The video game industry uses “holistic” hiring practices to achieve gender parity. There aren’t enough female coders and engineers to achieve a 50/50 ratio of men to women, so the end result is a vast over representation of women in all non-coding positions. That’s why virtually every community manager and narrative designer is female; shoving women into these non-coding roles is the only way that devs can satisfy diversity mandates without completely sabotaging their ability to ship product.
A byproduct of this dynamic has been feminism taking over community management and storytelling at most big game companies. So while the men are typically still the ones who actually build the games, women are now almost exclusively the ones determining characters, story, writing, etc. while also being the ones who communicate directly with players.
It’s sorta like when people are stranded on a desert island, so they start giving people jobs to do, and then someone says “my skills are in management”. Except replace “someone” with an entire fucking gender.
This tracks with my experience as well. They exist, but they are a very rare exception and not worth the risk. I'd rather just have an office full of white guys every time for best results.
The video game industry uses “holistic” hiring practices to achieve gender parity. There aren’t enough female coders and engineers to achieve a 50/50 ratio of men to women, so the end result is a vast over representation of women in all non-coding positions. That’s why virtually every community manager and narrative designer is female; shoving women into these non-coding roles is the only way that devs can satisfy diversity mandates without completely sabotaging their ability to ship product.
A byproduct of this dynamic has been feminism taking over community management and storytelling at most big game companies. So while the men are typically still the ones who actually build the games, women are now almost exclusively the ones determining characters, story, writing, etc. while also being the ones who communicate directly with players.
It’s sorta like when people are stranded on a desert island, so they start giving people jobs to do, and then someone says “my skills are in management”. Except replace “someone” with an entire fucking gender.
This tracks with my experience as well. They exist, but they are a very rare exception and not worth the risk. I'd rather just have an office full of white guys every time for best results.