Fiona Hyslop says changes must be made to teaching science and maths to encourage girls into creative technology careers
Scottish culture minister Fiona Hyslop has spoken out about the lack of women taking up creative roles in the games industry. While attending the Protoplay indie gaming festival in Dundee on Thursday, the MSP for Linlithgow stated that more needed to be done to attract young girls into game development.
"I'm very keen to make sure we counter this drift toward a male-dominated environment," said Hyslop. "We need to tackle the concept of women in gaming: women play games, but we want them to create games, we don't want them to be just consumers."
The problem, says Hyslop, is in the teaching of science and maths subjects at an early age. "A lot of it is about the wider education system, about STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] subjects and how we encourage young girls to be interested early enough," she said. "I've already made statements in parliament about our intention to tackle this; we need to make sure primary school teachers, most of whom are women, are comfortable with programming. We need to try to get girls interested early. The government in Scotland is very committed to this – the employment minister Angela Constance has been meeting with people in the industry and looking into how we can promote that."
The annual Protoplay event is organised by the University of Abertay to showcase the finalists in its Dare to Be Digital games development competition. Students from all over the world are encouraged to enter game concepts. The teams with the most promising pitches are then invited to stay in Dundee for nine weeks to develop their ideas into playable prototypes. Around 10,000 members of the public are expected to attend the event, which takes place in Dundee city centre, and also features talks and presentations by local game developers.
The paucity of women game developers has become a major issue in the industry. Research by Develop magazine earlier this year found that only 6% of UK development staff are women and that, on average, they earn £3000 less than male counterparts. Everything from the geeky image of games to the lack of role models in the technology sector has been blamed.
It is a familiar problem to female developers attending the Protoplay event. "I always got my brother's hand-me-down computers – it was seen as a boy's thing when I was growing up," says Sophia George, who is about to take up a new position as the Victoria and Albert Museum's game developer in residence. "I said no, I want to do it. We can't give up!"
Erin Michno is co-founder of experimental development studio Quartic Llama and has helped run programming courses using the cheap Raspberry Pi computer. "I was the only woman on my games technology course in the entire year. It's such a shame. And afterwards I'd run into women who would say, 'Oh, I wish I could have done that'. It's about getting the knowledge out earlier on.
"There are exciting things happening though. The girl scouts of America have a games programming badge. That's about encouraging girls at a really young age. You don't have to wait until university to start learning about game development. There are things like the MIT Game Lab and Scratch, that's programming for seven-year-olds, and then there's Raspberry Pi which has organised programming events.
"You get people saying, 'Oh, I don't know how to programme', so you just say, 'Okay, well, what do you want to make?' Don't make it about the maths or science, because it can be a bit intimidating, it's more about: what do you want to create? We can show you how to do that. That way people find out, 'No wait, maths is awesome, I can use it to make stuff!'"
Part of Sophia George's role at the V&A will be talking to school children about game development and design – she sees mentoring as a vital element of getting more girls into games. "I hope more women game developers are open to it," she said. "I don't feel like I had any role models growing up."
In the US, a Twitter storm over industry sexism last year led to the formation of the #1reasonmentors hashtag, which has allowed newcomers to contact established women developers. "There is a greater community now," said Michno. "Even a few years ago it was harder to find mentors, you had to do more digging. Now it's much easier to say, 'Yeah, that's who I want to be like'."
For Hyslop, Protoplay is part of the process of communicating the benefits and rewards of a career in game development. "I'm delighted there are talks on women in gaming here," she said. "It's fantastic that developers are going to be working with primary school teachers who have never done programming, so how are they going to inspire the next generation, and particularly girls?"
On the show floor, where the competition entrants show off their games to the public, there is an upbeat mood among the large number of female students and graduates who have joined competing teams. Stephanie Bazeley is the programmer on a team named Prehistoric Spatula, showing off a promising augmented-reality iPad game called Dinersaur.
"I actually wanted to do a different course, but when I visited Abertay I thought, 'You know what? I could do gaming'," she said. "It's been the best four years of my life. I discovered games through my old Dreamcast, but at the time I never considered what went into creating them. It's amazing. Girls should just go for it." Reported by guardian.co.uk 11 hours ago.
Scottish culture minister Fiona Hyslop has spoken out about the lack of women taking up creative roles in the games industry. While attending the Protoplay indie gaming festival in Dundee on Thursday, the MSP for Linlithgow stated that more needed to be done to attract young girls into game development.
"I'm very keen to make sure we counter this drift toward a male-dominated environment," said Hyslop. "We need to tackle the concept of women in gaming: women play games, but we want them to create games, we don't want them to be just consumers."
The problem, says Hyslop, is in the teaching of science and maths subjects at an early age. "A lot of it is about the wider education system, about STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] subjects and how we encourage young girls to be interested early enough," she said. "I've already made statements in parliament about our intention to tackle this; we need to make sure primary school teachers, most of whom are women, are comfortable with programming. We need to try to get girls interested early. The government in Scotland is very committed to this – the employment minister Angela Constance has been meeting with people in the industry and looking into how we can promote that."
The annual Protoplay event is organised by the University of Abertay to showcase the finalists in its Dare to Be Digital games development competition. Students from all over the world are encouraged to enter game concepts. The teams with the most promising pitches are then invited to stay in Dundee for nine weeks to develop their ideas into playable prototypes. Around 10,000 members of the public are expected to attend the event, which takes place in Dundee city centre, and also features talks and presentations by local game developers.
The paucity of women game developers has become a major issue in the industry. Research by Develop magazine earlier this year found that only 6% of UK development staff are women and that, on average, they earn £3000 less than male counterparts. Everything from the geeky image of games to the lack of role models in the technology sector has been blamed.
It is a familiar problem to female developers attending the Protoplay event. "I always got my brother's hand-me-down computers – it was seen as a boy's thing when I was growing up," says Sophia George, who is about to take up a new position as the Victoria and Albert Museum's game developer in residence. "I said no, I want to do it. We can't give up!"
Erin Michno is co-founder of experimental development studio Quartic Llama and has helped run programming courses using the cheap Raspberry Pi computer. "I was the only woman on my games technology course in the entire year. It's such a shame. And afterwards I'd run into women who would say, 'Oh, I wish I could have done that'. It's about getting the knowledge out earlier on.
"There are exciting things happening though. The girl scouts of America have a games programming badge. That's about encouraging girls at a really young age. You don't have to wait until university to start learning about game development. There are things like the MIT Game Lab and Scratch, that's programming for seven-year-olds, and then there's Raspberry Pi which has organised programming events.
"You get people saying, 'Oh, I don't know how to programme', so you just say, 'Okay, well, what do you want to make?' Don't make it about the maths or science, because it can be a bit intimidating, it's more about: what do you want to create? We can show you how to do that. That way people find out, 'No wait, maths is awesome, I can use it to make stuff!'"
Part of Sophia George's role at the V&A will be talking to school children about game development and design – she sees mentoring as a vital element of getting more girls into games. "I hope more women game developers are open to it," she said. "I don't feel like I had any role models growing up."
In the US, a Twitter storm over industry sexism last year led to the formation of the #1reasonmentors hashtag, which has allowed newcomers to contact established women developers. "There is a greater community now," said Michno. "Even a few years ago it was harder to find mentors, you had to do more digging. Now it's much easier to say, 'Yeah, that's who I want to be like'."
For Hyslop, Protoplay is part of the process of communicating the benefits and rewards of a career in game development. "I'm delighted there are talks on women in gaming here," she said. "It's fantastic that developers are going to be working with primary school teachers who have never done programming, so how are they going to inspire the next generation, and particularly girls?"
On the show floor, where the competition entrants show off their games to the public, there is an upbeat mood among the large number of female students and graduates who have joined competing teams. Stephanie Bazeley is the programmer on a team named Prehistoric Spatula, showing off a promising augmented-reality iPad game called Dinersaur.
"I actually wanted to do a different course, but when I visited Abertay I thought, 'You know what? I could do gaming'," she said. "It's been the best four years of my life. I discovered games through my old Dreamcast, but at the time I never considered what went into creating them. It's amazing. Girls should just go for it." Reported by guardian.co.uk 11 hours ago.