#datorspelsbranschen

I’m doing a talk in a few days about diversity and equality in the industry. The request is to provide tips and tricks about how to survive as a woman in a male dominated environment. Honestly, I don’t a clue. I’m the last person to ask because I keep running into obstacles, behaving in a way that is totally unpalatable to some of the men that I work with, my ideas get credited to other people…

My co-workers and former colleagues can attest to the fact that I often go on rants about the games industry. This is not because I dislike the industry or want to cancel games or because I have a feminist agenda with everything I do (although I do). I go on rants because I think we can do so much better. Project managemen? Yes, we can do better. We can look at other software producing industries…

A thing that’s becoming more and more common in the games industry is design tests, especially for game designers and UX designers. I find there are several issues with this practice, so I’ll go over them, perhaps to my own detriment. I have a tendency to speak out when I perhaps shouldn’t. You – as a hiring company – are asking people to do unpaid work for you. I’ve had people asking me to do…

Triple-A Games Are Not Art

So you might think that this statement is very definitive and absolute and you would be kind of right. You might also wonder if I’m actually serious, because damn, look at all those lovely games out there, with their graphics and their narrative and… yes. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I know I’m right about one thing: If the people behind a game can’t stand up and say – “yes, we intentionally…

It has been a while since GamerGate. In the industry, time has passed. There are companies and developers who no longer were part of that painful and horrific time. They reclaimed Pepe the Frog and have no idea what seeing that frog as an emoji in a conversation is stressful and anxiety inducing. They didn’t see how individuals that were previously pro inclusiveness and diversity turned into…

I’m reading books about game design and game development at the moment. The reason I’m reading is because I actually want to read all those books I bought way back in order to see if they’re any good, really. One discovery that shouldn’t suprise me or bother me is the constant gendering of players as “he”. It is unbelievably common, and despite owning several books on game design, only a few –…

When I started in the games industry I was naïve. I thought it was a meritocracy, that we all had a chance at success. We didn’t. As the years passed, I saw more and more (and younger) men pass me by, getting the jobs, having a much easier time of it. A man would never have to prove he knew what he was talking about. I would, over and over. A man would never have to justify his existence in the…

Where do we start?

People have been asking me, for as long as I’ve been playing games and being a part of the games industry “what do we do? How do we fix this?” That is – of course – a massive question with a complicated answer. I think the first question – and the hardest question to be honest about is – do you really want to fix the poor ratio of women to men in the company? Is this something you actually care…