Russian Sledges

"I just have one question for people who think that women don't want to work in games: have you asked them?"

A Game Developers Conference 2014 panel tackling the myths surrounding women in the gaming industry, lead by Storm8 senior game designer Elizabeth Sampat, offered insight on why these beliefs are false and how to work through them.

Sampat kicked off "Women Don't Want to Work in Games (And Other Myths)" by sharing the results of an informal poll of women in the industry, taken through social media, mailing lists and word of mouth. According to her findings, 45 percent said they've always wanted to work in games.

"That's almost half," Sampat said. "Or, to put it another way, that's less than half ... Every time you perpetuate the myth that the only way to make it in games is to have always wanted to work in games, you're reducing the potential talent pool you're recruiting from by 55 percent."

Sampat, who covered myths such as there are no women to hire, or female candidates not fitting company culture, suggested that companies use recruiters to draw in new candidates. Recruiters should stop looking for a dedication to gaming, she said, and find candidates with curiosity and current interest. Talking to women about the industry and encouraging their interest is another way to pull in fresh voices.

"The game industry is fundamentally tied to games culture ..."

Company culture plays an important role in hiring, but not in the way many think. According to those polled in Sampat's survey, cultures that are flexible, provide clear communication and a collaboration are among the top choices. Negative cultures tend to revolve around alcohol or feature "brogrammer" speak. Sampat argues that culture fit isn't "bullshit," but that it's often applied in harmful ways.

"If someone isn't a culture fit because they schedule meetings at 7 p.m. on a Friday," Sampat said, "and come from a company where design is always at war with marketing, than yeah, don't hire them. Their work habits will negatively impact the work habits of the people who already are in your company. But if somebody didn't laugh at your stupid Magic the Gathering joke or didn't seem excited enough when you mentioned the company fantasy football league, get over it."

"... If you can't find any women who can fit into your company culture, have you considered that your company culture might, you know, suck?"

"... and we can't fault its victims for their own Stockholm syndrome."

Confronting the idea that women can be "one of the good ones" in an alleged sea of temperamental or inadequate peers, Sampat called this idea a "learned, cultured response to systemic oppression."

"When you hear a woman say 'I'm not like them,' whose words are they repeating," Sampat said. "Whose bullshit have they internalized as a survival tactic? The game industry is fundamentally tied to games culture, and we can't fault its victims for their own Stockholm syndrome."

If the games industry hopes to honestly and earnestly embrace diversity, she continued, there are only two options.

"We can uplift that stale narrative of the model minority, the badass loner of a woman who learns to be the cool girl in the boys' club," Sampat said.

" ... Or, there's always the second choice: we can do the other thing, the thing that's harder. The thing that doesn't involve getting a few token rich white women to the top by making them climb over the broken bodies of our sisters. We can burn shit down. We can stop being polite and looking for ways to lay equal blame at the feet of the establishment and those on the outside, as if identifying as a woman was a choice that led to their own self oppression.

"If there isn't room for you in the games industry, then fuck the games industry."

Sampat argues that while programs that get young girls into science and technology are important, these only address a small part of the problem. Instead, the industry should be investing in more women now. The only way to fix the system, she said, is to acknowledge that in its current state, it's broken; by participating, everyone is complicit.

"I'm going to say this as clearly and earnestly as I can," Sampat said. "If there isn't room for you in the games industry, then fuck the games industry. I don't want to be here if you can't be here. And this is something that we need to tell each other constantly ... We need to remind each other that we're not impostors. We belong here. And every day, every single chance that we get, we have to make space for each other."

Zoe Quinn is the creator of Depression Quest, and she became a target for harassment when the game was submitted to Greenlight.

"There’s a certain subset of the Internet that sent death threats to my house and leaked my phone number," she said during a speech at the Game Developers Conference. She went on to offer some advice from her experiences in both dealing with the harassment and reaching out to people who took part in harassing behavior.

"Internet harassment is not something that you can simply ignore or avoid. When digital distribution is our primary market, the Internet becomes part of our workplace," she said. "Beyond that the Internet is where so many of us find each other, we build our communities, and for some developers who can’t travel and don’t have local options, it’s the only community the developer has."

Quinn talked to hundreds of people after asking if they used to harass others and stopped in the past. "The number one thing that they all had in common across the board, they didn’t think the person on the other end of the screen was an actual person." There was no magic bullet: they stopped harassing others when their social circles stopped thinking this behavior was cool, or something happened that humanized their targets, and they understood that they were targeted actual human beings.

"This means that the don’t feed the trolls thing doesn’t actually work, even a little bit. Calling it trolling doesn’t even make sense, it’s harassment. Let’s actually call it that," she said. "Suggesting that people stay silent in this face of this only makes it harder for people who want to speak up about this to actually vent or come out." The idea that simply ignoring the problem is a valid solution may even encourage people to stay silent instead of pushing back against the behavior, seeking support, or just venting about their experiences.

"Taking care of ourselves and each other is important too," she said. "When things got too real and overwhelming, I deliberating went out and did something completely ridiculous." She and a friend filled an Angry Birds bank with glitter and smashed it. They read some of the worst messages out loud and in funny voices. "It felt so good to take a break from it and be ridiculous instead of worrying about the seriousness and heaviness of all of this."

"Not everyone can fight back, and even those who can, can’t do it every day"

She also suggested to talk to people who aren’t a part of the video game community. "It helps to realize how small it really can be in the grand scheme of these things and to remember that there’s life outside of video games and people who don’t even know about any of these things," she explained.

Quinn also suggested stepping away from the computer entirely to do good in your community. "It helps me to deliberately stop what I’m doing, go out, and help someone else. Because when you are being that positive change, when you are first hand making things better, then you have irrefutable evidence that it’s not all bad," she said.

Being the target of a harassment campaign is going to affect everyone in different ways, but discussing it and dealing with it openly and without shame can go a long way to helping the victim themselves, but it can also offer hope and guidance to people who don’t feel comfortable talking about it, or are scared it could open the door for more harassment.

"I’d like to encourage you to talk about it in any way you feel comfortable. If not, that’s fine too, just make sure to take care of yourself first," she said. "Not everyone can fight back, and even those who can, can’t do it every day. That’s not something to feel guilty about. I know it’s asking a lot but if you can, be open. Show how it’s impacting you. Don’t retreat into ‘show no weakness’ PR mode."

"You’re also a voice for other developers who may be feeling the same thing," she continued. "Some may reach out to you, or give you advice, or stand up for you or commiserate. You may not realize how much you need that right then."