Growing up as a girl who likes games.

I have been a gamer since I was very young. Games have been such a major part of my personal journey through life that I decided to go into a career designing them. There has been a lot in the media recently about the way development companies view female gamers. Personally, I feel there is a shift starting to take place, as games are no longer just played on the latest console by hard-core gamers. Even my 4 year old daughter is a gamer, she loves playing games on my tablet, some educational, some not so much. There are now more games aimed at her age group AND gender. It is very different to when I was growing up in the late 80s and 90s. Being a girl who liked games was not a particularly common occurrence.

One of my earliest childhood memories is playing on my dad’s SpectrumZX. It was some kind of Winter Games game, and I remember wiggling a joystick backwards and forwards as fast as I could to keep a big man running on a log. That was it, I was hooked. It then became a regular event at the weekend that I would ask my dad if we could "play the computer".

As time went by, the consoles we had changed. After the Spectrum, we had a SEGA Mastersystem. This introduced me to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, Alex Kidd and California games. I loved that machine.

Once my dad moved on to the Mega Drive when it was released, the Master System went in to my bedroom. This meant I was no longer restricted to playing games at the weekend, but could play them anytime I liked! And that is what I did for the last few years of primary school. It was about this time that I started realising that video games were not a typical thing for girls to be interested in.

I used to spend my lunchtimes talking to the boys about games instead of playing with the girls or talking about hair. It was never really an issue until we hit secondary school. Don’t get me wrong, I do have some very close girl friends that I’ve known for years, but none of them are into games like I am, and we tend to gravitate towards people who share our own interests. In my case growing up, the people I shared interests with were all male and as such, my group of friends was always predominately male. This then meant that the girls started to be jealous of all the attention the boys gave me, and no matter how much I protested that it was innocent, it led to me feeling outcast from my gender.

Towards the end of school you start to think about what you want to do as a career. My mind was already pointing me towards a career in something to do with games, at the time, I’d read about paths into the industry as a tester. When I mentioned this to a careers advisor though, she basically said “Why on earth would you want to do that? You’re good at science, do something with that.” This totally deflated me and then led to me spending the next 10 years not knowing what to do with myself as a career.

Over this decade, I had various “jobs” to keep a roof over our heads. I had my 3 children and settled to life as a mother. The gaming never stopped though. By this time I was gaming on a PS3 and had started branching out into online gaming. One game I quite often played online was Little Big Planet. I have always loved platform titles, and the added bonus of being able to create levels had me hooked. I found that even in this arena, the fact that I’m female had mixed reactions.

For example, there was an evening I was playing online and jumped into a party with some American guys. (One sounded exactly like Johnny Knoxville!) They all introduced themselves, as did I. We then proceeded to play the game. From that moment, they all forgot my name. I was then referred to only as “girl”. After 20 minutes of “girl hit that switch” and “girl do this” Id had enough. I’d even reminded them of my name at least 3 times, still to no avail, so I logged off.

I’ve had reactions the other way too. One guy I played with was adamant that I was only pretending to be a girl, called me weird, and kicked me from his party. I just find it completely crazy that it is all based on my gender and not on my gaming abilities.

As I mentioned at the opening, I did later go into a career in games. I took a home learning course and did as much as I could to put myself out there. I have now worked on a few released games. Even in my time as a student it was clear to see that the male/female balance in the industry is way off. We took part in a Game jam that was to be the Guinness record for most participants. Of the over 300 participants, there were less than 20 women. I myself was in a team with 5 men. I had no problem with this, but when you then factor in that there also are 2 to 3 other teams of guys in the lab, you can feel quite outnumbered.

I have been able to see first-hand the way that the industry is changing, people who would never have picked up a controller to play a game are now addicted to titles like Candy Crush and the like. To be identified as a gamer does not mean the same thing that it did just years ago, and it is nice to know that my daughter will never share my experiences as a girl who likes games. I hope that she and all other girls like her, do not feel alienated because they enjoy doing something that was always traditionally seen as a boy thing to do.