Roundtable by Heather Kelly

(Note: I maintained anonymity by only indicating the gender of who said what. This is not an exact transcript. Yes, this is very similar to the "Attracting Women to Game Development" roundtable.)

Heather: The 5 days of GDC provide a lot of exposure to women in game development. But what about the other 360 days in the year? In a recent list of the top 100 developers, only 1 of them was female.

Male: When I came in, the group of you were talking about the whole pregnancy situation. My boss, a woman, is trying to get pregnant. So we're thinking how we can work around that. No question about her taking time off. The core of our leadership group is pretty progressive. Another place she considered working had been unopen to the idea of her leaving to have a baby. I try to go out of my way to find women game designers. I have to fight the "lowering our standards" battle. I started going to universities more. I've talked to tons of students, to hire 3 of them. We interviewed the valedictorian, who was very interested in working with us. That is, until she heard we were working on an M-rated game. She had made a vow never to work on an M-rated game.

Female: I think going to universities and speaking to the women there is great, but it needs to happen a little sooner. Women in technology need to be more visible, to show that women can be successful in these fields. can be a woman and enjoy mathematics. The younger you get, your classmates are really tough on you and you want to fit in. It's getting better, younger girls are using computers a lot more, but it's slower than I had hoped for.

Female: The ratio of men to women at my school was 9-to-1. This is not much different from the game industry. Everyone I knew strived to be different. Trying to be different, not caring to fit in. You have to stand out to be noticed. Going into the game industry worked into that. I liked being different. In fact, (said with mild sarcasm) I got jealous when they hired another girl. And now they have 10.

Female: I find it really strange that on the Women in Games mailing list, there are constant arguments about marketing vs society as the definers of gender roles.

Female: My company is thinking of having focus test every week. We're going to start bringing in people from the universities and high schools to test our games. We want to ask girls, "What could we do to make them enjoy it more?" Some games have nailed it. But more girls have to be asked, "What do you want to play."

Female: We do that all the time. But focus groups don't speak to the question. How can we encourage young women to be women developers? I feel that's very different from broadening the market.

Female: I played games and wanted to fix them in junior high.

Female: There is a connection there. In a session yesterday, one reason that people come into the industry is that they love to play games. So if women don't play games, they will be underrepresented in the developer ranks.

Male: Speaking to more visibility of women game developers, I would love to see that. One avenue is more women writing about games. I would love to see women getting jobs at the gamer magazines. If there were more women writing about games, it could break the cycle.

Female: I cant believe that out of 100 "top game developers" only one of them is female. I hear a lot of frustration from the roundtables at GDC. I would love to come up with an actionable item that we could take within the IGDA SIG. Maybe we could do something with Game Developer magazine, maybe articles about women gamers in the industry. By next GDC let's have a top 10--screw the top 100 list--a list of the top 10 women artists, writers, producers, developers.

Female: Game Developer magazine doesn't have much reach outside the industry.

Heather: Internally to the industry, though, we have to remind companies that they can hire women.

Male: I don't know what teenage girls read, but if you want to get girls to consider the choice, we need to get into more mainstream teen publications.

Female: I tried that. I had a team of 30% women. I had never done PR for myself and thought we had a good story to tell. So I personally spent all this energy going to girl/women mags, and no interest.

Female: You really need to generate the story 6 months before it needs to show up. By the time those stories went out it would've been an old story. The mainstream press requires professional PR and a big lead time. PR is all about connections.

Male: Is it possible to have their reporters to come to GDC?

Heather: Teen People covers games and a couple issues ago had a video game feature. Including a girl at DigiPen and another girl game reviewer.

Male: I'm the point person at my company for "job shadowing". Job shadowing is having high schoolers follow around a professional while they work, to see the job firsthand. It's almost entirely boys who want to follow video game developers around. I specify that the schools should send women. "Please send women to follow me around." (lots of laughter) I don't think there's anything about games that deters women. The idea of being a game developer just doesn't come up.

Female: I think job shadowing is a great idea. We've had some examples in our company, but nothing organized. People at the company could speak at schools. How do the schools know to send people at all? How do we do this on a more global scale? An organization of career counselors?

Female: Grass roots might be a better level to start at.

Male: The ratio at a nearby college is 4-to-6, men to women. We've been able to get some good modelers, but we're in a remote location. A girl I'm talking to know isn't sure she wants to get into game industry at all. She wants to look at the possibilities that don't require moving to California. How do we get people out to our area to talk to?

Male: When I was coming to the conference, I told friends I was going to GDC. None of my female friends knew what GDC was. They didn't even think about games as a career choice.

Male: That awareness piece is so powerful. The most interesting thing is that it never occurred to me and my friends that we could be game developers. We stumbled into our industry jobs. Only an accident.

Female: This next generation will be very aware of games.

Female: I think it's that way with most stuff, because we are really removed from the source of production. We don't think that people actually make the bread we eat.

Female: My boss, a music educator, is now a music director. He stumbled into the job. Now people get degrees from programs at all these schools.

Male: We're much more media savvy than the general populace. I was talking to a woman about GDC and she knew all about. She was not even from the gamer culture.

Female: As one of only 2 women in the last talk, I've always felt out of the design loop. There seems to be a culture that is less accessible to women. How do we turn that around?

Male: I'm getting dangerously close to gender generalization, but maybe there is an inherent bias on working on a game system, like a bias toward social networking.

Female: We need to create the communication space woman will feel comfortable in.

Male: We have one female developer, and we're really excited. We had a big discussion, though, about all sorts of terrible biases. I see a lot of those in management. (Blah blah blah.) There is a conspiratorial element at all-men roundtables and events. People want to engage in slightly illicit behaviors to reduce the formality of the occasion. Things that sort of exclude women.

Female: I had to go to a good-bye party at a strip club for a co-worker.

Male: Do you think that's part of the problem? Or the problem caused the current situation?

Female: I've witnessed the change occur as more females have been represented on teams. I've seen it at my company. I was the only woman in those meetings. They were not offensive, just male. As more and more women came in, it changed because the communication style changed.

Male: I find either extreme of communication style uncomfortable.

(And, after that, the roundtable fell apart into the well worn "horror stories" of women in game development.)

-David