My goal as a lecturer in game design and game studies has been to uplift and support young women and to the draw attention of my cismale students to existing structures of gender inequality in the industry. I’m happy to announce that I’m now an individual Women in Games Ambassador.
From the WIG Manifest:
Women and girls in the games community are the targets of gender-based toxicity in person and when playing online.
According to the long-running Female Gamers Survey (Bryter), such toxicity is on the rise, and as a result, women gamers are often discouraged from playing the games they love. 72% of female gamers experience toxicity in gaming, often of a dark and threatening kind; even more disturbingly, the abuse doesn’t always stop once players leave the game – some instances manifest into serious consequences outside of gaming. In the 2022 Bryter survey, 1 in 4 women stated they are reluctant to identify as a real gamer, and just 38% of female gamers feel that there are adequate processes in place to deal with toxicity in gaming.
Women in Games advocates for all women, girls and people of diverse gender identities, as well as transgender, gender diverse and intersex women, in order to positively infuence public discourse and bring a culture of fairness and belonging to work and play spaces.
WIG Manifesto https://shorturl.at/qyKOT
Now as a Women in Games Ambassador, I am part of exciting events and organisations on the way. For starters, I had a talk at the “Leading Women in Science and Technology Summit” at Boğaziçi University, about being in the game industry and culture as a woman.
I started my talk with a conversation about how some games are considered “less then”, how the patriarchy considers certain games to be “not a game”. I told them to be confident to state that they play games, even though their male friends think that Sims is not a game. *This discussion is not about Will Wright considering Sims to be a toy more than a game, but more about patriarchy denouncing girls interests.
I talked about game design, game development, and game studies, and how one can position themself within the industry or academia, or both. I did not want to paint a romanticised picture, because I know how excluded one can feel in male dominated spaces. If they have the same experiences, these high schoolers should know that they are not alone. Thus I suggested them to play Gamer Girl, a game I keep suggesting to my both male and female students.
Lastly, I suggested local organisations, such as BUG Game Lab, UNOG Hub and WIG Türkiye, as well as Feminist Design (which is not local but led by my Turkish friend Sinem Görücü). Being part of a community is a first step in embracing and claiming the culture. And to change that culture, which is my main goal 🙂
Together with Feminist Design, we are working on building a comprehensive project about Feminist Gaming: https://www.feministdesign.co/lab
You may check the list of updated WIG Ambassadors from here:
Zeynep Burcu Kaya 