Reel Geek

At the end of November, twitter blew up with women in games sharing their experiences in the industry: #1ReasonWhy. In a response to the (albeit common) question of “Why are there so few lady game creators?” I even added my own: Because I was the only one heckled during my final game project presentation. #1reasonwhy

It was an amazing event to witness. The only shocking part of it all was the sheer amount of people who had the gumption to speak up. No matter how many tried to silence them. It makes me feel lucky that not only have I had it easy in comparison, but to know that I am in fact not alone.

This is my 3rd year in the game dev department at DePaul in Chicago. There were several prerequisites I had to take before the grad program actually started and I can only go mostly part-time, so it’s taking a while. All things considered, it’s far better than I had expected. Every professor I’ve come into contact with has been respectful from the beginning and I haven’t had a single instance of condescension. As well as no special treatment, at least as far as I can tell. In fact they have welcomed my class participation more than enough to make someone who is normally very quiet actually speak up. Last term I had to ask one to not put me on a team with a specific classmate (I will explain later). The email exchange was professional and respectful and he did so without question or making it an issue.

They do also have support for women in the computer department that sadly only caters to those without full-time jobs. While I could get to campus for a 4:30pm meeting, but the emails don’t always go out and rarely do I know more than a day in advance.

That’s not to say that things have been easy or that it’s been without incident.

Being the only or one of a handful of women in a class isn’t comfortable. It will make anyone question whether or not they belong. We as humans strive for situations that we fit in, and while I should feel at home with others who love games and coding, I just don’t. I feel uncomfortable most of the time. As if I really shouldn’t be there.

It doesn’t really help when the professor shows incredibly masculine videos to emphasize points. I’m pretty certain there is something better out there to signify now being advanced C++ coders than “welcome to the world of gentlemen, gentlemen.” Perhaps it would help to not bring up a study that women multitask better than men, especially when other studies say it’s actually men just prove that some people multitask better than other people. All that did was encourage the person sitting behind me to bring up the idea that “women are more emotional.” I turned around and asked if he was looking for a punch in the face and it made the class laugh. What I don’t understand is that if someone had said “all ____ (race) are _____ (stereotype)” shit would have gone down. It’s the same thing just instead of racist, it’s sexist.

For the most part my classmates aren’t exactly friendly to me and seem to just tolerate my existence. Conversations before/after class and during breaks aren’t what you’d call inclusive. While my interjections don’t fall on deaf ears, it’s not exactly welcoming either. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some that are like me and shy at first, but fine once they warm up to you. On the flipside, there have also been a handful that have been varying levels of terrible.

One that used the phrase “women shouldn’t talk like that,” to someone else. Luckily we both shot him down with looks and a response of “we can say whatever we want.” Strangely enough, he was one of the heckling offenders while I nervously gave a demo of my final game last term while trying not to throw up or pass out. Public speaking and I don’t really mix well. Perhaps I should have sat there invalidating myself through it like another woman had?

Last year there was one that fully believed I would commiserate with him on his failing grades no matter how many times I tried to get out the conversation. Every night during break he would follow me out to the cold of Chicago, stand too close and talked of failing classes, bad grades on projects and the state of our classmates geeky tee shirt attire. All I wanted to do was enjoy my smoke. Granted he never really paid attention to my responses of doing just fine nor the fact that I wear a different geek tee every week. While annoying, that would have been fine. It was the being 1 step behind me on the walk to the train – whether I took the elevator or ran down 10 flights of stairs. He would then get on the same train and watch me read from across the train car. That’s what set off my spidey sense enough ask not to work with him in the next class.

In all honesty, what’s worse is what happens in the outside world. Whenever I wear my xkcd tee “I’m not slacking off, my code is compiling,” without fail someone has to ask “are you really a programmer?” I don’t see why anyone would actually wear it if they weren’t. Though the attempted C++ syntax exams are rather unnecessary.

How I’ve chosen to deal with it
For the most part, I focus on the work. Doing as well as I am seriously helps the negative self-talk that comes from not feeling like I belong. I get A’s, that’s proof enough. I love coding and no one is going to take that away from me.

Comments that are sexist? It depends on the situation. Sometimes I jokingly threaten violence, but that’s only in very specific moments. Most of the time, it’s “Please explain how that is funny.” Then watch them try to justify the behaviour.

Sometimes, like the heckling, I don’t notice right away. I know it’s kind of shitty, but I’m too busy to focus on why. For the most part, it turns into jokes with friends. 1 that I’m turning into a game based on a conversation. Just something silly with Unity more for humour value.

Other than that, seriously taking a look at that mentoring list.

There is this learn to code meme/movement/whatever that’s been going around for a couple of weeks now. Please don’t learn to code vs please learn to code.

“Learning to code simply means having a basic grasp of how computers work instead of blindly following whatever a talking paperclip tells you.”

First of all, this is false. Having a basic grasp of how computers work has little to do with sitting down and learning a programming language. How did I get my mother to be complimented by the IT department for her computer understanding? Anytime she asked me a computer question, I told her to google it. That’s a basic grasp. And all most people need to know.

I had an epic battle with the Diablo III download this weekend and even though I have a rather in depth understanding of C++, I was still a slave to their programming. Oh I could read and understand the error but there was nothing I could do about it. The point is, you could be the most epic programmer ever and still have to blindly follow someone else’s program. There just isn’t enough time available to make every program and game out there.

What really got me thinking is when the topic brought up mandatory comp sci classes in schools. If I had found my love for programming earlier, would I be in a different place now? Maybe. But I regret none of it.

I found my love of photography freshman year of High School which pretty much dictated my life until the age of 21. So I can pretty much guarantee that nothing would have changed there. Well.. at least not until a pivotal point that happened roughly when I was 19. I say roughly only because it’s all kind of mushed together in my memory.

I was a portrait photographer – hadn’t gone to university yet – and my free time was split between my art friends and my nerd friends. As time went on, my art friends got more into experimental art that I found silly and more importantly became annoying. Oddly inflated egos and hypocritical attitudes of demanding acceptance of who they are while making fun of others. So I found myself choosing chess, DnD, irc, linux, gaming, html, and the like more and more often.

I had a lot of fun those few years. It was ~1995 and the net was just gaining momentum. Linux was still pretty new so we spent a lot of time trying to break it. Since there really wasn’t much else to do with it. If there was a way to write html in anything other than notepad, I didn’t know about it.

The pivotal moment happened when my computer science major boyfriend quickly explained QBasic and the program he was working on. My job was to travel to small towns in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri and do portrait photography in whatever store we had a contract in so I had a lot of time by myself. With my beast of a dell laptop and too much boredom, I sat down and wrote a text based adventure game.

I brought it home for him to test and had hoped I would be met with pride, but instead what I got was a deflated ego masked by anger. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong and we were both too young and inexperienced to communicate it properly. So it was the beginning of the end of that relationship.

Had he seen other females excel in computers earlier, it might have lessened the effect to his ego. I use might very loosely here because this is Nebraska we are talking about and tech was a boys only club. And I might have gotten use to the reaction like I have now.

The experience soured me pretty heavily in the years to come, but it wasn’t the only aspect. The year before art school I worked at best buy, a video store and a computer repair shop all at the same time. At best buy I was delegated to the printer aisle even though I knew more about computers than all of my male coworkers. Anytime I answered the phone, the customer asked to speak to a man. I eventually took control of the software section and ran it artfully, but no matter how much I proved I knew every piece of software, they always wanted a male opinion. I met the same indignation every night at the repair shop.

In my long thought process of what I wanted to do in my life, computers just seemed more trouble than it was worth. Had it been my only passion, things might have been different. Had I had a bit more time to foster my love of programming, I might have fought til the end. Now, 15 years later it’s a bit easier. I may have less fight in me, but there is less fight to be had.

Like I said before, I don’t regret my path. I may be too old for getting into the gaming industry and I’m OK with it. There’s a lot I could have learned but I wouldn’t be the person I am now without the experiences I’ve had. I just really hope I graduate before I get too close to 40.

A couple of weeks ago was C2E2 (Chicago Comic Con and Entertainment Expo). I was going to go for just an afternoon since I’m not all that big into comics anymore… who has the time for that? The last series I read was Y: The Last Man.

A day to wander around the show room and just geek out for a bit should be enough, right? That’s what I thought until I looked at the panel line up. A few video game panels including one with Coach Tony’s son, Taylor. Did I forget to mention that my Kung Fu coach is Kung Lao (Mortal Kombat 2 and 3) and his son is Kung Lao in the 2011 version? They are both awesome. And oddly it means the gym is filled with nerds. EKF!!!

My plan was to go by myself. Whenever I go to cons with other people, I don’t meet anyone new and I spend far too much of my time coordinating schedules and finding people. This time around I was going to do whatever I wanted and not care about what other people thought of it. Best decision ever. I met so many different people. Had all sorts of different conversations. Comics/art/games/kung fu/school/Buddhism/coding/tech/tattoos/etc. It was bloody brilliant.

Friday:

I spent a good portion of my day just wandering around the show room. What I really mean by that is artist alley. Everything else was just kind of… meh. Like I said, I don’t really read comics anymore. I sometimes flirt with getting back into it, but I don’t know where I’d find the time. I’m already stretched pretty thin. Plus I always read trades and I didn’t see many of them for sale, in my really brief walk through. The tees were over priced and only 1 thing jumped out at me… something about gamer girls not being suitable for normal guys. However it was only available in girl sizes where even the large cut off circulation in the arms for someone who’s done martial arts for 27 years.

What I think is hilarious is that I never once ran into the guys from EKF. How did I miss 5 guys walking around with wushu weapons?

I had a blast in artist’s alley. Where else can you have an in depth conversation about xkcd with artists? I was constantly getting stopped about my tattoos, my xkcd tee (I’m not slacking off, my code is compiling), and the more shocking to me the Buddhist beads I wear. The thing about wandering about alone, you are far more approachable. I think in a few short hours, I filled my talking to people quota. Plus I got to look at awesome art.

The Geek Girl and the Artist: Women’s Perspectives on Geek Culture, Gender Identity and Art/Media:
The only panel I went to on Friday. I’m really going to try and not get all angry feminist on this blog, so bear with me. There are real issues with girls and sexism in geekdom and it was nice to see this panel available. Plus the amount of turnout of the male gender. A lot of points got brought up, but I think it might have been glossed over a bit. Meaning the panelists were a bit too far on the positive side.

For instance, one said that being a geek helped her fit in with her co-workers in her techy job. But I don’t remember anything mentioned that as women we have to prove that we aren’t a fake geek, especially more now thanks to hipsters. They do exist, I’ve met several, and all have been hipsters. Being someone who gets confused as a hipster (black rim glasses, tattoos, piercings, nerdy tees, cycling, and crazy hair), I do actually end up spending quite a bit of time justifying my reasons for being a nerd (seriously?) and ya know.. proving my history of it. For the record, I don’t like apple products, I’m not opinionated about music, I don’t go out much and every hipster I’ve met I’ve found pretty douchy.

I think they also barely touched on the overly sexualized nature of geekdom and the sexual harassment we do have to endure. Especially in video games. You know because we are all fat, ugly or slutty.

On a logical standpoint, I completely understand why they tried to keep it positive. 1. It scares off women who are trying out geekdom to see if they like it. Keeping it positive, mitigates that hesitation. 2. Whenever a woman starts talking about these kinds of issues, we get labeled overreacting and feminist. Proof? Read the comments on this ars post. Constantly undermining our viewpoint based on being an over-sensitive female, sadly makes us second guess ourselves. Or at least hesitate when talking about it.

I tried. I really did.

The free shuttle stopped at 8pm but my panel didn’t get out until 8:30. Boo! So I split a cab to the loop with a bunch of strangers, who turned out to be very interesting and we went out for burritos and beer. Oh that was so needed.

Saturday:

Bringing Video Games to Life: The Men Behind the Motion
Really huge turn out for this. It was really weird watching guys I’ve seen fall on their face in class demo on stage in front of a crowd. Wushu: if don’t fall or hit yourself with your weapon, you aren’t trying hard enough. Just watch the vids I took.

After that I ran around with the ekf people until my next panel…

Behind the Graphics: a Video Game Industry Round Table
The majority of the talk was interesting. They had a programmer, technical artist, art director, animator and a programmer/everything else really indie guy. For the most part it was pretty basic things of who they are, where they work, and how they got into the industry.

The thing that really struck a chord with me was when 2 of them stressed pretty heavily how you have to be the best of the best in order to get a job. I understand how you’d be able to tell the difference with say artists, but how exactly do you gauge that with programming? How about technical artist? The more I learn about the role of a technical artist, the more I see it as a fit. However there is a time and a place for these kinds of discussions. It really didn’t fit into the lighthearted feeling of the rest of it and it never really got expanded.

I’m not a fan of our current culture of praising mediocrity, because it does seriously reduce effort put in. Or that everyone can do anything they want as long as they try, because people are different and excel at different things. I can’t draw myself out of a box and that’s OK. I have a really good eye for photography, but my execution is…decent. I was a really good editor, but I didn’t have the personality for it. I’m too much of an introvert to be constantly networking with people I have little in common with. The majority of the work is contract based and the constant looking for a job was really frustrating. Then I fucked up my wrist. No more motion graphics = death of an editor.

I met up with the ekf guys again for a bit until I had to run off to another panel. This post is already a wall of text so, I’m going to leave it at that.

Sunday:

Chicago Exists! The Games Industry in Chicago
This was an extremely positive experience. While there isn’t all that much of a big industry in Chicago, supposedly the community is really good less about competition. More open and helpful.

They talked quite a bit about IDGA Chicago and that it is open to students. Another was brought up called indie city games. I was going to ask when students should be getting involved, but from everything else they said it seemed like the answer was right away. But… I can’t make even make something other than text come up on the screen. Complex algorithms? Sure. Data structures of c++? Yep. I wrote a ray tracing renderer in the fall, but not how to use it. Yeah. That makes no sense to me either. Basically we did the math/computational geometry/etc for it to show up on screen but not the show up on screen part.

I guess it’s time to put the excuses away and just start showing up to meetings and talking to people.

final thoughts:
I bought a lot of geek art and that was worth it alone. I also have a bit more of a direction to focus on other than just the classes and assignments. Now I really can’t wait for PAX Prime in the fall.

Here we go.. another night of procrastinating homework. It’s Saturday night.. which isn’t so lame since it’s technically my Sunday because I work tomorrow. Anyways.. I spent most of the day cleaning and at kung fu, so applied algorithms isn’t really something I want to do at the moment. Now I have 1 screen of catching up on The Guild and Zero Punctuation and the blog on the other. I’m such a good multitasking faffer. It’ll get done, done correctly and on time.

A long time ago when my focus was art/film/animation/whatever I had stopped reading tech news. I recently got back into it and all I can say is what the hell is going on?

The patent wars? Seriously? Patents have no place in the tech field. Copyright? Yes. Patents? No. The problem with patents as a non-lawyer sees it, is that they are far too broad which stifles innovation. 1 person makes something cool, patents it, and no one else can take the idea and improve on it. That’s how the tech industry has worked since the beginning. You can’t really call foul this late in the game, especially when your company has done the exact same thing. *cough* apple *cough*.

ebook price fixing? Apple: hey publishers, if you want to sell ebooks for our shiny new ipad (please don’t laugh at the name) that everyone is going to want cause we are apple and we are the hippest shit out there, you have to agree to our terms. Set whatever price you want unlike that evil empire Amazon. We are going to take 30% of every single sale for no reason other than we can, so add that to your price. Oh and you can’t sell them cheaper anywhere else.

See that last part there? That’s against the law. Oops. Enter in the DoJ, European Commission, 16 states and a few class action law suits from Canada. What I don’t understand is where Apple is getting the balls to actually fight this. The line they are trying to stand on is that they were trying to break the monopoly held by amazon and it’s better for the consumer.

I’m a kindle consumer. I don’t want to read a book on a backlit screen, sorry apple. I <3 my kindle. Hard. It is hands down my favourite gadget. I can carry around programming and personal books without killing my back and decide which I want to read during my daily hour long train commute. If I finish a book while on the train? No big deal, hop onto my amazon wish list. I could buy them at 50% off. In comes apple and now books are almost the same price. Fuck you, apple. How is that good for me? I give up being able to lend out books to friends, sell them back, use during open book tests, read during parts of flights, and flip through for reference; and yet I now get to pay roughly the same price? All because you want to take 30% of the sales for your customers.

What they should have done is just opened their ebook store and let their customers overpay. They are used to it anyways. And like everything else, they would have happily bent over and asked for more.