But you still make it seem like it’s a bad thing that there are more men in the game industry, why is that? Women are not interested in games, that’s a fact, it’s not our fault… just like we don’t see many women doing construction work, would you balance that out too?
I’m not saying that I would balance it, society balances it self in time, it takes a lot of time until such a balance happen. Also stating that women are not interested in games is not what I believe, many just do not know what gaming is all about (again just my own opinion). More and more women are aware of gaming, even my mother is now and she was all against games about ten years ago. The more tolerance and education our society gets to more balanced the society will be on its own, every human being should be able to choose it’s own path without being questioned by others.
From what I have read in the thread I think that we all have the same base opinion, freedom for all :D.
My GF hates console games and can’t even play the original '85 super mario but she loves her iphone app games like candycrush and some weird cooking game i’ve seen her on from time to time. But then I’ve met other girls who are F*****G NUTS about video games. I think guys are more prone to video games for the same reason we like action movies and violence its our testosterone and that little bit of caveman still left over from the BC days, hunter gatherer and all that
Whoa… I didn’t expect such discussion on this.
Lucky You!
Numbers are funny indeed My YT channel is not that popular (>320 subscribers) so that definitely doesn’t prove anything.
That’s well said.
That would be difficult to answer to all your thoughts so let me just tell you what my GF thinks of this - she’s a senior .NET developer and works for a bank. Her situation can be translated into “our” world at some point.
Why there are more men than women in game-dev community?
Game-dev, Programming, IT, I know that lots of girls who say that it is boring, it’s not for me…but the problem is more complex and it does not touch only game dev industry in my opinion. If you want to become successful on what you’re doing you need to spend a lot time on that (and especially when you want to become a programmer, 3D artists etc). And because of that there is no much time left on other, “important” for woman things. Things that society expects from women - caring of yourself, your appearance, family. In a result you end up with greasy hair, no make-up and wearing black hoodie. That was me during my studies at Technical University. Such zombie girl is not ‘that’ attractive and has problems if she wants to find a partner of her dreams. I think, socially, men are more accepted here. It’s like… oh, he’s an IT guy, a programmer, he will have money, he’s cool.
There is also another important factor. What society tells you in the very beginning of you life. Look at the Barbie or Disney princesses. Can you imagine such princess uses a C++ code? She is suppose to look nice, take care of her family. We need a new Disney princess
And what about different threats in a male-dominated world?
I know stories where women were being intimidated, stalked. I don’t agree that only women problem. It can happen to everyone. That’s more general problem. I have never, ever been bullied, disrespected because I’m a woman. If there is a guy who says “a woman cannot be a good programmer”, he is explained he’s not right by my colleagues immediately. And that’s nice about men. You won’t find much jealousy or chaos as in female world. If you asked to choose where would I like to work? in a male or female dominated world… I’d say male.
Ask your girlfriends what do they think about this.
I get the same result on my youtube channel (the entire channel is just about game development)
Subscribers -> 5484
Views -> 733000
In my opinion the low amount of female game devs has something to do with the culture and education. Here in Austria the education is still like in the past. e.g Females have cooking lessons and males do some technical stuff. Females have drawing lessons and males do stuff at the PC… But luckily it’s slowly changing. Especially in technical universities the amount of females is pretty high. (but somehow I know very few female game devs -> even though I know many people from this community)
This thread makes me smile… typical underage male thinking.
All of you forget that girls/women’s have other things to do in life, like picking the right makeup, shopping the right shirt, do modeling or singing, and so on. Only we males, are the losers here, losing our lives creating virtual reality pixels, and totally forgotten that exist a beautiful real life. And we even ask why there are no women’s here? Why? LOL, women’s live real life, and we waist it trying to create virtual reality’s to live in.
There are some women’s in game dev, especially the art part. Breaking into male geeks world isn’t easy for other ***, so I admire them.
I’m a mod, not an employee. My views do not reflect that of Epic. Etc etc.
Firstly, we have a thread with no figures (just percentages, and that means nothing) with no context.
Secondly, the thread calls women “girls”. You’re not going to start a decent conversation if that is how you open it, with an insult. (I realise your first language may not be English, but take it from me, don’t call adult women “girls”).
Thirdly, we have the usual confusion between “sexual objectification” and “power fantasy” when looking at the protrayal of men and women in the media. (The He-Man v Barbie pics).
Fourthly, we have anecdotal evidence used as if it has any use whatsoever. (The “I knew a woman that totally used the system to get promoted” as if it has any bearing on other women).
Essays could be written (and have been) on this subject, so I’m not sure what can be improved by this thread. But here is my say, for what it’s worth.
Your figures could be explained by a number of things. Females pretending to be men in their profiles to avoid harassment. You might put them off with an unthinking presentation of your channel. (Seriously, have you seen all the DAZ3D tutorials? Every other one seems to be for a over-endowed lady in a bikini, and one of them even had such a grotesque caricature as his desktop. I seriously doubt he has many female subscribers). I’m not saying you do this, but if this is where your argument stems from, then people will look to you to see if you are at fault, first.
The problem with the lack of women in tech is not retaining them. It’s getting them in, in the first place. I was interviewing for a dev role at my company, and got sent 10 names, all of them male. I included the fact I wanted some females in the pipeline, in my feedback, and lo-and-behold, 25% of our next batch of CVs were for female candidates. None of them even got through the interview stage (ironically, they proved too techy for the role), but baby-steps, at least we were making sure that we were aware of the problem. You won’t KEEP any female developers if you don’t HAVE any.
I’m aware of the irony of a white, male, tall, (ex-athletic) middle-class male scolding others for being unaware of their privilege, but, in my 40-plus years, I’ve never seen being male as a liability, and seen plenty of examples of being female used as a reason to be dismissive. This isn’t the world I want for my daughter.
@Jazcentral: That’s what I call a decent discussion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. First of all I didn’t want to offend anyone by saying “girls” (yeah, English is not my first language). I just didn’t realize that the difference here is so huge.
No, I haven’t seen those tutorials, but I get the point. I want to share my knowledge about UE and I want my tutorials / videos to be interesting for everyone. Gender, descent, anything doesn’t matter.
So maybe it’s a good time to close it.
Well, this all went just about where I feared it would, hence my original “often contentious” comment. Can we all take a deep breath before this goes too far south?
I’ll be honest with you - getting to my current perspective on this subject was a very long and hard journey. If these issues had come up 20 years ago, I’d have been right there with the folks defending the way things are and using many of the same arguments. It took me a lot of time and a lot of life experiences to grok that my reality is not everybody’s reality. It took me years to accept that I have a lot of advantages in this world because of my ***, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. But I do, and if you’re reading this, there’s a pretty good chance you do to.
You don’t have to agree or accept that the lack of women in game dev or the treatment of women in gaming is a problem, but you should recognize and respect the fact that many people (both men and women) do. Those people don’t need to be proved wrong. We don’t need anecdotes, straw men, or red herrings that show everything is A-okay in the land of games, or to demonstrate that people who aren’t women have also experienced bad things in this world.
The status quo rarely needs to be defended. It’s got the upper hand. The home team advantage. It’s the incumbent that everybody votes for when they don’t know who to vote for. If you feel a strong need to defend the way things are, you really should ask yourself why. Why does the subject make you angry, and why is the mere suggestion of change so threatening to you?
@:
Its a good thing.
Shows that it is known issue that people are thinking about and, positively or negatively, discussing.
Education.
I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but as far as I am aware, here in Australia, programming is not something that is actively taught or even offered as a possible choice until well into a children’s education. This is a pity, given the worlds every growing use and reliance on tech in everything from tractors to buildings.
Being able to program, or at least understand the fundamentals, is more important than it ever was before.
And it will only become more so.
The way to get more women involved in the game dev world, at least in the future, is to encourage and educate the next generation as best we can.
That still doesn’t mean it will be attractive to women, but at least they’d have been given more of a chance to experience it then we were.
I am doing my small part.
My eldest daughter has taken an interest in what I do on the computer, so I’ve been going over the basics and encouraging questions.
Hope to get her into Scratch or similar soon
A bit young to get her into C++ or UE4 Blueprinting
: I would start your daughter on learning C++ at least, but take it slow and make sure she understands the reasons behind the code. Medically speaking, people can pick up and retain more information the younger they are since the brain is still in development.
As far as the entire statistic approach towards age/gender/nationality etc…; I would haphazard a guess that the ration is roughly the same as it is in any coding/IT industry. However, it can’t accurately be measured, because as far as I am aware, Epic doesn’t keep tabs on this information (I have mine all blanked, for example). If they did require this information, I would have never have registered, and I suspect, Epic would have failed as a company long ago. Therefore, we can only rely on survey-based statistics, which I find are pretty !@#% inaccurate.
I’m a woman, one in my early 30s, and have been working in the IT Industry for 9 years. I’ve recently joined this community as I’m finally attempting to a childhood dream of making a computer game. The tools are such now that developing games in my spare time is a possibility. I’m really in awe at some of the work that is being done using UE4, and the thing that attracted me to it.
Now in order to get into the technology area, I had a number of factors swing in my favour:
- Early indoctrination. I started playing games with a Tandy at age 3, which was all arcade style games. Computers have always been a feature of my home, and also had an Amiga and a number of PCs growing up.
- A technologically forward parent, it was all thanks to my Dad that my home was filled with gadgets of all types. He was an electronic engineer. As I demonstrated an interest in computers, I was schooled in binary logic when I was 5, and started learning to program in Pascal and C/C++ in primary school.
- Peers. In my case it was my brother, but in high school I managed to find a like-minded individual who I managed to convert to gaming (I created a monster).
Now if it wasn’t for these factors I don’t think I would have ended up in IT. It takes a lot of will power to head into an industry where you think that you are different. The truth is, I didn’t think I was any different than anyone else when I started my university course. Yes, I was a woman, however I had far more in common with these students than I did in my all-girls high school. I’d occasionally get a stupid comment from a friend - ‘You play Counter-Strike well for a girl’. Somehow in his mind being hand-eye coordinated is something uniquely male. It is those moments that annoy me the most, however for the most part it was positive.
Funnily enough I work with many women now, much higher than average in the IT industry. I think it helps when you work with the big corporations, but I must admit I’m one of the rare female technical specialists. Most of the women I’ve worked with have been either testers or business analysts.
Not sure where along the line, programming became a male profession. In fact during WW2 much of the programming was done by women, somewhere along the way male academics re-appropriated it.
Unfortunately what I think discourages women from joining is purely down to perceptions:
- How ‘good’ you have to be to join the industry. There are a lot of girls out there think you need to be great at maths. It definitely helps, but you don’t need to be super-smart at maths to work in the industry. Logic and systematic thinking is far more important.
- Not social. A lot of people I talk to think I sit on my coding away at a computer not talking to anyone. If anything I talk a lot more than if I was in other industries.
- Not very creative. Yes, IT work can be dull, however it can be VERY creative. Anyone you has found an elegant solution to a complex knows how creativity is often the key to those insights
Now I want to get something straight, people need to stop thinking that casual games are not ‘real’ games. Games have certainly evolved since Pong, but the last time I checked it was still a game. The reason why casual games is popular among women is because women are traditionally time-poor, then just don’t get lengthy periods of times to sit down and experience an immersive game.
When I was young I fell in love with those Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games, I loved the stories, the puzzles, and the beautiful graphics. As I got older I found the games on offer were less and less to my liking - lots of blood and gore. I mainly stuck to RPGs and strategy games after that. With work and sport slowly taking over my life, I found I had less time to play games, despite this I still classify myself as a gamer.
The reason why I’m here is I got a great idea for a game last year. Being able to get to the point of developing this game is incredibly far off. However I needed to start somewhere, after doing some research I discovered UE4, and the wonderful community that has grown here. It certainly seemed welcoming and helpful, so I signed up in January. I’ve been loving it.
Now the big question is how to attract more women to the gaming dev community?
- Start with them young. My Dad encouraged my interest. If a child shows an interest your game development, let them have a look, teach them something if they are really keen.
- Be respectful, mature and welcoming. This community in general is pretty respectful, welcoming and mature. But I must admit have seen some posts get a bit heated, some people like that, but I do know that a lot of women would find that off-putting.
- Produce games that are less sexist. Even if I could I could get over the scantily clad characters that feature in some games, I’d feel embarrassed playing it. It’s alright if it is in-character etc., but if all the female characters have gravity defying GG cups - I just cringe.
- Don’t make an woman in the game development scene feel like a novelty. Treat her like you would any team member - now I should say this with some qualification. Some teams can be very blokey, and you play pranks on each other etc. Bringing a woman into that blokey environment can change the dynamic - some women will be comfortable in it, others will feel very uncomfortable in it.
Anyway that’s my two cents worth.
Would be interested to hear from any other women in the community with their thoughts.
This could be anyone who is studying anything intensive. I’m quite sure there are many students that look terrible after pulling all-nighters. Medical students probably do this more than most. IT is actually incredibly female friendly, compare this to say a female dominated industry such as nursing. Nurses work unsociable hours and it is rather physical. IT is generally a 9 to 5 job, you can work from home very easily, hours can be flexible, you don’t work up a sweat etc.
There is nothing in IT that suggests you are required resemble a social outcast, you are perpetuating a myth. I mean I’ve certainly worked with the occasional social outcast, but vast majority of people are completely normal, wash their hair regularly, and even wear makeup.
Just so you know, I had a “Day & Night” Barbie. She had a pink power suit with a briefcase. The outfit was reversible, so ready to go out partying during the night. My mum even bought a computer as an accessory for the Barbie. This actually existed in the 80s! It was . Barbie gets a lot of undeserved poor press in my opinion.
Short answer: I’m a girl that’s been working with Unreal engine since the original but mostly UT2K4, UT3, UDK, and now UE4.
Full disclosure: Until about 9 months ago I was in denial about being a guy. I’ve since accepted that I’m a trans girl.
Why are there more girls? I’ve seen from my sister and a few friends playing wow what happens when girls try to get into real games (candy crush is fake to me) They feel like they just aren’t welcome at all. I don’t know about the gaming creation industry, but when it comes to playing? Absolutely they just don’t feel welcome. Also there are more games that force you to play men than women. Its always best when you get a choice, but if you take that choice away its almost always men. More often than not the popular play throughs use the male characters even when the female character has better voice acting. Most of the bioware games have better main female voice actors than male.
I’m on it - my daughter is six
What you or I may deem as sexist/not sexist may be considered not sexist/sexist by the other/others.
Take Bayonetta for example.
Much outrage by some on her tight outfit, provocative moves etc.
Others hailed her as strong and confident character.
You also have to consider what sells/doesn’t sell to your target audience.
So, yeah… this could be somewhat difficult to achieve
Its a bit easier for small developers, since they don’t have to worry about making back massive budgets.
@awilliams1701: It did.
Someone gifted me ME1 & 2 and I enjoyed them quite a bit (story at least), but I couldn’t bring myself to buy ME3.
EA. Origin. DLC shudder
No body is saying that casual games are not games, things is hardcore community (and it’s not just males) don’t see them up to quality, as casual market got fully infested by F2P, they see those games as designed exclusively (but not always) to drain money from them, they see it as vision of how hardcore games may end if practices of some big players gonna continue, end that why they embrace hardcore indie market (because casual market is primary indie) which concentrate more on design not money, as i know that one of the reasons why some big names from big companies jumped to indie. They discredit it as that statistic is used by ultra liberals as one of reason why changes need to be imposed in hardcore games, where statistic includes casual market where obviously there bigger female userbase
Ofcorse all of this is irreverent in context of female developers in UE4, as UE4 aim for both.
Mixed feelings on ME3. Great game and story until the ending which sucked to no end even after they “fixed” it. I was also disappointed in the limited number of dialog options. But the main story until the end was truly epic.
What games have to do with life gender stereotypes and culture?
Games are fun.
Games are more fun for guys! Why? I really don’t get it…
I happened to stumble on this thread and have not read it through, sorry, am being way too lazy for that.
Anyway, I’m not only a girl making games but old too and without any education worth mentioning so I’m definitely a unicorn of sort.
----- history and background, can be skipped -----
My first game was a 2D game released in 2000 (in Finnish and Finland only). 50% of it was made with borrowed computers. I learned what was needed as I went along and I did everything myself from graphics, audio to the spaghetti programming. The game and demo is still available (by demand) and is bought now and then. We have over the years sold a silly large amount of this game.
An interesting thing when we first went to see distributors in Finland and Sweden, 99% said the game needed more action and voices needed to be actors and one needed a huge box for it. There was also a negative attitude towards me because I was “old” already then and no one had heard of my business. I refused to comply and be put down by all that so I set up my own online store, decided to use a DVD box (we were actually the first on the market around here using DVD boxes for games), used our own family and friends as voices and so on.
Now I’m moving a huge 2D game (rendered 3D scenes) to convert to a 3D game in UE4. I’ve worked on the 2D game since 2002 and was 80% done. I’ve built most of the 3D models besides animals and humans, and programmed everything myself. Had to test and learn a couple of engines to find what I was looking for as I’ve now done with 3D engines for the last 6 months.
---- end of history and background ----
Here in Sweden the over all climate of making games is very positive also among girls. But many of the girls I have talked to about game developing are more interested in creating “caring” games and “free” games as in the game play not forcing you to do this and that before you can do what you really want to do. For example “give the horse a carrot before you can go riding”.
I don’t have a solution what need to be done but the market need more high graphic, realistic and non violent games with free game play. And definitely more animals, then I don’t mean pastel coloured “my little pony” kind of creatures, but real and furry creatures you can work with. If you look at what game engines offers when it comes to quadrupled creatures it is not much and it’s a struggle sometimes to make stuff work the way you want them to.
Just my 2 cent.
For me as a female artist i have to say: Games where games… but then i decided to change this. And so i started not to say “game” instead i began saying: “art”.
The highest art we ever developed besides creating life, cause those people who actually design the Game are no normal humans evermore. They are Creators and those who actually build the World are gods under people. Developing a game is not that hard as developing a rocket but its very near…
I am an artist, i used to play but knowdays i create art, cause im a creator. A female and very strong experienced too.
I hate society for making genderfied roles and jobs. I could be in a mineshaft deep underground or way up in the Sky fighting, i just dont want to?