uk resource centre for women in science, engineering and technology

Hi Kaye, welcome to the UKRC blog. It sounds to me like you need to have a whole combination of skills to be in your area of work: creative skills, design, drawing, technical skills, logic, maths... Perhaps that is another reason why it is hard to recruit people.

Why do you think that most of the students in graphics for games are male?

Best wishes,

Ruth

Hi Kaye

Just read your blog with interest. Unfortunately, I will not be following you into the games development area, as I am realy stressing myself out just to create a small game in Java for my assignment. I am more a teacher than a gamer. Good luck in your future career and thanks for sharing your information. It is not a subject that has interested me, probably because I have no interest in games. I feel younger people may be more interested in this area, I am 45 so it could be because there was not opportunity to get into those subject whilst at school.

Hi Ruth

Re: male students on games courses. A very good question. I think it's down to games not being pushed in schools and colleges, and so many young women never even consider games as a potential viable career.

Very much like film (we all consume films, but very few of us make them), games are often perceived as something made by other, more creative people. I believe there is this fundamental dismissal of games as something "you can do", and that it requires skills that are difficult, arcane and weird, and therefore not for girls.

In reality games are made by the same kinds of creative people that make websites (something many people feel they can do, and therefore do), or films, or advertising or anything visual, technical and creative. And yet ask at any career fair, and no-one will tell you that you can use your maths, art or creative writing skills in the games industry.

Getting back to the women in m y courses, it is worth pointing out that the general trend of female games students is upwards (from 0 in year 3 to 2 in year 2 and now 3 in year 1) it's still not rising fast enough. In that sense, it's very much like female representation in British politics...

Kaye

Hi Bev

I feel for you, stuck in the throes of game development :) No matter what platform you're developing for, it is a tricksy and intensive process. Break a leg! (not the build).

Your comment on being 45 and not having an interest in games is a particularly poignant one right now, as we're currently in the middle of a casual gaming boom where women over the age of 40 are the fastest rising gamer demographic by a long way - and on the flip side, hardcore gamers over 40 are starting to put down their controllers.

This is an interesting conflict of causal versus hardcore gaming, where the casual market is full of new, innovative titles that lure in gamers from all walks of life, and the hardcore market is saturated with the same old thing year after year. (I'm generalising, but broadly this is true).

I know you say you have no interest in gaming, but I would argue that you just haven't found the right game for you just yet. It will be out there, you just have to find it :)

Good luck with the game, and don't forget that "crunch time" during development is the perfect excuse fo doughnuts!

Kaye

Hello Kaye,
Thank you so much for a great post. My younger daughter is now 14, and about 3 years ago decided that she wanted to be a designer and creator of computer games (she was particularly keen at that time on designing roller coster and other similar rides). She is still a fan of the Sims, in fact her older sister (19) and cousin (also female) 21 still play the Sims (now Sims 3), it is amazing what a good investment that game has been and how it appeals simply through providing the basics to create your own imaginary world and situations.
I have sent my younger daughter a link to your post and hope she will read it. As she's 14 I don't know much about what she's thinking about these days, but I hope she will find it interesting, especially as she is soon going to be deciding what course to do in the sixth form.

With best wishes and thank you again
Maxine.
(Maxine Clarke, in my day job an editor at Nature and friend of Ruth's).

Hi Kaye
Thanks for the blog - its great to have you on here.
I have 3 comments / questions…

1. It’s brilliant to see that you are running game design workshops in local schools. Hopefully you will have inspired some of those girls to go into the industry. What reactions are you getting from the students and are there differences between the girls and the boys?

2. I’m running an action research project at Bradford College, looking at the use of role models in the computing department (HE). We’ve held three ‘Meet the IT Professionals’ sessions and for those we’ve had three female speakers in to talk about their career paths and job roles. The aim of these is to inspire the students (especially the women - because there are very few) to pursue a career in computing. The students have found the sessions beneficial and inspirational and their feedback has been very positive. How do you think role models could be used effectively as part of the curriculum to ensure that more women progress into this sector?

3. I’d be interested in hearing about your ‘big plans’ (6th paragraph) – if it’s not a secret!

Thanks
Tamsin

Hello Kaye
This is Maxine again. A propos of my last post, I was wondering if you know of any opportunity my daughter might have over the summer vacation to do a course in computer game design? As mentioned, she is 14 (15 mid-August) and I am sure would be interested in course late August if one is available and suitable for a girl of that age. Any other tips you have for her would be most welcome.
Thanks very much.
Maxine.

Am really enjoying your responses, Kaye, and hi Maxine!

Maxine, my 15 year old son invents and creates his own games using Scratch, a brilliant programme downloadable free from MIT: scratch.mit.edu/ Scratch is also a community, where you can share your games, adapt the creations of others, comment on people's work, etc, all moderated by the people at MIT. I think there are some other programmes of this type, but Scratch is the only one I know. I went to the Women in Games conference two years ago and learnt about it there from one of the creators.

Kaye, I am now wondering if I can come up with the dream game for women age 45 +. Maybe some readers have thoughts.... Maxine, maybe it should be a sophisticated who-dun-it: narrative, jeopardy, problem solving.... that sort of thing?

Hi Maxine

It's great that your daughter has gained so much pleasure from games - let's hope she continues to enjoy gaming even when things like boys and a hectic social life start to get in the way!

As for summer programmes, I'm afriad I'm not aware of any organized events for game design for children in the UK. At the moment these things are few and far between. There are some student events that run globally such as Game Jam (www.gamejam.org) or in Ireland there is Game Fladgh (sp?) but these are usually for over 18s only.

I'd second Ruth's suggestion of getting your daugher started on home-made games if she has an interest. I recommend GameMaker, a free toolkit for coding and creating fun 2D and 3D games. You can download it on www.yoyogames.com where makers share their games for others to download - there's some great stuff out there! One of the schools I visited with my game design workshop was already using GameMaker for year 10 projects so it's at an ideal level.

I hope she has a busy and creative summer! :)
Kaye

Hi Tamsin

Excellent questions! Here goes:

1) The game design workshops were great overall, although the major differences in input from the students was much more on an social level than a gender level. The boys and girls from the smaller schools threw themselves into the task equally well, and with a great deal of enthusiasm and creativity - but sadly there were students from larger schools with intake from more varied backgrounds, who were less enthused or engaged, and where it was a definite uphill struggle all the way.

One thing I did notice was that the boys tended to focus on zombies, virus outbreaks and the Mafia (!) as themes (there was much avenging of fathers and betrayal of best friends), whereas all-girl teams had a tendency to recreate shopping themes (with debt messages!) and fashion in their game designs. What's really interesting is that mixed groups had the best ideas by far, and were the most creative and less constrained by gender stereotyped themes. I thought this spoke volumes about how important an inclusive and balanced workforce is!

2) I love the idea of using role models for female students, but sometimes I think that unless there is a personal connection between the student and the role model, the effect can be limited. Going one step further to turn passive role models into active mentors would be one way to make the connection deeper and more personal for the student. Mentors can have limited but regular contact with the students for practical reasons, but as long as there is some one-to-one or one-to three (if pressed) with practical advice and Q&A, the students can contextualise the info. This could also help students visualise themsevels in such a role, which is the start of making any change.

3) I often joke about the fact that whenever I do something to promote game development careers to women, I realise that we need to start younger and younger to be most effective. My recent tour of schools in the area told me that years 11 and 12 are almost too late and at this rate I'll be tergeting Maternity wards with flyers and presentations.

Joking aside, my plans for targeting young people for game development showcases and careers advice are moving towards a wider spectrum of younger people. Even thought the UK games industry is relatively small, many young people are making waves in the booming indie game and casual game market. My plans - though still in the very early planning stages - start with a set of practical and fun activities teachers can run themselves in class and continue with getting computer science back on the curriculum in secondary education*. Michael Gove, I'm looking at you!

K
* I don't intend to do this all on my own though :)

Hi Kaye,

I'm a newcomer to this blog; your post was great so I'll definitely continue reading! I'm soon to graduate from the Computer Arts course at Abertay in Dundee and am keen to become part of the games industry myself; however I am finding it extremely difficult to find work, despite a good portfolio of development projects.

I know everybody has their own route into games, and it's different now compared to how things were a few years ago - but do you have any advice for an aspiring creative? At the moment I'm stuck between trying to find work in games development, opting for games related work that isn't actually games development, or making the most of my transferrable skills and opting for advertising/graphic design.

Do you have any ideas of what might be a good route? I realise that it's extremely competitive trying to get into the games industry these days.

Thanks!

- Jess

Thanks for the recommeded game, Kaye, I will see if my daughter will check it out.

A game for the over 45s? Well, do we have time? ;-) I love puzzles, eg I do the crossword and sudokus each day in the Times and always have a go at the new ones they introduce from time to time. But that's pretty two-dimensional. I also like Patience (or Solitaire as it seems to be called now) and play that on the computer occasionally. So that is me- a bit pathetic really. I do love blogging, though, and I notice that other bloggers love all these quick quizzes, polls, questionnaires etc. Again, hardly what you are asking, Ruth!

I think a good detective story might tempt me .I remember back in the 1980s a very good (to me!) game called Deja Vu, very basic graphics, where you are a person who at the start wakes up in a room with a dead body. You have to solve the crime in a series of lateral thinking exercises before you get accused of it yourself. That was quite fun and lasted days (in my case, I probably was not very good at it!).

Before that, on the old PDP9 or so (going back a long way) there was a text version of a dungeon-type game that everyone in the lab was hooked on. I never really quite got it in that I did not ever get very far in, but it seemed fun. (There was also a matrix version of star trek).

Just from observing girls and boys in my extended family, girls seem to like "creating a world/scenes/characters" type of games whereas boys like to kill as many people as quickly and efficiently as possible (male nephew behaviour) ideally while driving a virtual car very fast. The two come together in the Wii game that are popular with both sexes, eg Mario Kart.

Here's an incentive to study computing:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/best-paying-jobs-women/story?id=10585854

The latest Forbes list on best paying jobs for women.
'Computer programmer, a new addition to the list, came in at No. 7. Women constitute only 21 percent of the field but earn nearly equally to men. Female computer programmers earn a median of 62,000 dollars a year, and those in the top 10 per cent of the field make a salary of 111,000 dollars. Some other upsides of the job: Most programmers work standard 40-hour weeks, and telecommuting is becoming more common. Plus, employers typically require only a bachelor's degree, which is particularly appealing to women who want high earnings without the educational investment required by fields like medicine or law.'

At UKRC, our stats indicate that about 14 per cent of computer professionals are women.

Maxine: am thinking now... have you played Professor Layton? It's great, a detective story with puzzles. But something aimed at women 45 plus... Am working on it!

I hate to rain on the ABC news parade, but I can tell you that 40 hour weeks and the equivalent of £75K salaries are not standard in the games industry, even for programmers who traditionally top the salary tree in games. Here are some stats for 2008 in the USA
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/average-us-industry-salaries-up-7-percent-in-2008

Most of the programmers that I worked with did far longer hours than the rest of the team. Due to the crucial nature of thier role within the game development cycle they also tended to be core team members, and therefore very busy from the start of the project right until the end. Sometimes the lead programmer would be consolidating code for final archive and submission weeks after the rest of the team had moved onto projects new, so it's not quite the rosy picture ABC is painting.

Having said that, now that games are changing and the market is opening up to smaller teams working on smaller games, this model is no longer the only option. ABC are right about a move to telecommuting, although in games this is usally associated with outsourcing. One of my friends works freelance (mostly from home) and enjoys working on her own iPhone game in her spare time, so there is some scope for flexibility and it's getting better every day.

But back to the games for women over 40 debate. The good news is: You're not alone!
http://www.bizreport.com/2010/02/popcap_games_typical_social_gamer_is_female_and_forty-three.html#

According to this survey you're best off playing something social on Facebook. Farmville has a bazillion players for a reason - it is easy, fun and very, very addictive (although I have now weaned myself off it, finally).

But it depends very much on what platform you want to play.
For the DS I highly recommend Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a who-dunnit in 2D with lovely atmosphere and plenty of sleuthing at your own pace. The DS is a fantastic platform that now has a major following in the over 40s and even over 60s age groups.

For the PC (offline) there is the wonderful CSI series of games (Also sleuthing. I can see a pattern developing here) and any of the Pop Cap casual games such as Peggle, a highly addictive and utterly delightful casual game, or the absolute classic Bejeweled 2. Or you could dip a toe into one of the many Hidden Object games that has flooded the market recently. My favourite is Shutter island, based on the new film. Very atmospheric and easily dipped in- and out of.

Some of the Pop Cap games mentioned above are now available on smartphones too (iPhone, Blackberry, or any Android operated phone) so you can play on the train or in the car when waiting for the kids to finish ballet practice. if you have an iPhone you're just an app away from gaming fun.

For PC Online there are thousands of casual sites offering in-browser games that don't even need installation. For short session casual games I recommend www.miniclip.com, but that's just one site of many. If you prefer your games cute and quiet, I highly recommend www.orisinal.com (sic), for some stunningly beautiful flash games for all ages, that are particularly appealing to women and girls.

Or, if you can pry the controller from the kids' fingers for long enough, on the Xbox 360 there's Braid, an award winning game that combines story and innovative gameplay. Or you could try the cutely abstract building game World of Goo. There's the karaoke game Lips, and many more interesting games for the whole family to share.

The PS3 has the absolutely enchanting zen-like Flow and Flower games which could be used as part of a relaxation technique (that's how lovely they are), as well as the more social Sing Star, which leads us nicely to:

The Wii. I'm amazed the government hasn't issued every family with one of these as part of the tax credits system. Nothing has brought families closer together since the end of the sit-down dinner. For family play, Wii Sports Resort is a hoot. Best games for women over 40 on the Wii would be the WiiFit with balance board (see, games are good for you!) or Biggest Loser (if you are weight-loss inclined).

The oceans of games for everyone are vast and can be difficult to navigate for novices. Hopefully I've given your compass a bit of a nudge in the right direction :)

Hi, Simon here ex-colleague of Kaye's, also worked on Bratz :-)
I've given lectures with Kaye before and very interested in diversity issues within games and the games industry. I'm very keen on helping to bring in new perspectives to make games more interesting!

I'd like to recommend the Wonderland blog, which is written by Alice Taylor who is a commissioning editor in games for Channel 4.
http://wonderlandblog.com/

Maxine - you might like a game called 'Spirit Of Adventure' that some of my friends have made on Facebook for the over-40's female contingent :-)
Its kind of a detective novel story written by a writer from ITV's Bramwell and Foyle's War etc.
http://www.ndreams.co.uk/soalaunch
apps.facebook.com/spiritofadventure

Hi Simon! Fancy seeing you here :) Your Spirit of Adventure game sounds intriguing, I'll check it out immediately!

@Kaye, Maxine & Ruth

Hi. I used to use games in my teaching. I used SimSoc, which has not yet, as far as I know, been electronified - once a student arrested another and the latter didn't speak to him for weeks (I tried to convice him that it was only a game - but it wasn't). I interpreted this difficulty as one measure of the potential success of doing this sort of thing.

As for me, I loved SimAnt - including the jokes, of which one is: What is the largest ant in the world? Ans: an Eleph-ant. I know it's bad, but I love it. I also loved Shadow President by DC True. When you closed the program down, you heard the voice of George Bush I saying, God bless America. It was a geopolitical strategy game where the user was the president of the US. Unfortunately, it was DOS- and early Windows-based and don't think has ever been upgraded. This might be a worthwhile project - meaning I'd like to see it.

Facebook is currently running into privacy problems. Personally, I would recommend not touching it with a barge pole as I consider it "dangerous". www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/things-you-need-know-about-facebook.

Hi Kaye - great blog and answers/comments to questions.
I have come across the argument a number of times that playing computer games can be excellent therapy for people living with mental health problems. Are you familiar with this sort of thinking and if so is it something you take into account when designing/developing new games? Is it something that the 'wider' games industry considers a priority?

Hi Malcolm

The idea that games can be excellent therapy for mental health problems isn't exactly new to me (I have very fond memories of Dungeon Keeper getting me through a particularly stressful time in my working life, for example) but I wasn't aware of them being used in specific cases or therapies. Do you have any examples of uses for this?

It is true that games can be an excellent coping mechanism for all sorts of mental distress, thanks to their escapist and often empowering nature. I have seen students with social difficulties, and issues with anxiety and depression in particular, derive great solace from World of Warcraft and other MMO titles. Having a support network of friends that accept you as who you are - even if you have never met face to face - appears to be as powerful and as beneficial as actual local networks in many ways. But I have never heard of this being mentioned in a development environment.

Making games (at least, most mainstream games) is akin to herding angry, expensive, elusive and often conflicting cats. The notion that mental health would even be on the average developer's radar is wonderful, but sadly not likely.

In the 13 years I spent developing games, the only time mental health was mentioned was in the lament of the loss of our own, as we developers battled the simultaneous threats of crunch, burnout, redundancy, bad reviews, code breaks, bugs, management and publisher demands, and the frustration of lonely spouses and partners. I would like to think that somewhere, some developers are actively considering player mental health in their designs, but I doubt it.

The only example of a game where player wellbeing and relaxation was an issue for the developers (and this only peripherally as a mental-health-positive feature) is Flow, and by extension its successor Flower by Thatgamecompany. The designers were keen to allow players to explore and create at their own pace, and to achieve a state of relaxation and happiness. This was a core USP of the game.

It is interesting that games have recently jumped feet first into the realm of health and fitness with the wii and balance boards, but haven't ventured into the mental health equivalent. This is probably down to a lack of perceived (mass) market. Having said that, if Dr Ruth or some other household psychologist name would want to put their moniker to a game then I'm sure it would sell, but not sure how on earth it would be marketed. Maybe you would like to pioneer this? :-D

Hi all, I wanted to suggest Microsoft's new KODU project which is a visual programming tool for kids to make games. Its going to be on Xbox 360 and PC so really accessible.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/