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The pipeline problem is down ultimately to an attitude problem. Even on an art course I was vastly outnumbered by dudes, because 'girls don't do games' and I know the programming courses were even worse. Soldier on and you're met by an industry that continues to regard women as an afterthought, both as players and developers. I'm lucky to be at a company with a decent number of ladies(my department of 50 has 5 women! Some teams are much worse!) but I've heard unpleasant stories of boys clubs and outright misogyny in less well-balanced environments.
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Feb 11, 2012 13:15
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Typical Pubbie posted:What's the ratio of female CS grads to male CS grads? It's not just CS though- it's everything, from QA to Production. Surely there aren't that many more boys than girls getting business degrees or fine arts degrees or whatever enough to make a 7:1 ratio seem at all reasonable?
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Feb 11, 2012 13:58
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Purely anecdotally, aren't women better represented in the art disciplines? Can't ignore that it may very well be down to the product that often alienates women, which might explain why in my (also anecdotal) experience, more women work in the "casual" area. Also, as someone who works in pipeline, I have to say the problem is not with the pipeline, programmers need to do what they're told, and artists need to learn to follow simple instructions!
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Feb 11, 2012 14:10
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floofyscorp posted:The pipeline problem is down ultimately to an attitude problem. Even on an art course I was vastly outnumbered by dudes, because 'girls don't do games' and I know the programming courses were even worse. But how can this attitude change if incoming female freshman aren't taking art courses applicable to the industry? Purely anecdotal, but I know lots of incredibly talented female artists, and only one of them is building a portfolio that would interest a game company. If you had close to a 1/1 gender ratio in your art course then who but the most misogynistic idiot could say that "girls don't do games?" With a ratio of applicants like that the industry would see a dramatic shift in demographics within the decade. Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Feb 11, 2012 |
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Feb 11, 2012 15:43
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BizarroAzrael posted:Purely anecdotally, aren't women better represented in the art disciplines? Can't ignore that it may very well be down to the product that often alienates women, which might explain why in my (also anecdotal) experience, more women work in the "casual" area. They're represented most heavily in business and production. In the 5 years I've worked at Volition, we've had women in every discipline except programming, and Art, QA, and Business are the only disciplines that have had multiple women in them. Az, when they said it's a pipeline problem, they're talking about getting women through school to application, not whichever dev pipeline you're in charge of. And I'd argue if you're having multidisciplinary problems with people using whatever pipeline you're talking about (builds?) you need better documentation and/or processes 
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Feb 11, 2012 17:20
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Typical Pubbie posted:But how can this attitude change if incoming female freshman aren't taking art courses applicable to the industry? Simple answer: it won't. 'Girls don't do games' is a vicious cycle: games that appeal to women rather than teenage boys are rare enough in the mainstream that girls are turned off gaming(also, society says 'girls don't do games'), so they don't make career plans to work in the industry so games that appeal to women are harder to make because women aren't being involved in making them. Vast oversimplification here obviously but it's a complicated and headachey issue. Gender ratio anecdote! My department has about fifty people in it, five of whom are women: one concept artist, one character artist(me!), one monetisation specialist, one writer, and one programmer. All seniors/leads except for me because I'm the babby of the team
floofyscorp fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Feb 11, 2012 |
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Feb 11, 2012 18:47
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floofyscorp posted:Simple answer: it won't. 'Girls don't do games' is a vicious cycle: games that appeal to women rather than teenage boys are rare enough in the mainstream that girls are turned off gaming(also, society says 'girls don't do games'), so they don't make career plans to work in the industry so games that appeal to women are harder to make because women aren't being involved in making them. Vast oversimplification here obviously but it's a complicated and headachey issue. All we can do as an industry is not offend the women already here, and continue to push for games that wouldn't be immediately off-putting to girl gamers. You... can?... do affirmative action-esque hiring to load the deck, though I'm not sure if I really approve of that. It does have the effect of skewing the games made slightly more toward female interests, since there are more in the team making said games, but it also breeds a sense that the female applicants aren't getting the jobs because they're qualified. At NetDevil (where we had a large percentage of women), rumors were flying about how most of the women got their positions through either affirmative action or... shall we say, trading favors. Thugh on the bright side, well, bright-ish, the trading favors rumor wasn't always gender specific, and related more to the in-crowd of a particular team. It's a straight-up mess, basically. My only plan is to found a business and hope that a female CEO magically attracts qualified applicants of both genders, and to make games without jiggly breasted half-naked heroines. Or I mean, if we do that, we're at least darn well using the jiggle code on half naked barbarian crotches too. EDIT: Aaand, I guess I have a lot to say on the topic. Meh. Maybe I'll write a Gamasutra article or something. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 11, 2012 |
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Feb 11, 2012 19:09
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Shalinor posted:You... can?... do affirmative action-esque hiring to load the deck, though I'm not sure if I really approve of that. It does have the effect of skewing the games made slightly more toward female interests, since there are more in the team making said games, but it also breeds a sense that the female applicants aren't getting the jobs because they're qualified. At NetDevil (where we had a large percentage of women), rumors were flying about how most of the women got their positions through either affirmative action or... shall we say, trading favors. I think this feeling is one you can't fight until you hit actual equality in the workforce - as long as there's inequality there's always going to be this kind of horseshit floating around, and if that's the case, there's no sense letting it influence your decisions.
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Feb 11, 2012 19:23
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floofyscorp posted:Simple answer: it won't. 'Girls don't do games' is a vicious cycle: games that appeal to women rather than teenage boys are rare enough in the mainstream that girls are turned off gaming(also, society says 'girls don't do games'), so they don't make career plans to work in the industry so games that appeal to women are harder to make because women aren't being involved in making them. Vast oversimplification here obviously but it's a complicated and headachey issue. Then why weren't you turned off from gaming? The fact that there are thousands of games about manly men not having time to bleed didn't discourage you from pursuing the career you wanted. Is it because you still enjoy video games in spite of the bullshit and, as a creative person, can see the potential of the medium? There is a lot the industry can do to attract women and minorities. I just think our expectations must be tempered with the knowledge that even if you completely eliminated sexism within the industry, the number of female applicants would hardly budge because society isn't encouraging young girls to become engineers, mathematicians, or nerds in general.
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Feb 11, 2012 20:31
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So hey, the GDC Meetup Thread is now up. Can't wait to see the crew in person again next month. 
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Feb 11, 2012 21:33
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Sigma-X posted:Az, when they said it's a pipeline problem, they're talking about getting women through school to application, not whichever dev pipeline you're in charge of. Really? Really? Really?
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Feb 11, 2012 22:05
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This talk of 'games that are for girls' versus 'games that are for boys' and 'there aren't as many girls in the industry because there aren't enough games for girls' has me a bit confused. Eh. Maybe I'm the outlier and it's normal for girls to only want or care about 'girly' things in games.
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Feb 11, 2012 22:13
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abske_fides posted:There seems to be a real lack of audio/music talk in this thread which is not that surprising considered sound design and music have often been second thought in games until recent years. Let's remedy this! ... Though it's not necessarily useful or up-to-date, I'd recommend George (Fat Man) Sanger's book on game audio. amazon link It looks like it's gotten a bit scarce, but if you find a cheap copy somewhere, it's a pretty entertaining selection of anecdotes. It's not at all informative.
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Feb 11, 2012 22:24
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I would be interested to see what the gender ratios look like for a software company like Zynga (farmville, etc)
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Feb 11, 2012 22:57
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Typical Pubbie posted:But how can this attitude change if incoming female freshman aren't taking art courses applicable to the industry? Purely anecdotal, but I know lots of incredibly talented female artists, and only one of them is building a portfolio that would interest a game company. If you had close to a 1/1 gender ratio in your art course then who but the most misogynistic idiot could say that "girls don't do games?" With a ratio of applicants like that the industry would see a dramatic shift in demographics within the decade. Biased Anecdote: In my (tiny) art school, we have a pretty balanced amount of guys and gals in the game art program. In fact, the class I have today has 8 guys and 7 girls in it, while being taught by a lady in the industry. (The animation program is also mostly women, as far as I've seen, but I don't know how male-centric the animation industry is nowadays) 10% isn't a lot, but I can imagine it increasing slowly but surely in the next couple of years.
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Feb 11, 2012 22:57
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BizarroAzrael posted:Really? Really? I'm sorry I literally have no idea what you were trying to say the last time. I could be a huge idiot, it wouldn't be the first time. What are you trying to say because I do not get it at all.
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Feb 12, 2012 01:45
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I'll take "Completely missing the metaphor" for $500, Alex.
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Feb 12, 2012 02:18
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Rapt0rCharles9231 posted:Biased Anecdote: In my (tiny) art school, we have a pretty balanced amount of guys and gals in the game art program. In fact, the class I have today has 8 guys and 7 girls in it, while being taught by a lady in the industry. Yeah, at Gnomon we had 7 girls in our class of 15. Most of them I noticed wanted to go into film though, not games.
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Feb 12, 2012 02:40
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For whatever it is worth, I was the only guy in the art team where I used to work. In my school I'd say it was like a 75% male / 25% female ratio though.
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Feb 12, 2012 02:45
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In engineering and design, there are so few women, it's painful. In art, production, and product management, the number rises dramatically. Our PM team is half women, our art team is half women, and production is 25-30% women. Granted, since eng is the biggest department, we still average down to 15% women at our studio. PS The art school we recruit the most from, RISD, is 70% women!
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Feb 12, 2012 02:51
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I'm a senior in a CS Games major, and out of the ~50 people in my year, there is only one girl. The numbers are way higher in the year below me, and even more so in the grad programs, so it might just be bad luck with that. We had a number of girls switch to EE or straight CS freshman year, so that could be the reason.
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Feb 12, 2012 03:12
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devilmouse posted:In engineering and design, there are so few women, it's painful. More seriously, what did happen to that studio that was set up where they were only going to hire women so they would be able to make the best games that all women would be powerless to resist? edit: Here they are. http://www.siliconsisters.ca/ FreakyZoid fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Feb 12, 2012 |
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Feb 12, 2012 11:09
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Typical Pubbie posted:Then why weren't you turned off from gaming? The fact that there are thousands of games about manly men not having time to bleed didn't discourage you from pursuing the career you wanted. Is it because you still enjoy video games in spite of the bullshit and, as a creative person, can see the potential of the medium? I've always been a geeky nerdy type. My dad is a huge nerd and got me playing games from when I was old enough to work a keyboard. I've never played any of the thousands of games about beefcakes with guns because I was busy playing Monkey Island and Myst and Creatures and... well, once I started with Creatures there was no going back. I play WoW, I play Minecraft, I play Mario Kart. Shooters just don't show up on my radar and happily I don't have to work on one either. Not all girls get a start like I did. Most of my classmates grew out of playing Nintendos when they started getting baby dolls for christmas, playing house, and cutting Barbies hair. There's nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but games became something that boys do, and nerds like myself ended up playing by ourselves - especially when you go to all-girls schools like I did. I'm stubborn as poo poo and didn't mind being a loner but it's understandably a turn-off for a lot of young people. Gaming still manages to carry a faint stigma of being for nerdy shut-ins, and I think for girls that goes double.
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Feb 12, 2012 11:27
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More anecdotes: my engineering school had a pretty big skew towards men in the gender population (the oft-bemoaned "Ratio" was 1 woman to 4 men my freshman year), but there were next to no women in my CS/games courses. I think there was only one woman out of maybe 40 Master's graduates in Computer Science when I graduated, and I can only think of two women in the entire four-year undergraduate games program, both artists. Most of the women I knew outside of the game program were either artists or biologists/biomedical engineers, with the rest in various other engineering disciplines except for one particularly badass physicist. At an earlier stint in the industry, there were actually zero women on my fifteen-person team, and I don't remember working with any women when I had to work with QA. My current non-gaming software development job has two women (one engineer, one project manager) out of about ten people total.
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Feb 12, 2012 11:39
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FreakyZoid posted:But Zynga make games that women enjoy playing. This is only possible when at least 50% of your design team are women. How are you able to do it? I'll let you in on our secret: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207201/
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Feb 12, 2012 12:56
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It's actually sort of uncanny  
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Feb 12, 2012 19:54
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So this might be a broad question to ask but I spent the last six years at the same QA position and was recently laid off. My problem now is trying to figure out whether or not to stay in QA, or try to do like my friends are motivating me to and get into some IT field/getting general certifications for that. I honestly really enjoyed my time in QA and feel that I've garnered enough experience that I should be a desirable candidate, but it also seems like it's just a disposable job which I might have wasted six years being a part of. And I know in the OP it was basically a majorly frowned on position but how do I get back into it after having lost my job? Or is there any other real jobs I can use those skills for (such as database management, etc.)? Hopefully someone can offer some insight cause I hate to think I wasted all that time.
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Feb 12, 2012 23:53
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Question for Producers that have used JIRA. We switched to JIRA after a detailed evaluation and to start we have JIRA OnDemand. I set up all sorts of custom workflows and things are going pretty well. There are some drawbacks regarding things like only getting a small subset of plugins and not being able to create my own. Do any of you have useful anecdotes regarding using your own JIRA install vs OnDemand? I have my own opinion but I'd like to hear thoughts first.
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Feb 13, 2012 01:28
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I'm working on a CS PhD, and with a little luck I may have everything wrapped up in about two years, so I need to start planning for the future. I've worked on my own small games for years, and I think that writing software that can have lasting artistic value would ultimately make for a more rewarding career than building CRUD applications for faceless corporations, despite the low-pay, high-stress reputation the games industry has earned for itself. I have a strong command of Java and some work experience as a C# developer, and I'm capable of doing low-level coding, but I don't have much experience with C++ or 3D programming in general. I'm also a halfway decent pixel artist, so I can see a small project through on my own without resorting to colored rectangles. At the moment I'm weighing options as far as the skills I should be working on in my free time. I could dive into C++ and stop dragging my feet about learning OpenGL. My other option is to continue focusing on my portfolio of 2D games and shoot for a game design position. I feel like this might not grow my technical skills as quickly, but it is a personally rewarding use of my time. Long story short, if you guys were in a hiring position, do you think my Java background and a portfolio of games would look good for a programming or game design position, or do I need to nut up and start working with C++ now?
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Feb 13, 2012 03:00
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I would suggest doing a C++ project or too. While you probably have a nice resume as it is, where you go could easily use C++. It is a nice language to be familiar with and to have good experience with. I would also suggest trying to make of your future games 2D games in C++. If you are considering the technical side, and a CS PhD suggests that, it doesn't hurt to have more practice in it. I would also suggest diving into OpenGL on your first major C++ project. I tried doing that last year, and gave up because OpenGL is a pain in the rear end. This year, I have been on several C++ projects that were far easier becuase we were building on existing low level work. There are other good C++ graphics engines you could use, that would take care of that side while you familiarize yourself with the nuances of C++. Also, I'd suggest asking in the game programming mega thread in Cavern of COBOL for more opinions. The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Feb 13, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 03:13
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Internet Janitor posted:I'm working on a CS PhD, and with a little luck I may have everything wrapped up in about two years, so I need to start planning for the future. What's your PhD's focus? You could likely leverage that into some more obscure part of game development where they'll be more tolerant about your lack of specific language skills given that you're an expert in The Theory of Foozles. A PhD (assuming it's relevant) and a portfolio of games is plenty for consideration for most gameplay programming gigs and certainly enough for a design job.
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Feb 13, 2012 12:54
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I've got some people interested in the work I've done with my XNA implementation stuff to get their games on Mac/Linux, which is pretty exciting. They're asking about how much I'd ask for compensation wise (either funds or percentage of sales) and I'm not really sure what to tell them. I mostly left the answer to be up for discussion but I'd really have no idea how I should negotiate stuff. Any ideas on where I should go with this?
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Feb 13, 2012 19:08
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Work out either how much you think it's worth in terms of a flat amount for the time you think it would take them to do it from scratch, or how well you think their game is likely to sell. Factor in a little bit of leeway for how big a company they are, and if you are looking for repeat business. Then fling them that figure, and they'll email you one back that's 25 - 33% of it. Then you go back and forth. Also be sure you're all on the same page regarding maintenance - are they expecting you to update and trouble shoot your code, or are they buying a drop. edit: if you go for a percentage also be very clear if it is profit share or revenue share, and also pre or post Apple's cut.
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Feb 13, 2012 19:25
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EDIT: Ah, got some more information that makes this seem more interesting. Thanks for the responses all, they gave me some other angles to consider / questions to ask.
Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 01:37
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Shalinor posted:I wouldn't disagree but for different reasons. You'd basically need to hire a lawyer to look over the contracts to ensure that said friend really does have code rights. (Is he going to indemnify you if it turns out he's lying/misinformed/misrepresenting things?) Then more contracts to get his cut. Are you going to agree to auditors for his cut? Better add that to the fee. You'd have to balance his cut vs the cost to license the engine. If you sell 1000 units you'd probably be better off with noname engine, but what if you hit the motherload on the app store and make that top 10 list, what does that do for your earnings? And if the use of the engine is a one-off you need to as you point out balance the time invested in learning the engine for this one project vs increasing your Unity knowledge to make games 2, 3 and 4 even better. Too much risk for not enough reward. Somebody fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 01:52
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The gender issue is much larger than just games. I studied Literature in college and in our whole program that year, we were two guys. It's an endemic problem in the whole society, "games are for boys, nursing is for girls", etc.
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Feb 14, 2012 04:00
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The value of an engine is in how much time it will save you, versus writing everything yourself. It's possible this engine is very well written and easy to pick up, but my guess would be that it's unlikely to have the quality and tool support of existing engines that are available. Figuring out how an existing codebase works can be fun for those of us that love programming, but it's not the best way to get results quickly. Most projects pick up a lot of cruft in the push to release. Commercial engine vendors tend to be very good at keeping their engines in a well maintained state. I wouldn't say it's a definite no, but these are factors that need to be weighed up. It may be that this engine is cheap compared to the licencing terms of existing engines, but if it takes you longer to get to grips with it, then it's a false economy.
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Feb 14, 2012 04:10
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devilmouse posted:What's your PhD's focus? You could likely leverage that into some more obscure part of game development where they'll be more tolerant about your lack of specific language skills given that you're an expert in The Theory of Foozles. Compilers and programming language design, mostly. If anybody wants to be cool like Naughty Dog I would be ecstatic to build a proprietary language and toolchain for your company. I can also apply my knowledge of graph algorithms and the theory of concatenative combinators to alleviate any insomnia-related problems the team may be suffering from.
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Feb 14, 2012 04:17
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If you've got (or will have) a PhD in compilers why do you think the alternative to the games industry is writing CRUD apps in Visual Basic? If I were you I'd start hacking on clang now and you'll probably have people lining up with high-paying job offers by the time you get your doctorate. Of course if you want to make games because you love games that's a totally different matter. It does kind of beg the question of why you're studying compiler design though.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:06
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Anyone have any suggestions for a good book on x86 assembly? I'm not looking to become an assembly wizard, it just would be nice to have a little better understanding when I end up digging through the disassembly when I'm looking at a crash dump.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:25
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