The Time for Women in Games

VeeCee writes "Next Generation has an interesting article on why few women are game developers, why it should change, and how." From the article: "Fulton then cited workforce statistics, showing that in 1950, 30 percent of women worked, compared with 70 percent six years ago. 'We're rapidly becoming equal players in the larger workforce. More women are playing games.' Citing a study that showed women outnumbered men as players in the 24 to 35 year-old demographic, Fulton granted that casual games were a factor. 'However I think there's an appetite there. As we get online, as the games start getting more interactive, more social, women are getting more and more interested in what it means to play games.'"

Comments

Perception

[foundme]

I think in more developed countries, game-playing women are perceived as nerds, hence reducing their chances of finding mates.

In less developed countries, game-playing women are perceived as lazy, hence reducing their chances of finding mates.

Honestly, I'm surprised Ms Fulton titled her keynote "The Best Defense... Why Gender Doesn't Matter (As Much As You Might Think)". If gender really doesn't matter, then why would the general public care of 10% or 99% of the game developers are female?

Casual means casual

[Lewisham]

That statistic is BS. Sure, I watch girls play games all the time. They play Sudoku, Solitare, FreeCell. They like puzzle games, and that's cool. But it's almost always going to be on a casual basis.

Being casual does not make you that bothered. I ride bicycles, but I don't want to be a bicycle engineer. I would even say I love cars, but I don't care about their engines past how loud they are and how fast they can go. That's a casual relationship too.

Why would girls who play Sudoku care in any way shape or form about programming Sudoku games?

We can run around these circles all day about why girls play games or why they don't, why they program or why they don't, but the end result is the same. Unless someone can fundamentally change the nature of programming, or indeed, development, they aren't going to do it.

I have stopped caring about how many girls play games or how many girls develop games. It's not a big deal.

Business Situation

[McD!ck]

I work for a rather large software company, and I am one of the many engineers. In the 6 years I have worked here I have worked with a total of 3 women. Most of them were VERY competent programmers. In contrast I cannot count how many men I have worked with, sure enough the number would be in the hundreds.

Back in college (6 years ago), we had similar ratios in all the CS classes, and even in the upper division physics classes. However, my upper division social classes were DOMINATED by women.

I don't want to sound sexist or mysognistic, but I don't think we need more women in engineering any more than we need more male social workers. I think we need more people doing exactly what they want to do; if that fits a pattern, so be it; just as long as we don't restrict people from being in any profession.

McD

Re:Girls aren't interested in programming

[Hannah E. Davis]

I'm the only female programmer (technically just a co-op, but I'm on a work term as a programmer) at a small game company, but we're still just a startup, and quite honestly, I generally don't even notice that I'm in the minority unless somebody points it out.

I obviously can't speak for other girls, but I'm in this field because I like it. I get to dress casually (long skirts, tall socks, and comfy shoes!), play with code, and game or read Slashdot during breaks. I won't claim to be a particularly good coder -- hey, I'm still a student here -- but I've never found myself thinking that having a little something extra between my legs would make my job faster or easier.

It does, however, irk me when people (not you specifically, but far too many others) repeatedly bemoan or otherwise find occasion to rant about how few women there are in IT. If more women want to get into the field, they're welcome, but going on and on about how terrible it is for us poor little girls who actually have to *gasp* work with or even *double gasp* talk to male colleagues is just going to scare people of both genders away. Why not just shut up about it? Why not just let people choose what they want to do and leave them to it? A few more pairs of breasts around the office may be a welcome sight to the average guy, but if the girls don't want to be there, maybe they shouldn't be.

The problem lies elsewhere

[hanako]

The mainstream games industry sucks. What sane person would want to be trapped in there?

So girls aren't keen to join? That's probably because they have too much SENSE to join the world of perpetual crunch time and all the other misery we always hear about. :)

Girls who love mainstream games are perfectly capable of getting in there themselves. There's no point in trying to force others into it. I'm a female game designer and programmer and I would be thoroughly MISERABLE if you tried to hire me to work on your FPS.

The problem comes earlier, really. The problem, as I see it, lies in schools and preconceptions. I've been in plenty of places with girl gamers who think games are cool - but have been conditioned to believe that programming is really hard and impossible to understand and they couldn't possibly do it, so they will never try. Even though there are tons of tools out there to make programming easier and help newbies make at least small, crap games with very little experience necessary. The girls are too convinced that programming is beyond them to even LOOK for tools. So they just sit around and talk about games that "it would be cool if someone made" rather than doing anything about it themselves.

Do any high schools bother teaching simple interactive creation tools like Flash? Show more little girls that they can MAKE something cool if they just TRY and a couple more of them might come and join me. :)