“If you ask people to hire who they like, what you end up with is a homogenous team. People like people who are just like themselves.” An interview with game designer Sheri Graner Ray
Sheri Graner Ray Interview (click here to listen, right click to download directly to iTunes)
Transcript:
Alex:
Hi I’m Alex Layne of the podcast and blog Not Your Mama’s Gamer. I’m also a PhD student studying Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University, specializing in gender issues and video games and the video games industry. I’m joined today by game designer Sheri Graner Ray. Sheri has worked all over the gaming industry since 1989 at companies such as Electronic Arts, Her Interactive, and Sony Online Entertainment and on games such as Star Wars Galaxy and Ultima. She is the author of the fabulous book Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market, and in 2004 she was named one of the gaming industry’s most influential women. She has also received the International Game Developer Association’s Game Developer’s Choice Award for her work with gender and games. Today she is the founder of and on the advisory board for Women in Games International and the Studio Design Director for Schell Games. Thank you for joining me today Sheri.
Sheri:
Thank you for having me.
Alex:
Alright, the first question I have for you is, can you describe your experience in becoming a game designer?
Sheri:
Well, that’s an interesting question, because when I started in this, there really wasn’t any such titled as game designer. Back then, you basically had two types of people in game development and they were programmers and artists. So, about the time I was hired, which again was in 1989, they were just realizing that they needed people who could write, and specifically people who could write dialogue, and so they kind of had this category of writers. So I was initially hired in under the job title of a writer, but really what I was doing back then was little to no different than the design work I do today. So technically I wasn’t hired as a game designer, I was actually hired in as a writer. And it all started because I, actually, went to a gaming conference, paper game, D&D conference, where my group—my paper game group—had decided we all wanted to go to play, and there we met a fella who was looking for a gaming group, who wanted to join one. So we invited him to join ours, and come to find out that he worked for Origin Systems. After he had been playing with us for three or four months, he came to me and he said, “Sheri, you write all your own stuff, you design all your own modules and adventures for this group.” He said, “I kind of think you’re a natural fit for the company I work for, and they’re looking for a write right now. Do you want to put in your résumé?” And at the time I was working in non-profit health. I was working for the American Diabetes association as the Communications Manager for the state of Texas, and I said, “well sure. That sounds like a load of fun.” So I gave him my résumé, just kind of as a lark. And I gave him some writing samples, and a week later I had an interview with Warren Spector, and two weeks after than I started my new job at Origin Systems as a writer. I always thought it would be kind of short term. I thought, ‘eh I’ll do this for a year. It will be fun. It’s a lark” [laughter]. Almost 22 years later, here I am.
Alex:
That’s pretty amazing. So you’ve worked with gender and games for a really long time then, 22 years, like you were saying…
Sheri:
Well I didn’t start off with gender and games. I just started as a straight writer. I actually got interested in the whole gender question; I was working at Origin, and we had a title that did not get released. Which is another whole big thing that happens in games of course as we all work on titles that don’t ever get released. I was working on a title called Arthurian Legends, and it had a lot of female characters in it, and we had a whole box of people who had sent in registration cards from the Ultimas. Because we had a contest listed on all the boxes that was, ‘send us your picture for a chance to star in an Ultima.’ Well really all it was was an opportunity for us to get fresh faces to put into our game, because we were pretty tired of putting ourselves into the games over and over. So I was picking through this box of pictures, looking for as many girls as I could. And I realized that we actually had quite a few of them. And more so I thought than the other games out there at the time had, and I became very interested in that. And so I started looking into it, because I didn’t understand why more girls didn’t play our games, because I really enjoyed them, and I really enjoyed Dungeons and Dragons and things… obviously. So that kind of started me down the road of you know, ‘why don’t more girls play these games.” And so that’s where I started. So it was a couple years after I started in games that I really kind of said, “let me take a look at why more girls aren’t playing these games.”
Alex:
Ok, so have met any resistance to that type of work, to your types of suggestions?
Sheri:
[laughter]. All the time. [laughter].
Alex:
What kind of stuff do you recall?
Sheri:
It became a joke there when I was, when I was back at Origin, it became a joke for awhile because I became known for continually asking, “but what if the player is female?” “what if the player’s female?” I asked it all the time in every design meeting we had. At first they thought it was kind of funny. And then they kind of got irritated with me. Then they started having design meetings and not telling me. [laughter]. Sheri would be playing Hunt the Game Design Meeting because all of a sudden I would realize the other designers around me weren’t there. And I’d wonder, “where did everybody go? Oh they’re having another meeting and they didn’t tell me. So I’d have to go hunt the meeting.
Alex:
Oh man. Do you think it was because they didn’t know how to incorporate your ideas? Or they didn’t think women actually played?
Sheri:
Oh I was told over and over at the time that women don’t play computer games. So why should I care? You know, why should I care about female players that don’t play our games. So yeah, I was told flat out, not just by people I worked with, but by people in the industry, “well girls don’t play games. So why should we care?”
Alex:
So you were a game writer there at the time this happened?
Sheri:
Mhmm.
Alex:
Were there other women that worked there as well? Doing game writing or anything?
Sheri:
One. There was one other female designer there. Yes, one other. By the time I was laid off by Origin, the company was about 350 people I think, and I think we had less than 30 women. Right around 25 women. So yeah, there was one other gale that was doing game design and game writing with me at the time back then. But the rest were all very definitely guys.
Alex:
I’ve seen some statistics recently that say women in HR positions in the gaming industry have a pretty decent representation, 40 or 50%, but then when you get down into programming, it’s less than 5%.
Sheri:
Oh yeah.
Alex:
So do you have any experienced about the lack of women making these games that stick out to you?
Sheri:
Well it’s a really interesting thing. This of course is not a simple question. There’s a lot of reasons why. And it’s not always… and everyone always wants to jump to, “well it’s because the games are only for guys and so there aren’t any girls playing it, so why would girls want to make them?” But actually, we’re seeing that a little bit less because we have the whole rise of the social gaming and the Facebook gaming which is predominantly female. We’re having more and more young women that are growing up playing games. So that’s less and less of an obstacle. But what the really weird thing is, is that girls, women, don’t, they don’t see the game industry as a potential career path. So when you go up and ask a girl, “what do you think about making computer games?” they blink, because, it’s not that they looked at it and thought, “no I don’t want to do that.” It’s that it never even showed up on their radar. It’s something they never even considered. And so, we’ve got this incredible outreach. It’s part of why Women in Games International was founded. We really need to do quite a bit of outreach and let them see women in industry, let them see role models. So we can say, “look there is a place for girls in games. And we want you here.” Basically, we have to do a lot of awareness raising.
Alex:
Sure. And I think a lot of the outreach stuff you guys have done has become pretty pervasive, and most people are aware of those type of movements. Which is really good. Do you think that’s had an impact on how many women work in the industry? It seems to be getting better. I don’t know if you think it’s too slow…
Sheri:
It’s way too slow. [laughter]. It’s definitely getting better. There’s no question we are seeing more women coming into the field. We’re still, I think the last number I read was around 11% female, which is not near what I would like it to be, but I do think we are going to see it continue to improve with the schools now offering programs and things like that. We’re going to continue to see it improve, and that’s… well you can’t go fast enough for me, but hey. [laughter]
Alex:
So a lot of the time the things you’re talking about are pretty explicit. Like not inviting you to a meeting.
Sheri:
Oh yeah [laughter].
Alex:
So is there any sort of explicit discrimination you’ve faced because of gender in addition to that?
Sheri:
Well yes. There’s been quite a bit. I don’t… I don’t usually tell war stories. I have found that telling war stories causes people to refocus on some of the anger and frustration that we felt when we started this whole movement. And that’s not necessarily a productive emotion to dwell on. But, I have been—a couple of times at different companies—I’ve gone through full interviews just to have them at the end of the day, the CEO called me in and said, “Well, you seem to have a lot of experience, you seem to have the skill set. But you know we just don’t think you can make real games.
Alex:
Sure.
Sheri:
And I’ve also been told, “you know, we think you’re really great and you’ve got a lot of experience, but we just don’t want to do anything to upset the camaraderie of this office. This all male office.” So yeah I’ve been told flat out those things. Just flat out in those words; and sometimes just as recent as 5 or 6 years ago. We’re not talking about something that happened 20 years ago. We’re talking about stuff that’s happened in the last 5 years. So it goes on all the time.
Alex:
I think people like to think that it was 20 years ago, and that it doesn’t really happen very often… but I can see your point about not dwelling on those bad experiences, and instead making those movements to progress things, rather than…
Sheri:
And there’s a reason too for that. I did a big talk—I keynoted in fact—out at the developer’s conference out in the UK, and I did a talk on his here at the GDC conference last year. We seem to have a backlash happening here right now. I have been told that talking about gender is “old news.” That it’s not anything that needs to be talked about anymore. And of course it does need to be talked about. But I think a lot of what has happened is, when we started this whole thing, this whole women in games, we used this anger and this frustration to bind us together. To give us the strength and the courage to step up and say, “Hey, pay attention to us. Pay attention to our concerns.” But if you continue to use that kind of anger and frustration, people start to shut you out. They’ll start to say, “Look. Look at this. We’ve got 70% of casual gamers are women. That’s progress. Look, we’ve made the rules about the booth babes at E3. Look at these things. And you’re still angry? Why are you still angry? And so we have to, instead of coming across as angry and frustrated, we have to concentrate on the positive side of things, and putting out a positive message of, “Here’s why you need to consider looking for women; we need to own our successes. When we have women in the industry who do good things, we need to celebrate that. And bring it up so that people know. I get tired of some of the bigger conferences when I ask them why they’re not looking at females to keynote, I’ve been told “well, there aren’t any women that have done the kind of accomplishments that these guys have, that will have the draw factor.” Which of course is patently untrue, but that’s kind of in our cohort. That’s kind of our fault. We need to celebrate these successes. We need to own them.
___________
Alex:
Sure. I think that’s fabulous advice. So speaking of youths talking about “old news” about gender and games, I have this quote here from your blog you wrote about 20 years in gaming, and you say, “I remember very distinctly the day I made the decision to pursue the whole “gender and games” thing. It was a very serious and deliberate decision for me. I knew that going to bat for women in games would probably be the death knell for my career. I knew that it would label and pigeon hole me. However, I do not think I realized what exactly that meant. I know I didn’t expect the name-calling and the complete ostracization by many men and women in this industry. And, I certainly didn’t expect to EVER be referred to as “old news”… as I hear I am being referred to now when I apply to speak at conventions. It’s particularly disturbing when there are still SO many issues surrounding gender and ethnicity in this industry.” So I had a couple questions about that. Do you think going to bat for women negatively affect your career as you thought it might?
Sheri:
Oh of course it did. Absolutely it did. I tease that I can be the single greatest conversation stopper at the conference. There literally will be groups of guys; I will walk up to and they stop talking. “Oh god, here comes Sheri again.” They know I’m gonna say something. You know when they’ve done something really blatant in one of their games, they know I’m going to walk up to them and ask them to defend why they did that, ask them what happened. There’s no question. I became known as “that… oh there goes the women in games girl. Oh, don’t say anything wrong around her.” I know for awhile there I gained kind of a stigma in the industry of being difficult to work with because of it. And I don’t think I was being difficult to work with, but I would continually ask, “but what if your player is female?” and that can… that got me labeled as difficult to work with.
Alex:
I remember you wrote once about hiring people who are like yourself…
Sheri:
Oh yes.
Alex:
That sort of idea in the gaming industry that you only want people there that think like you. So I imagine that you sort of break some of that up.
Sheri:
Yep. That’s the whole hiring process of our industry. It’s not just our industry too. It’s a lot of tech in general. Where they’ll interview somebody and they’ll bring them in and run them through the whole team interview, but they never tell the team what to look for in the candidate. They’ll just say, “see if you like them.” If you ask people to hire who they like, what you end up with is a homogenous team. People like people who are just like themselves. So they’re never instructed to hire outside their comfort zone. They say, “Oh just see if you like them, it’s just… You know. I don’t look like them! You know?
Alex:
Absolutely. That seems like a pretty pressing issue then, the hiring processes. Do you have any other ones for people who want to focus on gender and games, any ones that are more pressing than others right now?
Sheri:
Well, hiring is a big one. The issue is not only the interview process but where they put ads. You know if you put your ads in game developer magazine, which is a predominantly male readership, you’re not going to get any female candidates. You know? A lot of them will come to me and say, “gosh Sheri! How do we find female candidates?” “Like, well, what have you been doing?” “advertising in Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra.” “Well, ha. Well I see your problem.” So we have to start looking at this, there are so many ways, in hiring in general we have to start looking at skill sets rather than experience. Cuz if you come up and say, “we need someone with 10 years experience.” Well, that already narrows your candidate pool down so far, and particularly if you look at how many women were making games 10 years ago, you know, the chances of you finding females in your candidate pool is just slim to none. So, you know, you have to be willing to open up your qualifications to skill sets beyond just years in the industry, things like that.
Alex:
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. So when you say, you believe it did negatively impact your career, by talking about gender and games persistently, um, so why did you ultimately decide to speak out.
Sheri:
Because somebody had to. Honestly, that was my thinking. Somebody had to get the ball rolling. Somebody had to do it. I was watching an industry that I loved, with making products that… you know, I’m a gaming geek man. I’m a 40 hour a week gamer. If I’m not playing computer games I’m playing pencil and paper, table top, role-playing games. I have a weekly gaming group that is the same guys, same group that I have GM’d for 14 years. That’s how serious a game geek I am. And so I watched this industry I love just making terrible mistakes and basically cutting off their nose to spite their face. I knew the female market was there. I knew it was very lucrative. And had money to spend. And I watched them slam the door on that market. And I just couldn’t stand by and watch that happen. And so, somebody had to do it. And so I did.
Alex:
That’s excellent. And I think many of us are very glad you did. It allows me to do the work that I’ve spent my life doing, because other people started it. So, right now I’m working with policies in the gaming industry, specifically those that influence women’s experiences working there. So I was wondering if you found, if you ever encountered a policy particular that stuck out to you. Maternity leave or sick leave or sexual harassment or promotion policies, or anything like that.
Sheri:
Specifically? Specifically that are exclusive?
Alex:
Or maybe just something you get a general feeling about some sort of policy.
Sheri:
Well the whole quality of life issue is always very difficult to deal with for female candidates. Um, because as we know women do not have the amount of leisure time that men do, although that number is getting closer together, I just read a read a recent study about that, and that’s good that that number is… women still carry the majority of the house work, although that number is getting closer too, so that’s a good one. But still they do, and they still carry the majority of the child work, childcare work. So, women don’t see home as a place of rest, they see home as a second workplace. And so when you’re asking women to work crazy amounts of overtime, and telling them that it’s expected, you’re cutting into, first off a smaller amount of leisure time that they have, but your also cutting into their time that they see as for their other job, which is taking care of the children, and the house, and things like that. And so that incredible pressure to do the extreme hours and to do the extreme work like that is definitely… well it negatively affects everybody, don’t get me wrong, but it is certainly a barrier for women, when they’re trying to get into the industry, or thinking about getting into the industry, they’re like, “I can’t do that. I’ve got to be able to take the sick time off when I have a sick child and things like that.” So that’s always been a problem.
Alex:
So, my last question for you is, you’ve worked in many game companies over the years, you’ve been working with these types of issues for a long time, if you were to advice companies on how to better attract female game designers, I know you’ve mentioned a few, figuring out better advertising, but some specific advice for companies. What do you think they should do?
Sheri:
They need to broaden where they’re looking for their candidates. They need to look outside of the traditional channels, for their candidates. They need to go find the women. Because remember what I said, for women, the games industry is not on their radar. It’s not that they discount it it’s that they simply don’t see it. So if they want women, and actually minorities in general, you have to go out and recruit for them. You have to look for them. Because they’re not going to come to you. So that’s the first thing I would tell them to do. Go out and find your candidates.
Alex:
That makes a lot of sense.
Sheri:
You need to look at your physical workspace. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told that the pornographic magazines left in the art cubicles are there for anatomy studies. Of course we all know exactly what that is. Bologna. So, uh, yeah. Clean up your workspace. You don’t want anything laying out that you don’t want your grandmother seeing on your desk. So clean the space up. Make sure it’s friendly. And welcoming to all people. And then the third and final thing you need to do is look at your products. If you’re putting the bikini chain mail babe on the cover of your box, and then have the boxes set up in the hall, the entry, is that woman coming in there going to be comfortable coming to interview at a place like that.
Alex:
That’s probably not the first thing you want to see when you walk into a new job.
Sheri:
Yep.
Alex:
Thank you very much for letting me interview you today.
Sheri:
No problem.
Alex:
It was very enlightening. Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Sheri:
Oh shoot you know I could talk about this stuff forever.
