I had a really hard time coming up with my final artifact. There are so many negative representations of Video Games and Gaming in general in the media, but I wanted to see if I could find something positive. That turned out to be a lot harder than I thought; the most recent articles I could find about how/why Video Games can be beneficial were from a few years ago. I then decided to go in a different approach and looked for something that was positive and included Video Games. I found a Newsarama article on Yahoo News about a relatively new scholarship called G.I.R.L. or Gamers in Real Life that Sony Online Entertainment has been awarding since 2008.
Description: This article is very optimistic in nature towards women in the gaming field, and features multiple quotes and interviews by women in the gaming workplace and by winners of the scholarship. It begins by explaining a little about the scholarship itself, what it actually is and how to earn it etc, and then jumps right into the feature of the article which are the testimonies by the women interviewed about how video games and the scholarship have affected them. The article is titled Sony Encourages Female Game Developers Through Scholarship, and yet the article doesn't go into as much detail about the scholarship as you may think. It mostly focuses on the personal experiences of the women, and why the gaming industry needs more women to be involved. It also highlights what the women who have won the scholarship so far have done, and it's nice to see them working on popular projects that I am actually familiar with and not some obscure title.
Analysis: There are only a few patterns that I can see in this article. One is the attention to the women in the gaming industry. Obviously this is going to be a good thing to have since the entire article is about how they need more women to work for gaming companies. Another pattern I noticed is that the article puts a very positive light on all the topics covered. There is little to no negativity in the article at all, instead focusing on all the fun and enjoyment these women have gotten out of playing games, the scholarship, and their work within the gaming industry. A final pattern I noticed is that they seemed to want to make the women interviewed relatable to other girls who play games or are at least interested. They had examples of the women's accounts of when they first knew they wanted to be involved with gaming as a profession, and even examples of what kinds of games they enjoy.
Interpretation: The first pattern, the observation that the article is focused on women, doesn't really need to be explained. The article specifically cites that it will be about women and their role in the gaming industry, so there is very little to Interpret from that. The second pattern though has more in it that could be interpreted. As I said, the article has little to no negativity to it at all, instead focusing on all of the positive benefits of becoming a women in the gaming industry. Having some experience of this myself, as a Game Design and Programming Major not a woman, I can say that it definitely isn't all happiness and fun. Being a programmer takes a lot of time and effort in order to even crack the surface, getting to be a good programmer proved to be way beyond my patience and understanding of the field. What it comes down though is that Sony wants to "sell" this scholarship to the female gamers and the females interested in pursuing this path. This is also the explanation to the third pattern. By including these women who went from typical gamers in school to actually being in the gaming industry they are hoping to relate to the women reading this and thereby influence them to try it out for themselves. It is because of this that Song would not want to put anything negative at all in the information and following article about this scholarship. Doing so would cause a lot of people to second guess themselves as to whether or not it would be worth it to try. I was influenced myself by articles similar to this one to try Game Design and Programming for myself, and like this article it focused entirely on the positives of the gaming industry. However I quickly learned of the negatives when I decided to try it for myself, and these negatives proved to be enough to dissuade me from continuing my studies.
This doesn't relate to a pattern really, but I thought it was most suitable to the Interpretation step. I noticed that the article did mention that the scholarship was actually open to men as well, but most were put off or not aware they could try out for it because of the acronym used for it, G.I.R.L.. I found that interesting that Sony would do this. Why title something with the acronym G.I.R.L. (Gamers in Real Life), have it targeted primarily towards females, but have it open to men as well? I find myself very confused by this, they even mention in the article that a few men have tried for it but didn't make it to the end. Sony should have been more clear with their intentions in the first place and either made it entirely for and about hiring females interested, or making it more ambiguous and targeting both males and females.
Evaluation: All in all I very much enjoyed this article. I am an avid gamer myself (if you couldn't tell by the blog title) and am very much in support of anyone trying to enter the gaming industry whether they be male or female. The article did put a very positive and supportive light on why and how women can enter into a gaming career, and even had testimony from other females who have done just this. The message is very clear, the gaming industry needs more female input as it is very clearly and openly dominated by men. However I was a little disappointed that they didn't include some of the hardships associated within the gaming industry, and that the article seemed to encourage making art for games more than programming or another area. By including the hardships or a career in gaming the article would feel more real, and the examples given by the women would have more weight and credibility to them. By saying that it was through hard work and dedication that they were able to make it this far sounds better then having them seemingly coast right to their dream job. It also seemed a little biased or sexist that the article heavily emphasized an Artistic concentration in the gaming field for women rather then another area. It is known that there are far more women who are in the gaming industry who are artists rather than programmers for example, but by not including more examples and facts about programming it is almost sorting the males and females into categories based on what is expected. While I find it amusing that an article about Female Gamers and Developers is slightly sexist towards the people they are targeting, I think that could have been solved with a little better wording and some more research in the area.
I still enjoyed this article overall and I wish the best of luck to anyone trying out for a job in the gaming field. I myself still hope to get there someday, but in a writing or development position rather than art or programming. Here's hoping that can be accomplished!
Link to article: Sony Encourages Female Game Developers
