Sexism in the Video Game Industry: A discussion starter

#1reasonwhy: Sexism in the Video Game Industry... A discussion starter

On Tuesday, November 27, 2012 female game developers spoke out regarding the sexism and harassment that is unfortunately rampant in the game industry.  Twitter was buzzing with tweets using the #1reasonwhy hashtag.  I was saddened and disturbed, but grateful for the many anecdotes shared to raise awareness.  Do a quick search in twitter for #1reasonwhy and it will not take long for you to understand the depth of the issue.

I am personally affected because I am a video game design and development teacher.  I teach 7th and 8th grade students.  Recently, I began work on my doctorate in educational technology and my research focus is the pedagogical benefits of game design and development, but my particular area of interest right now is increasing interest and involvement of female students in computer science by introducing the topic in an engaging manner at an early age.

I became especially interested several years ago.  I pitched the idea of offering an 8th grade elective in video game design and development and was fortunate enough to receive the support of my administration.  The course has been quite popular, but it was apparent very quickly that enrollment was dominated by male students.  I would say that in general, there were 95% male students in the course.  We offered 6 sections of the semester long course, so this meant about 114 male students and 6 female students took the course during the first year it was offered.  Shortly thereafter, we piloted 1 of 3 sections of the 7th grade cycle curriculum to offer an introduction to game design and digital storytelling.  All 7th graders take the cycle, so 1/3 of the students took this pilot course during the second year that the 8th grade elective was offered.  The cycle program in 6th and 7th grade exposes our students to the different content areas that they can then focus on at greater depth through our elective program in 8th grade.  The thought was that if we were to introduce these topics to all students, perhaps we would see an increase in female enrollment in the 8th grade elective.  There was a slight increase in enrollment after this pilot was offered.  The following year, we changed the 7th grade curriculum based on the pilot and all 7th grade students took the introduction to game design and digital storytelling.  This resulted in another slight increase in enrollment in the 8th grade course.  This has been encouraging, but nothing to hang my hat on just yet.

This brings me back to my doctoral research and ideas for increasing enrollment and interest in female students in hopes of ultimately increasing enrollment of female students in computer science and STEM related majors in college with the ultimate goal of reducing the issue of underrepresentation of women in the industry.  Research shows that students, in this case, particularly female students, formulate their self concept and confidence regarding math and science prior to entering high school (Kelleher, 2006).  Thus, many do not choose courses in STEM related areas in high school and certainly college.  It is my belief that if interest were generated through engaging activities in the younger grades we could increase interest and ultimately impact enrollment.

The #1reasonwhy discussion makes me realize that the problem is much deeper than just increasing enrollment.  I would hate to think that I was encouraging students to enter a field that would be marred by sexism, harassment, and an overall arrogant 'boys club'.  In a sense, I see wonder if this is another chicken or the egg discussion.  Is it possible that the decrease in enrollment in computer science and STEM fields contributed to creating this environment in the gaming industry?  Please understand that I am not in any way seeing this as acceptable, but wondering where the problem may have started.  Is the issue more related to the age old stereotypes - boys play with guns, girls play with barbie dolls?  It sounds like there is an overarching attitude that women are not perceived as gamers, or certainly not the 'cool hardcore gamers'.  Again, I am not supporting any of this, just posing questions.  Many of the #1reasonwhy tweets yesterday pointed out that women were definitely not taken seriously in the industry, were not considered to be interested in AAA games, but rather cutesy social games, not to mention the way women are depicted in games.

I would like to think that I am on the right track in believing that if we increase the presence of women in the game industry we can reduce this bias, but how difficult would it be to get to that point?  How many women have to suffer along the way?  Clearly, this is only one small aspect of the problem, but the problem must be addressed on a larger scale, hopefully before I succeed in sending more and more women into the industry.  I truly hope that the #1reasonwhy discussion is just a beginning (as it should be) and that the awareness raised will help.  I will certainly add a component of the sexist issue to my research as it would be important to look at that factor as it could certainly contribute to the lower enrollment which I am trying to address.

I welcome any resources that anyone can provide and was very excited to see the #1reasonmentors hashtag show up as well as I see incredible value in creating mentor / mentee relationships between my students and industry professionals.

I hereby indicate my commitment to the cause and am in full support of the #1reasonwhy movement and am entirely grateful to everyone for bringing such an important topic to light.  Quite honestly, the game industry NEEDS the diversity and cannot continue as a 'boys club'.

Kelleher, C. (2006). Motivating programming: Using storytelling to make computer programming
    attractive to middle school girls. (Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University). ProQuest
    Dissertations and Theses, , 369-369 p. Retrieved from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~caitlin/kelleherThesis_CSD.pdf
    

For more articles related to the #1reasonwhy movement, please visit:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-27-1reasonwhy-the-night-twitter-took-on-the-industrys-sexism

http://gamerfront.net/2012/11/1reasonwhy-women-are-speaking-out-on-their-involvement-in-the-gaming-industry/25212

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2012/nov/28/games-industry-sexism-on-twitter

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/27/1reasonwhy-women-take-to-twitter-to-talk-about-sexism-in-video-game-industry/

A Peek into my Video Game Design and Development Courses

Recently @techucation reached out to ask for some resources and ideas related to teaching Video Game Design and Development.  I responded to his inquiry and realized it would serve as a worthwhile blog post to share with the educational community.  Below is a general description of my 7th and 8th grade courses.  In 7th grade, I teach a six week introduction to video game design and digital storytelling.  In 8th grade I teach a full semester course in video game design and development.  I have also developed and teach the full semester course as an online high school course for The VHS Collaborative (http://thevhscollaborative.org/).  I hope you find the information helpful as I would love to see more courses evolve that teach important 21st century skills through game design.  

Currently, I am enrolled in the doctoral program in Educational Technology at Boise State University and the focus of my research is the pedagogical benefits of game design and development.  Some of the concepts I find most worthwhile to research further include constructionism, design based thinking, increasing female involvement in computer science, and ultimately the notion behind developing a scalable curriculum to teach game design and development from upper elementary school through high school.

Gamestar Mechanic is a great point of entry (and beyond).  My 7th graders spend about 3 weeks in a unit using Gamestar Mechanic (http://www.gamestarmechanic.com).  In that unit, I have them work through the Free Quest Line (Addison Joins the League) which takes them through the 5 episodes ending with the ability to create original games from scratch.  After that I have students create their own game.  Typically, it is a 5 level game of increasing difficulty that exemplifies good game design principles.  Prior to starting their game I have them complete a design document that is used for brainstorming / pre-writing.

For the 7th graders, I encourage them to earn some of the extra items through the workshop (i.e. the message block, etc. as I emphasize the importance of the story being told within the game (not just in the game and level descriptions).  They can also earn extra credit by doing the 2 premium quest strands (Addison Joins the Rogue and Dungeon of the Rogue).  They also benefit by earning extra items to use in their game through those quests.  Gamestar Mechanic also has a number of teacher resources including curriculum, student challenges, etc. available at http://gamestarmechanic.com/teachers/what_is_gamestar) 

I highly recommend licensing the premium quests for your class.  Gamestar recently implemented a new licensing program that costs $2 per student account and the students keep the premium account for life.  What a great way to encourage continued game design beyond the course!

Another unit in my 7th grade class involves Digital Storytelling.  I have them explore classic folk tales (http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/folk.html) and choose one to recreate as a team of 2.  Typically we have used storytelling Alice (http://www.alice.org/kelleher/storytelling/) but recently I communicated with Caitlin Kelleher (the project lead and she indicated that there is now a successor to storytelling Alice called Looking Glass (https://lookingglass.wustl.edu/).  I plan to shift to this with upcoming students or use Scratch (http://www.scratch.mit.edu/).  More likely, I will expose students to both and allow them to choose one of the tools.

My 8th graders primarily use Game Maker (http://www.yoyogames.com) and they learn the basics and create at least 4 original games (a simple maze game,  an adventure game, a platformer, and a scrolling shooter).  I offer a bonus opportunity for students to engage in reverse engineering and recreate a classic game (arcade or console).  

Some of my game maker resources can be found here:

Examples of student created games: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B01VYg6o6QuMWDIyUUx5UF80X2s/edit

'How to' Examples of isolated game maker tasks: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B01VYg6o6QuMWF9OZ0Z1ZnluWTA/edit

My final unit with my 8th graders is a project using Portal 2 and the Puzzle Maker.  You can find out more about the Teach with Portals program here: http://www.teachwithportals.com/.  My students play through a reasonable part of Portal 2 to understand the basics of the game and then create their own puzzles using the iterative design process of planning, creating, testing, and refining.  

Here are a few videos featuring my class:

Teaching with Games: Video Case Study

https://youtu.be/yBlM-W2rrVw

Teen Kids News Segment on STEM learning through Game Desgin

http://www.awptv.com/clients/tkn/S10-Segments/TKN-1008-Stem-H264.mov