9 ms·
Underappreciated Female Video Game Pioneers
- byerley 12y ago"Surprisingly, there is no good resource, online or off, that compiles the work that women have done to influence the history of video games. Uncovering who did what and when can be a challenge in a secretive industry ruled by marketing teams and nondisclosure agreements." Check the credits? Hiding game developers has been a thing since the NES revolution AFAIK. I don't know that anyone's made great strides towards documenting the history of video games in general. Still not really sure what to make of the "phallic first-person shooter" comment.
- tomp 12y agoI don't like this article, but I won't say why because I don't want to start a flame war.
- mhurron 12y agoThen why post anything at all?
- tomp 12y agoTo point out that the stifling of politically-incorrect speech and speech critical of certain topics has a chilling effect.
- CJefferson 12y agoHow is someone writing an article about a very little discussed topic, compared to the huge number of articles and books about make game developers, stifling?
- tomp 12y agoI wasn't talking about the article being stifling, rather the discussion (as witnessed by the downvotes). Can you list some of the articles/books about specifically male game developers? I haven't seen any yet (though I must admit that I rarely read anything about gaming, except technically oriented articles).
- recursive 12y agoPlease don't interpret my downvotes as anything other than a chilling effect on nonsensical comments.
- CJefferson 12y agoThere are huge numbers of articles and books which exclusively discuss male game developers, almost every one I've ever read. Did any of them say "This article will only be about men"? No. I'm not clear of your point -- do you wish all articles which only discuss men were labelled as such?
- tomp 12y agoMy point exactly; there are no articles saying "this article will only be about men" like this one is about women. Instead, they are saying "this article will be about great games" or "shitty games" or such. That's why I perceive this article as sexist.
- Jun8 12y agoToo bad. You didn't give us a chance to see and possibly learn your viewpoint and missed a chance yourself from getting your ideas analyzed by a critical crowd. Being a contrarian is not a bad thing. If you haven't already done so, I suggest you read "What You Can't Say" by pg (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) and Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens.
- tomp 12y ago> Being a contrarian is not a bad thing. I think so to. However, others disagree; you can check my comment history. I've read pg's essay. Thanks for the other recommendation.
- bentcorner 12y agoI'm thankful that women + video games is an issue that is continuing to get talked about - with a young daughter I hope that introducing her to one of my pastimes will be something that we can enjoy together. Games like Broken Age and Animal Crossing seem to have done well on that front. One small criticism for this article - personally, I feel that these kinds of articles tend to conflate two issues: 1.) Women working in the video game field (or STEM in general), and 2.) Video games intended for a female audience. Both are very important, but speaking about them together may give the impression that forward progress on one is required for the other. There is little reason that an industry largely populated by men cannot make content that is suitable for women. Conversely, when we reach gender equality in the gaming industry, we should not assume that gender-equal content will follow. Generally, I'd love to see less of the "made for girls = everything pink" approach. I guess it probably keeps the lights on, which is better than nothing. The gaming industry's trajectory is promising though.
- GuiA 12y agoSpeaking of Animal Crossing, there was a wonderful talk at the last GDC about how they developed it, and the role diversity had to play: http://gdcvault.com/play/1020808/How-to-Turn-a-New http://gdcvault.com/play/1020808/How-to-Turn-a-New
- lobotryas 12y agoI'm curious: what, in your opinion is the definition and criteria of "gender equality" in video game manufacturing?
- bentcorner 12y agoThis is a personal question, since my values are going to differ from yours that will differ from the rest of the world. I welcome games that treat gender as a non-issue. What I do mind are games that treat gender as some sort of precondition on body image or societal roles. In this day and age there's enough choice and content out there that I can manufacture a gender balance for my kids that I feel comfortable with. Sometimes there are gotchas - games (or movies/TV) that seem ok but have small portions I don't agree with, but these are bumps that I can smooth out myself. It's just that sometimes I'd rather it not occur at all. Again, I think this is deeply personal. I may think a certain game is perfectly fine for my kids, and another parent may recoil in horror at the suggestion (and vice versa). At the end of the day, I enjoy playing video games, and if there are more games that I think are appropriate for my kids, the easier it is for me to enjoy my hobby with them.
- rlt3 12y agoIs this about appreciating female game pioneers or about bashing the fact that games are a male dominated hobby? "phallic first-person shooter."
- cwal37 12y agoWay to take a quote out of context (literally cutting off part of a word). Here's the surrounding sentence: "Some of the most original games in recent years have been made by women. Kim Swift was the lead designer for Portal, which one game critic called the first nonphallic first-person shooter." Oh look, the full quote is appreciating a female game pioneer, and your mangled phrase was from a singular game critic. Also, it makes sense. Instead of shooting bullets, you're shooting portals. Seems pretty non-phallic to me.
- rlt3 12y ago"non-phallic" implies all other first-person shooters are phallic. The word phallic implies many things. Yeah, the phrase is from someone else, but it certainly wasn't included by accident. Certainly not out-of-context.
- untog 12y agoThe phrase isn't wrong, though. The vast majority of FPSes involve you playing a man, shooting other men. Sometimes it'll include a woman, but only if she's very, very scantily clad.
- dublinben 12y agoReducing men to the physical expression of their sex is more sexist than anything else mentioned in the article. I will grant you "masculine," "macho," or even "puerile," but "phallic" is simply offensive.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- 12y ago
- moggflunkies 12y agoAnother post about women and how they are doing stuff. I feel like its 2014 but I must be wrong. This mundane stuff still interests people?
- pervycreeper 12y agoUnfortunately, and ironically, the author of this article is laboring under a misconception as to why "video game critics" ought to feel embarrassed. "Game journalists" are a notoriously corrupt and incestuous group who are currently cynically propping up "gender diversity in games" as an issue to use as a cudgel in order to generate more pageviews for their work and to further their own careers. The recent Zoe Quinn debacle is a perfect illustration of this dynamic. There are a number of specific problems with this article, to name a few: an undercurrent of hatred of masculinity and men, and a persistent association between them and negative traits such as violence ("non-phallic FPS", wtf?), mentioning his personal interest in the issue because he has a daughter as though that would bolster his argument rather than undermine it, and some gender revisionism with regard to the creator of M.U.L.E. (which one may object to on purely philosophical grounds). To list them all, however would involve more text than was present in TFA. If anyone needs to "do better" regarding gender representation, then surely it is not the people who make hiring decisions (who already add bias to favor women over men), but the people who write about these issues in such lazy, thought stifling, and intellectually dishonest ways.
- astrodust 12y ago"...people who make hiring decisions...already add bias to favor women over men..." In some cases, sure, but in many? "This is an engineering position, honey. Why don't you apply to the secretary pool." Still heard in 2014.
- pervycreeper 12y ago>"This is an engineering position, honey. Why don't you apply to the secretary pool." Still heard in 2014. Mad Men reruns don't count, sorry.
- astrodust 12y agoDon't think that the 1950s isn't alive and well at some levels of management.
- xanderstrike 12y agoSomething I always wonder when topics like this come up, maybe someone has some industry data to illuminate me. According to the article, "22 percent of the people who make video games are women." What I wonder is, for a given open position at a video game company, what percentage of the people who apply are women? My gut tells me that it's probably substantially less than 22%. That's not to say that there isn't a problem or that women don't want to work in video games, but I feel like the blame for there not being more women (or more appreciation for women) in the games industry lays heavily on the studios. I think seeing the ratios of applicants vs the ratios of hires would be an interesting way to see how the industry actually feels about women.
- jameshart 12y agoEven if your gut was a valid source of data, the proportion of applications is a bad metric - you need the proportion of applications from strong candidates. Women applying for jobs in a field where there is a perception of sexism might be deterred from applying in the first place, especially if they feel they don't have the skills to outshine the men who apply; men may be more likely to apply even if their skills are only marginal for the role, because the industry has given them a disproportionate confidence in their abilities. So you might see a 16% female application rate, yet have women make up 30% of competent candidates, but still wind up at 22% women hired, which would not be the evidence of positive discrimination you suggest at all. The way sexism in hiring decisions works is subtle. Development is a team sport. When a candidate comes to you and tells you 'I worked on this highly respected game,' you are impressed, but need to try to figure out what their contribution was to the team. Did they solve the really hard shader engineering challenges that gave that game its unique look while maintaining 60fps? Did they just do a bit of coding on the menu system? Did they do nothing but make the coffee? So you ask, but your prejudices color how you hear the response. If you tend to assume that girls just don't do quaternions and stuff, you hear 'I worked on the water simulation' and if it's a guy you assume they did a bunch of stuff with physics and navier stokes equations, but if it's a woman you interpret it as 'I made the sparkly bits when things go splash'. If you're gender-blind you allow the possibility that the person in front of you might fall into either of those camps regardless of their gender. And it goes beyond hiring, into work assignments. You've got two pieces of work that need to be done: one is going to involve hard math, the other is building tools to help the testers QA stuff. Unconsciously, you let your prejudices about gender roles play in and assign the math work to a male coder and the tool to a female coder. Subtly, you push the women to less prestigious roles that limit their career options, while giving men opportunities to advance theirs. And then when your studio goes belly-up and those two coders are applying for work elsewhere, which one has the more impressive resume and is able to get in the door somewhere else?