1. Get pumped on what you and other women and girls have achieved!
2. Get inspired by your fave females, whether real, fictional, historical or current! There are SO many.
3. Combine your powers with other women and girls - if you band together, who knows what you'll achieve.
Today, just for Women's Day, here's a spesh online-only Real-Life Read. Lisy Kane, a Melbourne-based games producer, is pretty ah-mazing so I thought you might like to read all about her! She spoke to TG to coincide with the release of Barbie Video Game Hero, in which Barbie is a coder!
My family had a laptop when I was young, a really old one, and we played a lot of video games. I was fascinated with how they worked and didn’t realise they were made by humans – real people! I wanted to create things and made things like pinball machines out of old cereal boxes, toilet paper rolls, and marbles! They worked! They weren't great, but I enjoyed putting them together.
These days, I even make games outside of work - I take part in Game Jam and do behind the scenes stuff. For Global Game Jam, I did some audio coding. I make music on the side! I’m always making stuff.
Making games, you get to work with amazing people. In my role as a producer, I get to see everything – I get to see the code happening, I get to see the art being drawn. I’m the least artistic person in the team! But I love seeing these worlds being created. That’s what I love most about video games. A game I’m working on is a complete fantasy world filled with animals. I get to see that world being put together every day!
As a producer, I make sure the directors, coders, designers and artists all know what they’re doing so we can hit our release date! I got started doing IT in high school, then I studied game design and business at uni. I did work experience at a game studio while i was at uni. I didn’t know games were made in Australia, I thought they were all made overseas in big studios in America. But there are a lot of studios in Australia making games.
If you want to get involved in making games, play lots of games! All types - and then think about why they're fun to use. You can explore work experience at a game studios – see if you can talk to them and ask for advice. Most will be extremely happy and helpful if you reach out to them. Look for free tools like Stencyl so you can make your own games! You don't have to code, you can drag and drop. Play around and make games with your friends - that's even more fun.
The industry of games and tech is mostly male, which means one type of story is being told. Bringing more people, especially girls and women, means more stories will be told. So we need more women to enter the games industry and make cool games for me to play!
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