: I'm not agreeing with you. I don't think "most men" would fail at the task you mentioned. I also think that men can generally tell if a female character is realistic, it's just not what they're going for in a game and the market responds to that. Same with those romantic pulp novels people read on vacation. Regardless whether they're written by men or women, the men there are always hilariously unrealistic. This is by design.

AussieWog93 4y ago

>I see from your name and profile that you're from Australia. Suppose you play a game set in Australia and there's a scene where you have snow in January. The first game you play like that you might just laugh, but if every game you play has snow in January in Australia you would probably get annoyed. If you want a concrete example of that, A lot of media that features Australian characters are played by Americans doing bad Paul Hogan impressions. It's dumb, but didn't make me want to play Borderlands or COD instead of Overwatch or BioShock (with that damn 0126 code too - who does this!?) >(This is leaving aside the economic argument that developer jobs tend to be good and therefore desirable, and it should be suspicious when any particular demographic is dramatically underrepresented in a field with mostly good jobs.) Gamedev jobs are mostly terrible, with low pay, immense amounts of unpaid overtime and chronic, stressful "crunch time". I don't know why men stay in the industry, let alone women.

kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago
> If you want a concrete example of that, A lot of media that features Australian characters are played by Americans doing bad Paul Hogan impressions. It's dumb, but didn't make me want to play Borderlands or COD instead of Overwatch or BioShock (with that damn 0126 code too - who does this!?) Wrong weather and bad accents are pretty tame, I agree. Actual portrayals of women in games have been much worse. The "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" YouTube series by Feminist Frequency goes over a lot of these. Fortunately the industry has gotten better and games are now expected to include realistic female characters. That can be a tough ask for male game devs though. Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex. > Gamedev jobs are mostly terrible, with low pay, immense amounts of unpaid overtime and chronic, stressful "crunch time". I don't know why men stay in the industry, let alone women. Nevertheless there are many women in much worse jobs who would take all of those terrible game dev jobs in a second if they could. The fact that they haven't suggests some systemic problem.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex. I can't help but wonder where this statement came from. Men have sisters, mothers, daughters, partners. It's not some kind of a mysterious and opaque world, to which they don't have any access.
  - kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago
    Men have throughout history had the strangest ideas about women despite, as you said, having sisters and so on. I agree that is weird. Of course a willing male game dev could research anything necessary to portraying women accurately. Or, alternately, you could hire female game devs or at least some consultants and get on with actually making the game.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      > I agree that is weird. To be clear: I'm not agreeing with you. I don't think "most men" would fail at the task you mentioned. I also think that men can generally tell if a female character is realistic, it's just not what they're going for in a game and the market responds to that. Same with those romantic pulp novels people read on vacation. Regardless whether they're written by men or women, the men there are always hilariously unrealistic. This is by design.