February 9, 2022 • 24 mins
Laila Shabir is the co-founder and CEO of Girls Make Games. Here are some links to learn more about her game design studio, summer camp and quest to welcome more girls and women into the world of game design.
Girls Make Games
https://www.girlsmakegames.com/
What They Don’t Sea (2019) - Explore the underwater seas to collect special algae for an alternative energy project
Shredded Secrets (2022) - A game about bullying, that follows the bullied kid and the struggling bully as well. Nintendo Switch
Find Me (2021) - A beautiful and surreal 2D puzzle platformer about a lost shadow seeking to be reunited with her human girl, while searching for memories and avoiding the dangerous city lights. Steam, Playstation
Blubblub (2016) - Jennifer is out on a hunt to extract cuteness from anything and everything in sight to create the world's finest line of make up. It just so happens, BlubBlub is the cutest blub there ever was... Rescue your friends and thwart Jennifer's scheme for building a cosmetics empire. Down with the syringes! Steam, X-box
Interfectorem (2015) - A young sheriff-in-training who lives alone with her sister Sali in a small town next to the woods decides to go on a hike one day, but comes home to find her younger sister brutally murdered! Steam, Playstation
The Hole Story (2014) - When an unsuspecting young girl finds herself transported to a mystical world, she must rely on her trusty shovel and quick wits to find her way home. Steam
Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by David Zha, booking by Lisa Dunn, and editing support from Keishel Williams. The Managing Producer is Sachar Mathias and Executive Producer is Mia Lobel.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Junior. I wasn't
thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
I just wanted to make games. About two point eight
billion people play video games worldwide, from Fortnite to Rocket League,
(00:38):
my personal favorite. Gaming is a popular form of entertainment, relaxation,
and a way to connect with friends and sometimes strangers.
When I started Girls Make Games, I really wasn't very
familiar with gaming, and I did grow up playing on
my Atari and some arcade games like street Fighter or Teken,
but that was the extent of it. That's Layla Shaber.
(00:59):
She's the co founder and CEO of Girls Make Games,
an organization that aims to introduce game design to young girls.
Many people, including me my, spend a lot of time gaming,
but rarely take the time to think about who's making
these games and what goes into development. And that means
you know, programming your game, designing your character, making art
(01:21):
for it, animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating
and recording those sound effects from everyday objects that are
around you, testing it, and finally implementing and sharing it
with people so they can play your game. She founded
a game studio with her husband, but when it came
to hiring, she realized just how underrepresented women are in
(01:41):
the gaming industry. She launched an annual summer camp to
solve that problem. And it was just very shocking to
me because I'd come from banking and research in all
these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
Layla's husband was a professional gamer himself, and he introduced
(02:04):
her to the kinds of opportunities the world of gaming provides.
He didn't talk to me about how cool gaming is.
He talked to me about how powerful and how influential
gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids play games
in the US. That's a lot of kids. That's a
lot of young people being shaped by one medium. Nearly
fifty percent of people who play video games identify as female,
(02:27):
but less than thirty percent of game developers or women.
This is a problem that we can solve. I was
working in research and kind of on my way to
getting a PhD eventually and becoming a professor because I
(02:49):
wanted to do something meaningful with my life. I wanted
to be a teacher, and for my husband. He's a
fairly intelligent guy and he was playing Halo competitively and
I just couldn't. When I first met him, it just
blew my mind. I was like, why would anyone waste
their life away gaming and call themselves a professional gamer?
And so he opened my eyes to the possibilities in gaming.
(03:10):
And I think the way he did it was really
smart because he didn't talk to me about how cool
gaming is. He talked to me about how powerful and
how influential gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids
play games in the US. That's a lot of kids.
That's a lot of young people being shaped by one medium.
So think about the power it has over shaping our
(03:30):
society and what are we doing with that power. Who
are the people behind the scenes making the games that
these kids play. He didn't talk to me about any
of that. It was something that I discovered on my own.
He just showed me how influential it was and how
good it would be for us to combine our interests
of my interest to teach and his interest to make games.
And so we wanted to make educational games. So did
(03:52):
Girls Make Games start as an educational game? Like? How
did the camp emerge from your work with your gaming studio.
It wasn't until we started, like we launched our game
studio that I went out to gaming conferences and developers
conferences and I would be the only, oftentimes the only
woman in the room, and definitely the only woman of
(04:12):
color in the room, woman of color, non gaming background,
so really complete outsider. And it was just very shocking
to me because I'd come from banking and research in
all these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
(04:32):
So it just kind of shocked me. And I wasn't
thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
I just wanted to make games. But I got a
sidetracked by the shock. So how did you go for
getting sidetracked into creating Girls Make Games? So while I
was working on my first game, we were placed hasting
(04:55):
it all over the country, going to schools and you know,
little fairs and maker fair and things like that, and
we would have lots of kids come up having fun
with the game. But when we went to the developers conferences,
a lot of people would tell us girls are not
as interested in making games. When I tried to recruit
from my studio, we had about eight job openings and
they ended up being all filled by boys, because ninety
(05:17):
nine percent of the applications we received were from young
men who proclaimed that this was their dream job. And
I was just so shocked as I was like, oh
my god, it's going to be just me and ten
boys making a game. And oftentimes, again in the room,
I would be the only one with like different opinion
or perspective, and it's just very natural for me to
(05:39):
start thinking, if it's gonna be you know, these boys
making games, is the game gonna end up being more
interesting to boys? Or world girls play this too? And
how do I go meet young girls who might be
interested in playing or eventually becoming developers. So really the
first camp was a social experiment. I'm an economist by training,
so it's really important for me to gather empirical data,
(06:01):
and so that first camp was sort of my research
ground for our game. But by the end of the camp.
It was such an emotional experience for so many of
the kids, and I remember the last day of camp.
We're all crying. The kids were crying. I was crying,
the parents are crying. We're all like. I was like,
this is so weird. This is not what I expected.
(06:22):
You know, the kids that came in and they're talking
about this is the one place that I feel like
I could be myself. This is the only camp I've
been to where I'm not the only girl. I didn't
know there were other girls like me who loved playing
video games. So hearing those things over and over in
different forms just kind of solidified in my mind this
something that was needed and it just didn't exist. And
(06:42):
so I told my team I'm going to go on
a one year hiatus. And that was seven years ago.
So I'm still on that hiatus because Girls and Games
has just grown from that one camp to sort of
a global organization, and especially during COVID going virtual and
reaching kids all over the world. It's just been a
very unexpected journey, but I know it's something that's needed
(07:05):
and that's why we continue to do it. Can you
explain what goes on at Girls Make games camps. Yeah, absolutely, so.
A lot of it is it's like a regular camp.
You show up, you make friends, you play games. You
have great counselors who also become your mentors and help
guide you through the process. But the really magical thing
that happens is the sense of community and belonging because,
(07:28):
like I said, for a lot of the kids that
come to camp, this is the only place they've been
to where they were surrounded by people who look like them.
When they have speakers, you know, when we're speakers that
come into camp, these are women who work in the industry,
great role models, extremely successful leaders. They talk about their
journeys and how you know, they didn't know if they
(07:48):
wanted to become game developers, and how they ended up
to where they are. These are stories they don't get
to hear every day, but for fifteen days they're completely
immersed in this magical place. In their words, there's a
really fun feature where at the end of camp, your
team gets to pitch your game to a panel of
industry judges, and the judges have included people like Phil
(08:08):
Spend who's the head of Xbox, and Sean Leiden, previous
head of PlayStations so we'll have a lot of really
senior leaders who are judges, and the winning game gets
kickstarted and then professionally developed and published. We published a
title on the PlayStation. We published a title this year
in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch. So that's
kind of how the game studio side of my business works,
(08:30):
where we're like, we're taking these girls or bringing their
vision to life and putting it out on the story
so people can play them. That's awesome. So can you
talk a little bit more about your your studios because
I'm recognizing you have you have separate paths here, so
one of them's more altruistic and the other is actually
you creating games. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I really the
(08:51):
reason I got into the games industry was to make
games because I wanted to be a part of it,
and I think I still would like to continue making games.
It's just in the last years eight years, the only
games that we've ended up making have been creatively led
and designed by young girls. Can you take us through
one of those games? Yeah, like, describe one for us absolutely.
One of my favorites, which is coming out next year
(09:12):
on the Switch, is called Shredded Secrets. It's actually an
anti bullying game. So the game's designed by four young
teens from Seattle, and each one of them ended up
writing a story arc. So you actually followed through four
characters that are in a middle school, three students and
a teacher. There's a bully and a victim. So there's
a bully and a girl getting bullied, but you get
(09:35):
to play through each one and kind of learn what
they're going through in their life. And I thought that
was so amazing the way the kids approached it, because
not only did this show how hard bullying is on
the victim, the ultra showed why the bully was acting
out and how his life was kind of, you know,
whatever he was going through. It wasn't all about hey,
he's evil and you're the good one and you know,
(09:57):
go fight evil. It was more about building empathy in
the player. So as you progress through the game, you're
getting to fill in all these different shoes and by
the end you kind of walk away with a sense
of WHOA, I can't believe thirteen year olds to make
this game. So that was amazing. It sounds amazing. So
your company is making all the games from the camp
or the winner is the only one that's that's the
(10:20):
grand prize. That's awesome. Tell me a little bit more
about the tech and the types of skills that girls
make games actually teaches. You learn everything that goes into
(10:40):
making a game from you know, taking your concept that's
sort of an abstract idea, an idea like I like cats,
to becoming a full game, and that means you know,
programming your game, designing your character, so making art for it,
animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating and recording
(11:01):
those sound effects from you know, everyday objects that are
around you, and then putting that into the game, testing it,
and finally implement and sharing it with people so they
can play your game, so they go through the full
indie developer experience, which is I have a dream too,
I have a game. I love it now. Some of
(11:21):
my favorite games are Fortnite, Rocket League, and some of
these games are very violent. Yeah, and how much are
you guys focused on making games that don't include violence?
Like what role does violence in video games play in
girls make games? We're very lucky. We've never really had
to talk to anyone and say your game is too violent.
(11:42):
At most, we've had maybe cartoonish violence We definitely have shooters.
We've had fps's first person shooters, But the context matters.
If I'm shooting fruit at you or if I'm shooting
paint at you, it feels very different from you know,
if there's blood all over the screen. So the mechanic
is okay. The context matters. If TV and movies can
be violent, so can video games. If TV and movies
(12:03):
can move you and change you and educate you, so
con video games. So you have to be able to
draw those parallels. And we need smart people. We need
problem solvers, we need writers, designers, we need all kinds
of people to come join us and help build the
feature of the industry because we're going places. I mean,
gaming is growing so fast. It's already one of the
(12:24):
fastest industries. When I tell people that gaming makes more
money than music and Hollywood combined, their shock. Yes, right,
So video games are pervasive, They're everywhere, and they're going
to continue to be everywhere and grow. So it would
be awesome if we had more women and diverse people
come be a part of the movement. Are there any
(12:44):
pitfalls or obstacles that you faced being a woman in
the gaming industry that you're able to kind of help
your creators avoid as you teach them about making games,
but also about being a woman in the gaming industry. Yeah. Absolutely.
I think if you ask any woman in the industry,
you'll probably get a similar answer, which is that it
(13:04):
can be very isolating at times because there's so few
of us. There's less than twenty percent of us in
the industry, and it's very very visible when you go
to events. When we're at home and we're doing our
think it's mine, but when we go out and interact
with people and when we're at gaming events, it's painfully obvious.
And that sort of helps me. Like what helps me
(13:26):
is draw parallels with my childhood where I grew up
in the Middle East and I was very very aware
of being a girl, and I was constantly told I
shouldn't do this, or shouldn't do that, or I couldn't
do this or that. And what has really helped me
in the last almost a decade is the really strong
community and sisterhood that we do have with the twenty
percent of women that we do. And that's kind of
(13:47):
what we're building at Girls Make Games. When these kids
come in, they see each other year after year. We
have very high retention, nearly seventy to eighty percent retention rate,
So kids, once they sign up, they keep coming back.
These are people that are going to be part of
their journeys and they'll keep in touch and they'll go
to college and eventually get jobs. And that's really the
best thing you can help for because nobody can make
(14:08):
it on their own. We all need a support system
and if it doesn't exist, we gotta created for ourselves.
So with the seventy to eighty percent retention rate, how
are new people getting into this camp? It seems like
there's spots are going to seem a little competitive here.
How do you get new people? So the nice thing
about our camps is that every year, once we have
(14:31):
our registrations and we can kind of show up to
our partners, which is basically the whole games industry, and say, hey,
here are the kids who want to make games. Can
you support us? And they've always said yes, So it
really it's we have room for everyone. And while we
church tuition, we also offer one hundred percent scholarships, so
cost has never been an issue. If your family can't
(14:52):
afford it, we will offer up to hundred percent financially, Layla.
There are billions of gamers, about two point eight billion,
forty are women. I play a lot of games online,
and I know it can be a rough space. I
mean it is. There's racism, misogyny, it's all over the place.
How do you solving that and how do you help
other women? Stay hopeful that it will be solved eventually
(15:15):
when young women kind of come to terms with hey,
this is probably going to be a rough career path
for me, or hey, is this even going to be
possible for me because people don't want me here or something.
It's really a matter of time because when we end up,
like I said, building that community and we have enough numbers,
it's just going to go down with online communities. I mean,
(15:37):
this problem exists outside of giving to online anonymity is
just it's just what it is. It's ugly. But at
the same time, if you can kind of create an
alternate space, so I will never believe that the world
is going to be a perfect place for anyone. I
think as long as we have humans, we're going to
(15:58):
have cruelty, We're going to have we're gonna have evil,
let's just put it at that. But creating alternate spaces,
and I think that's that's where we need to make
our investments, Like we need to be able to combat
that with saying, hey, this sucks, but you have this
other option, that's great. A lot of women play mobile games,
not playing online or on consoles, you know, and they
(16:20):
don't identify as game or as They'll just say, oh, yeah,
I play on my apps. You know, I don't really
play games. I play apps. And I'm like, that's the
same thing. Yeah, So how do we solve people being
mean to people? It's it's a really hard problem. Do
you think that the solution is having an alternate safe space?
(16:42):
Do you think that's a viable long term solution As
a black person, I know, yeah, let's make the safe
space somewhere, But it doesn't actually get to the root
of the problem, which is that you know, there's there's
inherently misogyny here, both in the creating of the games
and then in the playing of the game. Yeah. Yeah,
and so that's the thing that we have to think
(17:03):
about when we implement those safe spaces. Right, as a
thirty five year old woman, do why I need a
safe space? Now? I feel like I don't because I
needed it ten fifteen years ago when I was much younger,
and I really I was vulnerable and I needed that support,
and I needed to feel confident in the choices that
I was making. Now that I've made those choices and
I've done well with them, I feel like I can
(17:25):
walk into any room and make any any conversation happen.
Like if you go back and study how all girls
schools influence confidence in girls, why does that work at
the middle school, high school age, and why does it
not really matter if you have a whole workplace full
of women. You know, it doesn't really work at that
It so you really have to implement it when it's
(17:46):
needed so early in your career, early in your teens,
when you're not sure of who you are and if
you should be making the choices or the decisions, or
if you have if you have the right knowledge or
even the potential to succeed somewhere, that's where you need
the support. That's It's funny because as you were talking,
(18:06):
I was thinking two things. One, what you're to scribing
is a greenhouse, yeah, yeah, exactly before you take the
plants out. And then the second thing is I as
soon as you said that I started to think about
all of my friends who went to HBCUs and the
ways in which they view themselves as black people in
the world versus people like myself and others who went
to PWIS who have a quite different experience. I think
(18:28):
there's some truth in what you're saying. Can you tell
me what does this look like when it's solved for you,
like in five to ten years looking ahead, how would
you want this problem to look If I could talk
to a young girl about gaming and ask her, you know,
would you consider working in games? And her answer is
(18:49):
not because I think video games are for boys, or
because I don't know any of the girls who play games,
or any of those things. If it's really because I'm
not interested because I want to do X, I want
to do this other thing that I'm more interested in.
The self selection that happens because of the environment. I
think that's that's the problem that we need to solve.
Like we don't we don't have to worry about people
(19:10):
not choosing gaming because they're not interested in it. We
have to worry about people not choosing gaming because of fear,
or because of negative stereotypes, or because they just have
these misconceptions about it. So as long as we can
tackle those things, as long as people have real choice,
that they're choosing because they want X or y, and
(19:32):
they're not leaning one way or the other because of
their environment, I think that would be that would I
would consider a success, And in that case, Girls Make
Games would be obsolete. It would just be another summer camp,
not really the summer camp that girls who like gaming
go to. Are you optimistic that this will happen? Oh,
one hundred thousand percent. I mean when we started Girls
(19:54):
Make Games, we were at twenty two percent of developers
identifying as female, and we are close to thirty now
that's just in the last seven years. Yeah. Okay. If
our listeners are interested in learning more about developing games
(20:15):
themselves or helping to support young women in gaming, what
can they do and where can they go to learn
more to get involved? So for parents, I would say definitely,
if you have a kid, if you have a girl
who's interested in gaming, center to girls in games. But
in general, for people who encounter young women, and I
think I don't want to talk about gaming specifically, I
think when you encounter young women who are interested in
(20:36):
non traditional careers, or non traditional hobbies or any of that.
Instead of pointing out how different it is for them
to be interested in it, engage them in it. And
I think that was one of the best things my
parents did for me, was even though I was out
in the Middle East and outside, the whole outside world
was telling me I'm a girl and I need to
behave one way or the other. When I went home,
(20:57):
my parents undid all of that damage by talking to
me like a regular kid. I wasn't a frail little
girl who needed all this protection in the world. I
could have all the dreams that I wanted and all
kinds of ambitions, and I could be prime minister or
you know, scientists or any of that, all that stuff
that wasn't possible outside. And then for if you're working
(21:20):
in a corporate setting, the same goes for you know,
your female colleagues. Like it's it's so much harder for
us to just try to pretend that we're all the
same and we're all in the same boat. But life
is just we've we've had to overcome so many more obstacles.
I mean, it's seeing a successful woman in tech or
(21:42):
a successful woman in gaming is really you are seeing
you're kind of observing a unicorn and so kind of
making that a norm, you know, we don't. We don't
need it to be an exception. I've one of my
least favorite stereotypes on TV is like that trope of
that one woman in the computer science or in the
tech classroom who is also a genius. I don't think
(22:03):
we need that double burden to be like the minority
who's also a genius. I think, you know, like and
get to be an average minority because being averages and
you know that's hourage, that's what normal people are. It's
a privilege, right, Yeah, So that's just such a burden
to to be like, oh, I'm a girl in gaming.
That means I have to be really really good otherwise
(22:24):
I represent all girls and if I suck, all girls suck. Yeah. Yeah,
I think the progress thoroughly comes down to, like, I'm
just an average developer. I'm just any one of them exactly.
So where can we find the games that you guys
have developed? I know I want to check them out,
and I'm sure our listeners do too. So we've actually
(22:45):
developed six games and they are They can be found
on the Girls Man Games website. There's a tab called games.
We started publishing in twenty fourteen. Blub Blub Quest of
the Blob is out on Steam and Xbox. The Whole
Story is out on Steam. Intrafectorium is out on Steam
and PlayStation. Find Me just came out on PlayStation last year.
(23:08):
It's also on Steam, and Shredded Secrets just came out
this year in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch.
It's our first Switch title and we're so excited. Layla,
thank you so much for being with us today. Oh absolutely,
it's my pleasure. Laylashim Beer is the co founder and
CEO of Girls Make Games. Layla attended MIT and pursued
(23:30):
finance at Black Rock, followed by economic research at the
Brookings Institution before moving into the world video games. In
twenty fourteen, game Industry dot biz named Layla a Games
Industry Person of the Year. Layla has a personal goal
to teach one million girls how to make games through
her work. If you want to learn more about game
development or any of the games that Layla's studios helped
(23:52):
to produce, check out the links in our show notes.
Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by David Jah
Booking by Lisa Dunn, Editorial support from Keyshell Williams. Our
managing producer is Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is
Mia Bell. I'm Ronald Young Junior. Thanks for listening before
(24:17):
we go. We know you're used to hearing the show
every week, but just want to let you know the
next episode of Solvable will be released at the beginning
of next month. It will be well worth the way,
so stay tuned and once again, thanks for listening.
Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Junior. I wasn't
thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
I just wanted to make games. About two point eight
billion people play video games worldwide, from Fortnite to Rocket League,
(00:38):
my personal favorite. Gaming is a popular form of entertainment, relaxation,
and a way to connect with friends and sometimes strangers.
When I started Girls Make Games, I really wasn't very
familiar with gaming, and I did grow up playing on
my Atari and some arcade games like street Fighter or Teken,
but that was the extent of it. That's Layla Shaber.
(00:59):
She's the co founder and CEO of Girls Make Games,
an organization that aims to introduce game design to young girls.
Many people, including me my, spend a lot of time gaming,
but rarely take the time to think about who's making
these games and what goes into development. And that means
you know, programming your game, designing your character, making art
(01:21):
for it, animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating
and recording those sound effects from everyday objects that are
around you, testing it, and finally implementing and sharing it
with people so they can play your game. She founded
a game studio with her husband, but when it came
to hiring, she realized just how underrepresented women are in
(01:41):
the gaming industry. She launched an annual summer camp to
solve that problem. And it was just very shocking to
me because I'd come from banking and research in all
these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
Layla's husband was a professional gamer himself, and he introduced
(02:04):
her to the kinds of opportunities the world of gaming provides.
He didn't talk to me about how cool gaming is.
He talked to me about how powerful and how influential
gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids play games
in the US. That's a lot of kids. That's a
lot of young people being shaped by one medium. Nearly
fifty percent of people who play video games identify as female,
(02:27):
but less than thirty percent of game developers or women.
This is a problem that we can solve. I was
working in research and kind of on my way to
getting a PhD eventually and becoming a professor because I
(02:49):
wanted to do something meaningful with my life. I wanted
to be a teacher, and for my husband. He's a
fairly intelligent guy and he was playing Halo competitively and
I just couldn't. When I first met him, it just
blew my mind. I was like, why would anyone waste
their life away gaming and call themselves a professional gamer?
And so he opened my eyes to the possibilities in gaming.
(03:10):
And I think the way he did it was really
smart because he didn't talk to me about how cool
gaming is. He talked to me about how powerful and
how influential gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids
play games in the US. That's a lot of kids.
That's a lot of young people being shaped by one medium.
So think about the power it has over shaping our
(03:30):
society and what are we doing with that power. Who
are the people behind the scenes making the games that
these kids play. He didn't talk to me about any
of that. It was something that I discovered on my own.
He just showed me how influential it was and how
good it would be for us to combine our interests
of my interest to teach and his interest to make games.
And so we wanted to make educational games. So did
(03:52):
Girls Make Games start as an educational game? Like? How
did the camp emerge from your work with your gaming studio.
It wasn't until we started, like we launched our game
studio that I went out to gaming conferences and developers
conferences and I would be the only, oftentimes the only
woman in the room, and definitely the only woman of
(04:12):
color in the room, woman of color, non gaming background,
so really complete outsider. And it was just very shocking
to me because I'd come from banking and research in
all these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
(04:32):
So it just kind of shocked me. And I wasn't
thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
I just wanted to make games. But I got a
sidetracked by the shock. So how did you go for
getting sidetracked into creating Girls Make Games? So while I
was working on my first game, we were placed hasting
(04:55):
it all over the country, going to schools and you know,
little fairs and maker fair and things like that, and
we would have lots of kids come up having fun
with the game. But when we went to the developers conferences,
a lot of people would tell us girls are not
as interested in making games. When I tried to recruit
from my studio, we had about eight job openings and
they ended up being all filled by boys, because ninety
(05:17):
nine percent of the applications we received were from young
men who proclaimed that this was their dream job. And
I was just so shocked as I was like, oh
my god, it's going to be just me and ten
boys making a game. And oftentimes, again in the room,
I would be the only one with like different opinion
or perspective, and it's just very natural for me to
(05:39):
start thinking, if it's gonna be you know, these boys
making games, is the game gonna end up being more
interesting to boys? Or world girls play this too? And
how do I go meet young girls who might be
interested in playing or eventually becoming developers. So really the
first camp was a social experiment. I'm an economist by training,
so it's really important for me to gather empirical data,
(06:01):
and so that first camp was sort of my research
ground for our game. But by the end of the camp.
It was such an emotional experience for so many of
the kids, and I remember the last day of camp.
We're all crying. The kids were crying. I was crying,
the parents are crying. We're all like. I was like,
this is so weird. This is not what I expected.
(06:22):
You know, the kids that came in and they're talking
about this is the one place that I feel like
I could be myself. This is the only camp I've
been to where I'm not the only girl. I didn't
know there were other girls like me who loved playing
video games. So hearing those things over and over in
different forms just kind of solidified in my mind this
something that was needed and it just didn't exist. And
(06:42):
so I told my team I'm going to go on
a one year hiatus. And that was seven years ago.
So I'm still on that hiatus because Girls and Games
has just grown from that one camp to sort of
a global organization, and especially during COVID going virtual and
reaching kids all over the world. It's just been a
very unexpected journey, but I know it's something that's needed
(07:05):
and that's why we continue to do it. Can you
explain what goes on at Girls Make games camps. Yeah, absolutely, so.
A lot of it is it's like a regular camp.
You show up, you make friends, you play games. You
have great counselors who also become your mentors and help
guide you through the process. But the really magical thing
that happens is the sense of community and belonging because,
(07:28):
like I said, for a lot of the kids that
come to camp, this is the only place they've been
to where they were surrounded by people who look like them.
When they have speakers, you know, when we're speakers that
come into camp, these are women who work in the industry,
great role models, extremely successful leaders. They talk about their
journeys and how you know, they didn't know if they
(07:48):
wanted to become game developers, and how they ended up
to where they are. These are stories they don't get
to hear every day, but for fifteen days they're completely
immersed in this magical place. In their words, there's a
really fun feature where at the end of camp, your
team gets to pitch your game to a panel of
industry judges, and the judges have included people like Phil
(08:08):
Spend who's the head of Xbox, and Sean Leiden, previous
head of PlayStations so we'll have a lot of really
senior leaders who are judges, and the winning game gets
kickstarted and then professionally developed and published. We published a
title on the PlayStation. We published a title this year
in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch. So that's
kind of how the game studio side of my business works,
(08:30):
where we're like, we're taking these girls or bringing their
vision to life and putting it out on the story
so people can play them. That's awesome. So can you
talk a little bit more about your your studios because
I'm recognizing you have you have separate paths here, so
one of them's more altruistic and the other is actually
you creating games. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I really the
(08:51):
reason I got into the games industry was to make
games because I wanted to be a part of it,
and I think I still would like to continue making games.
It's just in the last years eight years, the only
games that we've ended up making have been creatively led
and designed by young girls. Can you take us through
one of those games? Yeah, like, describe one for us absolutely.
One of my favorites, which is coming out next year
(09:12):
on the Switch, is called Shredded Secrets. It's actually an
anti bullying game. So the game's designed by four young
teens from Seattle, and each one of them ended up
writing a story arc. So you actually followed through four
characters that are in a middle school, three students and
a teacher. There's a bully and a victim. So there's
a bully and a girl getting bullied, but you get
(09:35):
to play through each one and kind of learn what
they're going through in their life. And I thought that
was so amazing the way the kids approached it, because
not only did this show how hard bullying is on
the victim, the ultra showed why the bully was acting
out and how his life was kind of, you know,
whatever he was going through. It wasn't all about hey,
he's evil and you're the good one and you know,
(09:57):
go fight evil. It was more about building empathy in
the player. So as you progress through the game, you're
getting to fill in all these different shoes and by
the end you kind of walk away with a sense
of WHOA, I can't believe thirteen year olds to make
this game. So that was amazing. It sounds amazing. So
your company is making all the games from the camp
or the winner is the only one that's that's the
(10:20):
grand prize. That's awesome. Tell me a little bit more
about the tech and the types of skills that girls
make games actually teaches. You learn everything that goes into
(10:40):
making a game from you know, taking your concept that's
sort of an abstract idea, an idea like I like cats,
to becoming a full game, and that means you know,
programming your game, designing your character, so making art for it,
animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating and recording
(11:01):
those sound effects from you know, everyday objects that are
around you, and then putting that into the game, testing it,
and finally implement and sharing it with people so they
can play your game, so they go through the full
indie developer experience, which is I have a dream too,
I have a game. I love it now. Some of
(11:21):
my favorite games are Fortnite, Rocket League, and some of
these games are very violent. Yeah, and how much are
you guys focused on making games that don't include violence?
Like what role does violence in video games play in
girls make games? We're very lucky. We've never really had
to talk to anyone and say your game is too violent.
(11:42):
At most, we've had maybe cartoonish violence We definitely have shooters.
We've had fps's first person shooters, But the context matters.
If I'm shooting fruit at you or if I'm shooting
paint at you, it feels very different from you know,
if there's blood all over the screen. So the mechanic
is okay. The context matters. If TV and movies can
be violent, so can video games. If TV and movies
(12:03):
can move you and change you and educate you, so
con video games. So you have to be able to
draw those parallels. And we need smart people. We need
problem solvers, we need writers, designers, we need all kinds
of people to come join us and help build the
feature of the industry because we're going places. I mean,
gaming is growing so fast. It's already one of the
(12:24):
fastest industries. When I tell people that gaming makes more
money than music and Hollywood combined, their shock. Yes, right,
So video games are pervasive, They're everywhere, and they're going
to continue to be everywhere and grow. So it would
be awesome if we had more women and diverse people
come be a part of the movement. Are there any
(12:44):
pitfalls or obstacles that you faced being a woman in
the gaming industry that you're able to kind of help
your creators avoid as you teach them about making games,
but also about being a woman in the gaming industry. Yeah. Absolutely.
I think if you ask any woman in the industry,
you'll probably get a similar answer, which is that it
(13:04):
can be very isolating at times because there's so few
of us. There's less than twenty percent of us in
the industry, and it's very very visible when you go
to events. When we're at home and we're doing our
think it's mine, but when we go out and interact
with people and when we're at gaming events, it's painfully obvious.
And that sort of helps me. Like what helps me
(13:26):
is draw parallels with my childhood where I grew up
in the Middle East and I was very very aware
of being a girl, and I was constantly told I
shouldn't do this, or shouldn't do that, or I couldn't
do this or that. And what has really helped me
in the last almost a decade is the really strong
community and sisterhood that we do have with the twenty
percent of women that we do. And that's kind of
(13:47):
what we're building at Girls Make Games. When these kids
come in, they see each other year after year. We
have very high retention, nearly seventy to eighty percent retention rate,
So kids, once they sign up, they keep coming back.
These are people that are going to be part of
their journeys and they'll keep in touch and they'll go
to college and eventually get jobs. And that's really the
best thing you can help for because nobody can make
(14:08):
it on their own. We all need a support system
and if it doesn't exist, we gotta created for ourselves.
So with the seventy to eighty percent retention rate, how
are new people getting into this camp? It seems like
there's spots are going to seem a little competitive here.
How do you get new people? So the nice thing
about our camps is that every year, once we have
(14:31):
our registrations and we can kind of show up to
our partners, which is basically the whole games industry, and say, hey,
here are the kids who want to make games. Can
you support us? And they've always said yes, So it
really it's we have room for everyone. And while we
church tuition, we also offer one hundred percent scholarships, so
cost has never been an issue. If your family can't
(14:52):
afford it, we will offer up to hundred percent financially, Layla.
There are billions of gamers, about two point eight billion,
forty are women. I play a lot of games online,
and I know it can be a rough space. I
mean it is. There's racism, misogyny, it's all over the place.
How do you solving that and how do you help
other women? Stay hopeful that it will be solved eventually
(15:15):
when young women kind of come to terms with hey,
this is probably going to be a rough career path
for me, or hey, is this even going to be
possible for me because people don't want me here or something.
It's really a matter of time because when we end up,
like I said, building that community and we have enough numbers,
it's just going to go down with online communities. I mean,
(15:37):
this problem exists outside of giving to online anonymity is
just it's just what it is. It's ugly. But at
the same time, if you can kind of create an
alternate space, so I will never believe that the world
is going to be a perfect place for anyone. I
think as long as we have humans, we're going to
(15:58):
have cruelty, We're going to have we're gonna have evil,
let's just put it at that. But creating alternate spaces,
and I think that's that's where we need to make
our investments, Like we need to be able to combat
that with saying, hey, this sucks, but you have this
other option, that's great. A lot of women play mobile games,
not playing online or on consoles, you know, and they
(16:20):
don't identify as game or as They'll just say, oh, yeah,
I play on my apps. You know, I don't really
play games. I play apps. And I'm like, that's the
same thing. Yeah, So how do we solve people being
mean to people? It's it's a really hard problem. Do
you think that the solution is having an alternate safe space?
(16:42):
Do you think that's a viable long term solution As
a black person, I know, yeah, let's make the safe
space somewhere, But it doesn't actually get to the root
of the problem, which is that you know, there's there's
inherently misogyny here, both in the creating of the games
and then in the playing of the game. Yeah. Yeah,
and so that's the thing that we have to think
(17:03):
about when we implement those safe spaces. Right, as a
thirty five year old woman, do why I need a
safe space? Now? I feel like I don't because I
needed it ten fifteen years ago when I was much younger,
and I really I was vulnerable and I needed that support,
and I needed to feel confident in the choices that
I was making. Now that I've made those choices and
I've done well with them, I feel like I can
(17:25):
walk into any room and make any any conversation happen.
Like if you go back and study how all girls
schools influence confidence in girls, why does that work at
the middle school, high school age, and why does it
not really matter if you have a whole workplace full
of women. You know, it doesn't really work at that
It so you really have to implement it when it's
(17:46):
needed so early in your career, early in your teens,
when you're not sure of who you are and if
you should be making the choices or the decisions, or
if you have if you have the right knowledge or
even the potential to succeed somewhere, that's where you need
the support. That's It's funny because as you were talking,
(18:06):
I was thinking two things. One, what you're to scribing
is a greenhouse, yeah, yeah, exactly before you take the
plants out. And then the second thing is I as
soon as you said that I started to think about
all of my friends who went to HBCUs and the
ways in which they view themselves as black people in
the world versus people like myself and others who went
to PWIS who have a quite different experience. I think
(18:28):
there's some truth in what you're saying. Can you tell
me what does this look like when it's solved for you,
like in five to ten years looking ahead, how would
you want this problem to look If I could talk
to a young girl about gaming and ask her, you know,
would you consider working in games? And her answer is
(18:49):
not because I think video games are for boys, or
because I don't know any of the girls who play games,
or any of those things. If it's really because I'm
not interested because I want to do X, I want
to do this other thing that I'm more interested in.
The self selection that happens because of the environment. I
think that's that's the problem that we need to solve.
Like we don't we don't have to worry about people
(19:10):
not choosing gaming because they're not interested in it. We
have to worry about people not choosing gaming because of fear,
or because of negative stereotypes, or because they just have
these misconceptions about it. So as long as we can
tackle those things, as long as people have real choice,
that they're choosing because they want X or y, and
(19:32):
they're not leaning one way or the other because of
their environment, I think that would be that would I
would consider a success, And in that case, Girls Make
Games would be obsolete. It would just be another summer camp,
not really the summer camp that girls who like gaming
go to. Are you optimistic that this will happen? Oh,
one hundred thousand percent. I mean when we started Girls
(19:54):
Make Games, we were at twenty two percent of developers
identifying as female, and we are close to thirty now
that's just in the last seven years. Yeah. Okay. If
our listeners are interested in learning more about developing games
(20:15):
themselves or helping to support young women in gaming, what
can they do and where can they go to learn
more to get involved? So for parents, I would say definitely,
if you have a kid, if you have a girl
who's interested in gaming, center to girls in games. But
in general, for people who encounter young women, and I
think I don't want to talk about gaming specifically, I
think when you encounter young women who are interested in
(20:36):
non traditional careers, or non traditional hobbies or any of that.
Instead of pointing out how different it is for them
to be interested in it, engage them in it. And
I think that was one of the best things my
parents did for me, was even though I was out
in the Middle East and outside, the whole outside world
was telling me I'm a girl and I need to
behave one way or the other. When I went home,
(20:57):
my parents undid all of that damage by talking to
me like a regular kid. I wasn't a frail little
girl who needed all this protection in the world. I
could have all the dreams that I wanted and all
kinds of ambitions, and I could be prime minister or
you know, scientists or any of that, all that stuff
that wasn't possible outside. And then for if you're working
(21:20):
in a corporate setting, the same goes for you know,
your female colleagues. Like it's it's so much harder for
us to just try to pretend that we're all the
same and we're all in the same boat. But life
is just we've we've had to overcome so many more obstacles.
I mean, it's seeing a successful woman in tech or
(21:42):
a successful woman in gaming is really you are seeing
you're kind of observing a unicorn and so kind of
making that a norm, you know, we don't. We don't
need it to be an exception. I've one of my
least favorite stereotypes on TV is like that trope of
that one woman in the computer science or in the
tech classroom who is also a genius. I don't think
(22:03):
we need that double burden to be like the minority
who's also a genius. I think, you know, like and
get to be an average minority because being averages and
you know that's hourage, that's what normal people are. It's
a privilege, right, Yeah, So that's just such a burden
to to be like, oh, I'm a girl in gaming.
That means I have to be really really good otherwise
(22:24):
I represent all girls and if I suck, all girls suck. Yeah. Yeah,
I think the progress thoroughly comes down to, like, I'm
just an average developer. I'm just any one of them exactly.
So where can we find the games that you guys
have developed? I know I want to check them out,
and I'm sure our listeners do too. So we've actually
(22:45):
developed six games and they are They can be found
on the Girls Man Games website. There's a tab called games.
We started publishing in twenty fourteen. Blub Blub Quest of
the Blob is out on Steam and Xbox. The Whole
Story is out on Steam. Intrafectorium is out on Steam
and PlayStation. Find Me just came out on PlayStation last year.
(23:08):
It's also on Steam, and Shredded Secrets just came out
this year in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch.
It's our first Switch title and we're so excited. Layla,
thank you so much for being with us today. Oh absolutely,
it's my pleasure. Laylashim Beer is the co founder and
CEO of Girls Make Games. Layla attended MIT and pursued
(23:30):
finance at Black Rock, followed by economic research at the
Brookings Institution before moving into the world video games. In
twenty fourteen, game Industry dot biz named Layla a Games
Industry Person of the Year. Layla has a personal goal
to teach one million girls how to make games through
her work. If you want to learn more about game
development or any of the games that Layla's studios helped
(23:52):
to produce, check out the links in our show notes.
Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by David Jah
Booking by Lisa Dunn, Editorial support from Keyshell Williams. Our
managing producer is Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is
Mia Bell. I'm Ronald Young Junior. Thanks for listening before
(24:17):
we go. We know you're used to hearing the show
every week, but just want to let you know the
next episode of Solvable will be released at the beginning
of next month. It will be well worth the way,
so stay tuned and once again, thanks for listening.
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