Self perpetuating cycles, masculinity, and money.
To answer my ultimate question, let’s take a step back first and examine video games and masculinity. The majority of video games and almost all games with a reputation of being “cool”, “hardcore”, or “real” feature hulking, muscular men and curvaceous women inexplicably in bikinis. Video games, by default, have a male protagonist, and female characters tend to have less game impact and agency.
But this isn’t an intentionally gendered assault- I doubt any developer goes into a game explicitly looking to oppress women. Men spend more on video games, and the final concern of a capitalist company will always be the bottom line- if breasts improve your stock value, it’d be a waste not to include them. This isn’t a new idea- capitalism vs ethics has been a hot topic for decades. However, I’d like to examine something a bit more subtle- the self-perpetuating cycle of male developers.
Back when computation was menial work, it was delegated to women, but once there was significant money involved it became men’s work and has stayed as such since. As such, I want to indicate that people tend to hire those that they empathize with or relate to, and it is often easier to relate to those of your gender. I remember reading some autobiography where a woman proposed a comedic skit that she and every other woman in the room found hilarious, but none of the men understood the joke- not by anyone’s fault, the skit was rejected for being “hard to understand.” But with that logic, how many ideas that are hard for women to understand have made it apst the cutting board? How many jokes that are slightly unsavory from the other side make it into “gaming culture”?
I guess the question comes down to- how much does “fitting in” factor into the hiring decision? To my knowledge, that answer is “a lot”, but I’m not exactly a hiring manager.
I think there’s a huge difference between “men trying to make specifically female characters” and “women making characters they relate to,” but even female developers can have skewed designs due to existing norms for video games. To stay “safe” or “conservative” in character design is to create female characters solely for eye candy and lend agency to the men, and minorities are doubly pressured to “fit in.” Even in a design meeting, proposing a female-targeted idea to a room of men can be daunting- and easily rejected- not by the fault of anyone, but simply an inability to relate.
So, if there exists a job that a woman and a man are both qualified for, but the man is more experience- the intuitive answer is that the man is the “moral” choice. He deserves it- he is, intuitively, “more qualified”. However, how much of his credentials are due to rapport with interviewers and ideas accepted and promoted by managers?
I guess my point is that it’s a case-by-case basis and that putting women in powerful positions in a company is one of the most effective ways to remove weird gendering from your games, in my opinion moreso than telling men to making a concerted effort to.
