{"id":17873,"date":"2013-03-12T19:30:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T00:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=17873"},"modified":"2013-03-12T20:23:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T01:23:58","slug":"sxsw-women-in-the-games-industry-are-not-unicorns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/gaming\/xbox\/sxsw-women-in-the-games-industry-are-not-unicorns\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW: Women In The Games Industry Are Not Unicorns"},"content":{"rendered":"

While moderating the SXSW panel on Women in the Video game industry on Tuesday, A.J. Glasser of Inside Network<\/em><\/a> made a few basic points that are often overlooked by male gamers. Women play games. Women make games. Women write about games. A woman who does any of these things is not, in Glasser\u2019s words \u201ca magical unicorn or a white elk.\u201d Yes, women may have different taste in games and content than men do, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily imply a massive, hard and fast gender split in who makes what. As panelist Cara Ely, a creative director at Zynga<\/a>, put it, \u201cYou make the games you want to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glasser interviewed Ely; Rachel Berstein, executive producer from Maxis Studio<\/a>; and Allison Rynak, VP of marketing at GSN Digital<\/a>, a site affiliated with the Gameshow Network, that provides casual games. While each woman\u2019s career path has led them through different facets of the industry, they all agreed on one thing: It was their passion for games, not their gender, that most defined their relationship with the industry and their colleagues.<\/p>\n

Certainly, these women often have had a different perspective on what makes interesting or entertaining games than their male collaborators, or indeed been the only woman in a room full of men. Ironically enough, \u201cthere is a huge benefit to being the only woman in the room,\u201d Ely said, \u201cbecause you\u2019re the only one who can offer that perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a weight to it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Rachel Bernstein added that EA\u2019s policy was to assess why the audience for a given game as a whole found a game engaging, and used that research to inform their design choices, rather than segregating the data along gender lines. the fact that female employees bring a different perspective to that process is understood and encouraged.<\/p>\n

\u201cEA understands that we\u2019ll make more, better, and more profitable games with more women in the company,\u201d Bernstein said.<\/p>\n

Allison Rynak agreed, noting that even in the case of some GSN games that provide a real-world payout to players, some of her male colleagues assumed that the attraction of such a game was \u201cthe adrenaline and the competition,\u201d but that for many female players, the games were about \u201crelaxation and having a little me time.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this isn\u2019t to say that things haven\u2019t changed for the better over the years. Bernstein told the story of her first pregnancy, which came while she was working as an independent developer under contract with a big publisher. Concerned that her pregnancy might scare off the publisher, who would fear that her maternity leave would cause delays, she would disguise herself as much fatter than she actual was when she went into face-to-face meetings, wearing oversized clothes and hunching over to make her baby bump look like a gut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would ask my friends, \u2018Fat or pregnant? Fat or pregnant?\u2019\u201d Bernstein said, smiling. \u201cAnd if they said \u2018pregnant,\u2019 I\u2019d change my stance.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time her second pregnancy came along, Bernstein decided to abandon the disguise.<\/p>\n

Rynak even detailed being the first person at her company to require a maternity leave at all and helping to shape the HR policy that would affect all female employees there in the future.<\/p>\n

Will more women find their way into the industry? Bernstein drew a comparison between the effects of Title IX on women playing sports and the growing number of women with a passion for games. When she was child, Bernstein said that, \u201cYou were either a tomboy, or a girly girl.\u201d Now, the executive producer at Maxis described taking her children to soccer practice and seeing a girls team all in pink and \u201ceven little pink Nike swooshes on their shoes,\u201d who were still \u201cgirly\u201d but able to enjoy their passion for the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs more girls grow up playing these games,\u201d said Bernstein, \u201cthey\u2019ll think \u2018I can make these games!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Slowly but surely, that change seems to be taking hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While moderating the SXSW panel on Women in the Video game industry on Tuesday, A.J. Glasser of Inside Network made a few basic points that are often overlooked by male gamers. Women play games. Women make games. Women write about games. A woman who does any of these things is not, in Glasser\u2019s words \u201ca […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":17875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,3062,125,908,2221,3063,730,26],"tags":[4255,4253,1408,3,4256,4251,4257,4126,4254,2313,4250,2746,2046,29,3549,4252,1157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17878,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions\/17878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}