SXSW 2009:”Gaming as a Gateway Drug: Getting Girls into Technology”
March 29, 2009 by itsamyxp
The panel “Gaming as Gateway Drug: Getting Girls into Technology” at SXSW sparked a debate on Twitter during their conference. The panelists talked about how more and more girls are getting into video games and some of them eventually work in the gaming industry.
The panel included Dee Kapila, Technology and Program Coord from Girlstart and also the moderator of the panel, Sheri Graner Ray, Sr Designer at Sony Online Entertainment, Cindy Roya, Assistant Professor at Texas State University, Megan Gaiser CEO and Pres at Her Interactive, and finally the only male on the panel Joe Sanchez co-Founder of Educators Coop.
The topic description is “Wanted: Girl Gamers!” It’s not just about playing, but using games to ignite a crucial spark. This session will explore how educators, parents and the community can use video games to attract girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).
Sheri Graner Ray of Sony Online Entertainment pointed out that 40% of all gamers are women, but the study is actually wrong. “Let’s talk about these numbers. The online casual games market, yes that’s a 70% female market. But the traditional industry is still less than 20% women” she said. She also said “The big AAA titles are where the money is. That’s where the jobs are, that’s where the money is, not in casual games.” Which is true with all the money pour into marketing games such as Gear of Wars, Grand Theft Auto, and other non-casual games out there. She also explained how girls and guys approach a game differently. “If you give an arcade token to a 14 year old boy… he goes up to the first machine he sees and throws the token in and goes ‘HOW DOES THIS WORK?!!?’. But what does his 14-year-old sister do? She watches the machine. Then she moves to the next machine and watches that. Then she moves to the next machine and watches that. And so on.”
Cindy Royal, professor at Texas State University said, “There are differences in the way they relate to technology. Girls in my classes will say, ‘The computer hates me.’ Or they’ll raise their hand because they’re afraid they’ll break it. I think that women just lack confidence in general when taking a computer class.” Hence, the perceived notion that gaming could serve as a gateway drug to get these same girls interested in technology. “They may trick out their MySpace page, but they don’t realize that’s basic HTML coding.” Which was also a good point from one of the audience member in the video.
Megan Gaiser, president and CEO of Her Interactive said “Since they wouldn’t let us in the front door, we went around to the back door and starting learning how to sell directly on Amazon.” She was talking about her company’s hit game Nancy Drew, which at that time no publisher would pick it up because of the stereotype that girls can’t use the computer well and definitely wouldn’t play video games on it. So in 2002, they self-published it and sold it on Amazon which help them took off and NY Times called it ”Un-Barbie of Computer Games”. This proves there is a market for these type of games in the industry and publishers know it, since they did try to go back to Her Interactive.
Joe Sanchez of the Educators Coop, said, “What I like about virtual worlds is that women are able to start building right away. You get to see things being created piece by piece. When you code a website, you don’t see it until the very end and the site goes up. With a virtual world you get to see it under construction.”
This conference will hopefully help get more girls who are interested in the industry to be more involved. Also, is good start to let big gaming companies know that girls are a demographic, and not a genre. So if these big companies want a more diverse market then they should start hiring women into the gaming industry. With women in the gaming industry you will most definitely see a more diverse content then before. As you can see from all this, the gaming industry is changing and its not mainly a male dominated industry anymore (or soon). We have seen female gamers that gone pro and female friends that are just as into games as we are. ( I can say some of them kicked my butt in SF4 too =X) This should be great for the industry and the community as a whole.
Check out the video from AustinChicRocks:
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