“not solitarie, minesweeper, sudoku, those puzzle games on MSN…”
A female gamer in Texas read She’s Such A Geek and then picked up the latest issue of Game Informer magazine. Maybe because she’d just been reading SSAG, she says, she noticed the staff of Game Informer was all men. She posted about this in the Girl Gamers group on Livejournal:
In fact, there are only 3 (at least obviously) female names on the entire staff page: the publisher, which I guess counts for something, and two advertising saleswomen.
I must admit, I found it difficult to read the magazine after finding this out. I just wasn’t as enthusiastic to be reading GI as I have been in the past. My GI subscription is fairly new since I just got my GameStop Edge card about a month ago and only have 3 issues so far, so I don’t know if there used to be female editors or not.
I wouldn’t say that I’m angry, and I certainly wouldn’t want them to hire a woman just for the sake of having a woman on staff. I would want her to be hired on her journalistic merit, of course. But at the same time, not having a single woman on the editorial staff makes me a bit uneasy and makes GI look somewhat backwards and old-fashioned, at least to me.
As you’d expect with Livejournal, there’s a spirited comment thread. A typical response:
Like it or not, ’serious gaming’ (ie not solitaire, minesweeper, sudoku, those puzzle games on MSN) is a field dominated by men, and likewise, so is their production. I’m studying computer game art in university, and I do a lot of classes with people studying other parts of video games (programming, design, music). I’m one of.. oh.. eight to ten girls, out of about 300 students in those fields at this particular university. Even my tutors have said that women really are a rarity in that field.
Meanwhile, the author of the original post, My Mind Is Lost, has a set of self-portraits on DeviantArt that are pretty awesome. My favorites are “tough guy” and “gothy girl.”
September 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Yep. I noticed that about GI too. Actually when I first started reading GI a few years back there was a female on the main staff, but I let my subscription lapse and by the time I started reading it again she was gone. Kinda sad.
September 24th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Actually, I haven’t got a lot of competition in the world of Minesweeper.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
a while back i was working in games industry writer, and got sick of the very man-centric games coverage. so i started my own print games mag/ zine (http://1up-zine.com) for a gal’s point of view! seems like if you want to get the ladies voice heard, you’ve got to DIY!