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More Girls Need Industry Jobs
The Guardian has an editorial up discussing the need for more women in the games industry. From the article: "The development team of the Sims Online game, for example, was 40% female, while 60% of its players are female. The contemporary life-simulation setting has attracted a non-traditional (ie female) audience in a way no other game has, says the Elspa report. Jessica Lewis, producer of The Sims Online, has said: 'I think simply because more women are involved in the designs and development, a different kind of contribution happens. Diversity ... is a good thing when making a mainstream game.'"
In my science and math courses in college, there was only one woman for every twenty guys there. My guess is that a larger percentage of guys like video games than girls, and this translates into more guys in the industry.
God spoke to me.
I understand there's an imbalance, but how is this a need?
40% to 60% sounds pretty exceptional to me considering that the industry is aimed towards males overall. Also, how does this compare to the ratio in other areas of business? Not counting the lower level positions, I would imagine that most businesses would be even worse off.
I'm all for female influence in games, assuming said females are just as creatively genius as their male counterparts. However, I find it ludicrous to say that women like The SIMS because women helped make it. I know 3 very different girls who all like the game. My observations point to them enjoying the fact that the game is braindead easy, obvious, and akin to playing house as a little kid. Would you claim that those aspects of the game exist because women helped design it?
Pffft.
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Sims Online seems like an extreme example... how many female FPS players are there (or RTS players, etc..) ... examine the different genres for female gaming enthusiasts...
... honestly, females in game development would be great and all, but you have to admit, except in cases like Sims Online or other games which cater more toward females... the client base for most games will be predominanetly men...
Saying "Oh yeah, take SIMS ONLINE for example" is like saying "Oh yeah, take BARBIE for example" when it comes to female playership.
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1. More girls don't need industry jobs. The industry needs more "girls" to fill existing jobs.
2. Girls? No, women. You don't see articles stating most of the industry's jobs are filled with boys.
While I have nothing against the term "girls" (my wife occasionally goes out for "girls' night out"), the workplace is not a good place for that term. It's either a reflection of a condescending attitude or leads to one.
The bottom line: avoid referring to female professionals as girls. Unfortunately, many females feel the term "woman" makes them sound old, so to be safe, use the term "chick".
Ok, I had to throw in a joke, but I meant the rest.
What do the two have to do with each other? Why should the percentage of females creating a product be equal the percentage of females using it? The vast majority of people in the construction industry are men, but half of the people who walk into buildings are women. Do buildings need be to built by women in order for women to relate to them?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Industry Jobs need More Girls.
So my question is, why is 40% the largest number of women to work on a game in history? And why is that attributed to The Sims Online? Didn't most of that team end up on Sims 2 afterwards?
Perhaps the lesson we should learn is that most women are smart enough not to get into an industry known for its long crunch times and poor working conditions. Or at the very least, after putting in tons of effort and finally pushing out a lukewarm title, which seems to be the average experience for people in this industry, they were smart enough to look for a job elsewhere?
Or is this an industry-wide problem that needs to be fixed? Is the industry's reliance on long crunch times and inflexibility when it comes to letting people spend time with their kids a built-in bias against women? Should people be taking industry members to court for discrimination?
(I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, so if I'm not talking sense, someone please enlighten me. It's hard to be PC around this topic.)
Marketing people are, if you'll forgive the term, complete whores. They care about the money and don't worry too much about how dirty what they have to do to get it will make them feel.
If they believed that Power Puff Girls was the way to make massive profits, they'd do it. They might suffer high programmer attrition at first but if they decided the costs were less than what they stood to gain, they'd absolutely do it.
This is the reason why we get dozens of generic FPSs and Madden games - they may not be the radical game that makes a fortune but they're sensible bets. The music industry, the movie industry, any large industry, is exactly the same: Even if a radical title makes ten times its costs - if it 19 out of 20 radical titles lose their money, it's a losing proposition overal.
In the past, the game industry tended to have a couple of guys who'd bash out code while eating ramen and, while they often lost money, they'd occasionally hit pay dirt and then end up in charge of wealthy companies that spent the next ten years failing to release the follow up to that Duke Nu*cough*.
Those companies were often run by nerds who had no knowledge of diversity, markets etc. Sometimes they guessed right, often they guessed wrong - but they tended to be guesses not targeted decisions based on research in to the market.
Now though, with EA owning half the industry and other large publishers owning most of the rest, these people have very expensive marketing teams who spend a huge amount on researching the market and very carefully target their next moves to ensure profit even if it isn't quite so cool.
So, in the past, I'd accept the argument that the guys in charge may have simply been unrehabilitated nerds who were scared of girls and hence didn't hire them nor develop games for them.
Now though? These people don't care what they have to do for the money so long as they make it. If they'll do whatever makes money, why aren't they making these [allegedly] massively successful girl-gamer-friendly titles?
The conclusion's pretty obvious:
Because, at the end of the day, it's not something they consider profitable.
The 18-35 male demographic is a great target audience. They have a high income, low costs, and tend to spend a far greater percentage than women ever will on gaming. Women simply have other things already fighting for their dollars.
Making up numbers here: say you had 100,000 men and 100,000 women. The men, on average earn say $10,000 a year, the women, whether right or wrong, $9,500 a year. So far the money's about the same. The women spend their $0.95b a year on other things but, with heavy marketing could be swayed to spend 10% on gaming - $0.095b/year. The men currently spend 25% on gaming and, with heavy marketing could spend as high as 40% - $0.25b-$0.4b.
Look at those numbers. Even if you get every last available female dollar, it's a drop in the ocean at $0.1b vs the $0.25b-$0.4b guys will spend.
Certainly, there's $95m waiting for the people who pull off the occasional fluke - as happened with The Sims. Overall though, that market's just not worth going after at the expense of the 18-35 male market. Even if you can multiply your female share by a factor of five or ten, it doesn't compensate for losing as little as five or ten percent of your male market share.
So, while I'm all for idealism - I'm also enough of a realist to recognise that, were it as simple as hire more women, make more money, the marketing folks would be out whoring to that market long ago. That they are not implies the observations do not support the idealism.
Of course, the odd anomaly will always support the idealists' beliefs. But an occasional anomaly, while taken as scripture by those who want to believe, will likely still be ignored overall unless it continues to consistently prove true.
My wide is an avid gamer, but she'd never admit it. She absolutely loathes my xbox.
She play Ultimate Yahtzee! on her computer quite often, a 9 year old game. It even says compatiable with windows 3.1 and windows 95 on the disk.
About a year ago she payed $20 to download some Wheel of Fortune game. She used to play a Jepordy game I bought her a few years back.
She plays "games" often, but her yearly market spending is next to nothing. Probably under $100 total over 10 years.
Women gamers do not count for the most part because they don't spend money. Yes ther are exceptions. But mostly it is free games like solitare or some online puzzles, or hey might buy one or two games they play for years.
More women in the industry? There are few women in the computer field, and few of those that are any good at it.
Of course, I applied to them for two years, and they never called me until the day I started the job I got cause they wouldn't hire me. What the hell...
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
We computer geeks like to think that we are enlightened, that there is no systematic bias against women in computer science. We are wrong. What's worse is that we cannot admit that we are wrong. Suddenly, we become unscientific in our analysis of the situation, using in our personal anecdotal evidence to serve as proof against the claim. We think "I never did anything to prevent a women from pursuing a career in computer science." My brothers, we are wrong. Here is a summary of the evidence for this claim: http://norfolk.cs.washington.edu/htbin-post/unrest ricted/colloq/details.cgi?id=312
Computer science isn't advancing as well as it could due to the fact that intelligent women who would otherwise contribute are being repelled due to male influence. It's humbling to admit that we aren't as enlightened as we think we are, but we need to. Only then can we learn with an open mind what we need to do--suppressing our pride and other misplaced feelings of righteousness and instead focusing on the data--to rectify the situation.
I guess 40% is not diverse enough. Is 45% more diverse than 40%? Does higher percentage = more diverse? Is 60% more diverse than 50%? Is 100% girls the most diverse? I guess that wouldn't make sense. So, maybe 50% = most diverse percentage? WTF am I talking about? Maybe diversity has nothing to do with this.
Why is this a problem? Why are we whinging about this difference? Even if women are being unfairly passed over (which I do not believe to be the case and if it were the case, would be a problem in need of addressing), what is being suggested here violates the very tenets of feminism (which, I can only imagine, is the motive of at least some). The fact that a comparison between the ratio of male to female developers and teh ratio of male to female consumers is being made indicates that people believe men and women have different things to offer and even more, that men cannot offer the same things as women. Feminism at its core is something I agree with and participate in. Feminism is defined by http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=feminism as 'Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.' Equality of the sexes cannot exist when society so firmly believes that men cannot offer what women can (or conversely, that women cannot offer what men can). I object to the viewpoint (whether consciously or subconsciously adopted) which has permeated our society that women are better than men, or at least that women are worth more and have more to our society than men (of course, a conscientious reader would ask me to justify this position, and I can, but it would take too long and not be worth it). Realistically, a twenty per-cent difference from developers to consumers is not something worth a fuss.
--- Sheepy ---
Why do few women makes games? Because far fewer women play serious video games (Bejeweled doesn't count is serious, so put thus statistics away). I would bet that any woman with average skill can land herself a job making video games significantly faster then any man could, simply because she is a woman. The industry is already biased to trying to balance out the ratios. The problem is simply that the supply of woman who want to make games is so low to meet up with the demand.
As to the why of it, I think it is just a cultural stigma. Further, I think it is a self imposed cultural stigma. My girlfriend is the biggest fucking geek on the face of the planet. We watched DS9 from session 1 to session 7 in order together. She genuinely enjoyed it and often times was the one that was pushing me to pop another one in so that we could see how it ends. This is a woman who knows all of the characters by name and their entire back stories. Put her in front of her friends and you have to twist her arm off to get her to admit she has even watched it, much less that she enjoyed it and knows the name of every character and who they slept with. The same happens with video games. With video games it is even worse. Unless the game is cute and fluffy, she won't touch it. Yet if she thinks no one is looking though, she will wander off and play Vampire: Bloodline (which is a horribly violent RPG).
Guys have gotten over the entire geek stigma. Hell, these days being a geek for a guy is just down right cool. You can wear your math club T-shirt to a fancy club and no one will look down on you for it. Having your pockets bulging with gadgets and gizmos isn't going to make anyone think less of you. Women on the other hand have a long way to go, and my personal belief that what is holding them back isn't men. I don't think there are many guys out there who would be offended if their girl friend pressed them to play Grand Theft Auto or Halo with them.
"Honey, we desperately NEED a new computer to be able to play Half-Life 3."
"Honey... come play... when was the last time we spent some quality time we 0wn3d n00bs in World of Warcraft or went pwn1g by0tch3s in UT2004?"
Well, uh, gee, don't twist my arm.
The real issue is women dealing with other women. Women can just be fucking vicious to each other in ways that my tiny male brain just can't comprehend. If only someone could just explain to them that geek is sheik...
_The_ worst games ever produced are the ones where the designers obviously aren't in the target demographic. That's been a major problem in the industry for more than a decade: a bunch of lemmings decide to clone Game X because it sold well last year, but manage to miss every single element that made Game X a success. Why? Because they don't actually have a clue _what_ those players liked.
E.g., speaking of The Sims, I know of at least 3 games which tried to include elements of it, just because it sold, yet managed to miss the whole point. They made something non-fun and "streamlined out" every single gameplay element that made it fun.
(And not even only games. If I look at the frameworks, libraries, tools, etc, I use at work, _the_ crappiest ones were the ones where marketting was at the wheel, instead of those who actually use it. _The_ way to make an utter crap web application framework, for example, is to have it designed by some marketroid who's never actually coded a web app. It'll have all the buzzwords that woo an idiot PHB, but none of the qualities that would actually make it useful to those who actually have to use it.)
Just taking a wild guess at someone else playing the game doesn't even start to cut it.
E.g., my father still refers to Chrono Cross as "that game where you whack rats with a frying pan". And more than once he's expressed opinions like that maybe I'm into RPGs because I somehow like whacking rats with a frying pan. (*sigh* Yes, dad, Lena had a most unfortunate choice of weapons in that game, but FFS it's not even a main character.) Or that it's those games where they just spew lots of pointless text and never get to the fighting part.
Want to bet what kind of an RPG he'd design, if you asked him to design one? Well, I can tell you that no actual RPG player would want to touch it with a 10 foot pole.
E.g., your own "My observations point to them enjoying the fact that the game is braindead easy, obvious, and akin to playing house as a little kid." Being a die-hard The Sims player myself... let's put it as diplomatically as I can: good grief, I hope noone asks you to design a The Sims clone. Ever. Because again, no offense, you illustrate just the point I was making: you're missing all the _real_ points.
That's the problem: the whole game industry itself is an example of what happens when you ask the _guys_ to design a game for _women_. They have no clue where to even start.
We're talking an industry which started with a clean 50-50 gender distribution among gamers, and ended up with "chicks don't play games." Why? Because the males can't even start to guess what the females like to play, and viceversa. Not being in the target demographic tends to have that effect.
The publishers did give males almost 3 decades to try to guess what makes a good games for women. They failed. Utterly. They actually _lost_ that market. Now someone's finally got a brain and figured out "ok, wth, let's give women a chance too. Maybe they know better what they'd like to play."
That's all.
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"Sims Online seems like an extreme example... how many female FPS players are there (or RTS players, etc..) ... examine the different genres for female gaming enthusiasts..."
In Quake 2 they had over 30% females among the people who registered the game. I.e., about 1 in 3 players of that FPS. I think that's not quite the answer you already had in mind, right?
"except in [...] games which cater more toward females... the client base for most games will be predominanetly men".
In other words, if you make games for males, yes, mostly males will buy it. Perfectly logical, yes.
Thing is, that's the whole problem.
Consider this: back in the days of Pong, they had a clean 50-50 between male and female players. Also see blips on the radar like what I've mentioned above about Quake 2 registrations. So gaming being for men only, isn't as set in stone as you seem to assume. It certainly didn't start true.
The effect you _are_ correctly noticing is caused by the fact the industry ever since has mostly been churning games made by men for men. And indeed, most of them didn't sell that great to women. Quite unsurprisingly, I would say.
"Saying "Oh yeah, take SIMS ONLINE for example" is like saying "Oh yeah, take BARBIE for example" when it comes to female playership."
And that's the whole problem. The publishers by now would _love_ to get some money from women too. But by now they don't even know how to start. _How_ would you make a Barbie game that actually appeals to young girls, for example? (Matel would love to know the answer to that.)
So far most games for girls have been abhominations that should have been taken out, shot, and burried at crossroads with a stake through the chest. That bad.
In all fairness, most software for kids is crap, because it's designed by people who've forgotten what it's like to be a kid, and bought by parets rather than kids. But games for girls (Barbie stuff included) are trully the bottom of the proverbial barrel, because most are designed by some 40 year old _male_ that has no clue what girls like. So they start with vague ideas like "uh, girls like dolls, don't they?" and it goes downhill from there.
The problem is that the industry has concentrated for more than two decades on on making games by immature boys for immature boys. They have no clue what to make for women. Even when accidentally end up with something that sold well to women (e.g., Quake 2), the guys are clueless _why_ it sold well and _what_ did those women see in it. And then just to prove that they didn't understand anything, or didn't even try, they make a sequel which loses all that female market share. (E.g., Quake 3.)
So at this point the "except in cases like Sims Online or other games which cater more toward females" part is clear to them too. That's exactly what they'd like to make more of. They just don't know how.
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"I think simply because more women are involved in the designs and development, a different kind of contribution happens. Diversity ... is a good thing when making a mainstream game.'"
,tedious games i have ever had the misfortune of playing.
This is the same argument that set the course of women in politics back 20 years after Thatcher.
The sims online was one of the most boring
I love Sim-city and its sequels , but yeuch if women Designers produce games like the Sims then we need less of them.
In all truth though , Women are equally as skilled as men in most things(Though i doubt they make very good male strippers or professional sperm donors) , the reason there are not as many is for the simple fact that not as many women are interested in Games as men are , let alone the whole alpha geek realm of making them.
We would have a problem if women were discriminated against in the industry , but from the looks of it , it just appears that there are not as many applying for the positions
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Of course it could be that they're just not plainly interested - but then again, the games industry isn't exactly looking like the most appealing recruitment choice right now ...
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Just because 60% of the user base of Sims was female, why does it matter that only 40% of the developers were female? If the developers as a whole were providing content that matched their users expectations and desires, then why should it matter what their gender ratio is? These are the kinds of studies and reports that just make the gender gap even wider. Males and females (note the lack of use of the word 'girl' here, since I don't feel it belongs in this article at all) both program, they both play, but why do the gender proportions have to match up? Is it not physically possible for a male to contribute something useful to a game that is played by a female, and vice versa?
And they said zombies weren't real!
Is this really a problem? Some people on here think that we are 'keeping them down' and some think women 'just aren't hardcore gamers.' I don't agree with either.
My wife and I dated in college. As computer savy as she is, and let's be honest, she can USE a computer not build one or install one, she has really no interest. As a software engineer she always expected me to know what's wrong with windows (frankly, no one knows what's wrong with windows - just reinstall). She now plays WoW but doesn't really care about any other games but I guess I don't really either.
She majored in Interior Design/Decorating which had about a 95%+ female class. The few guys that were in there were gay (and when I say 'gay' I mean 'gay', there is no stereotyping here). In my CS department they were trying to reach out to get more women interested, but were they doing that in her department for men? No. They just accepted that it's just not something men are interested in doing as careers and moved on. Everyone can debate about whether or not it's societal or 'just the way it is' but the plain fact is when a department honestly tries for diversity and fails due to lack of interest then you just have to let it go.
I never repressed any minorities or women (women are NOT a minority) and I don't know anyone in my department that did. And when there were women in our classes they were treated exceptionally well by all of us CS nerds.
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I don't think it is at all fair to blame the industry. They present as an example the Sims Online development team. That team had 40% women, but women make up only about 20% of the potential candidates. In other words, the Sims Online team either found some way to attract twice as many female applicants as average or disproportionately favoured women during the interview. If we are going to blame them, we should blame them for not hiring an appropriate number of males.
That said, I accept that our industry has a significant problem attracting women into the field. In fact, we have a significant problem attracting anyone into the field at the moment, and we generally treat our employees like crap. But I fail to see why we should be blaming industry. If only twenty percent of the grads are women, isn't that either a societal problem or a problem with the education system?
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Oh... er...sorry... is that *not* what we're talking about here?
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We have found that having those 57% there that are female has been fairly effective at getting those 43% that are male to want to come and to stay around!
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I'd say 45% would be perfect for the best diversity... 45% men, 45% women, 10% other where other constitutes cross-gender, no-gender, homosexual, self-sexual, bestial, and alien sexuality categories.
But then again, I'm not exactly what you'd call a 'proponent' of diversity... at least not for diversity's sake.
Er, wasn't Sims Online a flop? It's probably not the best example to back up the author's point.