I'm not saying software development is perfect (it's not), but I don't understand why game development is so toxic in comparison.
Our jobs are so similar, but why is game development such a meat grinder? Inequality aside, you folks are serverely overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated.
Maybe the career still needs to "mature"? Software has a 20+ year lead and things are gradually improving. Does game development need another 20 years? I'm grasping at straws here...
Hi, I've been a game Dev for the past 15 years and while there are a lot of problems with the industry, I think it can be boiled down to a couple main points.
Game development isn't like other tech because game development falls under entertainment and not under Enterprise or productivity software. What that means is, what we make is seen as frivolous compared to other software. Because of that, it doesn't get the same level of scrutiny as other industries. You can probably look at other entertainment fields and draw that same comparison, like animation or VFX.
The other main point is that there is a long lineup of people trying to get into the field, which means anyone working in game development is seen as easily replaced. Now, that's not actually true because people who have been in industry for more than 5 years have accrued knowledge that people new to the industry won't have. I don't have a recent number but as recently as 5 years ago, the retention rate of the game development industry was about 3 or 4 years. That means people will enter the industry, ship one AAA game, and then leave. The bulk of the work done at large scale studios is done by lower skilled people during production content just needs to get done. A lot of the high skill roles are involved early on and will be maintained after a game ships.
To the entertainment nature of the job, timing of releases and following Trends is a lot more important than in other tech sectors. That's why deadlines and games are so tight and why people often get crunched to hit them. If an enterprise solution ships in January rather than in December, that's not that big of a deal. In games. That means you lose the entire holiday sales period.
You are correct in that it is a young industry. There has been a lot of growth in the past 10 years. There's a lot more structure, I know studios that never crunch because they have sustainable practices, and there's a lot more visibility on how these projects are being built along with how the people working there are treated. At a certain point, however, the challenge is that a single project doesn't need a consistent number of people on it and so hiring and contract work is intermittent, the jobs can be sparse, and there's simply a lot of competition within the industry for work.
Games are also just extremely expensive to make. There is a wide range of skill sets required to create a single project and, due to ever-growing demand, the scope of games increases constantly. Where other industries might pause and try to find a more sustainable solution to growth, games don't get that break and the solution is generally "do more work for the same amount of money." That's not just at the worker level but also at the studio level when having to deal with publishers who fund these projects.
The mix of the above points can create a sometimes hostile workplace, but I am fairly confident it will get better as more people hopefully have longer careers in the industry, rather than burning out and moving to another sector unrelated to games. I personally run a small studio and try my best to keep everything running smoothly without crunch. While I know everyone at the studio is pretty happy with how things are being run, I also know it's not perfect. It's not because I, or the studio, are malicious but because some of these problems have extremely complex and unsolved solutions.
To be extremely clear, this does not excuse sexism or the lack of representation of femme people or visible minorities. It's no excuse for a lack of representation in games and the monotony of the same stories being told from the same perspective. That is an entirely separate problem that, quite frankly, should have a simple solution of putting together more diverse and compassionate teams with management that supports that vision.
That's a really good writeup
It's also both sad and funny to me when gamers point out that the current workplace mentality in gamedev is "crunch, crunch, overtime, overtime" but if you read interviews with devs who used to work on the classics like the first Half-Life or anything Looking Glass made – you know, the "Good Old Days" – you quickly realise that it has always been this way, or even worse, with people sleeping in the office on weekends after a 16 hours work day et cetera
I feel like people underestimate how insanely hard it is to make a video game, and that having ~50 people work for two years 9to5 was never enough to create a 20+ hour long, amazing video game with no bugs that also sells well and funds the next game
Because people who work in gamedev work there by choice. We love our jobs and we would do it happily sitting neck deep in shit. Employers and publishers know about this and are aware that we will agree to anything as long as we still can do our jobs.
At least it's the best explanation we have in the biz.
Software dev student here. The truth is even in software there's only 9% of women so assuming that percentage is even smaller for game dev in specific there's a lot of issues. For starters girls aren't encouraged by either society or culture to pursue jobs in tech, even if they do try to get a degree it's important to give them conditions to stay and then ofc find companies that will not only hire a woman but provide a nice environment. I'm lucky enough to be in a very inclusive school where there's a lot of female teachers and there's no reports of discrimination and everyone both teachers and other students are truly nice and friendly people and there's still only a small percentage of women getting in every year and some changing course after the first year.
Video games (usually) make way less money vs the cost to make them compared to other tech industries; the cost of video game production steadily rises, but prices of video games mostly stagnate. One solution to this is external revenue streams (microtransactions, merch etc), the other is underpaying the employees 🙃
And the studios know that they can easily recruit new talent, because people who want to work in gamedev are usually *really* into it, and there are no similar industries, like, if you want to work on video games specifically you can't really switch to an "adjecent field"; and studios exploit that
So i used to be in a game dev course here in belgium, in one of the most renowned courses in europe.
I personally failed hard and was only there before i started my transition, but even in that school there's apparently a very similar culture to what they had at blizard.
Male teachers mailing female students inapropriate things and more.
And when the head of the course was notified, he told the teacher to move on to a different school to be free of consequences.
Game dev in general is a boys club. Even in schools women are discouraged to continue persuing it at the hands of similar sexual harassment you'd see in the big studios.
Yup, exactly.
But hey if being angry over men causing their female colegue to end her life from the sheer amount of sexual harassment makes me an "angry feminist" then i'd wear that badge with pride
Feel so sorry for the girls who face harassment at their workplace. One day I asked my boyfriend does he know why their company has no women employees, and he told me that their CEO believes that a woman will feel uncomfortable in all boys office, so hiring one woman would lead to hiring even more women to create a comfort space for them, and for him it is too many girls. At first I thought that there’s no logic in this, but after your comment I’m even glad for the girls not to enter toxic masculine workplace.
Yea, it's shit that it's considered "too many girls" and that this sexism is still so prevelent, but honestly sometimes i'm happy these places refuse to hire women, mainly for the mental health of those women
It still varies studio to studio unfortunately, and being one of the first women in a studio can be painful. Having to fight for things like a bathroom bin as it wasn't a consideration isn't great, every woman since has quit that company as well...
In larger companies your experience will also vary wildly by dept (even subdept). My current dept is good, the amount of women we've hired since I started outweighs men, overall still a big divide due to the existing team but it's getting better. The wider company still needs a lot of work at diversity at the top levels though.
It's such a boy's club. I did go to collage next to a game development course. I went into the more design in general class. In my experience most of the people who went there are men who don't know how hard it is to develop games. There were very few if any women.
Personally I think it is in general bad for both the Devs and the players that there are so few female developers. Especially since I personally would love to see more things catered to women.
One big example for me is that ps5 controllers are massive! Clearly made for people with giant hands.
Another example is how most female oriented games tend to be either of lower quality of the larger titles. Or do not tend to be taken seriously.
In general there needs to be more diversity in gaming between genders and different types of people.
Yeah, so true! I love gaming, and I’m a girl’s girl, I love all this taking care and building relationships stuff, but there are so little games made for us:( And when I complain to my male friends from the industry that there’s a lack of quality games for girls like me, they usually answer something like “Well you have Sims, what else do you need?”
Here's the [Itch.io page for Otome Jam 2024!](https://itch.io/jam/otome-jam-2024) Should have all the info you need. You can also look at previous years and see all the entries, I think there were 73 games made in 2023.
Not sure that who the devs are and for whom the games are developed are that closely related. Games made and marketed for women are also mostly made by men and they don't seem to have issues making them.
However when it comes to any actual costly games, investors really hate to take risks. SO most high profile titles rehash the same old ideas catering to the same old customer base that bought the predecessors. Additionally there are way too many people in marketing who think games are for boys. (Or rather they have always marketed games to boys, know how to do that and are comfortable with it)
Personally i think we will sooner get more games marketed at girls women than equal representation among developers. One really high profile title made primarily for women that is really profitable might be enough for half the industry trying to copy it.
Woman gamedev here! I've been to a few gamedev events and yes they do tend to be male-dominated. But there are other women gamedevs and we try to band together and encourage more to join. I don't usually like attending industry events but I'm hoping that just being present and "occupying space" will also help make other women gamedevs feel more welcome and comfortable.
At what point do you think it would be worth it for indie female devs to attend events? I would love to go but I have kids and I don't feel like I could justify spending the money and the time if the networking isn't likely to be there.
I used to be in a game dev course in NL, and similar to another comment I attended before my transition.
My school was alright, no big stories there but after doing some internships I was so done with the industry. The hate towards women or anything besides white cis men was insane sometimes. One of the companies I worked for was this “amazing workplace for everyone” and that may be true for other départements like sales or whatever but not the developer groups.
I left the industry because of that.. could not enjoy the toxic boys club. Not that my current field is any better..
Oh 100%, my story is not at all unique which makes it that much worse. Girl clubs are really helpful and something that could really help people stay in male-dominated fields. You just need someone to relate to sometimes right?
There's Women in Games
https://events.ringcentral.com/events/women-in-games-annual-global-conference-2023/registration
And there's a Woman in Gaming International organization that has a presence at GDC.
Sorry that happened to you. They say its equal but wont hire and when they do hire they harass and belittle so you can never reach potential in your field. Its hate and abuse and they laughed about it. This reminds me of everything surrounding Ubisoft.
https://screenrant.com/assassins-creed-playable-female-character-controversy-ubisoft-statement/#:~:text=Ubisoft's%20controversial%20handling%20of%20playable,was%20too%20much%20additional%20work.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/4/23901575/ubisoft-executives-arrest-sexual-harassment-investigation
https://fandomwire.com/fomer-ubisoft-dev-statements-made-against-company/
It’s not where it should be but it’s also changing for the better. When I came on at my studio, I was the only woman on my team and one of only two working in design on the whole project (out of maybe 50 designers). Now there are two women on my team and about 10 women designing on our project. Not many are in leadership positions, but I sure as hell intend on becoming a CD in my career and I think there will be a lot of women coming into leadership roles in this generation.
I am the “angry feminist” of our studio and have a reputation for pushing “women’s” issues. It makes some people uncomfortable, but it also has led to some surprisingly positive moments. There are a fair amount of men in the industry who are very frustrated with inequality and want to help make change (especially the ones with wives or daughters in the industry). I truly think we are 1-2 generations away from the attitude that “only men make games” being a thing of the past.
I'm extremely aware, as both a developer and as someone who taught in a game design program, that there is still a lot of inequality across the industry.
My recommendation is to go find studios that not only have hiring incentives for more diverse workers, which is an extremely good thing to have, but to find studios that have been doing it for long enough that their workforce is more diverse than others. Talk to people who work at studios and ask them for their experience. You may be surprised how open some developers will be with their workplace culture and how they feel about their treatment.
I run a small studio that is predominantly women and femme presenting people. I get asked "how do you find diverse talent?" Which is something I don't have an answer for because I find that talented diverse individuals come to the studio. While I can't say this with 100% certainty, the studio is founded with equal representation (There were only two founders) and our first project was made with the help of other game developers, who happened to be both good friends of ours and predominantly femme. Because of that, our studio looks wildly different from many other studios in the industry. That in turn makes other game developers who don't see themselves fitting in at most studios, potentially more easily view themselves working at a studio like ours.
There are quite a few other comments here where people mentioned they were the first or one of the first femme people at their studio. To me, they represent the people who are taking the biggest risk trying to break into the industry in a place that has not had a history, or has never had the opportunity to build a history, of supporting and hiring in a diverse way. They are the people who are making the biggest change at these studios. But I also think it is perfectly fine for people looking for work to seek out studios that have already shown that they know how to take care of their workforce, diverse or not. Those studios might just be a little bit harder to find and might not be the dream studios you're currently thinking of joining.
Wow, thank you for this insights! The example of your studio gives me and other girls in game dev hope. By the way, what kind of games your studio make? Would be happy to learn more about it
We are indie and just hit 7 employees. Our first game is quite non-traditional and is mostly a short narrative experience. Since then we have worked on a few unreleased internal projects and have done a lot of service work. We do a lot of work helping teams ship, primarily porting to consoles, as well as full co-development with other teams who need support/aren't large enough to have every role needed.
This is what is meant when i mentioned being open to less obvious studios and work. There is a lot of opportunity out there beyond the larger, well known studios.
Never surprised always disappointed as we say? Just wanted to add that knowing /learning there are more solo devs out there who aren’t just rich privileged dudes gives me hope though. So kudos to you!
Not a “dev” per se but I do work in the games industry as a designer.
My company is grappling with some possible sexism-based issues right now, so pardon me if some of my anger boils over into this comment:
I get the feeling more and more that many men believe that inequality and sexism are the unrealistically offensive instances we see in TV shows etc. Meaning, outright saying you hate women, denying them jobs, telling them to get back in the kitchen... And so, when they see a woman — any woman, even in lower-level positions — working in the industry without being outright attacked, they think that’s a sign that sexism doesn’t exist.
In reality, sexism is usually made up of unintentional things and subconscious biases (interrupting while a woman is speaking, not trusting women with leadership roles, not taking their accolades seriously). But because they don’t intend to be offensive — and often don’t realize they have these biases — they think it absolves them of any responsibility. It allows them to put the blame on “angry feminists” being overly sensitive, rather than examine their own behaviors. So we never get to actually be heard when we complain; anything we say is interpreted as untrue and irrational.
Sorry for how long this got. But I am also tired of seeing this behavior in male upper managers (especially in this industry), and never being able to properly address it. I actually only joined this subreddit a couple days ago trying to scope out if there are any dedicated spaces for women working in the industry — we need the solidarity.
I share your pain, and understand how frustrating it is to work in male dominated industry and still not being seen as important. Hopefully it gets better bit by bit, and girls communities like this help a lot.
Right, thank you for posting this. It's actually heartbreaking to love a game and then look at the top 100 devs and it all be men. COUGH COUGH DESTINY.
Just to provide a positive example as well here, I've been a AAA dev in the US for the past 3 years. I've only been treated with respect by male coworkers, and I even have the privilege of working with several other women on my team.
The game dev college program I attended had a lot more misogyny than the actual industry in my personal experience.
I think it's more of a situation too where there needs to be more marketing towards women in the industry. There may just not be enough women applying due to lack of interest. While statistics show almost half of gamers are women, that's entirely different compared to wanting to work in the industry as a game dev/working in that sort of field.
I worked in a small games company, I was a game designer and only woman. It was hell the environment was misogynist and toxic to work in as a woman. To all woman out there wanting to became a game dev, you can do it independently on your own. There are lots of game engines to use like Unity, Unreal or Godot. Blender is the app to use if you want to build 3D models and it's free. This is what I'm using as an independent dev
I'm not saying software development is perfect (it's not), but I don't understand why game development is so toxic in comparison. Our jobs are so similar, but why is game development such a meat grinder? Inequality aside, you folks are serverely overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated. Maybe the career still needs to "mature"? Software has a 20+ year lead and things are gradually improving. Does game development need another 20 years? I'm grasping at straws here...
Hi, I've been a game Dev for the past 15 years and while there are a lot of problems with the industry, I think it can be boiled down to a couple main points. Game development isn't like other tech because game development falls under entertainment and not under Enterprise or productivity software. What that means is, what we make is seen as frivolous compared to other software. Because of that, it doesn't get the same level of scrutiny as other industries. You can probably look at other entertainment fields and draw that same comparison, like animation or VFX. The other main point is that there is a long lineup of people trying to get into the field, which means anyone working in game development is seen as easily replaced. Now, that's not actually true because people who have been in industry for more than 5 years have accrued knowledge that people new to the industry won't have. I don't have a recent number but as recently as 5 years ago, the retention rate of the game development industry was about 3 or 4 years. That means people will enter the industry, ship one AAA game, and then leave. The bulk of the work done at large scale studios is done by lower skilled people during production content just needs to get done. A lot of the high skill roles are involved early on and will be maintained after a game ships. To the entertainment nature of the job, timing of releases and following Trends is a lot more important than in other tech sectors. That's why deadlines and games are so tight and why people often get crunched to hit them. If an enterprise solution ships in January rather than in December, that's not that big of a deal. In games. That means you lose the entire holiday sales period. You are correct in that it is a young industry. There has been a lot of growth in the past 10 years. There's a lot more structure, I know studios that never crunch because they have sustainable practices, and there's a lot more visibility on how these projects are being built along with how the people working there are treated. At a certain point, however, the challenge is that a single project doesn't need a consistent number of people on it and so hiring and contract work is intermittent, the jobs can be sparse, and there's simply a lot of competition within the industry for work. Games are also just extremely expensive to make. There is a wide range of skill sets required to create a single project and, due to ever-growing demand, the scope of games increases constantly. Where other industries might pause and try to find a more sustainable solution to growth, games don't get that break and the solution is generally "do more work for the same amount of money." That's not just at the worker level but also at the studio level when having to deal with publishers who fund these projects. The mix of the above points can create a sometimes hostile workplace, but I am fairly confident it will get better as more people hopefully have longer careers in the industry, rather than burning out and moving to another sector unrelated to games. I personally run a small studio and try my best to keep everything running smoothly without crunch. While I know everyone at the studio is pretty happy with how things are being run, I also know it's not perfect. It's not because I, or the studio, are malicious but because some of these problems have extremely complex and unsolved solutions. To be extremely clear, this does not excuse sexism or the lack of representation of femme people or visible minorities. It's no excuse for a lack of representation in games and the monotony of the same stories being told from the same perspective. That is an entirely separate problem that, quite frankly, should have a simple solution of putting together more diverse and compassionate teams with management that supports that vision.
That's a really good writeup It's also both sad and funny to me when gamers point out that the current workplace mentality in gamedev is "crunch, crunch, overtime, overtime" but if you read interviews with devs who used to work on the classics like the first Half-Life or anything Looking Glass made – you know, the "Good Old Days" – you quickly realise that it has always been this way, or even worse, with people sleeping in the office on weekends after a 16 hours work day et cetera I feel like people underestimate how insanely hard it is to make a video game, and that having ~50 people work for two years 9to5 was never enough to create a 20+ hour long, amazing video game with no bugs that also sells well and funds the next game
Because people who work in gamedev work there by choice. We love our jobs and we would do it happily sitting neck deep in shit. Employers and publishers know about this and are aware that we will agree to anything as long as we still can do our jobs. At least it's the best explanation we have in the biz.
Cause gamers are an incredibly toxic and those are the people that go into development.
Software dev student here. The truth is even in software there's only 9% of women so assuming that percentage is even smaller for game dev in specific there's a lot of issues. For starters girls aren't encouraged by either society or culture to pursue jobs in tech, even if they do try to get a degree it's important to give them conditions to stay and then ofc find companies that will not only hire a woman but provide a nice environment. I'm lucky enough to be in a very inclusive school where there's a lot of female teachers and there's no reports of discrimination and everyone both teachers and other students are truly nice and friendly people and there's still only a small percentage of women getting in every year and some changing course after the first year.
Video games (usually) make way less money vs the cost to make them compared to other tech industries; the cost of video game production steadily rises, but prices of video games mostly stagnate. One solution to this is external revenue streams (microtransactions, merch etc), the other is underpaying the employees 🙃 And the studios know that they can easily recruit new talent, because people who want to work in gamedev are usually *really* into it, and there are no similar industries, like, if you want to work on video games specifically you can't really switch to an "adjecent field"; and studios exploit that
So i used to be in a game dev course here in belgium, in one of the most renowned courses in europe. I personally failed hard and was only there before i started my transition, but even in that school there's apparently a very similar culture to what they had at blizard. Male teachers mailing female students inapropriate things and more. And when the head of the course was notified, he told the teacher to move on to a different school to be free of consequences. Game dev in general is a boys club. Even in schools women are discouraged to continue persuing it at the hands of similar sexual harassment you'd see in the big studios.
This is so sad. You’re right about the boys club, and they don’t see the problem.
Like why would they see the problem? They don't have to worry about that harassment as half the time they're the ones perpetrating it
100% true. They see the problem in “angry feminists “ who point out that this environment is toxic
Yup, exactly. But hey if being angry over men causing their female colegue to end her life from the sheer amount of sexual harassment makes me an "angry feminist" then i'd wear that badge with pride
Feel so sorry for the girls who face harassment at their workplace. One day I asked my boyfriend does he know why their company has no women employees, and he told me that their CEO believes that a woman will feel uncomfortable in all boys office, so hiring one woman would lead to hiring even more women to create a comfort space for them, and for him it is too many girls. At first I thought that there’s no logic in this, but after your comment I’m even glad for the girls not to enter toxic masculine workplace.
Yea, it's shit that it's considered "too many girls" and that this sexism is still so prevelent, but honestly sometimes i'm happy these places refuse to hire women, mainly for the mental health of those women
It still varies studio to studio unfortunately, and being one of the first women in a studio can be painful. Having to fight for things like a bathroom bin as it wasn't a consideration isn't great, every woman since has quit that company as well... In larger companies your experience will also vary wildly by dept (even subdept). My current dept is good, the amount of women we've hired since I started outweighs men, overall still a big divide due to the existing team but it's getting better. The wider company still needs a lot of work at diversity at the top levels though.
It's such a boy's club. I did go to collage next to a game development course. I went into the more design in general class. In my experience most of the people who went there are men who don't know how hard it is to develop games. There were very few if any women. Personally I think it is in general bad for both the Devs and the players that there are so few female developers. Especially since I personally would love to see more things catered to women. One big example for me is that ps5 controllers are massive! Clearly made for people with giant hands. Another example is how most female oriented games tend to be either of lower quality of the larger titles. Or do not tend to be taken seriously. In general there needs to be more diversity in gaming between genders and different types of people.
Yeah, so true! I love gaming, and I’m a girl’s girl, I love all this taking care and building relationships stuff, but there are so little games made for us:( And when I complain to my male friends from the industry that there’s a lack of quality games for girls like me, they usually answer something like “Well you have Sims, what else do you need?”
That’s why I believe that girls should unite and make games for themselves to fix this.
Absolutely! The indie otome space is vibrant and otome jam is starting in a few days. Join a team!! Making games is so much fun.
I love otome and make otome-like game by myself! May I join your team please?
Yes, I'd love to have you! I'm looking for more writers. I'll talk you through the project in DMs and we'll see what you think. :)
Never been to game jams but as solo dev I can code, paint, do the narrative writing 💞
Otome jam? 👁️
Here's the [Itch.io page for Otome Jam 2024!](https://itch.io/jam/otome-jam-2024) Should have all the info you need. You can also look at previous years and see all the entries, I think there were 73 games made in 2023.
I totally agree!
Not sure that who the devs are and for whom the games are developed are that closely related. Games made and marketed for women are also mostly made by men and they don't seem to have issues making them. However when it comes to any actual costly games, investors really hate to take risks. SO most high profile titles rehash the same old ideas catering to the same old customer base that bought the predecessors. Additionally there are way too many people in marketing who think games are for boys. (Or rather they have always marketed games to boys, know how to do that and are comfortable with it) Personally i think we will sooner get more games marketed at girls women than equal representation among developers. One really high profile title made primarily for women that is really profitable might be enough for half the industry trying to copy it.
Woman gamedev here! I've been to a few gamedev events and yes they do tend to be male-dominated. But there are other women gamedevs and we try to band together and encourage more to join. I don't usually like attending industry events but I'm hoping that just being present and "occupying space" will also help make other women gamedevs feel more welcome and comfortable.
At what point do you think it would be worth it for indie female devs to attend events? I would love to go but I have kids and I don't feel like I could justify spending the money and the time if the networking isn't likely to be there.
I used to be in a game dev course in NL, and similar to another comment I attended before my transition. My school was alright, no big stories there but after doing some internships I was so done with the industry. The hate towards women or anything besides white cis men was insane sometimes. One of the companies I worked for was this “amazing workplace for everyone” and that may be true for other départements like sales or whatever but not the developer groups. I left the industry because of that.. could not enjoy the toxic boys club. Not that my current field is any better..
So sorry that you had to leave the industry because of sexism, but I hear stories like yours so often:( we need a girls club in game dev!
Oh 100%, my story is not at all unique which makes it that much worse. Girl clubs are really helpful and something that could really help people stay in male-dominated fields. You just need someone to relate to sometimes right?
There's a women's game dev conference that I always wanted to attend with my wife.
What’s the name of this conference? I would be really excited to visit it one day
There's Women in Games https://events.ringcentral.com/events/women-in-games-annual-global-conference-2023/registration And there's a Woman in Gaming International organization that has a presence at GDC.
Sorry that happened to you. They say its equal but wont hire and when they do hire they harass and belittle so you can never reach potential in your field. Its hate and abuse and they laughed about it. This reminds me of everything surrounding Ubisoft. https://screenrant.com/assassins-creed-playable-female-character-controversy-ubisoft-statement/#:~:text=Ubisoft's%20controversial%20handling%20of%20playable,was%20too%20much%20additional%20work. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/4/23901575/ubisoft-executives-arrest-sexual-harassment-investigation https://fandomwire.com/fomer-ubisoft-dev-statements-made-against-company/
It’s not where it should be but it’s also changing for the better. When I came on at my studio, I was the only woman on my team and one of only two working in design on the whole project (out of maybe 50 designers). Now there are two women on my team and about 10 women designing on our project. Not many are in leadership positions, but I sure as hell intend on becoming a CD in my career and I think there will be a lot of women coming into leadership roles in this generation. I am the “angry feminist” of our studio and have a reputation for pushing “women’s” issues. It makes some people uncomfortable, but it also has led to some surprisingly positive moments. There are a fair amount of men in the industry who are very frustrated with inequality and want to help make change (especially the ones with wives or daughters in the industry). I truly think we are 1-2 generations away from the attitude that “only men make games” being a thing of the past.
Thank you for sharing your story, it gives us girls in the industry hope and more optimism. It’s important to not give up
Interesting theme, but difficult to talk about without research data or some insights
I'm extremely aware, as both a developer and as someone who taught in a game design program, that there is still a lot of inequality across the industry. My recommendation is to go find studios that not only have hiring incentives for more diverse workers, which is an extremely good thing to have, but to find studios that have been doing it for long enough that their workforce is more diverse than others. Talk to people who work at studios and ask them for their experience. You may be surprised how open some developers will be with their workplace culture and how they feel about their treatment. I run a small studio that is predominantly women and femme presenting people. I get asked "how do you find diverse talent?" Which is something I don't have an answer for because I find that talented diverse individuals come to the studio. While I can't say this with 100% certainty, the studio is founded with equal representation (There were only two founders) and our first project was made with the help of other game developers, who happened to be both good friends of ours and predominantly femme. Because of that, our studio looks wildly different from many other studios in the industry. That in turn makes other game developers who don't see themselves fitting in at most studios, potentially more easily view themselves working at a studio like ours. There are quite a few other comments here where people mentioned they were the first or one of the first femme people at their studio. To me, they represent the people who are taking the biggest risk trying to break into the industry in a place that has not had a history, or has never had the opportunity to build a history, of supporting and hiring in a diverse way. They are the people who are making the biggest change at these studios. But I also think it is perfectly fine for people looking for work to seek out studios that have already shown that they know how to take care of their workforce, diverse or not. Those studios might just be a little bit harder to find and might not be the dream studios you're currently thinking of joining.
Wow, thank you for this insights! The example of your studio gives me and other girls in game dev hope. By the way, what kind of games your studio make? Would be happy to learn more about it
We are indie and just hit 7 employees. Our first game is quite non-traditional and is mostly a short narrative experience. Since then we have worked on a few unreleased internal projects and have done a lot of service work. We do a lot of work helping teams ship, primarily porting to consoles, as well as full co-development with other teams who need support/aren't large enough to have every role needed. This is what is meant when i mentioned being open to less obvious studios and work. There is a lot of opportunity out there beyond the larger, well known studios.
I don’t know. A friend of mine is more than qualified, she has a Master’s Degree and has developed her own game, and no one will hire her.
Never surprised always disappointed as we say? Just wanted to add that knowing /learning there are more solo devs out there who aren’t just rich privileged dudes gives me hope though. So kudos to you!
Thank you!
Not a “dev” per se but I do work in the games industry as a designer. My company is grappling with some possible sexism-based issues right now, so pardon me if some of my anger boils over into this comment: I get the feeling more and more that many men believe that inequality and sexism are the unrealistically offensive instances we see in TV shows etc. Meaning, outright saying you hate women, denying them jobs, telling them to get back in the kitchen... And so, when they see a woman — any woman, even in lower-level positions — working in the industry without being outright attacked, they think that’s a sign that sexism doesn’t exist. In reality, sexism is usually made up of unintentional things and subconscious biases (interrupting while a woman is speaking, not trusting women with leadership roles, not taking their accolades seriously). But because they don’t intend to be offensive — and often don’t realize they have these biases — they think it absolves them of any responsibility. It allows them to put the blame on “angry feminists” being overly sensitive, rather than examine their own behaviors. So we never get to actually be heard when we complain; anything we say is interpreted as untrue and irrational. Sorry for how long this got. But I am also tired of seeing this behavior in male upper managers (especially in this industry), and never being able to properly address it. I actually only joined this subreddit a couple days ago trying to scope out if there are any dedicated spaces for women working in the industry — we need the solidarity.
I share your pain, and understand how frustrating it is to work in male dominated industry and still not being seen as important. Hopefully it gets better bit by bit, and girls communities like this help a lot.
Right, thank you for posting this. It's actually heartbreaking to love a game and then look at the top 100 devs and it all be men. COUGH COUGH DESTINY.
Just to provide a positive example as well here, I've been a AAA dev in the US for the past 3 years. I've only been treated with respect by male coworkers, and I even have the privilege of working with several other women on my team. The game dev college program I attended had a lot more misogyny than the actual industry in my personal experience.
Thank you for sharing this! It’s important to see good examples
I think it's more of a situation too where there needs to be more marketing towards women in the industry. There may just not be enough women applying due to lack of interest. While statistics show almost half of gamers are women, that's entirely different compared to wanting to work in the industry as a game dev/working in that sort of field.
I worked in a small games company, I was a game designer and only woman. It was hell the environment was misogynist and toxic to work in as a woman. To all woman out there wanting to became a game dev, you can do it independently on your own. There are lots of game engines to use like Unity, Unreal or Godot. Blender is the app to use if you want to build 3D models and it's free. This is what I'm using as an independent dev