From my Twitter feed just now:
A typical conversation:
Guy: "We just need to get more women interested in games."
Me: "But women are LEAVING when they get here."— Caryn Vainio (@Hellchick) December 9, 2014
Me: "We need to fix the culture that's causing this."
[like "2 weeks" guy in Total Recall]: "But…we just need to get more women interested."— Caryn Vainio (@Hellchick) December 9, 2014
Interest isn’t the problem, unnamed guy in this conversation. Women are already interested in games. They are playing games in huge numbers. They are interested in what games have to offer and are broadening the market in ways I couldn’t have predicted, both in terms of consumption and in terms of creation.
Here's the thing: saying "we just need to get more women/girls interested" is a nice panacea, because it puts the onus on WOMEN to fix it.
— Caryn Vainio (@Hellchick) December 9, 2014
Boom.
Nothing needs to be fixed regarding my wife’s interest in games. Or my daughters’, which for them started from a very early age—and I doubt we are alone in the influence we’ve had on our children being engaged and interested in games.
It’s not a matter of interest. It’s a matter of a toxic culture that takes that interest and then stomps on it. That culture is created and fostered by the men that already inhabit these spaces. It does everything it can to take that interest and convince women that games and gaming communities aren’t for them, then tries to hide the responsibility by saying “this isn’t broken, or at least if it’s broken, it’s not our fault, it’s just how it is.”
