“It’s something that no one tells you publicly or publicly,” Speer told the Washington Post. “It’s something you hear and absorb over time.”
These subtle reinforcements of gender roles and restrictions about who is allowed to enjoy certain hobbies inspired Speer to start Girls Make Games, a summer camp where girls and non-binary children learn all the basics of games, from coding to art illustration. The camp is organized by Learn District, an educational media company founded by Shabeer and Ish Syed. During the three-week camp course, they work in teams with the goal of creating their own video games for publishing.
This year GMG offered three on-site campgrounds in San Mateo, Seattle, and Bellevue, Washington. Each year, GMG selects the best student project to receive crowdfunding, develop and publish it. Speer said that so far, GMG has released 11 student games, some of which have been shown GMG Website.
The camp was born out of Speer’s own experience in developing the sport. Before she co-founded Learn District with the goal of creating educational video games, she worked in finance, another male-dominated industry. After graduating from MIT, Schapir trained at Merrill Lynch before transferring to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and BlackRock.
None of these places come close to the gender disparity he’s seen in the video game industry, Speer said. When he posted hiring notices for his independent game studio, the applicants were overwhelmingly male.
“When I applied, 90 percent of the men and boys had applied, and this is my dream job,” Shabeer said. “But I’ve never made girls come forward and said I’m dying to make an educational game.”
LearnDistrict eventually grew to eight employees but Shabbir was the only woman. As Shabeer attempts to hunt down eligible women, he encounters resistance from both men and women. People told her that there aren’t enough women working in games, and that women aren’t interested in games. It took five years to impress the sister of Israa Shbeir, a fellow MIT graduate with a degree in computer science. Join the learning area.
Speer attributes this difficulty to a combination of factors, but one of the biggest cultural assumptions is that video games are a male pastime with content aimed at a male audience. If girls don’t play, Shbeir wondered, why do they make educational games that only boys can play? So I started Girls Make Games in 2014 as a research project: What if I asked some female gamers what kinds of games they enjoyed and wanted to see?
“I wanted to get to know them,” Shabeer said. “This is it. Honestly, a social experience.
This social experience has mentored more than 22,000 kids and partnered with industry giants such as Nintendo, PlayStation and Ubisoft. GMG Report 2021. Many campers are now veterans who have attended for years, which makes it a great way to build experience and strengthen their college applications. But this is summer camp. This means friendship and fun.
“The community is honestly one of the best parts,” said Vanessa Mesa, a 15-year-old camper who has attended GMG for five years. “Everyone is very nice. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what you want to do. It’s a beautiful and safe place for everyone to come in, relax and play together.
This year, some GMG students attended camp at Crystal Dynamics’ offices in San Mateo. Crystal Dynamics is the current developer of the Tomb Raider series, which features one of the games’ most famous heroines, Lara Croft, an archaeologist who roams the world. Scott Amos, president of Crystal Dynamics studio, described the developer’s partnership with GMG as an extension of the company’s core values, noting that Crystal Dynamics founders Judy Long and Madeline Canepa are both women. Amos praised GMG as a launching pad for budding game creators, especially those who love games and don’t know how to make their own.
“If you don’t have girls making games, do they know how to get a game engine and start making something?” asked Amos. “Of course, if you know what to look for, you can turn to YouTube. Then you say, is that good? Is this a bad thing? Do I know what I’m looking for? “
GMG students are encouraged to create anything they like. Speer says correspondence is an important part of the curriculum. Rather than pointing out the lack of women in the industry, Speer focuses on the value they bring. If women are subconsciously asked to join game development to level out ranks, they may feel like numbers on a company’s diversity report.
“Constantly reminding them that there aren’t many women in the industry who can’t go the other way,” Speer said. “No, it’s more than that, you know, girls make amazing sports. So we love your game. It excites them.”
She’s an inspiring camper like 9-year-old Rina Fols. Follis is currently enjoying the hit platform game “Stray” and the samurai adventure “Ghost of Tsushima” (in Japanese, no less), but this year at GMG he created his own. His project, “The Amazing World of Cake,” is about three animals trying to collect ingredients to bake a cake while dealing with thieves and mischievous birds. When asked how she came up with the idea, her answer is perfectly in line with GMG’s education philosophy: Make the game you love.
“My friends and I love cake,” Fultz said. “We did it all the way. Also, we used tiger, dog and leopard for the characters because they are our favorite animals.
Speer believes that video games have the potential to have profound, lifelong effects. As a medium, video games can be uniquely enjoyed as a hobby, party icebreaker, competition, or art form. In an episode of VH1’s “I Love the 90s,” John Mayer discussed how video game music heavily inspired his music and the scattered songs from “Super Mario Bros.” Note by note. Speer compared video games to books, in the sense that games have the ability to influence the way she thinks and perspective.
He said it was a strength that should be shared with everyone.
“It makes sense that kids would be drawn to video games, because kids are involved in everything that games are,” Speer said. “If we want to reach people and make a difference, I think video games have a huge social impact that we need to take advantage of collectively. Not just on an individual level, but as a community and as an employer.”