
Underappreciated Female Video Game Pioneers - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/arts/video-games/those-underappreciated-female-video-game-pioneers.html
======
bentcorner
I'm thankful that women + video games is an issue that is continuing to get
talked about - with a young daughter I hope that introducing her to one of my
pastimes will be something that we can enjoy together. Games like Broken Age
and Animal Crossing seem to have done well on that front.

One small criticism for this article - personally, I feel that these kinds of
articles tend to conflate two issues: 1.) Women working in the video game
field (or STEM in general), and 2.) Video games intended for a female
audience.

Both are very important, but speaking about them together may give the
impression that forward progress on one is required for the other. There is
little reason that an industry largely populated by men cannot make content
that is suitable for women. Conversely, when we reach gender equality in the
gaming industry, we should not assume that gender-equal content will follow.

Generally, I'd love to see less of the "made for girls = everything pink"
approach. I guess it probably keeps the lights on, which is better than
nothing. The gaming industry's trajectory is promising though.

~~~
lobotryas
I'm curious: what, in your opinion is the definition and criteria of "gender
equality" in video game manufacturing?

~~~
bentcorner
This is a personal question, since my values are going to differ from yours
that will differ from the rest of the world.

I welcome games that treat gender as a non-issue. What I do mind are games
that treat gender as some sort of precondition on body image or societal
roles.

In this day and age there's enough choice and content out there that I can
manufacture a gender balance for my kids that I feel comfortable with.
Sometimes there are gotchas - games (or movies/TV) that seem ok but have small
portions I don't agree with, but these are bumps that I can smooth out myself.
It's just that sometimes I'd rather it not occur at all.

Again, I think this is deeply personal. I may think a certain game is
perfectly fine for my kids, and another parent may recoil in horror at the
suggestion (and vice versa).

At the end of the day, I enjoy playing video games, and if there are more
games that I think are appropriate for my kids, the easier it is for me to
enjoy my hobby with them.

~~~
pervycreeper
> I think this is deeply personal.

Then why attempt to impose your standards on others?

~~~
bentcorner
Just sharing my thoughts. That's like, my opinion, man.

------
pervycreeper
Unfortunately, and ironically, the author of this article is laboring under a
misconception as to why "video game critics" ought to feel embarrassed.

"Game journalists" are a notoriously corrupt and incestuous group who are
currently cynically propping up "gender diversity in games" as an issue to use
as a cudgel in order to generate more pageviews for their work and to further
their own careers. The recent Zoe Quinn debacle is a perfect illustration of
this dynamic.

There are a number of specific problems with this article, to name a few: an
undercurrent of hatred of masculinity and men, and a persistent association
between them and negative traits such as violence ("non-phallic FPS", wtf?),
mentioning his personal interest in the issue because he has a daughter as
though that would bolster his argument rather than undermine it, and some
gender revisionism with regard to the creator of M.U.L.E. (which one may
object to on purely philosophical grounds). To list them all, however would
involve more text than was present in TFA.

If anyone needs to "do better" regarding gender representation, then surely it
is not the people who make hiring decisions (who already add bias to favor
women over men), but the people who write about these issues in such lazy,
thought stifling, and intellectually dishonest ways.

~~~
untog
_surely it is not the people who make hiring decisions (who already add bias
to favor women over men)_

That's not true, though. As much as people like to shout about political
correctness gone mad, I'm yet to see any actual evidence of a bias towards
women in hiring.

But then, I am debating this with someone who has the username 'pervycreeper',
so I'm not entirely sure if I'm being trolled or not.

~~~
catinahat
Well, there is this:

> _The main challenge comes when we actually do get a female candidate. We
> don’t discard a single one on resume. We see all of them. We discard about
> 80% of guys on resume. But even so, we get to see 4 guys to 1 girl or so. In
> the interviews, we help the girls shine, because we actually want to hire
> them, but then, one of the other 4 guys shows just an amazing performance,
> for whatever reason, truly impressive, like he has done many more things
> than the girl (and than the other candidates), can show more amazing code,
> personal projects, etc. And we think: “If the girl was a guy, she would not
> be on the race with this guy, just like the other male candidates are
> totally discarded now”. Should we let this amazing coding guy go? It’s not
> easy to find amazing coders either, you know?_

source: [https://startupsanonymous.com/story/hiring-girls-
difficult-w...](https://startupsanonymous.com/story/hiring-girls-difficult-
work-space/)

And it makes sense that someone would vent such things anonymously or not at
all, considering the skewering they'd get from the media if they even
suggested anything of the sort publicly.

As someone who's experienced teaching programming classes for girls, I can
wholeheartedly say that trying to recruit candidates who are actually
interested in the area is quite difficult. The program I worked for eventually
had to move away from being a 'programming' course, to more of a 'digital
arts' course just so that we'd get enough applicants to justify continuing it.
And this is in the bay area, the tech/liberal capital of the country. So I can
totally see this happening in the workplace too.

------
xanderstrike
Something I always wonder when topics like this come up, maybe someone has
some industry data to illuminate me. According to the article, "22 percent of
the people who make video games are women." What I wonder is, for a given open
position at a video game company, what percentage of the people who apply are
women? My gut tells me that it's probably substantially less than 22%.

That's not to say that there isn't a problem or that women don't want to work
in video games, but I feel like the blame for there not being more women (or
more appreciation for women) in the games industry lays heavily on the
studios. I think seeing the ratios of applicants vs the ratios of hires would
be an interesting way to see how the industry actually feels about women.

~~~
jameshart
Even if your gut was a valid source of data, the proportion of applications is
a bad metric - you need the proportion of applications from strong candidates.
Women applying for jobs in a field where there is a perception of sexism might
be deterred from applying in the first place, especially if they feel they
don't have the skills to outshine the men who apply; men may be more likely to
apply even if their skills are only marginal for the role, because the
industry has given them a disproportionate confidence in their abilities. So
you might see a 16% female application rate, yet have women make up 30% of
competent candidates, but still wind up at 22% women hired, which would not be
the evidence of positive discrimination you suggest at all.

The way sexism in hiring decisions works is subtle. Development is a team
sport. When a candidate comes to you and tells you 'I worked on this highly
respected game,' you are impressed, but need to try to figure out what their
contribution was to the team. Did they solve the really hard shader
engineering challenges that gave that game its unique look while maintaining
60fps? Did they just do a bit of coding on the menu system? Did they do
nothing but make the coffee? So you ask, but _your prejudices color how you
hear the response_. If you tend to assume that girls just don't do quaternions
and stuff, you hear 'I worked on the water simulation' and if it's a guy you
assume they did a bunch of stuff with physics and navier stokes equations, but
if it's a woman you interpret it as 'I made the sparkly bits when things go
splash'. If you're gender-blind you allow the possibility that the person in
front of you might fall into either of those camps regardless of their gender.

And it goes beyond hiring, into work assignments. You've got two pieces of
work that need to be done: one is going to involve hard math, the other is
building tools to help the testers QA stuff. Unconsciously, you let your
prejudices about gender roles play in and assign the math work to a male coder
and the tool to a female coder. Subtly, you push the women to less prestigious
roles that limit their career options, while giving men opportunities to
advance theirs.

And then when your studio goes belly-up and those two coders are applying for
work elsewhere, which one has the more impressive resume and is able to get in
the door somewhere else?

------
byerley
"Surprisingly, there is no good resource, online or off, that compiles the
work that women have done to influence the history of video games. Uncovering
who did what and when can be a challenge in a secretive industry ruled by
marketing teams and nondisclosure agreements."

Check the credits? Hiding game developers has been a thing since the NES
revolution AFAIK. I don't know that anyone's made great strides towards
documenting the history of video games in general.

Still not really sure what to make of the "phallic first-person shooter"
comment.

~~~
usea
Credits don't list gender, and they contain a very limited amount of
information about a person's contribution to a project.

~~~
byerley
I suppose, but nothing's secretive, that's just the standard across all art
forms.

------
tomp
I don't like this article, but I won't say why because I don't want to start a
flame war.

~~~
mhurron
Then why post anything at all?

~~~
byerley
Because it's a poorly written article and the media on this issue is in a
really silly place right now, but no one sane wants to deal with the hysteria
currently associated with mentioning a burger chain so it's hard to construct
well-reasoned yet diplomatic criticism.

~~~
A_COMPUTER
I want to take a moment to talk about a woman in video games. She made a
really great game, well some people don't call them games, but it was a text
adventure game. A quite well made one. Many people didn't realize how
effectively you could leverage the medium to make such an emotionally
evocative piece of, dare I say it, art.

I am of course talking about Emily Short. In the year 2000 or thereabouts, she
made a short interactive fiction story called "Galatea." (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatea_%28video_game%29)
) I highly suggest trying it out.

I think it's sad how fourteen years later, similar to the devolution of FPS's
from Quake to Call of Duty, some new text adventures may have gained a much
wider audience and are praised to high heaven but are clearly inferior
artistically and in design.

~~~
makeset
What do you mean by "devolution from Quake to Call of Duty"? I am honestly
curious, as I haven't played either (motion sickness; no FPS for me).

~~~
Crito
I don't know what he means, but I can give my own perspective (primarily ex-
gamer, used to play a lot of Q3A, Doom, and similar):

FPS games used to have very simple orthogonal game mechanics. Large amounts of
complexity would arise from those small lists of simple game mechanics. A
'board game equivalent' to this concept might be Go (or if we are being less
flattering to the video game industry, Draughts/Checkers). This orthogonality
was best showcased in weapon design; you'd often have less than 10 guns, which
each behaved in completely different ways and were best used in completely
different situations.

    
    
      Q3A examples:
        gauntlet: the only melee weapon
        machine gun: hitscan, accurate, fast rate of fire, low damage.
                     typically available on spawn.
        shotgun: hitscan, inaccurate, slow rate of fire, large damage when close.
                 must be picked up.
        railgun: hitscan, accurate, slow rate of fire, devastating damage.
                 must be picked up.
        lightning gun: not-quite-hitscan beam, medium-short range, high damage.
                       must be picked up.
        etc...
    

Modern games, typically aiming for some perverse sense of "realism", typically
lack this sort of weapon orthogonality. You get typically get the basic
categories of "assault rifle", "sniper rifle", "handgun", "submachine gun",
and "something that shoots explosives", which is all fine and good, except
each of those categories has half a dozen or more variations that have very
boring differences. Like 6 pistols that only differ in clip size or damage
(with one or two clearly being the dominant weapons in all situations). For a
concrete example of a game that I think suffers from this: Watch_Dogs. 10
different handguns, but the only one that it ever makes sense to use is the
handgun that you start the game with _(accurate, silenced, and semi-automatic.
yeah there are the automatic handguns, but why would you use them when you
could just use one of the automatic rifles? The game gives you absolutely no
reason to care about the other handguns)_.

That's just weapons. I have observed similar trends across nearly all other
game mechanics in modern shooters. It is like game developers forgot how to
create complexity from a small list of simple mechanics and instead just pack
games full of shallow features.

When you play or watch a game, try the following: Imagine that all the models
and textures were swapped out with generic low-poly abstract placeholders. All
handguns are small thin blue boxes, rifles are all long thin teal boxes, etc.
Does the game still play well? If it is Quake or Doom, then the game plays
exactly the same as it did before. If it is a modern game, then chances are
several pointless redundancies become obvious and several previously "neat"
game mechanics become obviously shallow. They have several "different" game
mechanics that are different from each other only in the model, texture, or
animation used.

Mario-Party-esque _" Push X to perform [every damn action in the game]"_ stuff
is another biggie for me. Incredibly lazy stuff which apparently appeals to
modern gamers.

------
rlt3
Is this about appreciating female game pioneers or about bashing the fact that
games are a male dominated hobby?

"phallic first-person shooter."

~~~
cwal37
Way to take a quote out of context (literally cutting off part of a word).
Here's the surrounding sentence:

"Some of the most original games in recent years have been made by women. Kim
Swift was the lead designer for Portal, which one game critic called the first
nonphallic first-person shooter."

Oh look, the full quote is appreciating a female game pioneer, and your
mangled phrase was from a singular game critic. Also, it makes sense. Instead
of shooting bullets, you're shooting portals. Seems pretty non-phallic to me.

~~~
mpyne
> Instead of shooting bullets, you're shooting portals. Seems pretty non-
> phallic to me.

What's phallic about bullets?

Are women not allowed to be interested in small arms? The Soviet Union
deployed women as snipers to great effect in World War II, and the idea that
only men could be violent and warlike is itself gender-biased to those who
look at history.

~~~
cwal37
I can't tell if you're serious. Do you really not see the distinction between
bullets and portals in a phallic vs, non-phallic context? You are literally
shooting phallus-shaped objects with the intent to penetrate your target. On
the other hand, you are shooting oval openings into which things enter.

This isn't very complicated or contentious from any angle I can imagine.
Unless you're coming in with an agenda, and take offense to the idea that
certain types of games might be traditionally male-oriented.

~~~
Crito
> _" On the other hand, you are shooting weird milky looking things out of a
> phallic object, then thrusting your player into a rather vaginal opening."_

If bullets are "phallic" (despite rarely even having in-game models) then
portals are "vaginal" and the primary game mechanic is to have your player
"penetrate" them.

In reality, all of this is just pseudo-intellectual Freudian bullshit.

