More and more women are playing games than ever before, but is this reflected by the amount of women making games? Dunn, a former games journalist and TV presenter turned producer, gave us her thoughts on the matter ahead of her participation in the Women in Games panel discussion being held in London on Monday evening as part of the Birds Eye View Film Festival.
“Every time I say to women, ‘oh I work in the games industry’, they’re always astounded because it’s just not a career path that they’ve ever thought about,” she says. “So for me [tonight] is very much about getting more women interested in games, letting more women know about games and what it’s like to actually work in the industry as a woman.
moscallout”I think that it’s crazy that we don’t have more women making games.”/moscallout“More women are playing games, and we’ve got a whole generation of kids who were brought up with games and that’s sort of non-gender specific. Personally I don’t think you have to be a woman to make great games for women, but I think that sometimes women might bring a different sensibility to the table which will enhance or make games more appealing to women. I think we’re making lots of games that women are enjoying playing and it’s crazy that we don’t have more women making the games.”
Dunn believes an awareness issue is at the heart of the reason there are still so relatively few female game makers “I do think that there’s a kind of misconception about what the games industry is about and that it is for males by males. I don’t think that that’s the case and I think the more women we can get involved in the games industry the better because I think women have got a lot to contribute.”
Late last year Mathew Jeffrey, EA’s head of Global Brand Talent, told Next-Gen that a key thrust for the publisher was to attract a more diverse workforce. “I think there are three components to that,” he said. “Women, ethnic minorities and LGB [lesbian, gay and bisexual] initiatives.” So is the publisher delivering on its word?
“I’ve been in development for three years and I haven’t significantly noticed the numbers changing, not specifically at EA, but I think EA is quite welcoming to women and I would definitely hope that it’s changing,” says Dunn. “While I haven’t necessarily noticed the number of women changing, certainly the jobs I’ve noticed women doing have shifted around slightly. I see more women programmers now and there are a couple of women artists and producers, although there are not many designers. So it’s less dev management and more dev development that I’ve noticed.”
EA isn’t the only publisher to have failed to fully address the gender imbalance in the industry but it does appear to be going in the right direction. Women currently run two of the four labels the company split into last year, with Nancy Smith heading up The Sims label and Kathy Vrabeck leading the Casual Entertainment unit. The work of Lucy Bradshaw, currently production head on the hotly anticipated Spore, who has helped to drive The Sims to become PC gaming’s biggest franchise, largely off of the back of its popularity with females, should also be noted.
“Like in any other creative media the more diversity you can attract or the more you personally go out and do different things and see other stuff the more you’re going to bring back to your job,” says Dunn. “I think if games were only ever made by one type of person you’d get really boring games. You need to bring in some different cultures, different people, different sexes and different interests, otherwise you’re just going to be churning out the same stuff again and again. We want some originality which definitely means mixing it up a bit.”
Dunn doesn’t believe that games industry workers are being hired on a gender basis. If true, this simply means there aren’t enough women applying for jobs in the business. For those thinking about embarking on a career in the industry experience isn’t essential, although a love of games is obviously an advantage. Arguably graduate gaming degrees, which Jeffrey says “are very much becoming like a fashion accessory”, aren’t the best route into the business. More general skills are often looked upon favorably.
“I think that women don’t think about their transferable skills and how those transferable skills could be applied in the games industry, for example in project management, whether it’s creative thinking or whether it’s producing," says Dunn. "There are so many different skills and so many different kinds of roles in the industry that women should think about where they might fit in.”
The “misconception” that the industry is made by males for males is without doubt hurting the business financially. Simply put, incorporating stronger female viewpoints into games could well have the knock-on effect of further broadening the game playing market. The likes of The Sims and a variety of Nintendo products, not to mention a host of casual titles on PC, Xbox Live and PSN, are undoubtedly hitting a note with the non-core market, but there are still so many more potential gamers out there, and while they’re not being reeled in the industry’s missing out on a sizeable amount of revenue.
Birds Eye View’s Women in Games panel discussion, taking place at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, will feature EA’s Emily Newton-Dunn, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Katie Ellwood, narrative producer and writer for the Getaway franchise, and Emma Westecott and Helen Kennedy, two of the driving forces behind the Women in Games conference.