[ACM-W] A Few Good Women Are Needed in Computer Gaming

[Bettina Bair]

The article (below) talks about how the computer game industry is finally
coming to grips with their lack of diversity in development.  If you think
that you'd like to learn how to develop computer games, consider enrolling
in CSE694G.  It is offered in Spring only, as a capstone course.

During the 10-week term, students form small teams and  implement a 3D
computer game of their own design. The course covers many aspects of
computer games such as terrain and models, lighting, sound, physics,
scripting, etc. in a hands-on teaching environment. We also provide some
career networking, for example this year students met engineers and managers
from a simulation company based in Columbus. The showcase of this year's
student accomplishments in the games course is this Wednesday at 1:30 in
Caldwell 120.  Come and check it out!


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A Few Good Women Are Needed in Computer Gaming
Computerworld (06/04/07) Pratt, Mary K.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=10&articleId=293317&intsrc=hm_topic

Women are highly valued by the gaming industry for the fresh insight
they can bring, and this is creating opportunities for female tech
professionals looking for job options outside of the usual corporate
IT departments. "If we want to have [game] titles that reach a diverse
audience, our workforce has to reflect that diversity," argues Sirenia
Consulting game designer and developer Sheri Graner Ray, who is also
chairwoman of Women in Games International's steering committee.

Peter Gollan of Iceland's CCP Games believes adding more female game
designers could result in the production of content that draws more
female gamers, while University of Southern California School of
Cinematic Arts professor Tracy Fullerton suggests that more women
would become game designers if there were more games on the market
that appeal to them.

According to the International Game Developers
Association, only 11.5 percent of the gaming industry workforce was
female as of 2005. Graner Ray points out that most game designer
tutorials follow a distinctly male learning paradigm, that of jumping
right in and playing with the game environment, while women are more
inclined to first understand games before they experiment with them.

Also discouraging to female game designers are negative portrayals of
women and a strong anti-female bias in popular games, notes ECD
Systems CEO Jack Hart. Meanwhile, JupiterResearch analyst Michael
Gartenberg observes that women and girls have a greater affinity for
games that involve strategy and puzzles than in violent first-person
shooter scenarios.
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