We need less agendas.
The solution to everything is not more women.
As a woman, and a gamer, seeing more women in the industry would be nice, but I don’t really think having more women in leadership roles will draw more women into playing games.
The solution to drawing more women into games is to make quality products at a reasonable price; (by reasonable I mean, able to make a profit without gouging customers.) The solution is to end console exclusivity and release on all platforms. The solution is to allow their customers to own the game they purchase instead of trying to make them rent it. (These sorts of changes will draw in men, women, trans/non-binary from across the board.)
Plenty of games get released full of bugs that get fixed after release because the bean counters at the top are rushing release, or are meddling in content creation when their MBA gives them no practical experience in development, coding, art, music, or play testing. I’m a woman, and I’m not spending money on a buggy piece of shit.
Then there is the issue with day 1 DLC. Day one DLC is not DLC, it’s a fucking money grab designed to milk more income out of your customers. How about those micro-transactions? How about taking some fucking chances instead of releasing sequel after sequel. How many COD and BF games do we really need? I’m a woman, and I’m not interested in playing the same boring, rehashed garbage over and over. I’m pretty sure people in other demographics have similar views.
The solution to making good games is also not MOAR graphics; it doesn’t matter if the art is made by a male/female/non-binary person. Plenty of small studios release games with low/mid graphics and do really well. See Stardew Valley, Hades 1 & 2, hollow knight, terraria, slay the spire, don’t starve, mega bonk, ect.
The solution to making good games is understanding game theory, and the type of game you want to release. Games fall into general modalities. Some games could involve lots of collecting (pokemon,) beating hard enemies/bosses (dark souls,) telling a story (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,) open world exploration (Fall-out 4.) Good games do 1-3 of these things really well. We’re getting to a place where we see more female or LGBT video game protagonists/characters. That inclusivity is great, but that doesn’t stop a game from being trash everywhere else. (Thank you Lara Croft for crawling so the rest of us could walk and run.) I’m not going to run out and buy a game with a female protagonist if the game play is trash.
The Tetris Company is a company that licenses tetris to 3rd parties, and occasionally releases rehashed versions of tetris. Nothing this company does is groundbreaking in anyway, other than trying to be an inclusive employer. (Kudos to them for recognizing the need for inclusivity in organizational hierarchy.) Per the article: Maya Rogers has been the CEO at Tetris since 2014. Her father, Henk Rogers, founded The Tetris Company with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov back in 1996. Maya Rogers is a fucking nepo baby, so any hot take coming out of her mouth is kinda meaningless to me.
There’s also an incredibly mysoginistic culture in many competitive games. Good luck using a mic as a woman playing CS, for example.
Completely agree though, more women in leadership and even just dev is a good thing, but for the most part people don’t really care who made a product, only how much they like it.
I don’t really play many games like CS, BF, COD because 1st person perspective shooters give me motion sickness/vertigo. I spent nearly a decade playing wow, and leading raids over vent. In those instances where men have been assholes, I had the ability to just kick assholes from my raid. I have been playing arc raiders, and at the start it was a mixed bag. Turning off cross play so I’m only in matches with other PC players made it much better. 95% of the interactions I’ve had with men after eliminating console players have been nice and respectful.
Such a well thought comment. I’d also add, just trying to build women centric won’t give as much rise in female gamers as would having Dad or Mom introduce kids into gaming.
As a male gamer I had my interests, but once the kids were old enough to hold a controller we’d get multiplayer family friendly titles. Now my daughters play online together in different provinces, and have built their own gaming PC
Appreciate you taking the time to read and consider it.
If 50% of Tetris players are women and it’s a game made by mostly men, then it’s already successful and why does it need more women? Just go make games FFS, why is it always a demand to be handed roles in the biggest and most established companies? Also why would games targetting men want more women if they don’t want to target women?
ITT: people surprised one of the most recognizable and prolific games in the history of video games has a CEO.
She sounds like a savvy business person:
“We’re half the population, and we bring in a lot of money into the industry, and so I always question when our licensing partners are developing a new Tetris game: how many women do you have on the team? Because our demographic is close to 50[%].”
Yeah that checks out. It’s pretty wild that “developing games for our demographic / population” is so hard for gaming companies to grasp as a winning concept.
Isn’t that a change that needs to be seen in general, not just gaming?
As a man in the trades, absolutely. I do my best to encourage women of any age to learn a skilled trade. There’s still a bit of a “boys club” sentiment, thankfully it’s starting to die out. There’s not enough people interested in doing the hard work involved in the trades to keep the skills going, even the sexists can’t afford to keep women out.
I have absolutely no issues working next to anyone, regardless of where they are on the gender/sexuality spectrums, all I ask is that they do their share and not be a douche-cannoe.
Maybe unsurprisingly the only 2 asks I have are too much for a lot of people.
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Well you’ve got me imagining fitting a woman into a project like a Tetris piece.
i keep doing this but then at some point they all disappear
only 4% identified as transgender, non-binary or gender diverse
You need to have a comparison against the wider population when you show stats like this. Maybe that’s more than usual? When you say “22% of developers are women,” it’s clear that there are fewer women than the population in general. But we don’t need 50% of game developers being trans. (I mean, that might be fun to see but…)
Then convince more women to play video games and become game devs.
Tetris CEO?
Why does a video game have or even need a CEO? 🤨
So they can slap people with lawsuits, of course.
Short form of The Terri’s Company Inc.
I personally don’t care what gender or skin color someone has. We don’t need more Woman (or any other gender). This should not be a topic of discussion in my opinion, only skill should be.
To an extent, but 10 skilled diverse people will result in higher quality than 10 skilled same people.
So yes, care about skill, but also make sure you get some free innovation by having varied opinions from differing cultures, backgrounds, genders, etc.
To an extent, but 10 skilled diverse people will result in higher quality than 10 skilled same people.
I don’t believe that. If someone gets a job, because it has blonde hair or is woman, while someone else might fit better for the job and is doing better… then clearly something is wrong.
Nobody ever says to pick the worse fit candidate just because they are a woman or whatever. That is a bullshit talking point by small minded people.
