GirlPowered! adds to game camp’s robust offerings
When IU’s Game Development Camp launched in 2013, there was a notable presence missing among the registered campers: girls.
At the end of the each game camp week, director Chabane Maidi would host a celebration for the students to present their final projects, games they had designed, to their families. Maidi noticed that among the audience, there were several sisters taking an interest in what their brothers had created. They seemed engaged, passionate, and excited about the game design content. But they weren’t involved.
Now in its fourth year, Game Development Camp, organized by The Media School’s game design program, has found a way to alleviate the discrepancy between the number of male and female students registered for the weekly programs.
GirlPowered!, a camp created exclusively for female students interested in game design, debuted the first week of Game Development Camp’s four-week run.
“The only way to change the way women are treated in the industry is to get them more involved in it,” said Juliet Roberts, Game Development Camp’s assistant coordinator and the primary organizer for GirlPowered! “Getting them started early ensures that they are going to develop the same skills at the same time as their male competitors.”
Increasing the female presence in the game industry is not only a central theme of GirlPowered!, but also 2D, 3D, advanced 3D camp and Art Weekend, the other programs the camp offers that also drew female participants.
With the push to attract more females in science and technology, making spaces comfortable and welcoming is one way to draw them in. Another is to introduce young girls to role models such as Kim Swift, a video game designer at Valve, a game development and distribution powerhouse. She visited the camp to share her insights about finding her footing in a predominantly male-dominated industry.
According to Swift, girls need to be more visible.
“I think that’s a major issue,” Roberts said. “The more they are seen doing the same things boys are doing in the gaming industry, the more they’re going to be respected and accepted.”
Having more females in the video games themselves is another way to break down perceived barriers. Students in the 3D and GirlPowered! camp had a video conference with Sam Barlow, video game director best known as the writer and designer of Her Story.
Designed to mirror a series of real life police interrogations, Her Story allows players to uncover a mystery surrounding the female protagonist by keying in clues and unearthing video files. Barlow’s experimental and innovative game has been well received by the industry, earning the grand prize at the Independent Games Festival Awards this spring. Maidi said IGF is the Oscars of the gaming world.
Barlow said he has been encouraged by the positive reception regarding his choice to showcase a female lead, although the decision for him was an easy one. He wanted to share a fresh story with a unique perspective, and one way to do that in video games is to use a female protagonist.
“As a representative of the white male population of video game developers,” Barlow said, “I could either choose to resign or I could choose to promote diverse characters and work with other creators, which is what I choose to do.”
The emphasis on a compelling narrative within the design of Her Story directly applies to the content Maidi and Roberts wanted to emphasize during the GirlPowered! week.
While much of the content offered through the girl-exclusive program is the same as the other camps, lessons are specifically tailored to focus on storytelling and character development, which Roberts said are of particular interest to the female game design students.
“I love the story component,” said Gwen Jarrold, 12, a GirlPowered! participant. “I get to experience something different than my own life.”
While the inaugural year for GirlPowered! didn’t meet the minimum capacity, Maidi and Roberts pooled available resources to bring the camp to fruition. There were seven girls registered in GirlPowered! this year, and others in both the 2D and 3D camps.
Roberts is passionate about fine-tuning marketing efforts for GirlPowered!’s second year, but the payoff is already apparent among the girl gamers.
“At school, it’s mostly guys that are playing games,” said Jarrold. “It’s nice to be around people that have the same interests.”
Roberts said her hope with this year’s addition of GirlPowered! is that her female students are inspired by what they’ve learned and that they feel brave.
“I’m hoping they are going to get a sense of teamwork,” she said. “There’s power in numbers, and we have to help each other out.”
Teamwork through a hands-on experience has been the foundation of Game Development Camp since its inception. While the camp continues to expand to meet the needs of the students, Maidi’s initial desire to offer skills-based training to students with varied levels of experience holds constant.
“I have been to other game camps, but this is the first one where they actually lead you,” said Seamus Cherry, 12. “They don’t just open up a Word document and tell you to have at it.”
Students may attend as many weeks as they like, and many come back year after year. Like several students, Raymond Labban, 16, said the training he received last year from Game Development Camp has positioned him ahead of the field this summer.
“I feel like I have a head start working on my game this year,” Labban said. “I love coding my ideas and making it function. Game development is something I’ve really taken an interest in, so being involved in a camp like this is an offer you can’t pass up.”
Diverse levels of ability among the students is what makes the teamwork aspect of game design so beneficial. Students aren’t required to have any coding experience at all; in fact, that’s the goal of the camp, to help everyone learn new skills by making a game.
“No two kids are similar here,” said Kerry Norris, an instructor at Game Development Camp and a senior game design major at IU. “Some are building from the ground up, and some have been here before.”
Regardless of the duration and intensity of their immersion in the game development world, Norris is impressed.
“These kids are really good,” Norris said. “It’s terrifying to see them make stuff that took me about a month to learn. It is truly amazing to see how veracious they are and how much they want to keep doing this.”
Barlow shared a similar reaction with regard to how these skills could translate into future successes.
“Everyone is one step ahead of younger me in knowing that this is something you can make a career of,” he said.
But for now, Game Development Camp is largely the highlight of these potential future designers’ summers.
“There was a camper that sent in a handwritten note to our counselors that said, ‘This has been the best week of my life; Thank you for all that you’ve done,’” Norris said.
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