Hocking critcises "Viking" culture of dev studios
LucasArts creative director says "we can do better", calls for more female developers
LucasArts creative director Clint Hocking has challenged the industry to improve the working environment at its development studios.
In a column for Edge magazine, Hocking compares the culture at most studios to that of the Vikings, "Minus the literal rape and killing, of course."
"Game development studios and their teams are largely staffed in the same way that Viking longships were crewed. Consequently, the culture is overflowing with beer and pent-up aggression, and a very significant portion of our overall cultural output is fart jokes. I think we can do better."
Hocking points out that the Vikings were ultimately defeated by a "better-balanced" culture in 1066, and suggests that establishing a more balanced culture within the games industry is the key to both future stability and reaching a "truly mass market audience."
The top priority, as Hocking sees it, is to bring more women into game development, so that studio culture better reflects the structure of society as a whole.
"This means that we need to better position the industry as a desirable workplace, one in which female artists, designers, programmers and project managers would want to be employed. It involves reaching out to universities and colleges to help them attract more female applicants to their programmes, enabling us to benefit from a greater number of female graduates."
"Like the Viking expansion itself, this transformation probably needs to be driven from the bottom up. Like it or not, the culture onboard your ships is the culture you're exporting. Fart jokes have their place in culture, but when fart jokes become your culture you have a problem."
I'm a female Graduate from a BSc Computer science computer games programming degree, I'd Love to get a job in games even if it wasn't in development. I know other fellow woman games students who would love a job in games but simply can't get one. I think the problem isn't encouraging woman into games its the fact the few that do want to work in games, can't get a job in it.
May be the way to get more woman into games is to simply help female graduates who do want to work in it to get the experience to get a job, AKA Web based Game dev. groups which are recognised by the industry on a CV or even experience in local games devs?
Normans == Vikings.
Sorry, I'm a terrible pedant when it comes to these things :(
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Nick McCrea on 6th July 2011 10:48am
But his metaphor is all kinds of wrong, uninformed, uneducated and insulting.
They where a highly advanced and industroius race who had trading links with many other clutures and races.
As for getting more women in to the industry, I worked with some women who where some of the best QA staff I have ever worked with.
I think a ballenced team is more important than 'just having more women' but the industry is still more attractive to men as is most IT related jobs including coding and testing.
Even where I work today there is a distinct bias in some roles gender wise but the same is true for other roles including HR and finance so its not as clear cut as it can appear.
True, more often than not I'm the only girl in the studio and have been taken for the secretary many times, but even that is changing. As more girls study and have an interest in game development, we're now seeing a healthy mix in the average game development studio.
There are a lot of things that need fixing with game development in general - work conditions, benefits, work hours, training - but I'd say that the office culture and the attitude of the people who work in the industry in general is one thing we are really good at. It's a work hard, play hard culture that's great for any creative industry. I feel sorry for anyone who experiences the kind of office environment described in the article, but I have yet to come across that experience with game development.
Btw, Vikings were also farmers who colonized most of Northern Europe and Britain, so they were not all that bad ;)
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Nataska Statham on 6th July 2011 2:03pm
What a crock of ****. Someone obviously doesn't know their history - the Normans were lucky as hell, and certainly no more liberal:)
The Normans were Vikings and the Saxons were... well Saxons stupid analogy and dated point
I'd applaud more women on staff.
Whilst 1066 might be famous for conquest of England by Normans I think Hocking here refers to the battle of Stamford Bridge that same year where King Harold II defeated the Norwegian Vikings of King Harald III.
Though if my memory serves well it was there a single viking on the bridge challenged the entire English army, only to end up stabbed from beneath said bridge after hacking through several soldiers. Way to go for an inspiration toward civilization.
In fine: vikings < balanced civilization < the French.
There's a cool BBC video game about 1066, check it out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive...
Its not about gener but getting fresh blood with new ideas and opinions in to sutdios to make the games of the future which in turn will lead to more people looking to enter the game industry and futher ballence teams along many lines including gener.
And the battle of Stamford Bridge was a battle between Viking cultures. I think he was referring above to Hastings (or, more precisely, Battle:)).
Anyway, this is all besides the point of the article:)
Free agency is the traditional route of art. Has been, for hundreds of years.
That will put control into the hands of the key creators, and achieve it.
It sure as hell should not come as some top-down command dictate from an administrator (corporate or otherwise).
And yes to what Clint says. At least story wise, 95 percent of games wouldn't even make soap opera standards.
I miss girls. Sometimes I start to wonder if they were real at all.
I seem to remember them being at high school. But then, my memory isn't 100%.
But sometimes I do yearn for a more 50/50 kind of environment, like I see out the window in the real world.
:)
Balanced studios make more balanced games, most likely for a broader audience. While the 'viking' studios might make the more niche games. They're both needed for a healthy industry.
Gaming at least in the mainstream is a wasted medium, at least until we get a shifting demographic. Obviously we do have fringe exceptions; Jenova Chen and Jason Roher are obvious exceptions.
Before changing my degree route I originally started on a games programming course. I remember lecture 1, of around 200 students I could see just one other girl. I've heard female programmers being referred to as "the unicorns of the games industry".
However with the huge rise in tuition fees, I can imagine the overall number of graduates studying games programming, art and design declining, and therefore also the number of girls. But perhaps it will be more balanced by then.
The ideia,that because we love what we do, we have to work like slaves, with almost no social life, with impossible schedules. And as soon as the product is finished or something goes wrong, firing the working crew is the first weapon on the arsenal.
This industry must change and value the people that work in it, since they usually are some of the most qualified and hard working people I have worked with.
If a programmer, for example, has to be that good to thrive on this industry, why isn't he payed at the same or higher level as in IT business, and the same goes for graphic artists, musicians, etc...
The companies in this business get the largest slice, instead of distributing it by its workers.
This mentality must change.
Hopefully resulting in more people taking interest in games, resulting to even more balance. It's already taking a turn for the best so this issue should solve itself eventually. As for Vikings, I assumed he was just using that as a metaphor for white male dominance that's pretty common in the gaming concept.