Kim Swift's call to arms for female devs
Why the game designer wants them to be seen, loud and strong
Game designer Kim Swift has called on women in the industry to make themselves more visible, in order to help inspire the next generation and bridge the gender gap.
We need to change the make up of our industry, because games are a reflection of their creators, she said in her blog.
I see the solution to this problem coming not a year from now, not five years from now, but twenty. When this current generation of kids sees the good example that we should be setting now. And though we may not be able to tell it completely like it is just yet, there's still plenty we can do to help future generations of game developers.
Swift, who is best known for her work on Portal, asks her fellow female developers to be visible, outspoken, strong and kind.

Image by Kim Swift
Be everything that the younger versions of us could've pointed to and proudly said: 'Girls make games too.'
Reacting to the 1ReasonWhy hash tag, Swift insisted that she loved the industry, and that her bad experiences were dwarfed in comparison to the love of making games.
So when I blather endlessly about a game I'm working on until my eyes bleed, in the back of my head, I hope that there's a little girl out there that realises her dreams are achievable.
http://www.inthebasecase.com/?p=17
Sadly, we're not there yet, as the Gameloft holiday party shows.
Anyway, Kim's point is that more role models for young women who are interested in making games to look up to would be awesome. The games industry isn't great about personal recognition, but when the vast majority of 'famous names' in our industry are guys it's nice to see great female devs like Kim Swift standing up and saying 'Hey look, we make games too.'
But also to bear in mind, male and female thinkings certainly differ and thus the way the article is phrased has a slight gender slant to it.
Ideally, game designers should inspire other folks to become more prominent irrelevant of their race/colour/gender. I would say, gender should be taken totally out of the equation with any jobs these days. which is different from being great role models for other human beings.
Whereas the issue of parity, its a bit trickier. some industries will not truly achieve parity, due to the methodology of approach to work, work life and skillset. eg. are we going to look for true partiy in petrochemical engineering, piloting of heavy goods and aircraft.
Ultimately, there shouldn't be the need to genderise the issue, but making it such that its a open platform for any human being (reptilians not included) with opposable thumbs to contribute, would be ideal :)
Would our studio (currently seven wasps) be better if a woman or a gay came to work here? Possibly, or maybe it'd be worse. Depends on the person and I don't think "women" bring any unique features along with them, same as "men" don't. It's all about the individual.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10551-007-9630-y
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100930143339.htm
http://web.mit.edu/cortiz/www/Diversity/PDFs/Jehn%20et%20al%201999.pdf
I personally think an even more important aspect though is widening the recruitment pool. You say you don't get female applicants? Well, guess what, in many industries they have to actively hunt for their talent, informing in schools about the possibility of working in a certain discipline and making sure people work towards it and see it as one of their top choices upon graduation. In the games industry we've had the luxury of having gamers coming to us, and we've often made it a requirement that you have to be gamer to make games, or preferrably even an already experienced game developer.
In truth though, this recruitment procedure perpetuates an old demographic of hardcore gamers and existing developers as our talent pool, and that is a very small fraction of a much greater potential pool. Our games would probably benefit a lot from involvement by people who are not traditionally seen as gamers and would not think to come to us unless we actively asked them. It wouldn't make the games any less fun, but it would likely make them much more accessible, in turn giving us a bigger market and making more people interested in working in games.