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Programming IT Technology Entertainment Games

Inequity and Diversity in the Game Dev Sector 43

Posted by Zonk from the lots-of-one-little-of-the-other dept.
Thumpah writes "J, the Damned Vulpine, has just posted a report on the inequality panel from the latest meeting of the Austin Game Developers group. The panel consisted of Sheri Graner Ray of Sony Online Entertainment's Austin studio, Ellen Hobbs of Amaze, Chris Smith of Lois Earl Entertainment, Denise Fulton of Midway Austin, Matt Crump of Amaze, Suzanne Freyjadis-Chuberka of the Women's Game Conference, and Susan O'Conner (a freelance game author) to moderate the panel. He ties the discussion in with the recent IDGA Game Developer Demographics Report."
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Inequity and Diversity in the Game Dev Sector More

Inequity and Diversity in the Game Dev Sector

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  • So... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @04:55PM (#13839320) Journal
    To summarize today's news:

    Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, Google, iPod, game developers, game developers, game developers, shaaria-compliant Simpsons in Arabic, game developers...

    Slow day at Google today -- it's a good thing someone stepped into the breach to sue them!

  • Man, I hate this stuff (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 0kComputer ( 872064 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @04:59PM (#13839363)
    Why is diversity so important? Why does every industry HAVE to have diversity? Discrimination is one thing, but I think its pretty obvious that thats not going on here. I just don't buy the whole "lets encourage everyone but young white men to get into [ insert field/acedemia here ] because the industry needs diversity argument."
    • The most practical reason is because diversity in the development teams leads to diversity of subjects in the games, which then potentially leads to larger audiences for games. Games like Dance Dance Revolution, Katamari Damacy, SimCity, and so on appear because people who aren't like the current game developers, people who aren't interested in the same old things, end up controlling a project. These then may well result in larger revenues, and larger cultural relevance, for games in general. As well as m
    • because this is the west and if you dont you are a racist. dont you love the circular logic?

    • I just don't buy the whole "lets encourage everyone but young white men to get into [ insert field/acedemia here ] because the industry needs diversity argument."

      An interesting study that I read about recently said that all sorts of computing-related diversity-increasing measures that are being tried basically amount to test cases for methods that will work for anybody, regardless of their minority status. So when Group G does Foo to try to get more members of Minority M into computing, if it works, the

    • Couldn't agree more. Its not like this industry looks specifically for young white males, they just happen to be the interested parties. So to what end would diversity improve anything in this development? I suspect people are looking for products with more mass appeal, but then we're stereotyping a particular group, when we produce "games for girls", etc.

      Seems more non discriminating if we didn't focus on diversity.
  • Percentage of people with disabilities = 13% (e.g., cognitive, mobility, sight, etc)

    This number strikes me as astonishingly high. Looking at the raw data: as I'd figured, 5% of that is dyslexia/ADD/whatever (which is still pretty high). But 2% blind?!? 1% paraplegic/ALS? 5% saying yes to "Mental illness (eg, depression, schizophrenia, etc)"?!?!? Yikes!

    Either there's some huge skewing in the study sampling or the game industry is, to put it mildly, a demographic outlier. It's interesting how all the discus

    • >5% saying yes to "Mental illness
      >
      You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.

    • It's interesting how all the discussion of the report fails to take any note of a supposed 5% rate of severe mental illness.

      The USA has 295,000,000 [cia.gov] people.
      Of those, 20,000,000 [cia.gov] have prescriptions for medical treatment of mental illness.

      That's a 6.7% rate, and that's only counting people recieving pharmaceutical treatment.

      So, are you asking why the programmers have a 1.7% lower rate of mental illness than the public at large?

      PS. If you're a programmer with difficulty concentrating, faking mental illness to ge
      • First, I don't get what your second link (the same as the first link) is supposed to be showing.

        Second, the percent of people in this study claiming mental disabilities is 10%. 5% is the sort of low grade stuff that you're referring to and that (I'd guess) makes up a large share, if not a majority of those prescriptions. The other 5% is severe mental illness -- that number seems very high to me, for a population that is entirely employed.

        And 2% blindness, in a sample that is not just employed, but employed

    • You work for EA for six months and then tell me 5% of your coworkers having clinical depression and suicidal tendencies sounds high. I'm guessing about 9/10 of those blind folks became blind as a result of a work-related injury, like pencil-in-the-eye after they heard of how much crunch was expected of them (of course, one pencil only makes you half-blind -- they then stabbed the other eye because only one punctured eyeball isn't enough to get a day off of work).
  • The Austin Game Developers group is not the same thing as the Austin Game Conference. The AGD meets periodically and holds discussions like this; the AGC happens annually and is a for-profit conference.
    • Thanks Raph -- if you notice, I didn't specify AGC, I specified an AGD..."conference". I guess I could have put "periodic meeting/discussion at an undisclosed meeting where, unfortunately, everyone was wearing pants". "Conference" just sounded better. Sorry for the confusion.

  • Inequity? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 )
    "Inequity and Diversity in the Game Dev Sector"

    Whoa... read that as "Iniquity and Diversity..."

    For a second there, I thought the study may have been saying that Jack Thompson was really onto something -- that maybe game devs really are wicked.

    Turns out they're just white males with a high incidence of mental illness (no surprise, considering what they go through on a regular basis).

  • surprised? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    I am a bit surprised by these numbers:
    "Male = 88.5%, Female = 11.5%
    White = 83.3%, Black = 2.0%, Hispanic/Latino = 2.5%, Asian = 7.5%, Other = 4.7%"

    Sure most employees have college drgrees and therefore there are few blacks and lations (not PC, but sorry, I can't change relaities of different cultures)
    but asian is ONLY 7.5%!! WTF? What happened to all the japanese and korean developers?
    • What do people expect from an industry that was FOUNDED by young white male programmers willing to work out of their garages for days on end without seeing the sun living on Velveeta cheese - that IMPRINT will take a long time to change. Anyways, women tend to be more social than men, so programming is not a natural choice for someone who wants to interact with people on a daily basis.
    • this survey was done by a group in Austin, TX, so it could represent just the local developer community. I would expect a lot more in areas where there are large Asian communities, like SF.
  • And Sony Online Entertainment was on that panel? Muhahahaha !
  • I generally don't reply to these threads because they often degenerate into rantings, but for the sake of clarity I have to say <sound-bite> diversity is important because it is American. It is one of the single-most defining characteristic of what this nation is about: different cultures coming together for the pursuit of happiness. I know it's a cliche, but it's true, I'm a game developer in New York City and I see it every day. </sound-bite>

    But seriously, what diversity gives you is a differe

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