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This is a fairly interesting view towards women in gaming.  I myself have been in the industry for the past 2+ years.

To be frank, this is a subject I’ve typically refrained from addressing or inserting my opinion on because I’ve seen the splitting of women’s opinions on the matter and it’s not very pretty.  There are women who will try to address the subject so aggressively, they typically take a very ‘girl power’ stance that seems to exclude males even in the equation (defeating the purpose altogether).  Then there are the women who don’t approach it altogether, but still are unhappy with the results they see.  I can be categorized as one of these women primarily.  Truth be told, any stance regarding women in gaming is a difficult choice to make.  And due to it being so segregated in views women have on the situation for our industry it’s a hurdle for bringing about any kind of change.

I’m one of those ‘exceptions’ referred in the article of women who love the big dumb guy appeal games of Uncharted 2, Gears of War, Halo, and so-on.  I grew up in a male-dominant household.  I went to college primarily for game design and sat in rooms with an 8:1 Male to Female ratio.  I knew I wanted to be in video games since high school.  The difference between Rachel and I is really what happened during our paths.  My Dad encouraged me to do whatever I wanted and my relationship with my brother was really strong due to our shared love of video games.   So when it came to making that decision to move forward in Games, despite being told “you should focus on your music or take up law,” I kept going in the direction towards the game industry. 

I’ve always had a very lackluster attitude towards being a female in the games industry.  I take offense to being told I should utilize my gender to make myself known in industry and only ever want to be acknowledged for the job I’ve done, not because I have the second X chromosome.  Because of this, I’ve never really been treated like a special case.  No one comments on my being a female and most certainly treats me like one of the guys.  To me, it’s the best way to be in the industry.  Women are exceptional, but for different reasons than why men are.  Because of that, there’s something we can all bring to the table in development, but it shouldn’t be treated that there’s a deficiency because of it.

This leads to a point Rachel made that should really be one of our focal points if getting women into development is a large concern and that is appealing to them at a younger age.  As I understand it (blurry fact coming-in), children between ages 8-10 primarily make their decision of whether they will take a technological path in life or not.  And if we don’t reach them then it becomes increasingly harder to do so.  Also, going back to the why I became an ‘exception,’ the idea behind the games industry being a poorer career choice compared to other industries also is something we need to overcome as a whole.  Because as much as someone wants to be in the industry (male or female) – they very well could be deterred by parents, teachers, and other external views.

Does this mean that we should gear all children’s games to a specific goal to reach women?  No.  It does mean if a goal of ours is bringing in more women developers then we need to determine what’s working currently and how to capitalize on it.  Truth be told, I’ve never seen an article that really addresses today’s women developers from development to community to administration and makes the ties of what really brought them in.  If we haven’t started there, maybe we should.

On the flip-side, if there is a deficiency in our industry of the female touch and how it could change gaming, I don’t particularly see what those changes could be (at least not yet).  Yes, maybe the visual aesthetics of women not being so busty might be a focal point, but is that going to change gameplay?  I personally love the character development of Chloe Frazer and Elena Fisher in Uncharted/Uncharted 2.  Their busts didn’t reach a Double-D and they both seemingly had minds of their own which played really well into their interactions with other characters in-game.  To me, that’s progress.  But if there were more women in development today, what are we supposedly adding to the table?  I’m totally all for having women in game development, don’t get me wrong.  I just want to make sure we’re doing it because we honestly believe there’s a reason for it.  Otherwise bringing women into development just to say it’s a gender-neutral industry is a bad reason, in my own opinion.

@C-urtn_y – To be honest, development tools for games today isn’t just an issue for bringing people in but has been a subject at which is a deterrent for development as a whole.  Because engines are all separate and under separate licenses, the toolsets being utilized are all built in-house or licensed out.  My former Creative Director gave a great presentation on how this is one of our largest issues in development today and help attribute to why the industry has to ramp up employees and creates a large development curve from pre-prod to prod.  But that’s probably another long winded response from me for another day."