UCLA Hosts Events Focused on Girls and Gaming - Live Streaming Available

Read below for our (reconstructed) discussion with event organizer, Yasmin Kafai.

Could you summarize what the events you’ve organized titled ‘Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender, Games and Computing’ and "Girls ’n’ Games" will be about?

Essentially, it’s time to broaden the conversation on gender and gaming and evaluate the differences that exist today compared to a decade ago. There are amazing numbers of women playing games nowadays. Ten years ago, companies didn’t think there was a market for girls. Although research is now showing there is a large female market, many questions still remain unanswered. We want to know why women aren’t in the profession if so many of them are playing the games. These discussions will bring people together to talk about what’s going on with female game involvement and how they feel about it, doing so in a global approach with representatives from Europe, Asia and North America being involved.

What would you like the attendees of these discussions to learn and go away with?

Overall, gender equity is still an issue, contrary to what people may say. Even if women are playing games, gender issues are still prevalent. One of the main purposes of these discussions is to promote a change in women’s participation in IT and games. We also want to question the stereotypes about how men and women are portrayed in games, what men and women like, as well as, the relationship between gender, play patterns, and learning, while illuminating the roles of culture. Mainly, we’d like people to examine these issues and share information with each other to be able to transform the game industry.

You’ve said, ‘Until recently, boys and men dominated the digital games worlds.’ How is this picture changing?

The E3 Expo used to have a predominantly male audience on the floor. Back a few years ago, the only women visibly present seemed to be the “booth babes” that guys would wait in lines for, in order to have their pictures taken with these models. Now, hundreds of girls are showing up to game development conferences, as they did at the WIGI event in San Francisco called ‘Game for Women, Games by Women’– and their there to learn, as well as, give insight about the industry. Basically, we’ve moved on from the days of ‘Barbie Fashion Designer’. With more computers in the home, access to Internet, new game genres, and the ability to customize content within a game – all being relatively new phenomenon’s – there’s been a larger acceptance of game technology that women have become increasingly engaged in.

In what way can game developers learn from your research?

Game publishers should learn to expand there ideas. There are so many clones of the same games that exist. Every year, one or two games become success stories and so many distributors try to copy the same style in a new game. It seems like every game wants to emulate the others. Game developers shouldn’t follow the crowd anymore, as we need to make room for a wider variety of games. In effect, publishers need a new production distribution model.

Do you think the increasing number of female gamers will make a difference on how games are designed? How so?

Industry, in general, responds well to market forces. At E3, because more women have become involved in the industry, the validity in the use of ‘booth babes’ was finally challenged and organizers decided to ban them. This has been a good step in the right direction, but it’s obviously not enough. It’s still unclear how the industry will respond to this year’s research. Perhaps next year we’ll see a big improvement on the types of games that are put on the market. One area that is starting to change is advert games. Industries are paying close attention to the opportunities for advertising their products and services within games because of the money to be made this way.

While women are taking use of the Internet and personal computers as much as men, the number of women in the IT and game industry has not changed significantly – why do you think this is?

Part of the cause is related to the working conditions in the game industry. There seems to be a number of unpaid hours or overtime required to meet deadlines, making it impossible to care for dependants like children. However, now that the industry is more established, and it’s not a garage industry anymore, this situation is changing. An example of this shift was seen when the spouse of a Game Designer at EA exposed 'quality of life' problems within the game development industry and when Gamewatch.org was developed to discuss and monitor these issues. In any event, from a social context, the atmosphere tends to be more or less male and that’s because there just aren’t as many women with the background in programming or the technical skills to build games. Women are basically involved on the fringes. What needs to happen is have girls engaged in computers early on at a grade school level and flush out the mythology that the IT industry is mostly male. With that the negative misconceptions that parents have about games needs to change, as they are the gatekeepers to the sorts of early entertainment children have access to.

What would you like to see happen next, following the discussions you've organized?

A few things: expose the broadness of women and games, engage universal game design using a range of characters and stories, understand and expand the types and genres of games, and improve technical training to target both genders.

NB: A book edition of the events will follow.

Interview by Christina Reinards