Editor's note: Generally speaking, white men make video games. Why is this? Rachel wants to know, and she has a few theories based on personal experience -- her teachers dissuaded her from pursuing studies in computer science at a young age. I agree with her that we'd all benefit from increased diversity in the industry, and her interviewees offer insight about how to accomplish that goal. -Rob
I received a sharp wake-up call this month from Develop, a trade magazine who reported the cancellation of the annual Women in Games conference in Bradford, U.K. Why was the gathering called off? Too few delegates signed up to participate. This year would have been its seventh, and now it's dead.
Oops.
Emblazoned on the conference organizer's website were the words: "The Times recently published a poll naming the '10 Brits who changed video games forever.' All ten were men. Join WFTV for a panel discussion about why the gaming industry has been dominated by men, and what opportunities are available for women."
Does this mean that encouraging more women to work in game development is a lost cause? Is it a signal that the industry doesn't really care if there's a disproportionate number of women to men in the industry? Do we even need to encourage women if this is true? Aren't new games coming along just fine with the few women involved now?
Whatever you think, the numbers suggest that if we do want a female touch on the games we consume, we need to do something about it.
Only 11 percent of industry professionals in the U.K. are female, and a large proportion of them are involved with quality assurance, administration, public relations, localization, and management. Female artists and designers are uncommon; even rarer are female programmers.
I’m female, and I don’t work in games. Is it because I’m not interested? No. I was always very curious, ever since my whole block would gather after school to play Streets of Rage together -- girls and boys alike.
I often dreamt of making computer games, but I never thought it was possible. A programmer seemed along the same lines as a chocolate taster. "Surely, you can’t make a living out of something so cool," I thought.
Despite my hesitation, I thought I’d take computer science at school. Shortly afterwards, my teachers called me for a meeting in which I was actively dissuaded from the subject. “Computer Science is more of a filler for people that can’t do much else. A lot of boys in the class see it as an opportunity to mess about on the Internet,” they said. “You’re more than capable of learning two languages. Computer science would be a waste."
This was my first and only experience of trying to break into the game development industry, and it was enough of a hurdle to knock me over. It didn't help that I didn't have a spine about it, but I'm not bitter.
They had the same meeting with my best friend at the time, Susie Rowland, who I grew up with talking about our favorite pastime. She had the sense and the guts to argue her case.
She took that computer science class, continued those studies in college, and battled through university lectures as one of a few girls in a class of hundreds. She is now a games programmer, and she uses what she learned at school every day.
The only French phrase I remember now, despite getting a reasonable grade, is "omelette du fromage," and that's only because a particularly memorable episode of Dexter's Lab featured the passage.
Six years later, I spoke to Susie, now a programmer for Iron Will Studios, to ask about her experiences as a woman in the games industry.
