Women in Game Development

Breaking the Glass Level-Cap

Jennifer Brandes Hepler

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000007770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

Videogame development is usually seen as a male dominated field; even playing videogames is often wrongly viewed as a pastime for men only. But behind the curtain, women have always played myriad important roles in gaming. From programmers to artists, designers to producers, female videogame developers endure not only the pressures of their jobs but also epic levels of harassment and hostility. Jennifer Brandes Hepler's Women in Game Development: Breaking the Glass Level-Cap gives voice to talented and experienced female game developers from a variety of backgrounds, letting them share the passion that drives them to keep making games.

Key Features

• Experience the unique stories of nearly two dozen female game developers, from old-school veterans to rising stars.
• Understand the role of women in videogames, from the earliest days of development to the present day.

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• Hear first-hand perspectives from working professionals in fields including coding, design, art, writing, community management, production and journalism.

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• Get tips for how to be a better ally and make your company and teams more inclusive.

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• Learn about the obstacles you face if you're an aspiring female developer, and how to overcome them.

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• Meet the human face of some of the women who have endured the industry's worst harassment… and kept on going.

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1

Introduction

“Full disclosure” is a term that gets thrown around a lot recently regarding game journalism. So, in the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I knew none of the amazing women in this book until quite recently. In fact, until they began to face a sustained campaign of harassment to try to drive them out of gaming, it’s safe to say that most women in the industry toiled alone, knowing they loved games and wanted to devote their lives to making them, but not how many other women were harboring the exact same dreams.

But as women have been targeted, harassed, threatened with death and rape on a regular basis, faced with an anonymous mob of so-called “fans” who want to drive them out of their jobs, the natural thing has been to reach out to each other. Those who were the earliest victims reached out to comfort those suddenly in the spotlight. And communities of support sprang up everywhere.

Suddenly, instead of working alone, women in gaming were part of a vast network of supporters reaching out to them, face-to-face or online, across companies and countries, publicly on Twitter, or behind closed doors. #1reasonwhy became a Twitter phenomenon that let women voice the horrifying things said or done to them as a result of wanting to be in the game industry. But that gave way to #1reasontobe, an outpouring of women’s love for games, which spawned panels at places such as Geek Girl Con and GDC¹ to give women a chance to voice what they love best about game development and why they stick with it.

And people whose lives were turned upside down by harassment emerged to find themselves celebrities, a new thing in the world—celebrity feminist game developers!—and in turn reached out to others, to encourage them to keep trying for their dreams. So, though the dreaded “feminist illuminati” never really existed, that very fear has now created a community of female game developers determined to see each other succeed. A group of women who reach out to each other when someone is targeted, who support each other through Patreon and other services during the endemic post-project layoffs. A group of women who come from every discipline in gaming, from industry veterans who have weathered gaming’s ups and downs since the 1980s, to rising stars who have burst onto the scene in the last few years.

This book just scratches the surface of the thousands of intelligent, talented, hard-working, and opinionated women who can be found in the ranks of nearly every game company. They have come together to tell you their stories—why they wanted to be in games, how they broke in, the obstacles they’ve faced, and what keeps them coming in to work every morning, even on the bad days.

If you are a woman, working in or hoping to break into game development, this is the chance you’ve always wanted to corner some of your inspirations at a conference and hear what they have to say in an unguarded moment. If you’re a man in the industry, these are the stories your female colleagues want you to hear, so that you understand that the struggles they face working in games are different than what you see, and they need your support. And if the first time you heard about women in gaming was on The Colbert Report or Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, these are stories you should hear to understand how one of the twenty-first century’s fastest-growing forms of entertainment can sometimes be so hostile to the women who create it that they have had to flee their homes in fear of their lives.

In these pages, 22 women in game development tell you their experiences in their own words. In addition, this book provides further information about the latest research on related topics, such as how unconscious gender bias affects people during hiring and corporate reviews, what Imposter Syndrome is and how it can affect talented women, and what really happened during the ongoing harassment campaign known as “Gamergate.” And if you’re one of those crazy enough or passionate enough to pursue a career in games despite the costs, you’ll find tips for breaking into many fields of development, from design and writing, to programming, art, community management, production, and quality assurance. And you can go in armed with the knowledge that even if it gets bad, there are women who have fought those same battles for years and they will welcome you with open arms.

So, pull up a chair, turn the page, and imagine you’re at GDC, at the best mixer ever, where no one interrupts and the music isn’t too loud. And you’re getting the chance to meet some of the best and brightest ladies in the industry, one-on-one. What can they tell you?

Is This a Feminist Book?

Is this a feminist book? How could it not be? Feminism is the belief that women are equal to men, that their ideas and experiences are worth hearing about, that they deserve and will succeed at any of the same opportunities given to men. Writing this book is an act of feminism just like voting, or sending your daughter to college, or celebrating your wife’s promotion. This is the feminism that the great majority of both men and women in the developed world believe in, often without thinking about it.

However, there is also the more academic meaning of the word feminism. This is the feminism of Gender Studies classes, and while it is important, it can tend to operate in a rarified sphere of specialized language that can be confusing or off-putting if you’re not used to it.

The women in this book are, for the most part, not academics (though a few are). They have written their stories in the language of programmers, business people, game designers, writers. They have written their opinions, their life experiences, their lessons learned. And in some cases, they have written things that disagree with each other.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings about feminism. There are those who see, for example, two female game developers, one criticizing Grand Theft Auto and one loving it, and call that proof that feminism is meaningless. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth of feminism is that women are people, with tastes and opinions as wildly divergent as men’s.

So is this book feminist? of course it is. No book designed to highlight the achievements of women could be anything else. But it is, first and foremost, a “boots on the ground” view of game development, written by women actually working in the field.

Endnote

1.  The Game Developers Conference, the largest professional gathering of game developers.

2

Brenda Romero

Games: Train, Síochán Leat, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds, Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn, Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna, Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom, Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Wizardry 8, Wizardry Gold, Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure, Jagged Alliance, Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games, Jagged Alliance 2, Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business, Realms of Arkania Vol. 1: Blade of Destiny, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Commander, Realms of Arkania Vol. 2: Star Trail, Druid: Daemons of the Mind, Freakin’ Funky Fuzzballs, Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes, Playboy: The Mansion, Playboy: The Mansion Party Pak, Def Jam: Icon, The Walking Dead, PreConception, Pettington Park, Retro City Rampage, Ravenwood Fair, Ravenstone Mine, Critter Island, Garden Life, SuperPoke Pets, SPP Ranch, Top Fish, Rescue Raiders, Crypt of Medea (Some credited as Brenda Brathwaite or Brenda Garno)

Books: Sex in Video Games, Challenges for Game Designers, Breaking into the Game Industry

Before I say anything else, let me say this: I am profoundly grateful for a life spent in the game industry. I cannot imagine any other way of life. It is the culture in which I was raised and, barring some last-minute career change, it is the culture in which I will die. It is here that I find the soul of my creativity, my closest friends, my inspirations, and my loves. It really is who I am, and for all the criticisms one may throw at it, the game industry is my home.

Second-Hand Games

I started making games when I was five, I think. My mother would bring me to garage sales, and since we didn’t have much money, I would pick out secondhand games. The cheapest ones were those that were missing a few parts. I didn’t much mind, actually. I’d collect the parts and recycle them into my own games. At such a young age, the “games” didn’t have rules, per se, but they did have narrative structures or ways of behaving. At some point, I discovered LeGos, and realized I could create entire worlds with them. I’d spend hours creating complex areas, what I would now call “levels,” and invite my family to go through them while I played the role of narrator guiding them down hallways, past spooky corners, and into the un-adventured and unknown.

This desire to create worlds, a phrase that the late, great origin Systems used as their corporate tagline, eventually extended to writing. My friends and I would rush home from school and gather around one or another’s kitchen table and spend hours creating and exchanging stories. With nothing else to fill the space, we filled it with our own creativity. I remember writing plays which we staged with neighborhood kids for their parents in someone’s basement. From offstage, I watched the audience react to what I’d created. It is that feeling which I chase in games to this day.

My magical moment as a gamer came when my mother got me the original white box version of Dungeons & Dragons. Three books, two dice, and a pencil, and I was gone. It was the perfect mix of my interests—storytelling and games. In those pages, I found a structure in which I could absolutely lose myself. I’d spend hours creating characters and worlds, complete stories for people to play. Better yet, these were not small, discrete events. The worlds and characters that I created extended far beyond a single session.

In playing Dungeons & Dragons, I felt as if something had been created just for me. By the time I was fourteen, I was in the thick of it and had begun to explore systems other than D&D. By then, Iron Crown’s Rolemaster system was my system of choice, and in a move that foretold my career more than any other, I decided to rewrite the rules of encumbrance (how much your character can carry and how it affects them). Unfortunately, that little edit required edits to other parts of the system, and before I knew it, I rewrote the whole thing. My friends named it “Brenda Law,” and we enjoyed many hours in a system that I am sure was full of holes and flaws overlooked by our forgiving imaginations.

Discovering Video Games

By now, arcades had come to ogdensburg, New York, and every Saturday, I would faithfully deposit my allowance into the machines, quarter-by-quarter, until it was gone. Pac-Man, Tron, and Ms. Pac-Man were my favorites. I was mesmerized by the darkness of the arcades, the bar-like atmosphere. That parents didn’t want their kids in there only made us all want to be there even more.

Yet, there was something beyond playing games that drove me, a curiosity about how things worked, coupled with a need to create my own worlds. Though I had no idea how something as complicated as a video arcade game was made, I imagined (incorrectly, it turns out) that inside those cabinets were the same tangle of wires that I’d seen inside pinball machines. I had no concept that I could create something like that—an actual game—on the VIC-20 my mother had just purchased for me at home.

It’s interesting for me to look back on this. We didn’t have much, my mom and me. My dad had passed away when I was just four, leaving my mom alone with three kids. At this time, one of us was in college and another heading there soon. How my mom had enough money for this, I don’t know, but she certainly got her money’s worth. I became as obsessed with programming as I was with playing games. I dutifully typed in programs from magazines I got at the library and modified the code to make the program do something different. I signed up for the new programming class at my high school, learned BASIC, and took my first tentative steps into Pascal. If I had to do anything more than two times, I’d code it instead. Code did the same thing for me that board game parts did, that writing did, that D&D did—it gave me a framework in which to create worlds.

By this point, I had become very much the person I still am today: a girl, now woman, obsessed with games, technology, metal music, and classic cars. everything and nothing has changed.

Sir-Tech Software

In the fall of 1981, while smoking in the bathroom at my local high school, another student came in looking for a cigarette. Now, before I go further, I must tell you that (a) you shouldn’t smoke, (b) it was dumb that I smoked at all, (c) we smoked in the bathroom against the school’s policy, and (d) we were prohibited from leaving the building during school hours without prior permission (and no, they wouldn’t grant permission to go outside and smoke, so you can perhaps understand the idiotic nicotine addict’s dilemma here).

That girl was Linda Sirotek, then 15 herself, and co-owner of Sir-tech Software, one of the game industry’s very first companies and publisher of the amazing Wizardry series of role-playing games (RPGs). It was obvious to me that Linda was looking for a non-menthol cigarette, and so I offered her one. To be polite, she struck up a conversation. “Do you have a job?” she asked. I didn’t. “Have you heard of Sir-tech?” she said. Again, I hadn’t. “Have you played D&D?”

Oh.

With that, my job interview concluded, and I agreed to meet Linda at her house the following Tuesday to play Wizardry for the first time. To say that this was the beginning of a long, long love affair is to minimize the effect of Wizardry and Sir-tech on my life. Here at last was everything—all of it— that I loved: storytelling, games, D&D, and technology.

I was hir...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Brenda Romero
• 3 Rebecca Ann Heineman
• 4 From the Beginning
• 5 Judy Tyrer
• 6 Brianna Wu
• 7 Karisma Williams
• 8 It Starts in the Classroom: Women and Computer Science
• 9 Jane Ng
• 10 Kimberly Unger
• 11 “You Must Be an Artist”: Stereotypes and Realities about Female Game Artists
• 12 Laralyn McWilliams
• 13 Elizabeth LaPensée
• 14 Elizabeth Sampat
• 15 Erin Hoffman-John
• 16 Don’t Girls Hate Combat?: Variety in Game Design
• 17 Jennifer Brandes Hepler
• 18 Sheri Graner Ray
• 19 Write What You Know: How Female Writers Expand a Game’s Audience
• 20 Megan Gaiser
• 21 Kari Toyama
• 22 Good, Fast, or Cheap: What Does a Game Producer Do, Anyway?
• 23 Katie Postma
• 24 Donna Prior
• 25 “Just a CM …”: Why Community Management Is Judged So Harshly
• 26 Sheri Rubin
• 27 The “Average Player”: How Game Testing Departments Can Bias Their Results
• 28 Leigh Alexander
• 29 Mattie Brice
• 30 Anita Sarkeesian and Laura Hudson
• 31 Conclusion
• Index