Carolyn Koh recently attended SOE Fan Fare. While there, she attended a panel on SOE's Gamers in Real Life (G.I.R.L.) program which promotes women in game design. Today, Carolyn files this report:

Gamers in Real Life, G.I.R.L is the name of the initiative started by Sony Online Entertainment in 2007. They had a straight forward mission: To positively influence how women are portrayed in games and to influence game content to appeal to women. Sara Kaplan, PR Manager for Sony Online Entertainment spearheads all the G.I.R.L. initiatives at SoE and was pleased to introduce the panel this first day of SoE FanFaire 2008.

Moderated by Dana Jongewaard, Editor-in-Chief of IGN.com, the panel members were drawn from Sony Online Entertainment. Torrie Dorrell, Sr. VP of Global Sales & Marketin, Laura Naviaux, Director, Global Brand Marketing, Lorien Gremore, Producer of The Agency, Laralyn McWilliams, Lead Designer of Free Realms were included as well as Julia Brasil, the first G.I.R.L. scholarship recipient.

Read the article here.

You missed out the article link :)

Good.  For a second there I thought it was just me.

Hrm... still waiting for a link...

Doesn't matter, it's still nothing more than gender discrimination.

Originally posted by Gameloading

Doesn't matter, it's still nothing more than gender discrimination.

Sorry, G.L., I respect you very much but I highly disagree with you here (as we have discussed in the past).

So, er.. "link please".

Originally posted by Gameloading

Doesn't matter, it's still nothing more than gender discrimination.

Gender discrimination, in video and computer games? Nah... it never happens in games...

EDIT: Yay, a linky!

EDIT #2: After reading the article, I like the fact that people were talking about the choice to make your character look however you like. Though I personally prefer to roll women, if the avatar is unreasonably skinny (female BElfs in WoW) or unreasonably proportioned in any way, I won't play them. If they looked normal, or the option was there to return their missing bottom ribs to them, I would play one.

My main problem with the whole G.I.R.L. thing is that it does discriminate against men. While I do think that the industry could stand for a few more females, I believe that combating sexism with sexism is not the right thing to do.

What I'd rather see is Gamers In Real Life be about all gamers in real life... about both sexes finding a balance so that NEITHER is discrimiated against in real life or in games.

From my experience, that program seems like a big waste of time and money. I don't know one girl in real life that actually likes video games, my gf barely has the attention span to play Pac Man(which is her favorite game btw).

We are around its just that most of us are too busy leveling up characters or in my case crafting.

At Uni, I once got into trouble because I said its was sexist since they had a Womens Studies course but no Mens Studies, so what if the female characters are going around wearing clothes that wouldn't go amiss in a S & M party. 

As long as female characters have the same skills and abilities as the males then its not a problem apart from a few pixels (ok loads of pixels if yer a female DE from L2), time to complain is if/when the sexes are unfairly balanced due to so called sexual differences in ability and genetics (for wont of a better word)

I have played MMO's for a loooooong time,  and before that I was playing pen and paper RPGs (still would if I could get a group together).  Folks just cannot seem to grasp that there are some females that like to play games of any nature.

I could be worse....the standard reaction I get is

Male player : " Yer a girl, as in you got tits and stuff " quickly followed by

Male player : " So how old are you?" 

Me : "  probably old enough to be your mum "

Male player : " really I'm like 16"

Me : " Told you so, I'm 40.  Btw, yes I'm married and have a kid, and we all play mmo's together"

This usually gets, them going " Wow, I wish my mum would play mmo's that be cool "

At the end of the day, females are not actively excluded from gaming.  If they want to become game designers etc they can, and should be employed because they are damned good at what they do not because they are female.

Heh, same here.  I'm 43 and we all play (including my daughter.)  My best friend and her teenage daughter often tag-team in the same MMOs.  But I'll often run male characters simply because I can't stand how the femal charcters are portrayed.  It gets on my nerves to have a character that's expected to "adventure" wearing little more than tissue paper and nail polish.

I don't lie about being female in games, but don't usually advertise it either.  I'm there to play, ya'know? 

Originally posted by Abrahmm

From my experience, that program seems like a big waste of time and money. I don't know one girl in real life that actually likes video games, my gf barely has the attention span to play Pac Man(which is her favorite game btw).

Maybe your girlfriend's lack of interest reflects the fact there is there is little that in the current video game market that appeals to women.  I am a real life woman who plays video games.  I've been heavily into MMORPGs for over 10 years and frankly I am shocked at how the distaff side of the market is ignored.  There is very little in the current crop of video games which is designed to appeal to women. 

I know folks will reply to this post that there are absolutely no difference between men and women, beyond body parts.  Hey, I went to an all woman's college and I took that Women and Society course.  I am also the mother of a daughter and a son.  On the whole men and women are more similar than they are dissimilar, but to assert there are absolutely no differences between the two groups flies in the face of evidence.

Tastes overlap, but some features appeal more to women, others more to men.  The ones that appeal to women are largely ignored.  The ones that appeal to men are given time and resources.  And then guys wonder why they can't get their girlfriends interested in online gaming.

I loved Ultima Online back in the day.  Yes, I loved questing and killing dragons.  But what I enjoyed the most was role-playing.  I loved my house.  I loved crafting items and selling in my player run vendor mall.  I loved our role-playing village.  I loved growing and crossbreeding plants.  I loved being able to change the appearance of my character.

Now let's look at World of Warcraft, the behemoth of MMORPGs.  Role-playing is an aspect of online gaming that attracts a high percentage of women.  Does WoW support role-playing?  Yes, they have role-playing servers, but if a game doesn't have attractive locations for weddings....it's not RP friendly.  No such place (private, attractive, not subject to random attacks by mobs) exists in the entire game.  Role-playing is difficult in public spaces, which brings me to the next issue.

WoW does not have housing.  I loved having a house to decorate in UO and SWG.  Many of my guy friends enjoyed their houses too and got especially creative in making items for their houses, like making a grand piano out of black dyed shirts and chess boards.  Many of the guys I knew, however, had their houses decorated with storage packs.  This is something that tends to appeal a bit more to the fair sex.  WoW has no housing.  It has no villages where one can role-play in private.  Many of the guys I knew used housing to attract their significant other to play UO.  What hook can they use to entice them into WoW?  Most women who become active in MMORPGs are initially introduced to online gaming by a significant other.

Women tend to care a bit more about how their character looks.  WoW has very little leeway in character customization.  Until Blood Elves there were no attractive female choices on the Horde side.  Armor, while leveling up, makes one look like an explosion in the Crayola factory.  Guys care about how their character looks.   Gals tend to care a bit more.  Again, WoW is full of fail here.

Women are likely to be interested in the creative aspect of online gaming.  In SWG one of my characters was a dancer.  She was part of a guild that put on shows in the various towns around the galaxy.  That game allowed you to coordinate dance routines with a troupe.  Nothing like that in WoW.

Women tend to be more into the social aspect of online gaming.  Men are more likely to prefer PvP.  Yes, I've known some women that were awesome in PvP.  Yes, 50% of those how played SIMS online were guys.  But to pretend there are no differences between what is likely to appeal to the two sexes is naive.  There is a lot that could be added to WoW that would make it a more female friendly place to be, but Blizzard has put those on the back burner.

I've played WoW since open beta and obviously I find enough appeal to keep renewing my subscription.  I'm more into working with my guild to take down a tough boss than I am into hanging out in the SIMs disco.  Still, there is a lot that could be added to this game which would enhance its appeal for me.  Maybe having some female designers on the team might make the universe of MMORPGs a more female friendly place.  And guys usually like having the ladies around, so it'd be a win/win, plus tap into a huge potential market that is currently being largely ignored.

A good, and interesting article, that I thought took a much more balanced look at women's careers in game development than a lot of others have.  It seemed like it put the focus where it deserves to be: not that women should be hired to be game designers because they're women, but they should be hired to be game designers if they can design kickass games.

I probably come at this from a somewhat different perspective because I'm male and working for a game developer already, but I also have a little daughter who'll be two years old in a few months.  Right now none of this matters for her, but give her twelve or fifteen years (and probably a lot sooner than her grumpy old dad is ready for) and I'm sure she'll be trying to decide what she wants to do for a career, where she wants to go to college, etc.

You know what?  I'm totally fine with the idea that she might want to be a nurse, a teacher, or even a stay at home mom; I'm also fine with her deciding she wants to be a pilot, a doctor, or follow in her daddy's footsteps as a game developer.  (Though in the latter case I hope she'll go to a different college than I did, to make getting her first job a little easier.)  The point that I hope she'll learn as she grows up is to try to succeed by being the best at what you do, not because people cut you more slack when you're tall, pretty, and female than they do when you're tall, slightly overweight, and male.

I'd like to think that when my little girl is ready to go join the workforce that she will be judged base on her merits rather than on her gender.  Of course I'd also like to think that by that time, no one will be shocked if she plays video games just as well as her dad and brother, and that if they do, she'll gleefully teach them the error of their ways.

Howdy,

My wife and I were at this panel.  One issue that was not discussed was the real obstical to female participation in game design, the male dominated command structure.  Some of those guys can be hard pressed to place a woman in the role of a man.  I grew up watching the feminist movment in the 70's and early 80's and respect the fight to have stronger roles in our companies for females.  I have seen amazing women do incredible things to have it discredited by a male dominated corp. enitiy.

To beat the status quo, I would like to see a dominately female design and development team assigned to come up with a new game.  Lets see if  this new direction could possibly yield whole new ways of game play.  In other words this subject should be handled by coming at it from the other way.  Instead of infusing women in a male company, have a professional group of female game developers pool together and hire men where they need them.

I would be excited to see what might come from such a project.  The nastiest fight I ever saw was two girls fighting.  Girls have different perspectives and could provide a shockingly different view of the same subjects men thought they knew.  New forms of game play might even evolve from such a project.

At any rate, I was happy to attend the G.I.R.L. panel.

After I read this one of my friends pointed out something to me that I found funny. He said to me

"How come come theyre givin scholarships to girls for being a minority in MMO's? SOE isnt giving me a scholarship for bein black, and Ive met far more women than other black people in MMOs."

So in the year 2042, when its projected that caucasians here in america will no longer be the majority, I expect a scholarship, even if Im 75 years old.

And yes I do agree that this is in fact discrimination.

Originally posted by impsangel

As long as female characters have the same skills and abilities as the males then its not a problem apart from a few pixels (ok loads of pixels if yer a female DE from L2), time to complain is if/when the sexes are unfairly balanced due to so called sexual differences in ability and genetics (for wont of a better word)

You'll love AoC, the women are weaker than the men by design.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by impsangel

As long as female characters have the same skills and abilities as the males then its not a problem apart from a few pixels (ok loads of pixels if yer a female DE from L2), time to complain is if/when the sexes are unfairly balanced due to so called sexual differences in ability and genetics (for wont of a better word)

 

You'll love AoC, the women are weaker than the men by design.

Heh it was my understanding that the lack of dps from women was due to a bug they just havent gotten around to fixing yet.

Originally posted by Arcken

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by impsangel

As long as female characters have the same skills and abilities as the males then its not a problem apart from a few pixels (ok loads of pixels if yer a female DE from L2), time to complain is if/when the sexes are unfairly balanced due to so called sexual differences in ability and genetics (for wont of a better word)

 

You'll love AoC, the women are weaker than the men by design.

 

Heh it was my understanding that the lack of dps from women was due to a bug they just havent gotten around to fixing yet.

As they always reply whenever they can about supposed bugs: "Working as intended.".
 

touche

It is usually easy to tell who the female gamers are.  They are usually more interested in the fantasy world around them.  They don't generally rush through quests, they actually take time to experience the world they are adventuring in.  I will have to say, my MMO experiences have been greatly enhanced by adventuring with these ladies.

AoC's gender differences in DPS were not intentional....but a result of MOCAP talent used to create the weapon attacks.  They explained this several times.

I'm torn on the whole G.I.R.L. initiative thing from SOE.  It's one thing to encourage women to get into the game industry, it's another to give them preferential treatment because of their gender.

dis·crim·i·na·tion 

 (d-skrm-nshn)

n.

3. Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice:

* I fail at cut and paste :) *