Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games Entertainment

Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers? 93

Posted by simoniker from the mentioned-previously dept.
Thanks to MSNBC for its fresh look at the problems of integrating the needs and tastes of the female into the male-dominated videogame industry. It's suggested by Microsoft's Laura Fryer: "Half of the population isn't having input into what's being created... And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games." Sheri Graner Ray of Sony also points out: "The purpose of recruiting women is not so they can make games about pink fluffy kitties... You can't say that women like this or Japanese gamers want this." Thus, it's argued: "The solution to this dearth of female fandom... lies in recruiting more women coders, artists and level designers, the type of positions that can shape a title's story, look and gameplay."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers? More

Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers?

Comments Filter:
  • Heh, as interesting as this is to me, and really - it is - shouldn't the idea be - make better games, get more male and female gamers? I mean, EVERYONE likes to have fun, from the poor kid down the street with one of those second edition Nintendos to the upper class catholic schoolgirl only child who got her choice of two cars when she turned 16. Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'

    Doesn't seem to make sense to me. But what do I know, I have a penis.
    • Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'
      But sex is fun!

    • Re:How about, make games that are fun.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by incubusnb ( 621572 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:51AM (#9481923) Homepage Journal
      "Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?"

      unless the Sex your trying to attract isn't having any fun with the current selection of games (with the exception of the few Women gamers out there)

      imagine a world where Hollywood concentrated on providing entertainment to just the Female audience and told guys to "have fun" watching Movies written for Women

    • Re:How about, make games that are fun.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dreamsylvania ( 789999 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @02:47AM (#9482137) Homepage
      You're right, the solution to attracting female gamers is to make games that are fun...to them. Everyone likes to have fun, but they don't all have fun in the same ways. I've been a female gamer since 1988 (back in first grade or so), and I haven't had much shortage of games to play (although there was a time when the RPG scene dried up on the N64 and I'd yet to get a Playstation). I mostly play RPGs (console and PC), point-and-click adventures, innovative games, and pretty much everything developed by Nintendo. Male gamers don't usually like cartoony graphics -- I LOVE cartoony graphics. I also avoid twitch games like the plague - you won't find sports games, shooters, fighting or racing games in my games library, but if they have really story and/or gameplay (like Max Payne 2 or Vice City), I'd usually give it a whirl (I'm a sucker for a good story).

      Interestingly, because "guy" genres on the PC are so prevalent now, I've lost the urge to upgrade my PC and am now almost entirely a console gamer (minus the odd adventure game). I'm even considering a switch to Mac now that I'm not so dependent on Windows for gaming.

      I'm obviously not saying that every girl gamer is like me, but I think you'll find a lot of similarities among us. When you have mostly guys developing a game, the game will inevitably have a mostly male point of view (unless the game is specifically geared toward girls). It's just human nature. That is why I think it'll be good for studios trying to attract female gamers to hire female developers (FPS developers needn't bother). However, that would also be tough because since there are fewer girl gamers, there are fewer girls who want to become game developers. I've taken a few game design courses during my stint at USC, but the guys in the classes are generally more into gaming than the girls.

      But there are still good female developers who are doing their fair bit out there. Check out Jane Jensen's (creator of the Gabriel Knight series) newest venture called Booby Trap [adventuregamers.com]. It's a point-and-click mystery adventure that's being sneaked into the casual puzzle-gaming scene.

    • > Heh, as interesting as this is to me, and really - it is - shouldn't the idea be - make better games, get more male and female gamers?

      Exactly. The problem here is that games are produced by young men, for young men. Women in those games are portrayed as either sex objects or helpless victims. And yes, there are exceptions, some brilliant, but that's what they are: exceptions.

      And it's pretty arrogant to think that men alone can produce games that are universally "fun". As long as the games industry i
      • I'm not in the game industry, but I do test software. It's easy to say that developers need to hire more women, but where are they? In all of my math/engineering classes, the male:female ratio was very high. Most women aren't interested highly technical fields of study. In a field dominated by men, attractive talented female employees has follow educational institutions attractive more female engineers and scientists.
        • Generally, when girls get into high school, they just aren't encouraged to push themselves in math and science, as those are "male" disciplines they aren't expected to like or even be very good at. So then, even if they get a shine to start programming in college, they usually lack the foundation necessary to take an engineering curriculum and succeed. This is something that a lot of studies in the field of education have noted, and that current educators are supposed to try and change. Unfortunately, educ
          • Actually, this seems to be more of a "western" thing(well, Japan too). For instance, in China, while there are more males studying things like math, engineering etc, IIRC 40% or so of those studying in those fields are women. Something to think about.
      • I think you've missed the point, but indirectly hit it, as well.

        There are games that show women as sex objects like Vice City and Donkey Kong (for lack of a better example), but there are also lots of strong female character games, as well, like Beyond Good and Evil. What differentiates the two is that many of the women in the male character games are sex objects or victims, which is not the case for the female character leads, in which men are, at worst, equals. If anything, a game with a female PC and
    • Why lose sight of the 'fun' and instead go for attracting a certain 'sex?'

      That's what we female gamers have been wondering for the past few years as games have become less and less fun, and more and more about attracting stereotypical 15-year-old boys. (a lot of whom don't like them either)

      When game companies realize that eye candy might tempt me to buy one game from them, but only solid gameplay will get me to buy another one, maybe we'll get fewer sucky (but gorgeous) games.
  • It'll just attract more male gamers.

    I guess I'm just pessimistic about the prospects of meeting women in the gaming world. I know just as many men who pretend to be women gamers as I do actual women gamers (as far as I can tell).

    I suspect that most of the women gamers out there pretend to be guys, to avoid all the lameness that choosing a female nickname attracts.
    • maybe i'm one of the few and proud, but i actually know quite a few Female gamers, i find that they're usually the most competative, and the really good ones are hard to beat, my theory on this is that they figure they have to work twice as hard to make themself a name in a dominately male industry
    • The point here is to make games, and the games industry, appeal to more than 50% of the population - not to give male geeks a higher chance of getting a date.

      Have you tried just going out and meeting people?

  • Women developers are not the only answer... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jeranon ( 184097 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:19AM (#9481813)
    "recruiting more women coders, artists and level designers"
    I don't know about this. It might help, it might not. I find women all have different tastes. Some like the Final Fantasy games with its high character driven drama (with fighting), others like puzzle games (fast to start, fast to stop), while others like something cute and fun (Nintendo's various "kiddie" titles). This looks like it's targetting the FPS or the 3rd person action/adventure which is not where they usually are found (not that I'm saying women don't play such).

    I'd say in general, if you're a woman game developer, you probably have similar tastes to other women game developers rather than all women.

    On the other hand, focusing on women (maybe near naked) with oversized parts of the anatomy does turn women off. Developers are supposed to concentrate on the character of the female avatar (strength of will, determination, I am woman hear me raaawwrrr), but instead choose to appeal to the traditional male demographic because they're the only consistent game buyers.

    Lastly, this topic was talked about at GDC2004. They didn't seem to get anywhere though. [insertcredit.com]

    (Off topic... I'd tried to read the article at msnbc but it looks like they stop /. referers?!)

  • One Problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @01:33AM (#9481869) Homepage
    It's a good idea, and not only because the games are likely to be better, the work-environment is typically better in a more healthily mixed environment too.

    But one serious problem is that to be able to hire female game-designers, there needs to actually be some of those available. Before women can start taking a big role in design, artwork, story and coding for games, women need to start getting an education and experiences that makes them qualified for those kinds of jobs.

    Sure, there are some exceptions, but not very many. I've *been* on the employer side of the table, trying to hire more mixed. We put in ads explicitly requesting women and minorities to apply. Inspite of this less than 10% of the applications we got where from women, and to add insult to injury, the average qualification of those few women who *did* apply was abysmal. Not "sligthly lower than average of the males", but more like the best qualified of the females would still be in the last quartile of the men. Hiring unqualified workers won't help produce quality anything.

    • I agree with you, In my country there are 3 women for every man enrolled in universities, but in computer courses they are less then 10%, in the other and there are less than 10% men in language courses. So it seems that we have different interests, you a can easily find a young girl reading a book and young boy playing a game, the opposite is not common .
  • I don't like contact sports, but I don't see the people that run football thinking of recruiting managers that don't like it in order to attract me.

  • Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MC Negro ( 780194 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @02:03AM (#9481969) Journal
    From the article --
    It's a point seconded by Sheri Graner Ray, a senior game designer for Sony Online Entertainment. The game industry, by virtue of its overwhelmingly male employee-base, is missing a big market, she said.
    Uhm, what? I don't really disagree with the assertion that female gamers are not something you see everyday, but I certainly don't think an entire gender of gamers are being ignored. Like another poster said, people create games that are fun, regardless of gender.

    This seems to be a bit of a hot-topic, with mainstream media skewing the facts on female gamers. GameInformer ran an interesting feature about female gamers and women in the development and production of games, the results were astoundingly positive. I can't be troubled to walk 7 feet to get an issue of GI so I can login to GI-Unlimited for some linkage, but it's there if someone wants to put up a linky.

    Additionally, Pew Internet and American Life Project ran a survey [pewinternet.org] that had some statistics to support the GI article, namely (straight from report) --

    Surprisingly, slightly more women than men reported playing computer and online games (approximately 60% women compared to 40% men) while about the same number of men and women reported playing video games.
    Microsoft (of all people) also featured an article [microsoft.com] about women in gaming, noting that games like EverQuest and Quake have a very large, vocal community [planetquake.com]. Add that to a Reuter's report [about.com] that the women 18+ now outnumber the target audience of 8 years ago, and the claim that an entire market is untapped is sounding more and more like propaganda. I mean, obviously game developers/publishers are doing something right.

    My point being this: While I believe that, collectively, female gamers are in the minority in the gaming world, I refuse to give into the whole "WE MUST HAVE WOMEN DEVELOPING GAMES OR ELSE WE WON'T TAP UNTO THIS GIGANTIC MARKET" bit. Hire whoever gets the job done (regardless of gender)and make games that are interesting and fun, and everyone will be happy. At least, statistically.
    • Actually I was at a conference back in April and one of the presentations discussed studies of the gender of gamers, and I think they refered to that Pew study specifically but i may be misremembering. Anyway they said that those studies tend to be a bit misleading because in general men and women tend to play different kinds of games, for different reasons and for different lengths of time. They said that women tend to play more card games and things like bejeweled online while men tend to play more of t
      • I'm an exception to this generalization, but perhaps I can shed some light on why what you have quoted might be true for many women.

        When I'm bored, I shop online, or possibly post on bulletin boards (like Slashdot!). I play games for fun. I've been known to play MMORPGS for 18 hours straight, though it is rare that I have that much time available for gaming. I like games that I can install and play-- Age of Mythology has afforded me many hours of enjoyment. For the record, I don't play "The Sims." I h
  • As a teenager I remember a few years back when everyone was ubcessed with The Sims-yes, even the girls, and the hot ones too. I can only recall of two fems I know that were into computer games. The games were The Sims, DiabloII, The Final Fantasy Series, Starcraft, Everquest. One thing I notice about all of these games that they have in common is that they have some kind of distict heroine that is user-selectable or within the game. However, this does not apply as much with (for example) the Tomb Raider ser
    • Sims is a super expandable doll house with moving dolls!

      Seriously tho, AFAIK the killer computer app for most females I know is chat/instant messaging. That's what they seem to really like.

      Guys? They seem to have a lot of fun playing "kill each other".
    • My flatmate used to swear by Lara Croft. It was a bit sad watching her play it really. I kept finding myself telling her that Lara was just a bunch of pixels and she really wasn't sexy. She managed to get all the way through the most recent game, just on the looks of Lara. Truly bad game. She also loved the Xena game, which I found slightly enjoyable due to the button mashing. But it's strange that I as a guy will tend to choose female characters in games... probably because I find they jump better... or

  • Recruit more female coders? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @02:24AM (#9482048) Homepage
    I've heard this "solution" bandied about often enough. But it's not as easy as it sounds, in a practical sense. Female programmers are unfortunately very few in number compared to the males in the field. From what I hear, there are a much larger number of females graduating into the field now than there were when I graduated only a few years ago and even when I was in school it was much better than it had been before then. Which is good, but it also means, that if the company does happen to come across a female programmer, she is more likely to be relatively inexperienced, and therefore unsuitable for a lead programmer position or anything else where she would get any creative or directional control.

    Also, female programmers are, in my purely anecdotal experience, less likely than males to get excited about the prospect of joining a game company, presumably because of the lack of good experiences they have had with games. For many of the gamer guys I know, on the other hand, working at a game company is something of a nirvana, and any job openings are applied to with the appropriate amount of religious fervor.

    The only solution I can see is to simply get more female programmers out there. There needs to be some way to attract women to the computer engineering disciplines. Eventually they'll filter down into the gaming companies, and from there into positions of creative control, and then we'll start to see the sort of games that attract girls.

    Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the female approach to games. Hell, I'd probably want to play it. I just think that it's not likely to happen in the near future. I think it's a bigger problem than just "the games aren't made by women". There is something on a very fundamental level of these technical fields that is keeping women out. It probably has something to do with the way women tend to use the computer as a communication and information tool, while men tend to use it as an engineering or entertainment tool.

    Anyway, good luck to all the female programmers out there. We need your skills in this industry. The more people that realize it, the better.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @03:38AM (#9482307)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • You know I think you could argue if there were more games for women more women would be interested in being developers. Not that there aren't any games for women just that it could be argued that an increase in either will correlate with an increase in the other. Of course women do make up the majority of games by about 51% (think bingo et al.) So mabye the question should be why aren't there more women game developers?

  • Wait a minute (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 21, 2004 @03:42AM (#9482323)
    AFAIK the only roles in game design that determine the aesthetics of the game are lead designer, art director etc. Coders, and subordinate designers/artists have little impact on the direction of the game. Moreover designers who are skilled at their jobs are gamers, and know the material first hand.
    Now, anybody see the problem? You want more female-friendly (not neccessarily feminine) gaming? You gotta have girl gamers who grow up to be GOOD game designers and find themselves in positions of authority. First we need more female gamers (already increasing as a previous poster mentioned) and then THEY have to go professional. Trying to simply "hire more women" won't work if, for instance, they're coders or subordinate to a male lead.
    Also, sexism and objectification in female roles aside, who says that the current crop of games (even FPS/3rd person action etc games) aren't going to appeal to women? Isn't this like assigning GI Joes to boys and Barbies to girls? We don't have to rigidly seperate male/female gamers.
    The truth is: Hardcore Gamer = Computer Geek, and us geeks USED to be predominantely male, but that's changing. As Computer Geek goes from 95% male to 50/50, we'll see more women gamers. And casual gamers are ALREADY 40-50% female (look at the Sims), so the "gaming is a boy's club" stereotype is already out of date.

    Just my $0.02

    RsG
    • >Trying to simply "hire more women" won't work if, for instance, they're coders or subordinate to a male lead.

      great point.

      You are a game executive?

      You want to develop more games for women by women?

      Follow these two pieces of advice:

      -- Hire a female HR director who will review your company practices and make them gender-neutral so that future female employees are not put off by the working conditions. (fire any guy mo makes a sly remark, he 's an enormous liability).

      -- Offer a very competitive packag

  • Games and gender (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I had a truly freaky experience a few weeks ago, regarding women and gaming. Neither of my parents are really "into" computers, although since I left home four years ago, they've always had a relatively recent PC around the house, for web-browsing, word processing etc. I normally get phone calls from my mother, whose technological incompetence is normally only matched by that of particularly luddite sea-urchins, about once a month, asking how to attach a document to an e-mail, or something of that ilk.

    Ther

  • A woman's place... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are only two moral categories in the world today: "good for business" and "subhuman." Men, right now, are bad for business. Men buy less, spend less, and are in control of less (privately held) money. Therefore, an industry which caters to men is neglecting its economic duty to the homeland. Or "immoral," "deviant," "child-endangering," or whatever--same ethic, different rhetoric.

    That this argument is always coded in moralistic terms--saying, essentially, that any activity which is mostly enjoyed by
  • more female developers is always a good thing.
    • I'd say the number of female developers has little to do with anything. Take Civilization. Or most anything put out by Sid Meier. That is the point: I think it takes a focal point like a Sid Meier with a great idea to get the job done, not a committee built on diversity. And the coders, they can do things like game physics or UI mechanics (as opposed to the design of the UI), but when it comes to the game those parts are mostly standard things across various games, and it doesn't matter whether the coder if
      • Huh? Of course you don't need women to the job or to do it well. Whether having women on the team gives you any benefit in terms of actual development is irrelevent. I mean seriously, it's not as if improved games even makes the top 10000 most interesting topics of the day list.

        I'm just saying more female coders in general is a good thing. Not because we need more women in the workforce, womens lib, or some special skill they have that men don't.

        But the real reason is because it doesn't hurt to have a n
  • Hasn't the (typically unsuccessful) goal of most males in the tech world been to try to attract females? The problem is that the females simply aren't responding!
  • I think it's great that this is getting press. It's not just a simple "shove girls in and girl games come out" issue.

    As several other posters mentioned there aren't many female programmers out there. And the few that are out there aren't interested in video games. In order to get women into these areas, at least in the US, would take an overhaul of the education system. Get the girls into Math. Get them into Science. Get them into technology. But do it at an early age and make sure they stay interested. If
    • Just to expand on the education point: there are a good number of women in science. However, as it now stands, most/many are not interested in computer engineering or number theory. Many of them are to be found in biology classes: there are more women applying to medical school now than there are men (or so I heard from someone applying to med schools).

      I agree on marketing video games towards women.

      However, I can think of one feature that would make it a lot easier for more women, and more working peopl

  • Video Games and Women (Score:4, Funny)

    by chris_mahan ( 256577 ) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @11:10AM (#9484472) Homepage
    Women play a different kind of video game.

    It involves real life clothing, jewelery, shoes, accessories, makeup, perfume, and getting guys to pay for it all and then some.

    They see the visa/mastercard flash, quickly sign the slip with practiced abandon, and off they go to the next shop.

    Instead of wasting all their gp on some armor that's sure to rust and a dagger of poison resistance, they get the +4 white skirt of fatal attraction with the greaves of smooth-skin, which does massive area damage and renders all mages speechless.

    Of course, they have an arsenal of spells, from the "Let's Be Friends" of Doom to the "I like your friend too" of monster confusion.

    Surprisingly, their bag of holding actually is able to contain all magic artifacts, and is fully skinnable with the latest Gucci or Louis Vuitton wallpapers.

    It should also be noted that while most of them adopt a winner takes all style of play, they will cooperate as a team when faced with a room-full of drunk monsters. They will use the "Wall of Silence" for defense and stick together like a cluster of giant spiders to fend off the most gallant palladin or the most gruff dark elf.

    Oh, the payoff for paying the game well is not some cheesy animation with glowing credits scrolling up, but rather the latest Benz in the driveway of a million-dollar house with "Bob the level 60 Lawyer of Litigation" sufficiently charmed to fight all her battles, and an unlimited supply of lowfat Dannon yoghurts, to be enjoyed at all times of the day while deciding which restaurant to make a reservation at for the evening.

    No wonder they don't like our stinking video games.

  • womens place is in the kitchen, or serving beer, or cleaning bathroom, or making children. I dont want no women in my online games.

    On a serious note. I was running a big community forum for a TacticalOps game in Poland for over a year (Was here [pdi.net] before closing, the main site [gliwice.pl] is still up, but unmaintained). ~5000 registered users, ~250 active players. There were two womans among the players. I repeat, TWO. And one of them was kinda good at it, while the other one was 15 and desperatelly wanded to meet boys
    • There are a lot of people I've gamed with in the past decade who think I'm a man, although I've never claimed to be. I'm perfectly happy to let them continue thinking that. It's not a matter of avoiding sexual harassment -- although that exists -- it's simply that if they think I'm a guy, they take me seriously. I'm a gamer, someone like them, not "a girl" which is apparently some other species entirely.

      In one MMORPG, I have both male and female characters that are not publicly known as mine. People are,

      • I know of a number of other women who would die before they admitted to fellow players that they were IRL females.

        I know quite a few men payers who die laughing everyday pretending tha they are women. ;-)

        Too many of us have had too many years of being treated like a talking dog ("the wonder is that she plays games at all!")

        But you are in the way a talking dog. Not so long ago ppl were amazed that women could vote. Just from my experience average woman acts :
        "And I was like in this mall shopping
        And

        • While I'm waiting for you to get modded down as the troll (or neanderthal) you are, I'm bored enough to reply to entertain the lurkers.

          So, if that's what women gamers are "really" like, what am I? My MMORPG experience has been primarily Shadowbane and DAoC (RR5). I lived for PK. And no, not my own team. My favorite games of all time include StarCraft, Civilization, MOO2, WarCraft, and Age of Empires. (yes, I have a Napoleon complex) Lately, I've been playing Conqueror [conquerorgame.com] a lot. (free web wargame, check it o

          • While I'm waiting for you to get modded down as the troll (or neanderthal) you are, I'm bored enough to reply to entertain the lurkers.

            Those were my personal experiences with girls in a rather big game community that I had pleasure to gather arround my forum.

            So, if that's what women gamers are "really" like, what am I?

            Anomaly, that happends sometimes.

            My MMORPG experience has been primarily Shadowbane and DAoC (RR5).

            I could troll here that mmorpgs are for ppl with no lifes, but i will not :)

            I lived

            • Woman are good at Harvest Moon because evolution made them good at .. milking cows and taking care of the children. ;)

              This is why everyone I know who plays Harvest Moon is male, right? :)

              And you do understand that the reason there's not many women in those things you list (military, Olympics, etc) is that for a long time they weren't allowed? When I was in high school, just a few years ago, girls were not allowed to play football in gym class. The boys would play, and the girls would go to a separa

              • This is why everyone I know who plays Harvest Moon is male, right? :)

                Those are exactly the woman pretending to be a man you were speaking earlier of :D.

                Taking surveys of people you know never works. Based on the people I know (in forums and real life), all women play games. Unless you know millions of people, your experiences are just as useless as mine when talking about large numbers of people.

                Like I said, ~5000 users forum.

                • Those are exactly the woman pretending to be a man you were speaking earlier of :D.

                  Unrepentant Harlequin was speaking earlier. Hi, I'm Elley. Also, I was talking about men. Real life men. Not women. =)

                  ~5000 != several million. Even assuming that you know all of them enough to know for sure what gender they are, dispite Unrepentant Harlequin's suspision that there could be women who haven't brought up their gender for simplicity, you don't know all gamers. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if your

  • How about getting more men (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:52PM (#9485706) Journal
    As kindergarten teachers or nurses?

    Most aren't interested? Wow what a concept eh?

    Hey it's not like men wouldn't be useful in those fields. It's probably easier for male nurses to develop upper body strength - which helps when you need to move/shift bedridden incapacitated patients - to avoid bedsores, etc.

    So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?

    The barriers to _entry_ for programming/software development aren't high. PCs are cheap. Internet connections are cheap. Info about programming is paid for (internet). Write a game/program, stick it on the net and if people think it's good enough they may even pay you for it. Heck contribute to an opensource project while you're at it.

    There's nothing really stopping girls/women from taking up programming except themselves.

    If they are so easily discouraged (parents/peers/teachers) from programming, then it's VERY LIKELY that programming is NOT the field they should be in. Try something else, for everyone's sake. Please. Really. We need better programmers, not more.

    A common complaint is lack of _women_ role models. A good programmer is someone who writes great programs. If anyone is still thinking gender then they're not getting it.

    By all means give people opportunities, but if they aren't interested, there are millions of other things they can do. If they think they have better things to do, then for everybody's sake let them do it.
    • So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?

      Many universities actually give preference to male nursing students. I think it's a stupid idea (just like all race and gender discrimination in the university), but it's there.

      I generally agree with the rest of your post, though. Someone said that the reason why there are so few women programmers is because females aren't pushed to work hard in math and science. That's silly; no one is pushed to work hard in math and science during
    • So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?

      I doubt if most of us care, or have much of a stake in, nursing or kindergarten. (though some ACs may make me question that) However, most of us do play computer/video games, and we feel at least some interest in that industry. Put in terms of simple self-interest, a healthy, thriving game industry will be better able to produce more fun stuff for us to play with. Therefore, we have some stake in seeing it expand. Also, from the point o

  • Catch-22 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ElleyKitten ( 715519 )
    I think the whole women gamers-women designers is just a big catch-22. Women won't play games (as the theory goes) until women design games, and women won't design games until they play games enough to care.

    So obviously the solution is to break out of this catch-22. Since obviously women play games that aren't designed by women, game company just have to figure out what they like about the games. They don't have to hire women to develop if that's problematic, they just need to ask women what they like.
  • Funny how pieces like this never seem to consider the fact that most women don't buy and play games because they don't want to.

    I don't care what gender the creators of any piece of media are. What relevance does that have to anything? Are these strapping male developers solely engaged in making games that drive women away screaming? Of course not.

    Look at Nintendo, they'd be hard pressed to make their games any more inclusive. Perhaps more women buy their games than the industry average. I don't know.

    But
    • Setting is just wallpaper that gives the gameplay a recognisable grounding and context.

      I think that's a huge part of the problem, actually.

      Your typical teenage boy is more readily attracted by glitz than an older buyer. We older types have been burned a few times by the flashy car that was a total lemon, the fancy shoes that hurt our feet, and, yes, the glitzy game that stank on ice. So, the adolescent male market will buy a game if it has good "wallpaper" even if it turns out that the gameplay sucks
    • P.S.

      The objective is to provide everybody *who wants to play games* with something they want, not everybody period.

      Actually, the objective is to make everybody want to play games so they'll buy yours. It is to provide everybody, period, with games. Preferably multiple copies.
      • The objective is to profit. Trying to get everyone interested in playing video games is not profitable, since there is a large chunk of the population that is simply never going to be interested in video games. Whether or not the majority of that chunk is made up of women is an exercise left up to the reader.

        Rob
        • I disagree with the idea that "there is a large chunk of the population that is simply never going to be interested in video games." I think it's simply that they have not yet found the right game, probably because nobody has created that game yet. There are people who are not interested in movies, too, but they're a minority. Remember, this is a whole new market compared to other forms of entertainment. The game industry is still trying to decide what it wants to be when it grows up.
        • there is a large chunk of the population that is simply never going to be interested in video games.

          Movies and books didn't give up on people who didn't seem to like them. They just realized that people like different types of movies and books, so they made different types for different people.
  • People are complaining about game developers focusing on men, and yet a lot of games I've seen appeal at least as well to women (The Sims being the most obvious example, but there are plenty of others). The number of games now-a-days that portray women as helpless sex objects is really rather small, and a number of those also have strong female characters at the same time (GTA3 comes to mind). They're also balanced by the growing number of games with female leads.

    It would be nice to see female designers

  • ...games about pink fluffy kitties... You can't say that women like this or Japanese gamers want this

    What? Havent you heard of the 'Hello Kitty' brand?
  • I don't know about you. But I have met plenty of smart women who are more than capable of working in engineering. They always somehow end up stearing toward businesses, project management or HR.

    It's mind boggling seeing so many super qualified women just say yes at the first site of a business/HR position offer. Some even take pay cuts? There is no explanation for this.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close