Portal designer: 'We need to change the makeup of our industry'

I am in no way an expert like Kim Swift but in my humble opinion her makeup is just fine. Women who over do it tend to look like the Joker, only crazier.

What a myopic view of parenting. Instead of pushing my daughter to fix the sexist and juvenile game industry, which looks like counseling for life-long unhappiness, I would rather encourage her to exercise, use good judgement, and avoid listening to flabby, game-obsessed preachers. The meaning of life is not video games. If my child was male, should I dedicate his life to fixing the daycare industry? "Son, women rule child care centers, which is sexist, so I want to you to follow your dreams and take over the nearest nursery." Here is healthy advice, which works for both boys and girls: Making video games is dead-end drudgery. Examine the economy to discover better jobs in high demand. Learn the necessary skills to earn big money. Work smart, stay fit, and play games only to relax.

I agree that people should give a shot at following their dreams. But it is unlikely that an industry can change. The videogame industry will be lucky to survive. When the worldwide economy is bad. The first thing to go is spending on Videogame consoles and games.

Follow your dreams but have a back up plan. 99% of all dreams do not come true. Videogame school is expensive, There may not be an Industry much longer. So have a Plan B. While you follow your dream of creating videogames.

that's nice

I want to be a footaball playing astronaut king in space!!

Here's an idea, Ms. Swift: if you want more equality, then practice what you preach. Instead of just focusing on if you are inspiring girls, try inspring boys as well and motivating them to follow their dreams as well. You'd be surprised how many boys out theire don't get that encouragement.

Yes, parents should tell their children that they can "accomplish" anything, and that everything will be rainbows and unicorns and that whatever hardship they face is due to their diversity and a matter of wrongful discrimination. Very inspiring. 

("Accomplish" probably signifies asking for candy or whatever by complaining in some Twitter campaign [#1MoreCandy; #2EveryoneIsSoMean; #3ThisParkingCarHitMe; #4I'llHoldMyBreath/RunAway]. True job skills and personal virtues.)

This doesn't necessarily fully go against Ms. Swift; for that it would've been requisite to read her blog entry.

Everybody's missing the point here.  Yes, there should be more diversity, and yes, most women in college seem to eschew the math classes that advanced programming relies on.  SO, make a development language that takes the math out of it and does things in an intuitive manner.  A Visual DirectX, for instance.  Forget about window instantiation and matrix math - make them done behind the scenes, while you click on objects and set incremental movement rates.  No matrix transforms involved, just tell the object to rotate in these directions at this framerate.  Get the advanced math and the obscene programming language constructs out of the way, and everybody (including myself) will start programming games.  It will be a game renaissance, at last.  I tried to learn DirectX several times, but I couldn't even get a window to pop up, even with the textbooks available at the time.  You have to instantiate object after object after object just to get a window created...that's not necessary for creativity, so push that into automation and create human language equivalents.  Click on "Create Window", then set that window's properties, rather than type all that crap in (and worry about typoes, backwards lines of code causing crashes, linking libraries, etc).  Make it easy, and people will use it.  Kickstarter the damn thing, please.  /soapbox

The truth is not every one can make games because the suits control the industries. Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all have a closed platform.

MS will let you on the Xbox if you pay up. But they're even trying to close up Windows.

Apple has a closed iOS platform but they'll let you on if you pay up. Though you'll more likely get sued by them for some basic feature they claimed to be the inventor of.

Forget about Activision or EA sponsoring your poor ass. If it isn't COD or some other water down sequel they don't want to publish it. 

Long story short, there is a lot of freakin red tape everywhere. And that is after you get over the hurtle of learning how to program. 

Step 1) Use strong bait words such as 'sexism' to get people passionate about a so called issue.

Step 2: Get more females into the industry to help make games more appealing to females.

Step 3: Get a crapload of new female customers.

Step 4: $$$

I just wanted to say that Kim Swift is extremly cute

As for the article, don't think anything she said is wrong, or even that controversial. 

What she said was neigh the most sensible suggestion i've read in a while whenever this topic comes up. 

Very confused right now...... Didn't GS and other websites hype up Swift's involvement with "Quantum Conundrum" almost all damned summer? Why is she still being referred to as the "Portal Designer"?

It would be awesome if a developer made a game that let young people develop their own game. Starting with a choice of several game types. With the concept of involving both girls and boys.

Theoretically, if school funding and education were properly managed, elementary school students everywhere could be learning basic programming. This would create levels of progress we haven't seen before, because in today's society kids either don't learn to program at all or start in high-school, which is kind of late.

For game publishers and developers, I don't see how they can do anything about this. Making innovative, polished games under budget and on time is hard enough but you can't be hiring people based on gender before considering what counts: Skill and vision. More women are going to college than men. By 2020 its going to a 60% to 40% advantage in that regard. The important caveat is that almost none of them are going into fields that are important to the software and hardware industries. Newly registered Math, Physics, and Computer Science majors are more than 90% male. You know what majors women dominate? Psychology and Education. We are going to have an army of therapists roaming around. The only thing that might be good for in gaming is working HR talking some developers off the ledge during crunch. I agree that a diverse staff can positively effect a project, but forcing the issue isn't going to be good for anyone. As for sexism, there is 1 easy answer: No tolerance policies enforced without regard for who is at fault. That will stop it faster than desperately plugging in female employees into positions they aren't qualified to fill.

We're still talking about this stupid hash tag????   What is it with this whining about diversity?  I don't hear guys whining about the fact that the wait staff at Hooters isn't diverse enough.  I don't hear girls complaining that there isn't enough diversity in firefighters or construction workers?

Working on games requires alot of time spent in front of computer trying to complete one single task.  Women simply don't like to spend all of their efforts doing only one thing.  Women like to mutlitask and are actually MUCH better at it then men.  Men like to focus on only one task at a time.

Truth is, women should be ruling the world, while men should continue to work at building the world.  

I own two of Kim's games, I hope she continues.

If only the world worked in a happy everyone is special and important way. Unfortunately the world is harsh, and unforgiving. People get placed in situations that crush a dream everyday. From the mom who can't feed their kids and strips to take care of her babies, to the man who threw his dreams away to support his family.

People in a good place in life are the only ones who can afford to think this way.

I love Kim Swift is my platonic love :$ xD

When people expect the world to change so that everyone agrees with their way of thinking, those people get let down 100%. Just be yourself and look for your place in society, the world is not going to change for you or me.

LOL, well I don't know what diversity has to do with gaming but for certain I hope it is a reference to diversity in the way of games, and not some political/social agenda having it's rusty harp strings plucked...

I don't think there's as much sexism in the world as some people say there is. The reason there are more men in one kinda job and women in other kinda jobs is based more on gender strengths and weaknesses. A clear example of this is women nurses and male construction workers. Of course there are exceptions but they are a small percent of those industries. Now more then ever before in history is there equality in the workplace. Sadly this is not true in certain countries like India where rape seems to be looked at as a boys will be boys activity, it's good to see that there is now some strong protest against that kind of thinking in light of the horrible rape and murder of the young woman on the bus in India. Some people just like to whine about imagined let downs and I know from personal experience that kind of thinking can get out of control very easily. Things are not always as bad as they seem but when a person feels mad or scared reason go's bye bye.

I'm so tired of people saying that ''you can do anything you want if you want it''. It's a false statement. Most of those crazy things we would like to do(doing games, doing music, acting, etc) for a living are extremely high risk. Yes, everything is in fact possible but that definitely doesn't mean that everything will happen. Therefore, if you want to make games, consider getting a solid low risk job first and then you can attempt to build your dream part time. This greatly lower your chance of wasting your life.