Lionhead Dev: Half of Developers Will Be Women in 10 Years

[BreakfastMan]

I've said this before: On my college's computing course, how many people are girls? Not a single one! And that's out of about 60 people.

On the I.T. course the representation seems a bit fairer. It's probably about 5-10%.

I'm afraid that there are some subjects which just interest one gender more than the other, and things like programming are one of them.

Yeah... As someone who is a software dev, I call BS. Things quickly begin to get much more equal when you start to work in the industry. Things aren't at 50-50 yet, but they sure as shit as much higher than 5-10% (I would say around 30).

OT: Would love if that was true, but I think 10 years is a bit optimistic. It will probably be closer to 15, at least. Still, things are getting better, so who knows?

 

[zerragonoss]

I have no idea where so many people are getting the quotas thing form because it was not mentioned at all. Roughly equal numbers does not mean its artificially enforce half the people I would consider my friends are female and gamers. Around half the people with the passion and talent need to acutely make games that is true of as well. Now half the gamers I meat are not women, but a higher percentage of those I do actually care about the hobby rather than just partake. Also this is a estimate by a creative director so its fully possible he is right that most creative teams in the industry will be 50/50 in five ten years but not the industry as a whole.

 

[salfiert]

dunno while I agree that forcing gender placement may not be the best idea in terms of game quality or whats the fairest thing to do on an individual level, but in terms of strategy's to even out demographic from a long term perspective it actually has merit, force more females placements in the industry, have more females designing games that they would enjoy, more females buy these products as they appeal directly to them, more females get interested in the gaming industry as a whole, more females look to work in said industry.

maybe it won't work, but hey it looks to me like a 1 step back 10 steps forward situation, and really it wouldn't be the worst thing for an industry that badly needs shaking up right now

 

[lacktheknack]

Nope.

That's like saying "guys and girls LOVE cell phones/weird gizmos/other electronics, so eventually there will be equal amounts of them building the things".

You know how many girls are in my electronics course? One. And she wants to transfer out.

I don't see it EVER happening, because our "anyone's accepted" and the fact that we even have a "we need more women" campaign has only seen fewer women enter our computer/electronics/electrical/etc programs.

The interest just. Isn't. There.

 

[NeedsaBetterName22]

So, is he referring to jobs that are actually programming related, or just associated with game development? Because women applying for computer science degrees have actually gone down since the 80s, not increased. Let me repeat that: the amount of women in computer science has gone DOWN, not UP. In 1985 around 37.5% of U.S. computer science graduates were female, the number now? Floats around 11-14% depending on the year. The numbers dropped in the late-90s and have not recovered.

Sure, there's women, like men, who get into the tech industry without a degree, but statistically speaking the majority of women in the tech industry are drawn to other parts of it. And I don't blame them, considering they can often get better positions at, say, a social networking company then as a temporary programmer for EA that gets laid off after eight months. So I'm wondering where this magical supply of women with programming experience who love gaming so much they're willing to financially handicap themselves is. Seriously guys, I need a legitimate answer to the obvious workforce problem, not vague emotionalism about how great it will be once we have a perfect statistical breakdown.

I'll be honest, this comes off like nonsense that ignores basic statistical facts in favour of being politically correct. Very, very few fields (and bloody specific fields at that) are even close to an equal breakdown in terms of gender, and you really have to kid yourself if you think the statistics back up a 50/50 split ever occurring in the video games industry.

What is truly needed is a fair and equal judgement of skills and abilities without pre-conditions based on genders... it doesn't make a difference if you have 8 men and 2 women on your team as long as each of those team members earned their place through skills and abilities and not gender, it could be 8 women and 2 men as long as gender wasn't used as a condition.

Why is this so hard to grasp ?

Probably because there will always be some people, who, regardless of whether those people earned their position, will claim that your inherent sexism determined who you chose.

 

[Forobryt]

When i left Uni from doing Games Design there was i think 2 Girls out of about 100 of us and the Games programming course had the same. That was a couple of years ago now. So things arent that much different in the design areas compared to the programming.

I dunno maybe making games is still seen as too much of a stereotypical nerd thing from the outside world, even if actually playing the games has lost alot of that stereotype over the past few years.

 

[ellieallegro]

Snip. And I don't blame them, considering they can often get better positions at, say, a social networking company then as a temporary programmer for EA that gets laid off after eight months. So I'm wondering where this magical supply of women with programming experience who love gaming so much they're willing to financially handicap themselves is. Snip

Exactly my point. Thank you. Again, women aren't in IT or programming games because they lack the skills or interest. I work with a team that is 60/40 women that analyzes big data sets for the bio-tech industry. We all use R, SPSS and Stata on a daily basis (among other programs). Does anyone think that we couldn't use those cross-disciplinary skills to program games or work in IT? People concerned about a lack of women in IT (and the games industry) always ask the wrong questions. They should be asking... why aren't women in those industries now?

I'll tell you. It's because with few exceptions, (indie devs, owning your own company) most jobs in IT and the games industry suck. Yeah, I said it. They blow hard chunks: Low wages, lack of security, poor hours, lack of flexibility, crappy benefits... the list goes on and on (of course that changes if you are in demand or come in near the top). Frankly, I don't see why anyone works in the industry to be honest.

because you actually want to make great games ? ¯\(°_o)/¯

Bwhahahaha. Thanks for the laugh, I needed one since I'm working this holiday (by choice). Yeah, I'm gonna sacrifice my time and financial security just so I can can look back at my hard life on my deathbed and say, "member that time I helped make a great game which received decent reviews and then everybody promptly forgot about it when the next GTA/Halo/Zelda came out..." Yeah, totally worth it!

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I find the 45% of gamers are women statistic very hard to believe. I know two girls I might describe as such, one of whom is strictly a WoW player, and no other games (don't know if that counts).

I would like to know what the 45% proportion is of. All games? Casual games? Facebook/Smartphone/Browser games? MMOs? Online shooters? Single player AAA titles? I highly doubt that 45% of gamers who play Mass Effect, Far Cry 3, Crysis, Hitman, Deus Ex and games of this ilk, are women.

Still development houses could certainly use a massive oestrogen influx. It might well result in new genres or new approaches to existing genres that can better target female gamers without a negative change to the games male gamers enjoy.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

But I don't think it's right either that 50% of developers will be women in the future, short of actively hiring them based on their gender. Fact is that the overwhelming majority of womeen do not pursue careers in engineering, programming, maths or science. Many do, but they are a tiny percentage of girls going to university. Most women pick humanities courses and fields like English Literature, Dance, Childcare, Education and some others being predominantly women.

 

[hutchy27]

The game design course I'm doing at college had like a taster week on earlier in the year, I went along with about 60 other people. There were only 2 girls. There may be more on the actual course but I'll have to wait to see.

 

[NeedsaBetterName22]

I find the 45% of gamers are women statistic very hard to believe. I know two girls I might describe as such, one of whom is strictly a WoW player, and no other games (don't know if that counts).

I would like to know what the 45% proportion is of. All games? Casual games? Facebook/Smartphone/Browser games? MMOs? Online shooters? Single player AAA titles? I highly doubt that 45% of gamers who play Mass Effect, Far Cry 3, Crysis, Hitman, Deus Ex and games of this ilk, are women.

Still development houses could certainly use a massive oestrogen influx. It might well result in new genres or new approaches to existing genres that can better target female gamers without a negative change to the games male gamers enjoy.

It's a deliberately vague statistic as far as I can tell, I've never been able to find a proper definition or breakdown of it. I'd argue it's either a product of someone just being terrible at statistics, or actual misinformation to encourage Simpson's paradoxes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox]

 

[EvilRoy]

I'll tell you. It's because with few exceptions, (indie devs, owning your own company) most jobs in IT and the games industry suck. Yeah, I said it. They blow hard chunks: Low wages, lack of security, poor hours, lack of flexibility, crappy benefits... the list goes on and on (of course that changes if you are in demand or come in near the top). Frankly, I don't see why anyone works in the industry to be honest.

I hear that. After all that talk of the entertainment industry being recession proof and then seeing these big companies downsize by the hundred, aside from love of the job I can't see a single reason why game developers can find anybody but the most sub-par employees. Engineering companies love programmers, and I would bet they offer wages that would crush anything people on game dev teams would see. Plus there's the benefit of not being immediately fired after the project you were assigned to completing.

 

[BarkBarker]

No one goes into the game industry to look back and say they lived a happy fulfilling life or to enjoy the financial security and all the spare time it gives you, the people who go into game design want to make GAMES, some of them so much they put up with some truly unreasonable shit, but the fact is, you don't go into this industry for anything other than personal desire, now ask just HOW many women want to sacrifice a LOT of shit to make a game, a consumer product and as such doesn't even have a general idea of success beyond returns on the product and a general review on the product, you do this the same reason you want to do anything taxing and time consuming: PASSIONATE AS FUCK, TO THE POINT OF A FAULT.

 

[Carpenter]

Being "equal" doesn't mean firing male employees so you can force an equal number of female employees.

That's just stupid. That's like cherry picking employees based on race to make sure it's the same number all around. It's just a more annoying form of discrimination.

But yes please make this a trend. I would love to see an equal number of female employees at the foundry I use to work in. Let's see how that works out for everyone.

How about you just hire the people that are best at doing the job you need them to do. That may lead to a majority of female employees or it may lead to a majority of male employees, that's not the point. Having half male and half female is not something that just happens, that's a conscious decision they made when hiring people.

Don't you think it would look really weird if a factory owner went out of his way to make sure he has an equal number of black people and white people?

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Ten years? No.

My sister is doing a Bachelor of Computer Science and the classes are still fairly skewed towards males, I wouldn't bet anywhere sooner than 20 years for a 50/50 ratio.