A Female Perspective On The "Viking" Dev Culture

[Spaec]

"I'm not entirely sure that it can be eradicated without completely dismantling widely held cultural mores"

Then let's dismantle them! It's probably about time anyway...

 

[Veloxe]

Soo... She is not like the other guys?

She is like... The other fellers? No... Buddies? Negative...

The other... Ummm... Ehhh... Things?

She is fully identical to my additional coworkers, in all terms and manners (except reproductive organs).

I just go with "One of us...one of us...".

Although I think her breakdown of "She's like one of the guys" is a little too deep when it's just supposed to mean that she isn't really different from anyone else doing the job (or to say, she fits in).

Actually, in the context it's used (to attempt to establish that her being a women doesn't mean she'll be out of place or incompetent) does in fact imply that women are out of place or incompetent in the work-force, in so much as simply having to say it implies that it's not the norm. Which is sexist.

But I question that as the context or even the intent. Yes, words have meaning and if you look into many of the sayings and euphemisms that people use day to day you can find all sorts of sexist, racist, or homophobic tendencies in the language. But to where I sit the intent of the saying isn't to say "Well, she's good, for a women." but to say she's now an accepted part of the social group of the work place (which I went into in another post on this topic). Yes, the saying does have all the connotations you mentioned if you look for them but if you just take it for the intent (edit it in your mind to something that you can accept) then there isn't much of a problem.

Obviously if it really bothers you if you went and talked to the person about it, and they are reasonable and not a dick, they will try to change their language. I'm just tired of people looking to be offended at every little thing that comes up and having people immediately jump to sexism/racism/homophobia instead of talking to each other and working towards some sort of Utopian future language.

 

[Mouse One]

The game industry is a creative industry, and as such it's in its direct interest to get more "female voices" in it. Women and girls are an increasing market share (about 30% right now if industry studies can be believed), and let's face it, there are definite gender differences in tastes. Sure, there's girls who like FPSs (I know a few), but female CoD fans are kind of like the guys who are MLP fans, although admittedly less defensive about it.

I work in an extremely male dominated profession (I'm a pilot), and believe you me, there was some active resistance to women entering the workforce even during the 90s. "Empty Kitchen" was one of the nicer things gal plane drivers got called. It's a lot better now, but there's the residual culture leftover from those days that still affects a woman's career chances. Basically, there's more to a job than just being a job-- if at the end of the day, everyone's gathering in the hangar and crushing beer cans against their heads underneath a Snap On Tools girl poster, not surprised when the girl just goes home. Then she doesn't meet and greet as much, doesn't get to know the guys who might give her advice of both a technical (here's how I do that) and career (Bob Smith is looking for a co-pilot) nature.

I suspect a lot of that is going on in the game industry. I know a lot of you are shrugging at that. If a woman doesn't like the culture, that's her problem-- it's not like the guys are actively discriminating. But again, it's in the company's best interest to try to create a non-monolithic culture. Not an easy task in an industry that is as male dominated as gaming. But the companies that figure out how to recruit and make the workplace environment comfortable for women will have a competitive edge.

 

[The_Emperor]

Females shouldn't be discouraged from doing anything. Gender may give you a minor natural advantage in certain tasks but the brain changes as it adapts to different tasks so all skills can be learned.

I think males dominate the industry because gaming was seen as a primarily male thing to do, in times past.

I do however believe gender influences what you find interesting, and a lot of why people do what they do has as much to do with nature as nurture.

Is it a coincidence that feminine men outweigh masculine men in the fashion industry?

Is it coincidence that Females who do things traditionally thought of as masculine seem more masculine themselves? you could argue that it's nurture but I think nature contributes to these things also.

not that I care about gender or that I could even prove that those statements are correct but from what I observe...

Have you ever met a hardcore gamer girl with bleach blonde hair, fake nails and fake tan etc?

I know they exist, but it's uncommon.

It's more the nature vs nurture argument that interests me, how much of it is biological? I think more than we think perhaps but only for certain things.

 

[Zom-B]

Not one day after Hocking says one of the dumbest, most condescending things I've ever heard and already there's another article slamming him for it. Justice!

You're gonna have to fill me in on what the "dumbest, most condescending things you've ever heard" actually was.

Personally, I saw an opinion piece from a guy trying to preach diversity and equality in a way that wasn't offensive.

 

[Zom-B]

Not one day after Hocking says one of the dumbest, most condescending things I've ever heard and already there's another article slamming him for it. Justice!

You're gonna have to fill me in on what the "dumbest, most condescending things you've ever heard" actually was.

Personally, I saw an opinion piece from a guy trying to preach diversity and equality in a way that wasn't offensive.

 

[geizr]

When you think of a gamer, what kind of picture comes to mind? Do you get the image of the over-weight, out-of-shape, sloppy, socially inept outcast computer/techie nerd, or do you get something else? I'll 100% admit that even as a gamer myself, my expectation of a gamer would be something along the lines of the former, and this can make you severly uncomfortable with yourself in the presence of others as you become extremely self-conscious of your lifestyle as a gamer.

Now, change the venue to GenCon, 2008. The entire image of the gamer geek as I describe got completely shattered, and it was a completely liberating experience. There, I got to see and meet so many different people that were far from the image of the stereotypical gamer geek. It was at that point that my expectation of who could and could not be a gamer completely changed. I went from expecting the stereotypical nerd to expecting, really, anyone. You had people from all walks of life and of different ages, genders, social backgrounds, and races(of course, you did have those who fit the stereotype, but they were actually few in number, overall). It didn't matter. For the first time, being a gamer felt normal and not an outlier interest in society.

Now what does this anecdote how to do with the discussion at hand? Its relevance is the change in expectation regarding who can and cannot be a gamer. Who is and is not allowed to have such an interest, and even more, just being able to identify such a person by appearance alone. The fact was, in light of GenCon, you couldn't identify someone as a gamer just by looking at them. You had to personally interact with the person to find out. The expectation has completely changed. As someone has said, we have to change the social expectation of who is allowed to have what interests. Only once we are accepting of the fact that anyone(male or female; black, white, blue, green, or plaid) can be a gamer and interested in game development can we advance. These rigid boxes of expectations we keep putting on people just don't exist in reality.

Now, I'm going to say something that may sound sexist, but, please bear with me.

Men and women are different. But we are different only in physical appearance and style of approach to life. The things we can be interested in and the various challenges we face in life are the same. We may find different solutions, but they are merely different solutions to the same problem. Neither solution is superior to the other, they are merely different.

(I did have to laugh at the one person's post about how her male co-worker changed his computer screen background from a semi-nude woman when she joined their group. Fact is, human beings like having sex and like seeing arousing imagery of the human form. I'm sure she would probably post an image of a semi-nude guy for her background, assuming she is heterosexual.)

We as a society need to break free of these rigid boxes we constantly keep trying to put everything into. Reality is more amorphous than that. People aren't robots that have been preprogrammed to only behave a certain way. We are free to choose our behaviors, just as we are free to choose our interests. Gender, race, ethnicity, nationality? These are just superficial qualities that have no prescription on our choices as human beings.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Not one day after Hocking says one of the dumbest, most condescending things I've ever heard and already there's another article slamming him for it. Justice!

You're gonna have to fill me in on what the "dumbest, most condescending things you've ever heard" actually was.

Personally, I saw an opinion piece from a guy trying to preach diversity and equality in a way that wasn't offensive.

Seriously? "Viking culture?" You didn't see the part where he directly slammed every co-worker and subordinate he's ever had, all the artists, writers, computer scientists, and level designers who worked on the Splinter Cell games and Far Cry 2, for not being as "sophisticated" as he is?

 

[Zom-B]

Not one day after Hocking says one of the dumbest, most condescending things I've ever heard and already there's another article slamming him for it. Justice!

You're gonna have to fill me in on what the "dumbest, most condescending things you've ever heard" actually was.

Personally, I saw an opinion piece from a guy trying to preach diversity and equality in a way that wasn't offensive.

Seriously? "Viking culture?" You didn't see the part where he directly slammed every co-worker and subordinate he's ever had, all the artists, writers, computer scientists, and level designers who worked on the Splinter Cell games and Far Cry 2, for not being as "sophisticated" as he is?

Nope, not at all. I don't get where he says he's more "sophisticated" than anyone else. You've read far too much into his comments, methinks, finding insult where there is none.

Give me a direct quote?

 

[Baresark]

Well said. That guy was a blowhard. The worst thing you can do is treat someone badly because they are a different gender or race. The next worst thing you can do is treat them better for the same reasons. Making exceptions for people because they are female will only hurt the female population within the industry, and maybe even the industry itself. You still want the best person for the job. If you hire a female just to have more of them in the industry, and they produce bad work, then you have hurt everyone involved.

See, though, that wasn't his main point. His main point, put simply, was "we need more female developers." He didn't say treat them worse, he didn't say treat them better, he didn't say give them any different expectations. He just said we need more females in this industry to diversify it. That doesn't mean hiring every other female that applies, if the person doesn't look good for the job then s/he isn't good for the job. Rather, we need to start getting more females interested in working in the industry to begin with, as Dunki says. This is why I think we do need to make gender matter, otherwise we're still stuck with a sausage-fest.

I can't agree. He was saying to hire more females because they are females. Like the status of them being female will somehow bring more to the table than is currently there and reflect better culturally in games. Quinn Dunki points out this exact thing, he is framing it as females will bring things to grow the industry, when the reality is, diversity from any source will grow the industry. Framing this as a male vs. female conflict will not bring more diversity and in reality only serve to further fracture the work force. We need a more diverse development environment, is what he should have been saying. The worst part is that a lot of publishers are what holds this whole thing back. They don't want diversity because it comes with risk.

I'm all about a more diverse game selection, and a lot less sausage fest, don't get me wrong. I would be interested to see how many female developers have worked on games that I have played though. And also, is there a population of female developers working on the indie side of things? Also, for the most part, I am a talented arguer, but I can't convince my GF to play games, let alone be interested in designing or working on a game. And she loves to watch open ended fantasy games such as Oblivion.

 

[Jumplion]

I can't agree. He was saying to hire more females because they are females. Like the status of them being female will somehow bring more to the table than is currently there and reflect better culturally in games. Quinn Dunki points out this exact thing, he is framing it as females will bring things to grow the industry, when the reality is, diversity from any source will grow the industry. Framing this as a male vs. female conflict will not bring more diversity and in reality only serve to further fracture the work force. We need a more diverse development environment, is what he should have been saying. The worst part is that a lot of publishers are what holds this whole thing back. They don't want diversity because it comes with risk.

I'm all about a more diverse game selection, and a lot less sausage fest, don't get me wrong. I would be interested to see how many female developers have worked on games that I have played though. And also, is there a population of female developers working on the indie side of things? Also, for the most part, I am a talented arguer, but I can't convince my GF to play games, let alone be interested in designing or working on a game. And she loves to watch open ended fantasy games such as Oblivion.

Well, yeah, sure, diversity of anything will bring some awesome things, I completely agree and it's pretty much what I said in the first place. The thing is, though, we need to start somewhere and getting the other section of the world into development would diversify not only in genders, but in other diversities as well. I don't think he really meant that we should hire women just for the sake of them being women, but as a first, but huge, step towards making the entire industry much more diverse than it already is.

I think it's a mix of both their perspective. I completely agree with his point that we need more female developers (and more diverse people in general), but I had also said that we need to get more females interested in game development in the first place as it is mainly a "boy's club", just as Dunski had said.

 

[SnakeCL]

I'm all for more women in the games industry, so long as its based on their merits. I don't want to be passed up for a job because I don't have the necessary bits to fill a company quota of a specific gender, even if I'm more qualified for a job.

EDIT: Argh, sorry, didn't realize how old this post was, sorry for the necro.