Video Games & Women, Part I

What's it like for women in video games who comprise just 12 percent of the industry? Cristen and Caroline kick-off their two-part series on video games by looking at women making their way in the industry and the challenges -- and sometimes death threats -- they face.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stup
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and this is part one of
our two parter on women in video games. And originally
this was gonna just be one episode. We thought, Hey,

(00:24):
women in video games about a being about a boom?
Wait no, yeah, yeah, because we took to our Facebook
page to ask sminty listeners what they want to hear
about in terms of women and video games. And once
we took that into account and started researching, honestly, this
could be a three parter if we really wanted to

(00:47):
make it that because things that were requested for us
to talk about had to do with women in gaming, credibility,
the girl gamer stereotype, getting hit on while playing multiplayer games,
what it's like for women in the gaming industry, and
just within those few topics, there's still so many things

(01:07):
to discuss. Yeah, women, I think women in the gaming
industry are so fascinating, mainly because I'm not a math
person or a science person myself, and so I think
these women who are creating these games are so fascinating
and and the women who play them. Um, but I
was telling Kristen that that there was an ick factor
for me when I was reading some of our sources
about this topic. And you're thinking, what ick factor, what's

(01:29):
your problem girls in gaming? You know? And no, that's
that's not at all. The ick factor stems from the
fact that these women who are both playing the games
and designing the games, faced so much abuse, so many
threats from men and boys in the industry and other gamers.
It just created this really icky feeling. But the upside,

(01:51):
the bright side to all of the recognition and the
more media attention to those ick factors is the fact that,
regardless us of that, these women who are making and
playing games are really starting to change an entire industry,
or at least broaden an industry that has such a
massive reach to so many people. And I'm glad you

(02:12):
mentioned to Caroline, science and math because this is in
a way an extension of our series on women in
stems science, technology, engineering in math. Because remember this is
this is a STEM field. Video games is STEM and yeah,
and like the rest of the STEM fields, male dominated exactly.
So for this part one episode we are going to

(02:33):
focus on the video game industry and women in it,
and in part two we'll talk more about the women
who are playing the games and the women actually in
the video games. Right, So let's look at a breakdown
of who has the controllers. Percent of Americans altogether play
video games. The average game player is thirty years old,

(02:56):
but the largest demographic is thirty six and over. Now,
if you're looking just at women, this is coming from
the Entertainment Software Association Report on Gaming, women make up
forty five percent of the entire game playing population. And
I think that's an important point to make right out
of the gate, because I think the stereotype is that

(03:18):
there's like two women total anywhere. It's just you and
me sitting here with our old game boys and childhood.
But we should point out that when we say the
entire game playing population, those games are not only things
like Call of Duty, but also candy Crush on your
phone or even board games. This is we're talking about

(03:39):
mega game here. But then if you look just at
video games, women still comprise of that gaming population. And
that's compared to boys seventeen and under, who comprise only
nineteen percent of the video game population. So there's still
plenty of women playing video games and there are also
plenty of women buying video games. Forty six percent of

(04:03):
the time, women are the most frequent game purchasers, and
that might be because we are buying games for ourselves,
but also buying games for gentlemen in our lives or
maybe other women in our lives. Yeah. Well, my mom
was the one who bought me video games when I
was a kid. Yeah, so there you go. There we go.
And by the way, if you can't keep up with
all of the sources that we're citing, don't worry. All

(04:26):
of them will be posted in the podcast post over
on stuff mo I never told you dot Com because
we're gonna cite a lot of statistics and we've got
a lot of sources coming your way. But don't worry,
you will have one handy reference for that. Well. So,
as far as what we are playing when we pick
up those controllers, uh, this is coming from Variety back
in October, as many as thirty percent of women are

(04:49):
playing the more violent games like Halo. Uh. Call of
Duty counts about twenty of their players as women. Well,
Grand Theft Auto counts women of its audience. I will
say Caroline that in regard to Halo, I was just
haloed out in college from sitting around more hours than

(05:12):
I care to even consider watching my then boyfriend and
his friends playing that game. I can't play Halo for
that reason. I mean, that's that's it for me. Um. Also,
I do take issue with this Variety article that repeatedly
referred to women playing games as quote unquote fem players.

(05:36):
So strange just came out in. Yeah. That to me,
when you say fem, that has a totally different connotation
than just being a woman. Yeah. Now, when it comes
to who's making the games, the percentage of women shrinks
pretty drastically. Only eleven percent of video game developers are women,

(05:56):
and if we look inside the games, especially big name games,
you have even fewer. Women represented only four percent of
video game protagonists. For instance, among the top twenty five
selling games of two thousand thirteen. For instance, in two thirteen,
among the top selling games, only four percent of those

(06:18):
games protagonists were women. And when you're in the store
looking at the boxes themselves, two thirds of all video
game box art features no female characters whatsoever. Now, there
are some games on the horizon that are adding, you know,
the option to play a female character. Games like Call
of Duty Ghosts, you can customize your character and play

(06:40):
as a female soldier for the first time, which makes
sense considering women are now like legit allowed on the
front lines. So there's that um and the game Mass
Effect three has also added playable female characters. But I
mean you see that, like you see how the numbers
have decreased as krist and I have ticked them off.

(07:01):
That you know, where you have thirty one percent a
video game playing people being women, but only of the developers.
It makes sense that they're you know, there's such a
small number of women actually developing the games, so that
kind of bleeds over into not having that many female characters. Yeah,
so let's talk for a minute about who these women

(07:23):
are who are working in video games and what kind
of stuff they're doing. First of all, I would like
to offer a shameless stuff I'm never told you dot
com plug we recently posted about Carol Shaw, who was
the first female video game designer, perhaps around the world,
but at least in the US. She was definitely the first.
She worked her first job out of college with Atari,

(07:46):
and she created the highly popular game when she moved
over to Activision called Reberators. But The interesting thing about
her is that she's super low profile. She got out
of video games the gaming into stream entirely in the
early nineties essentially because she made some wise investments in
her husband made plenty of cash, so they were like,

(08:07):
she was like, I don't need to do this anymore. Um.
But the numbers of women working in video games isn't
all that greater than it was in Carol Shaw's days
when she was the only woman really hanging out at Atari. UM.
In her time in the eighties, for instance, women comprised
about three percent of the video gaming workforce, but today

(08:30):
again it's only around twelve percent. Yeah, and when you
break down even further the women who are in this industry,
so we we mentioned that they're eleven percent of video
game designers, they make up three percent of programmers, sixty
of graphic designers, and of the tech jobs involved, like

(08:51):
for instance, building the software. And when you look at
some of those names, we have Donna Bailey who started
at Atari as an engineer in nineteen eighty. She w
created Centipede, which I used to play on my t
I eight five during biology class and freshman year of
high school. Yeah, and it's interesting that that Bailey was
working at Atari at the same time as Carol Shaw.

(09:12):
She came on right after Shaw, but she ended up
leaving the industry distinctly because of criticism that she had
to deal with from her mail colleagues. There's an interview
with Carol Shaw over on this video gaming website, I
think it's called like Vintage Video Games or something, and
she didn't really acknowledge sexism as a issue that she

(09:34):
had to deal with on a day to day basis.
But she also talked about how growing up she was
a real math nerd and so she was used to
being the only woman in the room and it kind
of just rolled off her back. She said it would
happen every now and then, but apparently for Donna Bailey
it was a lot more of a potent issue. Um.

(09:54):
And someone else who also comes up who's still in
the industry. She's a rare veteran who's been wor king
in the industries since n one. That's Brenda Romero, and
she has credits on more than twenty games. Yeah, and
I mean, speaking of criticism from male colleagues and and
male gamers, etcetera, etcetera, Romero had an interesting quote that

(10:15):
I cannot say on the podcast where you know, people
were talking to her about gender issues, and she was
talking about criticism from men, and she basically said, and
I will admit the bad words, but she basically said, hey,
you guys, I helped build this industry. Did you like
all my pauses? Um, you know, she's basically saying, like,

(10:36):
I am a veteran, I don't deserve any less respect
than these these men that I work with, And and
so there was a lot of frustration in her tone
that the female gamers and game designers have to put
up with all that abuse. Well imagine too that if
you're someone like her who has been working in games
since the early eighties, how many times she's had to

(10:58):
answer that question too. I'm sure that gender is perhaps
an annoying topic for her to even talk about, because
you know, she probably wants to be recognized as simply
an amazing veteran designer, not oh, you're a woman, what's
that like? How do ovaries feel so today? Considering the

(11:18):
fact that women are still only comprising around of the industry.
A lot of the advice that you hear for women
who want to break into the ranks in order to
do that. Essentially what women need to do is just
start building games. There are so many resources now, you
don't have to be working for Nintendo to build an

(11:39):
amazing game. And so it's sort of it reminded me
actually of advice that we would hear Caroline in journalism
school of how to become, you know, a credible writer
is you just have to start writing. Whether you're doing
you know, freelance jobs literally for free or just starting
a blog, you just start making your stuff so that
you have some kind resume for people to look at

(12:01):
and see that you can actually build these products. And
on top of that, especially if you're a woman, you
gotta have a lot of perseverance in order to break in. Well. Yeah,
and especially since women, young women might not have the
same avenues open to them that that men do. Especially
you know, we've talked about this in the stem fields.

(12:22):
Not only are there fewer women in the stem fields
than men, but that just means that there are fewer
allies bringing you in or even raising your interest if
you're like a twelve year old in math or science class.
And that's that's something that Kate Edwards said, she's the
executive director of the International Game Developers Association UM and
she says that the root issue is that we really

(12:42):
need to bolster the availability of STEM programs for girls
and young women to get them interested in games as
a career path. And it's the same thing that Kristen
and I talked about in our whole STEM series. If
you get out there, if you get the idea into
girls heads from a young age that these are even
jobs that are available. Maybe they just don't know, or
maybe they think, no, that's just a guy thing. So

(13:04):
getting it into their heads is so very important, which
leads then and again echoing our STEM series to the
importance of the visibility of women in games. While it's
a lot of fun to play or watch something like
let's say Halo, if I hadn't spent so many hours
watching an ex boyfriend played it in college, those kind

(13:26):
of I mean, it's it's it's not saying that all
all video game characters need to be women in order
for this to happen, but there is a distinct absence
of them. And so one thing that comes up a
lot when you're talking about the video game industry are
issues of sexism, and that's a controversial topic to bring
up because a lot of gamers don't take too kindly

(13:49):
to these kinds of critiques on the industry. But when
you simply look at the numbers and how marketing money
is siphoned out, it's the same kind of assumptions that
are made in the video game industry as are made
in Hollywood in terms of assuming that, well, you know what,
if we make a movie about women, guys aren't gonna

(14:11):
want to go see it, But if we make a
movie about men, then men and women are gonna go
see it, So we're gonna make a lot more money,
even though statistics suggest otherwise. So let's talk a little
bit how that applies to video games when we come
right back from a quick break. Okay, so right before

(14:33):
the break, Christian was talking about some of the obstacles
that women have to face in the game gaming industry. Uh,
one of those being marketing and the fact that a
lot less money goes to women developers and marketing for
women led games. Yeah, because a lot of times when

(14:54):
you get more women on a creative team, they're like, oh, hey,
you know, we could we could make this game about
a female protagonist, or at least have you know, women
in addition to men in the game that you that
are playable characters. But Jeffrey Zakin, who's a video game analyst,
talked about this to Penny Arcades Ben Kachia in this
article that was widely publicized, and zach And said, quote,

(15:18):
games with a female only protagonist get half the spending
of female optional protagonist games and only the marketing budget
of male led games less than that actually, because he
goes on to explain of that thinking that well, the
only people playing games or guys, So we gotta make

(15:40):
games for guys. And well, yes, guys do you make
up a majority, but you still are overlooking a massive population.
And one thing they talk about as far as money
goes is the whole thing of well, it would take
so much time and money to to, you know, redo
some of these care actors to be women. And it's like, seriously,

(16:03):
it takes so long to craft realistic looking breasts, Caroline,
Well obviously, I mean did you see how long did
it take to demold Laura Croft's first first figure? And
this is something that the site VG two four sevens
Brenna Hillier took issue with an example of this more
recently when the video game company Capcom was making this

(16:26):
game called Deep Down, and one of the gamemakers said explicitly, hey,
we're not going to have any female characters in this game,
or I think he more just said we're only gonna
have dudes in this game. But her point was, Hey,
this is a game about time travelers kind of going
through and fighting historic missions here and there, and I'm

(16:49):
just not buying this that somehow because they said, for
quote unquote plot reasons, they could only stick with men,
to which she basically said, hey, you know what, Ay,
I'm not buying it and be a quote better lazily
crafted women than no women at all. Basically, you can
make it work if you want to make it work. Yeah,
And she she writes this basically fake script between this

(17:12):
imagined conversation between a gamer and a developer and just
a woman just like woman character, and through this conversation
she has these these two dimensional characters realize like, oh wait,
if we make games that don't treat women like subhuman
dust bunnies fit only to be rescued, kidnapped, lusted after,

(17:35):
or left out of the picture altogether, women might buy
more of our games. Yeah, and if you want to
remain a growth industry, then it would be wise you
would think to go after new audiences, new consumers who
were just sitting there waiting wanting to play games. They're
already playing games. And I liked how she pointed out, how, hey, listen,

(17:58):
if you're taking all of this time time to make
all these different kinds of armor and weapons, and you know,
carefully sculpting men's pectoral muscles, then you can't just you
can't add another option, just a one more player option
for a female. And on top of that, she before
she even goes into her explanation, sort of makes a

(18:19):
preemptive Hey, if you are about to comment talking about
how women have no place in video games, just save
yourself the time, because I'm not going to respond to it,
because this is an argument that comes up all the time,
and it's foolish. It's simply foolishness. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, so, um,
moving outside of the game and into the real world,

(18:41):
let's look at the actual direct sexism that women in
the gaming industry experience. UM, Chris and I have talked
about on the podcast before. Different social movements that kind
of are birthed on Twitter, various hashtags that sort of
rally people to a cause, and the gaming industry is
no different. They got the one reason and why hashtag
back in twelve that ended up revealing a lot of

(19:03):
issues that women in the industry face. Yeah, there are
all sorts of issues of harassment that women were sharing
via Twitter without hashtag, such as getting groped at gaming conventions,
issues of isolation, being dissatisfied with the product. One tweet but,
for instance, said because I got blank stairs when I
asked why a female soldier in a game I worked

(19:26):
on looked like a porn star. Um. On top of that,
there are issues of pay gaps. On average, for instance,
women make percent less than men in the industry, and
on and on and on and and In between those
tweets about issues of harassment, you also had a lot
of women stepping forward too and saying, hey, if we
don't want to discourage other women from getting involved in games,

(19:48):
the fact of the matter is we need more and
if someone's looking for a mentor, I'll step up and
do it. You know, There's there's clearly some solidarity that's
going on as well. Yeah, but then you have the
issue of women leaving the industry altogether because of that
harassment and death threats and rape threats that they have
faced online. Zoe Quinn, for instance, she created the game

(20:12):
Depression Quest. She received an onslaught of harassment basically just
because of her gender, because she dared, as a female
create a game. Yeah. I forget the name of the site,
but essentially she made this game herself and posted it
on um some kind of like game sharing site and
just got dog piled with all of this harassment going on.

(20:37):
And I mean, the the interview that she gave to
Vice magazine was heartbreaking because she just she was clearly
so exhausted by it, like it was to the point
to where, you know, when when you get to a
point to where rape threats really don't have any impact
on you, that's not a good place to be in.
And that's not the way it should be, absolutely not.

(21:00):
And Kate Edwards, who we mentioned earlier, she's the executive
director of the International Game Developers Association. She was talking
to Polygon and saying that the organization is looking into
starting support groups for developers because of this problem. And
she says that while the harassment isn't having a major
impact on development, yet she said, we're at the cusp

(21:21):
of where it could And while men do get death
threats too, I mean, the bulk of them are against women.
I mean former BioWare developer Jennifer Helpler, her name is
in the news a lot because she received death threats
against her children. Yeah, the story of her harassment is
just kind of mind boggling in the way that it
took off. Because there was a snippet from some interview

(21:44):
that she had done years ago about her like gaming
habits or something, and it got reposted on a forum,
and essentially a cyber mob organized around it, and eventually
it got to the point to where people we had
found out not only her address but also the address

(22:04):
of her children's school, and we're posting it online, threatening to,
you know, kidnap her children from school, telling her that
her children should have been aborted, threatening to rape her.
And and even when male developers get death threats as well,
because they also deal with this. You know, we don't
want to say that women are exclusively the targets of

(22:25):
this kind of cyber harassment, but a lot of times too,
when men get threats, it's often linked to and we're
going to rape your wife. They're always these like just
violent rapey the threats that happened, and if they're not
threatening their wives or with violence, they're just talking about
how you're gay, like well in in possibly other words.

(22:46):
But I mean that's the gist, like we're going to
insult you and threaten you by saying that you're gay. Yeah,
And this is this is the dark side of the gaming,
the hardcore, the hardest of the hardcore gaming community. Which
there was one article that I was reading talking about
how a lot of them actually might be younger boys,
that subset of the you know, the seventeen and under demographic,

(23:09):
who might be making more of these direct kind of
threats because older men with jobs might not you know,
might be a little wiser to putting leaving a breadcrumb
trail of cyber harassment that could possibly threaten their employment
at some point. Um. But it's horrifying to see what
women like Jennifer Helper and Zoe Quinn are having to

(23:31):
put up with that shouldn't be part of the expected job.
And that was the thing Kate Edwards was saying, was that,
I mean it's really becoming something that you need to
especially if you're a woman in the industry you got
a prep for. Yeah. It has a total chilling effect
not only on women wanting to enter the field, but
on them wanting to stay in the field. Yeah. And
it's also a byproduct too of social media, in the

(23:53):
sense that you know, there has never been a thinner
line between you know, the industry side and the players side,
where now, you know, thanks to social media, you can
you know, tweet directly to these people whatever you think.
And I think also part of the harassment that Heppler
was receiving was because she was um influential and making

(24:16):
the switch in a BioWare game to allow gay romance
among male protagonists. Yeah, you know, but I mean, speaking
of that, that social media, that fine line. One one
thing we read was talking to this guy who was
basically the quote unquote sheriff. He worked for Microsoft when
they were developing this game, and there were changes there,

(24:37):
there were going to be changes happening, and so as
the sheriff for kind of social media interaction, he was
tasked with dealing with some of this harassment and these
these basically crazed fans, this core group of gamers who
were so upset by the changes and he because he
was a public face, he himself became the like got

(24:58):
the brunt the abuse, and he was like, look, I'm
not I'm not dealing with that. I think he moderated
Xbox Live, which I cannot even imagine because the kind
of there are studies that have been done analyzing the
comments that players will make back to each other while they're,
you know, playing games together, and it's like horrific stuff

(25:20):
that they say back and forth. So you can only
imagine if they're disgruntled at some kind of game change
that is being made. And he said he's no longer
working there, but he told the interviewer that he still
gets like fifty emails a day from people who are
just enraged about something. Um, I feel like those people

(25:40):
should like take up a volunteering project or or become
a social advocate for something like direct that passion into
something useful. I don't know, well, I think it's I
don't think it's because working on the internet. I don't
want to believe that it's because people are evil in
their hearts, because that would just make it really hard

(26:01):
for me to wake up and go to work in
the morning. I think it's because of the anonymity of
the Internet. This is the awful byproduct of it is
that people are growing up more and more having no
consequence for their communications because we are communicating more and
more via text message, via you know, instant message, Twitter,
YouTube comments, and you just say whatever comes to your mind.

(26:25):
But I do wish they would direct the rage into
something more productive. Yeah, you and me both, um. But
moving away from this dark underbelly of what it is
like sometimes to work in video games, let's go on
the complete opposite end of the spectrum to not so

(26:46):
much the women making the games, but the women who
might be promoting the games at conventions like E three.
Although I think the three is cracking down on this. Um,
we gotta talk about booth babes for a minute. Yeah,
and booth babes. You know, it might be models, it's
it's typically really attractive younger women who do know a thing.

(27:07):
They tend to know a thing or two about the games,
whether it's whether it's just to be able to answer
basic questions from guys at conventions or whether they're actual
gamers themselves. But there there are a lot of stories
same same with UM booth babes at marijuana weed conventions
at UH beer tasting conventions, like it seems to be

(27:30):
a common thread through conventions really. But anyway, um, whether
it's sex cells, Oh my gosh, did I just coin
a term? I think you just coin yeah, that we're
onto something. But so anyway, these these booth babes as
they're called, are pretty popular way to kind of like
schill your product, draw people to your booth, you know,
attract more men to your product. But they're kind of

(27:53):
not as big of a thing as they used to be. Yeah,
I think that as there has been more speaking of
the power of social media, I mean, for every evil,
there is also a lot of good, including like the
one reason why hashtag. But also I think that this
is partially why UH booth babes are seen in a
less positive lights, simply because everybody's seeing them now. Whenever

(28:17):
a giant gaming convention happens, you know, there's now this, well,
who's using booth babes? Are we still trying to use
boobs to sell video games or technology? Um and Spencer
Chin wrote a piece for tech Crunch about a little
experiment that he did with a split test for UM.

(28:40):
I forget which company it was, but it was some
tech company and they were allowed to have two spaces
at a convention. He was like, you know what I'm
gonna do. I'm going to have just knowledgeable people at
one and I'll have booth babes at the other, and
we'll see how many sales are converted for one versus
the other. And guess what. The booth babes don't actually

(29:01):
help sell products because a lot of times the men
who you know swarm to booth babes are probably not
the key stakeholders that you need to talk to in
order to actually sell your product and mass a lot
of times they're just maybe lower level employees who are
really pumped about seeing, you know, getting to go to

(29:21):
Vegas for a week and maybe take pictures with booth babes. Um.
Whereas when you stock your booth, which is knowledgeable people
who may or may not be in bikinis, you actually
sell things a lot more effectively. Yeah, especially if if
the person walking around from booth to booth is a woman.
Women tend to avoid the booth babes there. Yeah. Um,

(29:45):
but I will say this, remind me to you of
that email that we received and read at the end
of our marijuana episode from a craft beer model a
beer babe, if you will, and she's basically saying, listen,
I have blonde hair and boobs, and I really enjoy beer,
and this is a stereotype that I have to deal
with the assumption that just by virtue of how I look,

(30:07):
that I'm a bimbo and so booth babe. Elaine Low
wrote sort of a similar self defense over at Jezebel,
basically being like, hey, listen, booth babes are getting all
sorts of flak, but we're usually just trying to make
a buck at these things. Yeah, she says, the depressing
truth is that standing around in a costume at a

(30:28):
convention pace far better than writing ever has. So it's
it's being used to supplement other career goals, and I'm
sure she probably makes more doing that than she would
like waiting tables at a coffee house or something. Yeah,
and the thing about it, too is that you are
There was an article published at The Verge in early
two thousand thirteen talking about how booth babes are gradually

(30:50):
being replaced by booth bros and booth bots, which makes
so much more sense because this is technology robots John Robot. Yeah,
he was talking about how people just like flock to
these booth bots because they're interactive and you can you know,
I mean, your your audience is gamers and you're putting
a big old robot in your booth like, that's awesome. Yeah,

(31:12):
I would want to go play with the robot. I'd
rather go play with the robot. And I think as
this has gotten more and more attention, sort of like
with the whole bro grammar culture in you know, the
tech industry as well, where it's being a little bit
more looked down upon. To be so directly insensitive to
the women who are starting to comprise greater numbers of

(31:35):
your industry, it just makes you look a little foolish
if to use that kind of knee jerk promotion. And
I don't have her name in front of me, but
there was actually a relatively high profile women women in
video games who stepped down from a position because with
with a company, because she went to an event and

(31:58):
they were booth babes everywhere. You're just like, Nope, you
don't know. You clearly your company, you know standards, clearly
don't align to my standards. See you later. I'll find
somebody who actually gets it interesting. Yeah, And so I
mean that kind of leads us to this question of
is it getting better? And yes, I think it's absolutely
getting better. There's still so many horror stories, particularly coming

(32:21):
from you know, just these cyber mobs that pop up
every now and then. But I think in terms of
the industry itself, there's at least more recognition and there
are a lot of women at the top. We don't
want to make this a totally deb downer kind of
episode because there are a lot of women who are
doing a lot of amazing things. You've got women like

(32:43):
Jade Raymond, who's the head of Ubisoft Toronto, who oversaw
a three person team creating Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Blacklist. Yeah.
There's also Bonnie Ross and Kikey wolf Kill at three
three industries that are heading up high profile games such
as my favorite, the Halo franchise. UM There's also Kim

(33:04):
mcculloffe and Elizabeth Sampet who are leaving leading game designers
at Microsoft Game Studios and Storm eight. Hope Cochrane is
the CFO of King, which publishes Candy Crush. Let's be
honest with women. We love Some Candy Crush uh Indicaid
CEO is Stephanie bearish Um. There's also hollylu who co

(33:26):
founded CABAM which is known for its Kingdoms of Camelot franchise,
and there are I mean, we could go on and
on and on. There is literally a laundry list of
women sitting on these notes in front of my face.
And I don't want to just turn this into calling,
you know, a roll call of every single woman, but
it is excited to see, whether it's with independent games

(33:47):
or with larger corporations, you do have women at the
top levels. Kind of it's reflective of what's going on
in the broader tech industry where you got we got
plenty of women on the top, and we have a
lot of women and I think too really want to
break in there. It's like, how can we build that
bridge to where you know, there's more of a direct

(34:08):
pipeline between the two because the younger women need mentors.
And one thing that's come up to in conversations of
women in the industry is how it is so important
to create an environment that will keep them around long
enough to where to where they are. Like a Brenda
Romero who has veteran insight. Yeah that's important. Yeah, Well,
a lot of the women UH in the list of

(34:30):
women at the top of the industry, some of them,
you know, rose to the top of some of them
co created their companies or solely created their companies, and
there is some recognition for that. Microsoft's recent Women in
Gaming Awards has quickly grown in just six years. It
began as a series of informal dinners hosted by a
group of female developers from the Xbox division UH and

(34:53):
this past year they honored Anita Sarkisian, whose name is
all over everything when you look up anything about themen
in gaming. Yeah, and talk about controversial. Lord, we're gonna
talk about Anita Sarcasian in our next episode, I'm sure,
much to the chagrin of at least one person listening
who posted about how he didn't want to hear about
her name on her Facebook page, But we have to

(35:14):
talk about her. She actually just received a huge award
from the UH Game Developers Association. It's some sort of
ambassadorial award recognizing people who have changed the industry for
the better. And I think that right there is assigned
to of how the industry is improving, So you know,

(35:35):
there's a lot of it's a tough road to hoe
right now. I think for if you, if you're a
woman in gaming, but I mean having Matt and talked
to women in the industry knew and who have been
in there for a while, I mean women they do
it because they love it. They're making things that that
are really fun to play and really enjoyable, and and

(35:55):
I feel like that passion for games sort of balance
is out, at least to some extent, the issues the
harassment or sexism that they might have to deal with
at least for a little while, because I mean the
fact is a lot of that abuse is coming from
people who feel threatened, a lot of men and boys

(36:18):
who feel like, no, this is a male dominated industry
needs to stay a male dominated industry. So I'm going
to abuse you into maintaining the status quo, yeah, or
just kind of the misguided logic industry wide of thinking
that you have one specific demo of you know, uh,
an eighteen year old male gamer who is the only

(36:40):
person that you should cater to. But I think that
perspective is absolutely changing, and we're going to talk a
lot more about that and about the women who are
playing video games and the women in video games in
our part two of women in video Games. So now
I hope that there are some people men, women whoever,

(37:01):
who are working in the industry or might have some
insights that they can share with us. Let us know
your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
you can email us. You can also tweet us at
Mom's Stuff podcast, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. I have a letter

(37:22):
here from Megan about our cars episode driving in Gender.
She says, I just wanted to let you guys know
that I am a woman and mom, and I am
the main driver in my household. For a long time,
when we rode anywhere as a family, we rode in
my car just because that was where my daughter's car
seat was, and I almost always drove. But since then

(37:42):
we've bought a family car, both mine and my husband's,
but I still drive of the time. When we go
somewhere together, like in relationships where the man usually drives,
I typically drive because my husband is kind of a
nervous driver and he prefers to ride. He's still comments
about me speeding and such, but he just gets much
more frustrating when he is driving, so it's just easier
for me to do it. I typically don't mind it,

(38:04):
but when he does drive, I enjoy the break. That's funny, Megan.
My boyfriend also comments on my speeding, and he can
just deal with it because I'm driving. So thank you.
Uh well, I've been an email here from Heather, also
about our men and Cars episode. She said I had
to laugh because this was a timely episode. I'm forty

(38:25):
three and just purchased a new car last weekend. Since
both my husband and son are in a physical therapy
assistant program right now, I'm the primary breadwinner. I went
to see about getting a car for my son and
ended up buying a car for myself instead, and got
my son a perfectly good hand me down. He was
totally happy to get it. By the way, even though

(38:45):
the salesman knew I was the primary breadwinner and that
my car was paid off, he still asked me if
I was okay to buy the car without my husband.
I smiled and simply said yes, even if he was here,
I would be making the same for ches. And she
goes on to say another thing I found funny is
the stereotype that women don't know how to drive manual transmissions.

(39:06):
I was taught on a stick shift and actually prefer
to drive them to an automatic. I think it's because
I'm such a control freak. Many times over the years,
salespeople have said, oh, this is a stick shift. Is
that okay? I tell them that I actually prefer that,
and they relax. The funny thing is that I've never
seen this happen when my husband has gone looking for cars.
My last car was a stick and when the woman

(39:26):
came out to go over the final paperwork, she was
reading quickly and started handing me the keys and then
pulled them back as she said, oh, this is a
stick shift. Can you drive a stick I thought, really no,
I just figured out how to drive one with a
brand new car. Here's your sign something's never change. The
can you drive a stick has now become are you
okay to buy this without your husband? For the record,

(39:48):
I have the better driving record in our household, and
the way we decide who drives is by whose car
we're taking. If it's mine, I drive, If it's his,
he drives. However, on long trips we take turns, So
thanks Heather, and thanks to everybody who's written in to us.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
email us and to find links to all of our
social media as well as this podcast episode with all

(40:11):
of our sources included. And you know, if you want
to watch our videos and read our blogs as well,
there's one place to go. It's stuff Mom. Never Told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
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(40:35):
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