Breaking down borders in video games.
Deirdra
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Homepage: http://www.deirdrakiai.com
Posts by Deirdra
We Need More Women in Indie Games
Jun 9th
Whenever I find myself in discussions about women in games, it seems like it’s always about getting women into more positions in the mainstream game industry. That’s all well and good and useful, but I have a better idea: why don’t we just get more women to develop indie games? It’s arguably far easier than what we’re led to believe are the traditional methods of “breaking in” — you can find free or cheap development tools for nearly any genre or style of game you fancy creating, so the only thing you need to do is make something cool and post it online. That’s it. No need to worry about getting the right degrees or jumping through dude-controlled corporate hoops. Just write a game. How hard can it be, right?
It's not only the mainstream game industry that's dominated by men; indie games have the very same problem. Quite frankly, it's just as annoying.
Maybe the problem is that not very many women even want to make games — the same problem that supposedly plagues the mainstream industry. To exacerbate the situation, most people don’t get paid to write indie games; it’s a hobby that takes up a large chunk of one’s free time, with little or no promise of any sort of concrete reward. Could it be that in our society, women aren’t encouraged to have seemingly pointless, solitary hobbies to the same degree that men are? Perhaps, but there are still a lot of women out there who work on novels, short fiction, blogs, visual art, music, crafts, and other time-consuming creative things in their spare time. Why should games be any different?
Maybe it’s because games are too technical, and women supposedly have a handicap in that regard. These days, as girls are being given more opportunities to excel in math and science than was the case decades ago, that’s becoming less and less true. Sure, learning to program is hard, but once you get the basics down, it’s actually a lot of fun. Of course, if coding isn’t your thing, there are tools that allow you to avoid it, from Inform 7 to ChoiceScript to Adventure Game Studio to Ren’Py to Game Maker… and I’m sure there are others out there that I’m missing.
Maybe the problem is that a lot of women don’t know where to go for resources and community when it comes to indie games. It’s true that one of the best ways to keep up a hobby is to know that there are people like you out there doing similar things, with whom you can bounce ideas around and give and receive helpful tips and advice. Maybe too many indie game communities in existence are overly dude-centric, overrun by guys who think of ladies as mythical creatures rather than actual people, and maybe women game developers want a place where they don’t have to deal with being belittled and mansplained at. Maybe it’s just as simple as not wanting to be the odd one out. Sure, there are some women out there who are more than happy to hang out with a crowd of all men, but it’s certainly not for everyone.
Maybe the problem is that we game enthusiasts don’t do enough to promote the work of existing indie games created by women. Where are our female Jon Blows and Jason Rohrers? Some would argue that there simply aren’t any female indie developers out there who measure up, but is that really true? Or is it a matter of our societal biases privileging the point of view of men over that of women, just like we do in literature, music, and film? To give a specific example, why are so many online discussions of the recently-released Hey Baby game inundated by nitpicky complaints about the bad graphics and lack of interesting gameplay, when Super Columbine Massacre RPG! had the exact same problems but was lauded by many gamers as a work of art? Why don’t we even know the names of Hey Baby’s creators? Could it be that there are a handful of women out there making great indie games whose names or work we haven’t even heard of?
"Hey Baby" is a first person shooter about street harassment, written from a woman's perspective.
What are your thoughts? How can we convince more women to develop indie games? What can we do to counteract some of the above problems? Are there others that need to be overcome?
Are women “too smart” for a career in the game industry?
Dec 18th
I was recently pointed to a post on Slashdot where it is suggested that women are “too smart” for tech careers, rather than “not smart enough”, as common and misguided wisdom seems to suggest. To wit, “only ‘boys’ are stupid enough to go into a field that’s globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it’s common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.” This is actually a suggestion I’ve heard more than once regarding the unicornification of women in the game industry; maybe, just maybe, it’s not a matter of women actively being denied entry, they say, but a matter of them simply having better things to do with their lives. Right?
People who make this particular suggestion tend to think they’re giving women as a group some kind of compliment, but I feel uncomfortable with it for a number of reasons. For one thing, it implies that women who do work in games, such as myself, aren’t as “smart” as other women, which I, quite frankly, find insulting — and I’m sure many readers and contributors to this blog will feel similarly. Second of all, it does male game developers a great disservice. The truth is, many of us in the industry, regardless of gender, are passionate about game development but also care very much about quality of life issues. I personally do believe that companies with good work/life balances generally do better at attracting greater diversity in employees, and indeed, the stereotype that all game developers must be overworked and underpaid appears to be changing, in this post-ea_spouse climate. Slowly, I’ll admit, but we’re getting there.
Sadly, the kind of comment I usually get on this subject isn’t made with the implication that we should change the way our industry works, but with a more “that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s always going to be” kind of mindset. Game dev, like many careers in the arts, is known for being highly competitive to get into, and indeed, many people see difficult working conditions as a way of “weeding out” the competition. As such, the implication that anyone who’s “smart” would stay away is something of a backhanded compliment, meant to exclude rather than include. Instead of questioning why we’re suckered into believing that the only way to make good games is to push ourselves to exhaustion for little in return, we’re essentially being told to ignore and avoid the problem so that the same old people can keep on churning out the same old games with the same old lack of different perspectives. Convenient, isn’t it?
Deirdra’s Obligatory Welcome Post
Nov 29th
Me, circa June 2009.
Devastatingly witty greetings to you, dear readers of the newly minted Border House! My name is Deirdra and I design and develop video games. I will also be one of your friendly neighbourhood contributors to this here blog, which I look forward to, seeing as it’s run by extremely awesome people. Maybe if I stick around long enough, the collective awesomeness of everyone here will rub off on me a little bit. We can only hope…
Anyway, apparently, I’m supposed to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m a mid-twenties female-bodied human being of mixed race, born in the Canadian prairies and currently residing in Vancouver, BC. Several of my childhood experiences, as documented in this short Flash game, taught me that I was a failure at belonging to the dominant culture in which I was raised, which eventually led me to adopt an identity as an outsider; bearing that in mind, my interest in feminism, anti-racism, and other anti-oppression work is very much a personal one. The fact that people are allowed to be marginalised and silenced in our society for what to me are extremely trivial reasons completely boggles my mind… and yet it happens all the time, all around us, to the extent that many of us are conditioned to not even notice it exists.
Me, as I appear in my faux-pretentious indie game, "Des Rêves Élastiques Avec Mille Insectes Nommés Georges"
As for my gamer cred… since I am, of course, a member of the generation that was born around the same time as the NES, I’ve been playing video games for as long as I’ve been able to push buttons. (Much to the detriment of my older cousins, whom I have vague memories of annoying by yanking away the controller and mashing to my heart’s content whilst causing the on-screen avatar to die a horrible death.) Most of my gaming was done on the PC, because my parents wouldn’t let me have a console, so I cut my teeth on shareware games such as Commander Keen and Wacky Wheels, and edutainment titles of the likes of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Of course, it was when I discovered LucasArts adventure games — particularly Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and the Monkey Island series — that I had an uncontrollable urge to someday grow up to write games that were every bit as creative, imaginative, and witty as they were. Several years of schooling and tinkering around with tool sets later, I’ve gotten to the point that I can make a living doing so. Of course, in those intervening years, the game industry, shall we say… changed a little bit, to the point that the kinds of games that made me want to get into this business in the first place ceased to be thought of as commercially viable by the industry, and that bland, ultra-violent testosterone fests were where all the money was at. As such, I put much of my hope and energy into the “indie” side of the industry, both in terms of my day job and the personal projects I undertake in my spare time — and this, as you may have guessed, is where I will be focussing the bulk of my posts to this site.
Hopefully this is enough of an infodump to give you a sense of who I am and what I do; if you’d like to know more, there’s a website for that. Until then, I bid you all adieu, and look forward to what becomes of this interesting new space!
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