[game_edu] Implications of students going into a male-dominated industry?

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

   My experience is as a content-writer and lecturer for a 
distance-learning course, so it may not be the most 'standard' view, but 
here's my experience of working on a game-design course.  We were a game 
development studio who created the course together with an experienced 
(if controversial) distance-learning company.  I was a narrative 
designer (a story-writer / game-designer) who was drafted in for my 
writing talent and specialist knowledge, so I wrote as part of a team 
which included a (female) games journalist, a middle-eastern (UAE) 
designer and another white male designer.

   Firstly, the textbooks and coursework did not touch it at all.  The 
whole course text was focused on making the students into designers, 
based on the experiences of a company full of developers.  The wider 
social aspects were considered little more than footnotes because we 
were no educators and had the freedom to teach as we saw fit as long as 
it matched the standards that universities worked to.  The whole selling 
point was that it was gave developers making the course, trying to train 
up future designers to do the job instead of pass an exam.  
(interesting, we got 'benchmarked' as equivalent to 2/3 of a UK 
honours-degree at bachelor level, so we must not have been doing too badly)

   The other part of the teaching was through lectures, these were 
usually on specialist (and therefore optional) subjects that students 
could opt into, such as games narrative (my lectures) or 
console-specific programming concerns.  This was often influenced by 
conversations on the official forums and we soon discovered a number of 
topics we had not covered in the course which were common subjects for 
discussion.  Women in gaming is a big thing, but so is disabled gaming.

   Oddly, I have yet to see any big discussions on ethnic minorities and 
their relationship with gaming.  We have minority students and I have 
worked with staff from ethnic minorities, but I have found that the 
press and educators seem more concerned about the lack of minority 
role-models than the players themselves.  I consider it an point of 
concern that games do seem to focus on the idea of a white male 
protagonist, but it is more often the 'male' part that people express a 
first-person distaste for. (i.e. being insulted on their own behalf, not 
someone else's)  Even sexuality seems more of an issue (name one 
intelligently-handled and open gay / lesbian / bi / trans-gendered 
character in a major videogame) right now.

   That said; working in games for the last five years; I have seen some 
multiple cases of women being objectified or insulted for their gender, 
one case of someone being (jokingly, but still overtly) insulted over 
their sexuality and not one single case of racism from a developer.  
Religion has almost reared it head once or twice, but nobody was stupid 
enough on ether occasion to voice their opinions.  That matches the 
priority that the three topics seem to be given in the industry right 
now, so I suppose we are at least vaguely reactive as an industry.  As a 
married (to a gamer) white male, I can't comment on what a gay, minority 
or female gamer would want, so I just try to be open to discussions of 
how we might be failing them.

   Based on this discussion, I might start asking the students about 
their experiences now...

  - Anthony

On 18/09/11 19:22, Ian Schreiber wrote:

> Hi all,

>

> This (long but worthwhile) article has been making the rounds on 

> Twitter recently, so I thought I'd bring it up here:

>

> http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html

>

> While it focuses primarily on the Magic:the Gathering player community 

> (as that is what the author is closest to), I think the sentiment can 

> be applied to just about any male-dominated industry, from video game 

> development to mechanical engineering to business.

>

> Personally, in my industry survey class I make it a point to spend 

> some time talking about gender/minority issues. Students in these 

> groups need to be prepared for potentially unjust treatment. Students 

> who are not, need to not add to the problem. (I would actually just as 

> soon make Women's Studies or Minority Studies a required course for 

> all game dev majors until such time as the industry fixes itself, but 

> so far I haven't had the power to affect curriculum that much, so I'm 

> left to just make a "strong recommendation" that my students will go 

> on to ignore.)

>

> It makes me wonder though: the fact that the industry is predominantly 

> white, male and straight, and that this lack of diversity is a problem 

> in so many ways -- is this a problem on everyone's radar in the 

> educational space? How do different schools handle this (particularly 

> trade/vocational schools that are highly industry-focused)? Does 

> anyone require students to take an entire class in understanding 

> unequal societal power dynamics... or do you graft it on to a single 

> class as an isolated topic, and hope it sticks... or do you try to 

> integrate these discussions throughout the curriculum (say, by having 

> game design students make games for target audiences other than 

> themselves)... or does the topic never see mention in the classroom at 

> all because it's seen to be outside the scope of game dev?

>

> In short: where are we now, as a collective? Is that where we should 

> be? If not, what do we need to change to get us there?

>

> - Ian

>

>

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