Getting More Women into Game Development: An Interview with Tara Teich, Part II

At the recent Women in Games International conference keynote speaker Denise Fulton, head of Midway"s Austin studio, had this to say on the topic of getting more women working in the game design industry:

“I’m a hiring manager,” Fulton explained.  “I’ve been a hiring manager for a number of years. One out of maybe twenty resumes I see is from a woman – that’s not about who’s good, who’s bad – you’re just not seeing them apply.”

She expresses one of the ultimate issues responsible for the number of women working in the industry - the limited number of women applying for jobs.  In this second part of my interview with AI Programmer Tara Teich (read the first post HERE) I have asked her some questions specific to the point of attracting more women to game development:

Guilded Lily:  The number of women working in game design has been slowly increasing, but there is still a vast majority of men working in the field.  What do you see as the major obstacles to getting more women involved in the game industry, and what do you think could bring more women into this field?

Tara Teich:  So many people are trying to answer this question.  I think there are so many issues here.  First, why aren't there more women programmers in general?  I remember reading a great article in the Boston Globe about this.  And thanks to the power of the internet, you can too: LINK HERE (free registration required).

    The basic idea is that during the dot-com era, everyone and their cousin was becoming a computer science major so they could make big bucks.  With overwhelming class sizes, the profs starting trying to weed people out by making the intro classes really tough.   In these weed-out situations, you lose a higher percentage of women then men, or so says the article.

    I know that was the case at my school.  Many women I know either took the intro CS class and then stopped because it was too tough, or were intimidated out of it by reputation alone.  Fewer women go into CS as a result.

    This is probably a bit of a touchy subject, but I'm going to say what I think.  Women are more social then men.  Not *all* women of course.  But as an aggregate, women are a more social creature then men.  Programming tends to be a very solitary, very isolating path.  You need to be satisfied working on challenges within your own head, and not necessarily interacting with people at all.  Once you get out into the workforce, programming is a much more shared challenge.  But in school, group projects are few and small.  I think many women get turned off by that sort of required solitude.

    Next up, the challenges of getting into the industry.  This issue applies to both programmers and designers.  Start with the pool of programmers - already not many women there, my graduating class had 10% women, in 2000 - and let's start applying to the games industry.  Send out those resumes and hear nothing back.  We lose some people to well paying non-industry jobs.  Some stick it out, they make demos, they take internships for little pay and apply again.  We lose some more.  After all this, how many are left at all?  What percent of them were women to begin with?

GL:  I get the sense that programming is the area of the game industry that has the lowest percentage of women.  Do you know if that is the case?

TT: I don't actually know.  I've only worked at one game company so far, and the numbers of women that I've seen at all are too low to be able to make that kind of a generalization.  On my last project, however, we had three women programmers at one point, out of 10 programmers total.  That was quite exciting.  But very unusual.

GL:  What are some of the better approaches you have seen to encourage more women to consider the game industry as a career?

TT:  I think the biggest change for the better has been the rise of "geek chic."  It's become increasingly "cool" to be a geek.  When I was growing up, I was mocked by my peers as a nerd for my love of gaming.  No one admired me for being a girl into gaming.  I don't know what's caused the cultural shift (maybe the dot-com era and the realization that being a nerd can bring in the bucks?), but today everyone I meet thinks it's totally awesome that I'm a gamer.  Kids today don't have the same difficulties that some of us had.  It's fine if a little girl wants to play a computer game now - gaming has just become more mainstream.  With more and more girls growing up gamers, it becomes more likely that more of them will want to make games.

    Everyone is constantly discussing what we can do to bring more women into the games industry, but I don't think we need to work so hard at it.  I think it's getting better every year because of this gradual cultural shift.  More women play games, more women will make games.

    I think the best thing to do is to constantly encourage girls and remind them they can do whatever they want.  Send women from the games industry to talk to the girls and tell them about their jobs.  Send women to universities to remind them as they grow that we're out here and we're having fun.

GL:  Do you feel that as the game industry grows that the percentage of women working in game design will naturally increase, or do you feel that there will need to be a continuing effort to increase the number of women in game design.

TT:  I think I covered this a bit.  Yes, I think it will naturally increase.  But I do think that some game companies need to grow with the times and make sure they become welcoming to women.  I had the good fortune to work at a place were I was completely respected, but I've heard from women in the industry who had terrible experiences where they were made to feel like their gender was all that mattered.  I'm sure this is true in many non-game companies as well, but it's something that we should be extra aware of as companies that were female-free for many years gain their first women employees.

Thanks very much to Tara for taking time out from her busy schedule to answer these questions, and best of luck to her in her new job.  You can keep up with Tara's progress via her blog, Free Candy for Everyone.