#1reasonwhy

[lorpius-prime]

Tumblr was never my favorite.

Because you can’t reply.

[tpell514]

Ready for the @nyscas graduation this evening #classof2020 #nyscas #tourocollege #brooklyn #graduate #graduation #1reasonwhy #virtual #nevertoolate 👨‍🎓 (at Brooklyn, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBjQv3Ml3IaTN9XXKwJYoQ-25JkVcssLe5Ql500/?igshid=7rzbznamzk0o

[tsianphiel]

Ugh, Emotions: Part I

Ugh, Emotions: Part I

CW: Harassment, exclusion.

This is a difficult set of posts for me to write, because they admit to my own complicity in a culture I desperately want to change.

To understand gaming, the games industry and the gaming culture it’s necessary to understand some of the backstory of the nerd culture. We’ve been considered underdogs and weirdos, and we’ve been attacked by priests, politicians,…

[everygame]

Heavy Rain (PS3)

Developed/Published by: Quantic Dream / Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 23rd February 2010 Completed: 14th January 2018 Completion: Finished it once. Trophies / Achievements: 41%

David Cage, eh? Let’s be honest, he sucks. I thought so well before his recent recently pillorying in the press for not just being a ego-centric fool but also a genuinely toxic one; I don’t need to go into the accusations here, you can read all about them at your leisure. He’s always been something of an anomaly in game development; someone who has literally never managed to make anything good (let’s not forget Peter Molyneux put in his time) yet has managed to get Sony to bankroll genuinely massive productions, not least the upcoming Detroit: Becoming Human. There’s an odd emperor’s new clothes to him.

Since the accusations, things get muddled of course. I don’t think Cage should lead a game again; before, I’d have said purely because he makes shitty things. But now it’s one of those things where the “shitty things” in question have all the hallmarks that make us ask—why weren’t the questions being asked before? One only has to look at his recent wrong-headed defense of triggering sequences from Detroit: Being Human to see there’s something wrong there, as soon as he’s actually challenged.

Perhaps you’d view this all as an aside, but I there’s been a lot of chat recently that the reason gaming hasn’t had its “me too” moment is simply that women and marginalized people in game development simply don’t have the power. It’s very different being a known actress from being a programmer, or an artist in a team of hundreds; Quantic Dream isn’t just a production house that will just put someone else in Cage’s place; he’s the founder, he owns it, he’s not going anywhere. 

It sucks.

[Keza MacDonald would write an article about this lack of a “me too moment” for The Guardian that’s worth reading—pointing out that things like #1reasonwhy shouldn’t be forgotten.]

So with that all said, it’s with rather a different light that I consider my decision with a few friends to play Cage’s post-Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy games “as a lark” as a bit… less… funny. I think it’s worthwhile to dig into it, anyway, as an experience, so yeah, let’s genuinely try and make sense of it and him.

For background, let’s discuss Fahrenheit, because sure as shit no one bothers to remember anything about Omikron: The Nomad Soul other than David Bowie was in it (tragically.) It’s a game that opens with a polygon model of Cage himself explaining how to play the game, and I remember cringing myself fully inside-out at that point. After that comes literally Cage’s one (1) memorable interesting bit of game design, the one (1) that literally everyone references. He places you as a man who has to hide a body in the bathroom of a diner and there are lots of different decisions to make as to how you do it; and then you play the police investigating it.

It’s interesting! Genuinely! Because of course, you know where the police should look and what they should do; but there’s that thought where… maybe you don’t want them to? There are lots of interesting things to do with “player omnipotence” in narrative games, but of course, this is basically the only time Cage does anything with it. Indeed, he spirals into what I consider his true trademarks: a complete inability to write a narrative that makes any sense, and leering sexism.

But of course, we’re not here to go into Farenheit’s plot (anyway, you all know it devolves into your zombie protagonist fighting the embodification of the internet, etc.) we’re here to with an open heart explore Heavy Rain as a serious work of an artis… I’m sorry I’ll start laughing like a drain again if I keep this up.

Heavy Rain has trophies, right? The first one you get is, literally, “Thank You For Supporting Interactive Drama.”

The hubris.

I mean, this is why you want to play this, right? Because you desperately want to try and understand how you could have so much ego, so much self-belief, that you literally do something like that.

I’m really not sure what Cage thinks interactive drama is, though. His games crib relentlessly from the language of cinema, but they’re just “interactive” right? So they’re interactive movies, right? But no, they aren’t. Because for some reason Cage is obsessed with the minutia of living. In literally any film, character doing things as mundane as, say, starting their car are cut out, filmed dynamically so they’re expressive and over quickly, or—if they are included—included for a particular narrative or thematic reason. But not in Heavy Rain. In Heavy Rain, if you want to do anything, you have to do it in the most insane detail using the absurd control system. Everything you do takes forever; just opening a door has to be done perfectly.

It adds nothing; it gums up the pacing and seems to be interactivity for interactivity’s sake, because (turns out) when it comes to the crunch your interactivity otherwise is going to be nothing more than quick-time events.

There’s another thing here, too, which I think speaks to Cage’s ego. In Heavy Rain, you can “fail” at basically anything by not doing it just right. So, for example, reaching to open a door. You can mess it up and your hand drops back to your side. You can do it slowly, you can do it fast and then stop. You can basically make your character look like a jerky moron who can’t open a door because you think it’s funny, and I genuinely refuse to believe that Quantic Dream didn’t get testers in who did this. I’ve talked before on this tumblr about how players should “meet the designer in the middle” and play along with what is expected, but a big part of that is (as the designer) not leaving your game open to abuse by offering the player things they don’t need and can basically only use to mess with the game. This is a perfect example of that, and I believe that in every situation Cage said “Real players won’t play it like that. Ignore it.”

Ego.

When you really get down to it, your interactions are little more than tedious housekeeping; only once does it make sense, as the beginning of the game you experience one character’s perfect family life and then (later) experience the shattered mirror of it, except they’re not actually direct analogues so I’m being fairly charitable in assuming that’s the point.

So let’s just pretend the game doesn’t include a lot of interactions that serve no purpose. I mean, if the story is good, usually we can excuse that, right?

Even if Heavy Rain had a plot that generally worked (it doesn’t) it does something so inexcusable that I’m shocked—shocked!—that anyone gives it a pass. I’ll give the (not so vague) spoiler that in this game (about the search for the mysterious “Origami Killer”) one of the characters you play *is* the Origami Killer! Except, for every character you play you can see their thoughts by pushing a button. And all the characters are investigating the Origami Killer, meaning one keeps investigating themselves. “Ah ha,” you might say, “obviously all of his thoughts are cleverly written to not implicate himself, but also are believably what the killer would think.”

No, they literally act like someone who doesn’t know who the killer is, thinking full thoughts that the killer could never think, and it’s not like he’s paranoid about his thoughts, or in a fugue state. It’s just… I mean, is this lazy writing? Or is it just the work of an actual moron? I mean the section of the game where he “cheats” by obscuring the actions of one of the main character is lazy writing. But this is breath-taking, the work of someone who either doesn’t know how stories work, or doesn’t care.

Let’s move on to Cage’s other hallmark; the leering. Heavy Rain is a game that has a lengthy nude shower-scene for the female protagonist that happens… in a dream. Also just to note we… don’t need a shower scene with her anyway? Or for her to like, have to fight off men in her pants for ages and ages, also in a dream? It’s ok though, she’s mostly there to tend the wounds of the male protagonist and shag him.

[“Actually, systems-wise, she’s actually necessary to help the player keep good endings available if they fuck up a lot with the other male protagonists. But yeah, she is mostly a nurse... I mean apart from that bit where she has to rip her dress and act slutty to go on to almost get sexually assaulted”—charitable ed.]

Look, I can’t bang on about Heavy Rain forever, it feels like I have already. After playing through the whole thing, I struggle if anything worse to understand how Cage not just got more work but managed to get Ellen Page to star in his next game? How this game won a BAFTA (well, a video game BAFTA) for STORY!

Heavy Rain is fucking shit and it’s not why David Cage should never work again, though at one point I’ve had said it would be. He should never work again because he’s a toxic garbage person. I hope Sony sticks him in the bin after their obligations relating to Detroit are over.

(Oh and all the staff that have suffered under him and his culture get lovely jobs making things that are good.)

Will I ever play it again? I wondered if it would be more interesting with the Move controls, but I’ll be fucked if I’m ever touching this again.

Final Thought: Above I talked about how this game drowns in the mundane; and I’d like to restate that I do think it’s a mistake to argue this is some kind of a directorial choice, to imbue that mundane with meaning. Like… I don’t know. Anyone from Ozu to Jarmusch can show how that can be used thoughtfully. Hell, just watch David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Compare and contrast to failing to open a door because you didn’t hold the trigger down just right.

[garp19-alexgorcik]

Quotes from Sexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games across 31 Years

“Video games are a popular source of entertainment for girls and boys;men and women (ESA, 2014). However, women comprised only 22% of employees in the video game industry in 2014 (IGDA, 2014). The dearth of female employees alongside scholarly findings of sexist encounters in online game spaces (Fox & Tang, 2014) sup port the popular notion that video games are a masculine activity (Selwyn, 2007).”

 “Video game technology in the United States emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in close connection to the burgeoning U.S. computer industry (Izushi & Aoyama, 2006). The development of Spacewar! at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 encouraged several spin-off games and inspired the design of the first commercially available coin-operated video game, Computer Space, in 1971. A full-fledged industry emerged 6 months later with the release of the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. The computer industry at this time employed women in jobs that required limited technical skills, provided low-paying salaries, and presented limited upward mobility compared to their male colleagues (Haigh, 2010). Early on, this gender discrimination stifled women’s participation and fueled a persistent gender gap in technological fields (Haigh, 2010).”

 “The U.S. video game industry inherited the gender disparity within computer science and software fields with women occupying limited roles in these fields. Data on the gender demographics of the video game industry in the 1980s are scant, but popular press reports suggest that female developers only represented 3% of the workforce in 1989 (Graser, 2013).”

 “As Williams (2006) notes, the preponderance of men in the game industry leads to a culture in which the male perspective is the only one. Furthermore, online games in which women might connect and foster their mutual interest have served as deterrents due to gender harassment (Fox & Tang, 2014; Kuznekoff & Rose, 2012).”

 “Despite the contemporary perception of video games as a male-oriented activity\ break (Selwyn, 2007), early marketers of video games did not draw this distinction. Rather, advertising for theMagnavox Odyssey in the 1970s promoted the notion that individuals of all ages and genders could enjoy the hobby (Williams, 2006).”

 “Hartmann and Klimmt (2006) found that female partici pants consistently chose games featuring a nonsexualized rather than a sexualized female protagonist and expressed more interest in playing as the nonsexualized character. Similarly, Reinecke, Trepte, and Behr (2007) found thatwomen preferred female characters but disliked hypersexualized female avatars. These findings are important for two reasons. First, women express a dislike of video games because the content seems generally intended for heterosexualmales. Second, adding female characters as sexual objects marginalizes these characters in a way that women may view as derogating their in group.”

 “Thus, when women see repeated negative depictions of female characters in video games they may avoid the medium entirely and become part of the self-perpetuating cycle as Williams (2006) described.”

 “As few games feature female leads (Glaubke et al., 2001), women may not always perceive that designers intend content for them. The primary character in a video game is a commanding role, one that centers on the character as the main actor in the narrative and agentic force behind the gameplay (Williams, Consalvo, et al., 2009). This depiction is consistent with masculinized traits such as leadership and independence that may be imparted on female characters along with sexualized attributes (Jansz&Martis, 2007)”

 “Video game publishing companies provide financial backing toward development efforts that may affect a game’s success in the marketplace. Considering the popular notion that sex sells, it is possible that companies employ sexualization as a marketing tactic.”

 “Analyses of videogame content often involve sampling a fixed number of the top-selling video games during a specific time span to analyze content most frequently encountered by consumers (Martins et al., 2009;Williams,Martins, et al., 2009).Thi approach did not satisfy the sample for the current study because few top-selling video games feature playable female protagonists.”

 “Although the early years of the video game industry perpetuated the gender disparity rife within the computer industry, the recent and growing interest of women and girls seems to be influencing game con tent in positive ways. Recent feminist discussions (e.g., #1reasonwhy) have brought attention to the underrepresentation of female professionals in the industry as well as the sexualization and stereotyping of female characters in video games. This study complements those critiques by investigating whether games have always featured inadmissible depictions of female characters.”

 “Central to the study’s purpose, we found a pattern of change in sexualization over time that indicates the industry may be reacting to its critics. The games released from 1983 to 1990 featured the least sexualized characters in our sample. This finding is unsurprising considering the simple graphic capabilities of early video game con soles. Previous content analyses found that games with lower graphical integrity (i.e., highly pixelated visuals) show characters with highly disproportionate bodies, including large heads on boxy bodies (Martins et al., 2009).”

 “Our data reveal that throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, the industry introduced more sexualized female characters than other periods. The introduction of Lara Croft in the 1996 game Tomb Raider may have served as a catalyst for video game developers to feature more sexualized females as a sales tactic to entice male players. Although scholars have argued that Lara represents a strong, bold female archetype (Jansz & Martis, 2007), her sexualized portrayal in the video game and promotional materials in the 1990s supports the notion that video games primarily serve male interests (Cruea & Park, 2012; Selwyn, 2007).”

 “However, our data reveal a decrease in the sexualization of female characters after 2006. We attribute this decline to an increasing female interest in gaming coupled with the heightened criticism levied at the industry’s arguably male hegemony (Williams, 2006).”

 “RPGs had the second lowest rate of sexualization. This finding bridges evidence found in other areas of the video game literature. Women prefer to play games with less sexualized characters (Hartmann & Klimmt, 2006) and women play RPGs with more frequency than other types of games (Williams, Consalvo, et al., 2009).”

 “We also found that games depict primary characters as less sexualized than nonprimary characters. Nonprimary characters are less central to the story and, consequently, designers may sexualize them to enhance their appeal. The sexualization of nonprimary characters underscores their secondary role by reducing their importance to their physical appearance. Conversely, a primary character is central to the story and aspects of the narrative give her significance beyond her physical attributes. This conclusion aligns with tenets of objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) under which the body of a woman is valued for its use to others.”

 “Although the lower levels of sexualization for primary characters hint to prosocial change, more female characters filled secondary roles than primary roles in the sample. Thus, the risks associated with objectification of women in media (e.g., dehumanization) remain a concern (Heflick, Goldenberg, Cooper, & Puvia, 2011).”

 “We found evidence of the Lara Phenomenon (Jansz & Martis, 2007) in that characters portrayed as sexualized were also capable. Jansz and Martis (2007) suggested that strong depictions of female characters, even when paired with sexualized features, may empower female gamers. We agree that this possibility exists, but argue that if female characters require sexualization to bolster their merit, that objectification and its deleterious outcomes (e.g., discomfort among women who do not play video games) become difficult to avoid.”

 “Our findings indicate that children who play video games likely encounter sexualized imagery prior to adulthood. That is, games with the ESRB rating of Mature or Teen featured more sexualized characters than games rated Everyone. This is logical given that Mature games are created for an adult audience; however, games rated Teen did not significantly differ from Mature games in terms of sexualization. This finding does not imply that the video game industry sexualizes female characters for teenagers. Rather, because the ESRB ratings board consists of parents and other similar caregivers (ESRB, 2014), this may indicate that video games have normalized sexualization of female characters across audiences of varying ages.”

 “Our finding that the critical success of games featuring female protagonists has decreased over time possibly stems from a lack of industry support in creating these games. The limited financial success of games may fuel the decline in critical scoring of such games. Lower sales discourage publishers from future investment in games that feature female protagonists because male characters pose less of a risk. Poorly funded games receive less investment in development efforts, a cycle that may result in lower evaluations from reviewers.”

 “Despite a decrease in critical success for games featuring female protagonists in recent years, this phenomenon appears unrelated to sexualization. This finding implies that games do not require sexualized females to receive favorable reviews from critics. This also indicates that the presence of a sexualized female character does not bias the critic toward a higher review if other aspects of the game (e.g., mechanics, story, graphics) are otherwise poor. Furthermore, this finding under-scores unenthusiastic reviewer commentary for sexualized depictions of female characters (Ivory, 2006).”

 “These findings provide grounds for a policy recommendation to the ESRB for ratings. We found that games rated Teen presented female characters as sexualized as the characters in games rated Mature. Teen games are suitable for persons aged 13 years and older; M games are generally appropriate for ages 17 and older (ESRB, 2014).”

 “Although female characters cast in secondary roles still outnumber primary characters, the observed pattern of higher sexualization from1992 to 2006 followed by a decrease in sexualization from2007 to 2014 suggests that the widespread, overt sexualization of females is on the decline. Positive portrayals of female characters who are strong, capable, and attractive without overt sexualization may be an important factor for encouraging women to become interested in gaming. These trends may also contribute toward achieving gender parity in the professional industry if positive character portrayals attract more women to gaming.”

 “We found that, on average, female characters are far less sexualized than what previous analyses suggest. In other words, what scholars, critics, and the public largely assume is a nearly universal feature of female characters in video games (i.e., gross sexualization) seems overstated when considering game content rather than marketing materials.”

 “That is not to say, however, that subtle sexualization is unproblematic as it still encourages objectification by enhancing appearance focus (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Thus, subtle sexualization—such as that reflected on average in our observations—may still lead to damaging outcomes.”

  “Finally, although our study produced more conservative observations of sexualization than previous work, marketing still makes female characters’ sexiness salient, a factor signaling the masculine nature of the content that may encourage objectifying female characters from the onset of gameplay and a likely reason girls and women never pick up the controller (Near, 2013).”

[gamergirlsexperience-blog]

Reviewing the Female Gaming Community’s Pushback Against Surveillance

Afterword: Blaming, Shaming and the Feminization of Social Media Lisa Nakamura

This was a very interesting article to read, mostly because it discussed digital media as a surveillance method on women’s body, and the blaming that women receive as a result of their posts. The following excerpts stood out to me” 

“Troublingly, the state is unlikely to provide solutions; online harassment is robustly resistant to policing partly because of anonymity and pseudonymity, and online threats often are not taken seriously, but are rather tolerated as part of Internet culture” (3) 

“...the world of feminist digital gaming activism where there is a small but vital group of feminist, anti-abelist, and anti-racist blogs, tumblrs, and twitter hashtags (see #1reasonwhy and #YesAllWomen) that exemplify the “communitydriven options” that the Internet makes available to women. These blogs successfully appropriate the social media tools that we already have to exercise forms of countersurveillance that are non-coercive in nature. Fatuglyorslutty.com, 4 NotintheKitchenanymore.com, TheBorderHouse.com, TheHathorLegacy.com, and Racialicious.com collect racist, sexist, and homophobic hate speech that female and queer gamers have received while playing networked video games and publicize them for all to see (Nakamura, 2012).” (3-4)

Her approach to self-enforcing community guidelines is a very real way for the corrections of behavior and language. However, it seems to place a huge burden on the women and individuals who are facing harassment and discrimination rather than the developers, players, and offenders (think bottom-up, rather than top-bottom). 

Nonetheless, she provided a great group of resources for our group to access as we go on to document the treatment of women and all their ivtersectionalities in the world of gaming. 

-NC

[albinwonderland]

Have you guys checked out the #1reasonwhy hashtag on twitter? You really should.

[motherjones]

Tweets from women explaining the "#1ReasonWhy" it sucks being female in the gaming industry. 

[lorpius-prime]

Tumblr was always my favorite.

Because it lets me write more words.

[tsianphiel]

Post GamerGate

This is a new decade (well, technically, it’s not really a new decade until 2021, but who’s counting) and there are a bunch of retrospectives out there. This is… maybe not so much a retrospective as a reflection.

If existing in the gaming culture has taught me one thing it’s that we tend to forget very easily. “We” being your average, mainstream gamer. Not the actual average mainstream gamer,…

[fozmeadows]

Sexism In Gaming: A Response To Gabrielle Toledano

Yesterday, a woman by the name of Gabrielle Toledano – evidently a human resources manager for EA games – wrote a rather confusing and deeply problematic op-ed for Forbes outlining why, in her estimation, sexism isn’t responsible for the dearth of women in gaming. To quote her opening remarks:

 It’s easy to blame men for not creating an attractive work environment – but I think that’s a cop-out.  If we want more women to work in games, we have to recognize that the problem isn’t sexism.

…The issue I have is that the video game industry is being painted as more sexist than other male-dominated workforces.  I know sexism exists, but the issue isn’t just in video games.  And it’s not what’s holding us back.

Nonetheless, there are still too few women working in my company, so it’s clear there is an issue to fix. Rather than blame the majority just because they are the majority, I believe the solution starts with us – women.

Which is, frankly, one of the most flippant, useless and blithely ignorant summaries of the problem I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. For one thing, Toledano manages to contradict herself magnificently within the space of three paragraphs: because surely if sexism exists in gaming – which, as she plainly admits, it does – then it must constitute at least a part of the reason why women are so conspicuously absent. Instead of conceding this point even slightly, however, she dismisses it out of hand, and for no better reason than her dislike of the implication that gaming might be more sexist than other industries. This, at least, is a reasonable point: game developers are hardly alone when it comes to dealing with sexism, which problem is self-evidently one that affects the whole of society to varying degrees. But to say – and worse, to say casually – that such sexism as does exist in gaming must necessarily be either benign or irrelevant simply because it exists more prominently elsewhere, or because the extent of the problem is popularly overstated, is as irresponsible as it is inaccurate. This blithe attempt to handwave a serious problem is further compounded by Toledano’s assertion that sexism effectively constitutes “blaming the majority just because they are the majority”, a sentence nobody could write without having first elected to ignore the glaringly obvious: that the majority isn’t being blamed for being the majority, but for maintaining a culture of prejudicial dominance, whether due to ignorance, malice, laziness or a combination of all three. To summarise Toledano’s argument, then: sexism exists in gaming, but doesn’t impact negatively on women, because criticism of the majority is really only resentment of their status as the majority, and therefore disconnected from any rational complaint about their actions.

Right.

What, then, does Toledano see as the root cause of female under-representation in gaming? Her argument comes as a triptych: firstly, that female gamers have failed to identify themselves as such (which is both ludicrous and insulting); secondly, that the industry wants to hire more women (though how this admission constitutes a reason for their absence is anyone’s guess); and thirdly, that there aren’t enough women to hire (which is a partial explanation for her second point, but which nonetheless doesn’t explain why there are fewer female STEM graduates to begin with, which point she glosses over with a simple call for their being more widely encouraged).

Her closing remarks only serve to cement her total misunderstanding of the problem:

If women don’t join this industry because they believe sexism will limit them, they’re missing out.�� The sky is the limit when it comes to career opportunities for women (and men) in games. If we want the tide to turn and the ratio of men to women to really change then we need to start making women realize that fact…

Sexism is an unfortunate reality of our times, but as women we must seek the power and ability in ourselves to change the dynamic.  Cast aside the preconceptions, and look for the opportunities and places to make an impact.  And I can tell you firsthand that in the video game industry women are not just welcome, we are necessary and we are equal.

From beginning to end, the piece reads as an oversimplified, insipidly cheerful and woefully pat exhortation for women to simply wade on in – you’ve only yourselves to blame if you don’t! Sexism exists, but you can overcome it with gumption and elbow grease! Follow your hearts, my darlings! Follow your star! Never mind that Toledano offers notone single fact in support of her claim that sexism isn’t so much as a tiny part of the problem despite acknowledging its existence, nor cites any specific policy, testimony or other useful data that might bolster her argument. Neither does she respond to the wealth of evidence and arguments which directly contradict it, despite linking to an article which lays out a detailed opposing case; instead, she leaves it totally unaddressed. Add these deficiencies to the self-contradictory and wholly unsupported nature of her assertions, and it’s hard not to wonder if her belief in the benevolent non-existence/unimportance of sexism as a factor stems entirely from not having experienced it herself, or from believing such sexism as she has experienced to have had no detrimental effect on either her wellbeing or career. That, of course, is only conjecture on my part; but if untrue, the only viable alternative would seem to be that, having suffered sexism in the past but subsequently overcome it, Toledano has elected to use her own success as a yardstick against which to gauge the determination and worthiness of every other woman in her industry, which is hardly reasonable. Whatever the case, the implication is equally unsatisfying: that as sexism hasn’t impeded her, it must therefore be incapable of impeding anyone else.

Allow me, then, to provide the evidence that Toledano does not. In November last year, under the Twitter hashtag #1reasonwhy, women employed in gaming collectively shared the myriad instances of sexism they experienced at work in order to highlight the extent of the problem, with multiple accompanying conversations about problems in the industry following soon after. Around the same time, a Penny Arcade report based on actual data showed howthe dearth of games starring female protagonists has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: such games, it was found, were given smaller budgets by publishers and marketed far less extensively than their male-lead counterparts, leading to critical neglect and low sales, and therefore contributing to the outdated notion that women don’t play games, and as such aren’t a viable demographic. There’s any number of prominent accounts of women in gaming being dismissed or discriminated against on the basis of gender; this Christmas, headlines were made by the presence of topless women at Gameloft’s holiday party; and though they point more to problems in the culture of game consumption than creation, it would be foolish to view either the infamous Aris Bakhtanians incident or the experiences of Anita Sarkeesian as irrelevant. As for the comparative absence of women in STEM fields, this is hardly a problem without a cause: brogrammer culture, entrenched academic gender bias and subconscious bias in hiring practices, to name just three of the major issues, all affect female participation.

Because what Toledano fails to comprehend is that gaming, like everything else, is an ecosystem – and right now, at every single level of participation, women are feeling the effects of sexism. Female gamers are sexualised, demeanedand assumed to be fakes by their male counterparts; those who go into STEM fields despite this abuse frequently find themselves stifled by the sexist assumptions of professors and fellow students alike; they must then enter an industry whose creative output is overwhelmingly populated with hypersexualised depictions of women and male-dominant narratives, and where the entrenched popularity of these tropes means their own efforts to counteract the prevailing culture will likely put them at odds with not only their colleagues, but also the business models of the companies and projects for which they work; as the #1reasonwhy discussion showed, many will experience sexism in the workplace – hardly surprising, given the academic correlation between the acceptance of misogyny in humour and culture and real-world tolerance for sexism and rape culture – while others will be excluded from it completely. All this being so, therefore, if a single progressive HR manager at a comparatively progressive company looks around and finds, despite her very best intentions that, there are few or no women to hire for a particular position, then the problem is not with women for failing to take advantage of a single company’s benevolent practices, but with the industry as a whole for failing to create a culture in which women are welcome, and where they might therefore be reasonably expected to abound.

In her excellent book Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine documents a phenomenon whereby some progressive parents, determined to counteract the sexist influences of prevailing culture, found themselves adopting a ‘biology as fallback’ position when, despite their best efforts at promoting equality, their children still conformed to gender norms. “Believing that they practiced gender-neutral parenting,” Fine writes, “biology was the only remaining explanation.” But as she goes on to point out, the actual explanation is far more complex: not only were such parents still prone to promoting unconsciously absorbed gender roles, but when ranged against the ubiquitous sexism promoted by wider culture, even their best efforts were overwhelmed in the child’s experience – no matter how many pink clothes and dolls a son was bought, if the majority of his peers were playing with trucks and dressing in blue, and if every presentation of normalcy he absorbed through stories, clothing, culture, advertising and other children suggested he should do likewise, then his experiences at home would still read as anomalous. Unable to accept this, however, parents persisted in blaming biology: their failure could only have been predestined, and not the result of wider social and cultural factors beyond their individual control, let alone indicative of a flaw in their methods.

Toledano, it seems to me, is committing a similar fallacy, adopting a fallback belief in female disinterest in order to explain the lack of women in gaming, and thereby discounting the impact of more pervasive and difficult issues, never mind her use of faulty logic. And the thing is, it matters: not just because of her status as a representative of a major gaming company writing in a prominent publication, and not just because it betrays exactly the sort of misunderstanding of sexism that inevitably helps it perpetuate itself; but because she’s created a cop-out piece for sexists and those who doubt their influence to wave about as definitive proof that really, the problem is women themselves – and, more specifically, feminist women, or women who demand change. By claiming to speak definitively on the matter – unveiling the “dirty little secrets” of women in gaming, to use her phrase, as though she’s boldly daring the wrath of some secret feminist conspiracy in order to say openly what sensible women have always known in private, but been too scared to admit in public  - Toledano is using the supposed authority of her gender to claim, on the basis of not a single shred of evidence, that sexism isn’t an obstacle, because look! Here she is, a woman, admitting as much! And if a woman says it, it must be true! Which is, presumably, why she’s felt no need to sully her case by supporting it with facts; because surely, the act of merely presenting it must be evidence enough. Only, no, that’s not how it works. To modify a Biblical phrase, the greatest trick the patriarchy ever pulled was convincing women it didn’t exist – and in Toledano’s case, all too lamentably, it seems to have succeeded.

[videogamegirlfriend]

The Doubleclicks Music Video "Nothing to Prove"

This video is important. I watched this today and teared up at work. It's so amazing to see work that does a great job of reflecting the heart of where those of us who are fighting against sexism in gaming are coming from. 

[1reasonwhygaming]

#1reasonwhy

[ctin-488]

A good message for all of us. Inspired by GDC, but true all the time.

[be-the-solution-blog]

Be The Solution

Creating an Inclusive Video Game Industry:

A proactive response to #1reasonwhy

The aim of this document is to raise awareness about common patterns of exclusion in the video game industry and provide simple, practical actions towards a more inclusive developer community. Exclusion is often the result not of deliberate intent but of habituated patterns and social norms which frequently go unnoticed. This document provides a straightforward guide for people who wish to be more conscious about and to actively contribute to mitigating exclusion on the basis of gender, sexual persuasion or ethnicity. This document came out of the inclusiveness panel at IndieCade 2012, entitled, What’s Next: Games for and By Everyone Else. The urgency for its deployment was punctuated a month later by the #1reasonwhy discussion that emerged on Twitter. Why diversity in games is important. Games as both a form of entertainment and as a form of art are being created overwhelmingly by a single type of individual. While we are by no means discouraging anyone from making games, we do feel that there is room for a more expansive approach that welcomes people of varying backgrounds and perspectives to produce games alongside those currently creating them—not as a separate “class,” but as a vital part of an increasingly diverse community. In building an inclusive game community, we only serve to help Games as a medium to grow and mature. With diversity will come new ideas, new ways of thinking, new types of stories, and new types of gameplay, and new audiences. This does not mean that all old forms of games will cease to exist but rather that the whole field will be enriched. Ensuring that individuals with a range of backgrounds and beliefs feel welcome and safe in the community will only work to broaden the types of experiences that all of us can share, thus enriching us all, and spreading understanding not only within the game development community but the game player community as well. However, to realize this vision, the development community as a whole must first lead by example. We believe that many of our peers and colleagues understand the benefits of including diverse viewpoints and wish to be part of the solution. This list is provided to help provide simple, concrete actions that individuals can take at every level to help advance the cause of inclusiveness and diversity in our community. 1. Do not take your position of privilege—whatever it is—for granted. One of the greatest benefits of privilege is that you can ignore it. “Gender doesn’t matter...if you’re a man.” and “Race doesn’t matter...if you’re white.” Being part of the “normative” group—whether respecting gender, color, sexual orientation, ability, or whatever “normative” means in any particular context—entitles one to take one’s position of privilege for granted. It is easy to assume that one’s position is everyone’s position. An example of this is the difference in financial compensation between men and women within the industry. This leads to such problems as the belief that men do not have a gender. We coin the term “people of gender” as a way of highlighting this type of bias. As a member of a normative group, a simple first step is to be aware that our position is not the same as everyone else’s, that not all people are like us, and that people NOT like us may tend to feel like outsiders, marginalized or excluded as their viewpoint is not taken into account. With privilege comes responsibility, as well as opportunity. We can use our privilege for good. A teacher, for instance, can support female students and include female designers and authors in reading/play lists. A manager or design lead can insist on more diverse and less stereotypical characters in games. Recruiters can, give female applicants serious consideration. Awareness of privilege is the first step to inclusiveness. Saying there is not a problem doesn’t make the problem go away. 2. Inclusiveness requires care, attention, and sustained effort. Ignoring forms of difference does not automatically create equity. In fact, ignoring difference actually makes things worse because it reinforces the normative position referred to in item 1. Ignoring gender/race/sexual orientation is essentially accepting, indeed reinforcing the status quo, since by this logic men have no gender, white people have no color, and heterosexuals have no sexual orientation. This means paying attention to and possibly changing policies that may inadvertently discriminate. For instance, the hiring requirement of working on a AAA game may rule out people with relevant experience in other areas, such as serious games or academic research. It also means being more attentive to who we represent in our games and how we represent them, as well as our perceptions of market preferences. 3. Avoid inadvertently or indirectly dismissing, demeaning or belittling individuals from excluded groups. Comments such as “you’re intelligent for a woman” or “you speak well for an African American” are typical dismissive remarks that serve to demean or belittle persons from excluded groups. Asking a woman “who are you here with” at a professional event implies she is a partner, not an active member of the community. Diversity experts refer to this as “microagression,” the “death of a thousand papercuts” that erode self-efficacy and reinforce discrimination. 4. Credit and acknowledge all members of a mixed team. This is especially important for members of the press, as well as authors and event organizers. We regularly see members of the press chose only to interview the male member of a mixed-gender team, or conference organizers asking only male team members to speak. Even at IndieCade a recent award was inadvertently published with the female contributor's name missing. These sorts of oversights are easy to avoid. Acknowledging all contributions makes people feel included, and also increases visibility for those who may otherwise feel, and in fact be, invisible. 5. Include the excluded in lists, histories, exhibitions, panels, and games. A few years ago, Game Developer magazine published the list of the 100 Most Influential People in the Video Game Industry. This list included not a single female game designer, executive or CEO. Regularly game developers exclude women from lectures, presentations and exhibitions of “game artists,” even though women are among the earliest pioneers of video game art. It is not unusual to see an entire industry conference or program that includes no people of gender or color. This does not mean that separate categories should be created similar or that women should be “given” their own list. As well-intentioned as this may be it still builds a culture of exclusion. People of gender, color, or ability should be included throughout a program, rather than singled out as an “issue.” This includes creating non-stereotyped characters in games that diverse players can relate to, and that change the way that group is perceived. 6. Don’t stand for harassment, even if it’s not toward yourself. Harassment and hate speech, especially against people of gender and sexual orientation, but also racially-infused hate speech, is tolerated in game culture in a way that is unparalleled in almost any other industry. An argument is often made that it’s okay to harass women or gays, for instance, because it’s “part of the culture.” People who care about this issue have an ethical obligation to step up to the plate and object when others like them say hurtful or demeaning things. Even if you’re straight, don’t stand for homophobia. If you’re a man, speak out against misogynistic hate speech. If you’re white, intervene when racist stereotypes or slurs are invoked. Don’t just stand there. Do something. And don’t be afraid of the possible backlash. The more we speak out, the more unpopular it will become to be disrespectful to anyone. Cultures are shaped by the people that are a part of them. It’s within our power to change this culture. 7. Create a safe environment for everyone. “Any environment where an individual member does not feel safe is not a safe environment.” More often than not many forms exclusion can be very subtle, unspoken, and even be invisible to those not experiencing it—the microaggression referred to in item 3. We must be sensitive to the needs of others through understanding of our differences. Many of the behaviors that have recently been exposed took place in a professional environment. No person should have to hide who they are or endure mistreatment in order to put food on their table while doing a job that they actually love. A work environment is created not only by the company leadership but also the individuals that inhabit it. Thus we all must take responsibility for crafting a safe environment for those that are different from ourselves. We must recognize that while we all have slight differences there is one key thing we have in common—aside from being human. Our love for games. Keeping this fact in mind we should all be eager to enable each other to collaborate and explore this field together. This means from the top down and the bottom up creating an environment that can support individuals from varied backgrounds and ideals so that in the end both Players and Developers benefit. A diverse ecosystem is a healthy ecosystem. We’ve launched this site to engage a productive discussion on how to work together on building a solution. We invite others to add their success stories on how they have experienced or effectively contributed to inclusiveness. All are welcome to contribute, and requests for help and guidance are also welcomed. We ask that in the spirit of inclusiveness participants avoid trolling. The organizers of this site reserve the right to remove any contributions that are offensive, abusive or deliberately antagonistic.