Presenter Steve Scruton [SS] discusses women and computer games with me [RB].

Start: 11:45 AM.

• [SS] Now, I want you to think about something: think about computer games. OK? Think about who plays computer games. Well who are you thinking of? Probably the same as me: male? Youngish, man? Scruffy young boy, or boys, fighting over the controllers as they shoot down the latest villain? Well this apparently is the popular impression of the gaming industry. But it isn't doing the computer game companies any good at all. They actually want to reach a wider audience, and more importantly, get more women playing computer games. But this doesn't mean making video games pink and fluffy, or featuring the latest pop idol: they actually want to tap in to what women really want, and to do that, er, they also have to entice more women to work as game designers. So how are they going to do it? A-and will women ever choose virtual reality over reality TV? Well joining us now to explain more is Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, Dr Richard Bartle. Richard, good morning.
• [RB] Good morning!
• [SS] I can understand this is a bit of a problem, isn't it?
• [RB] Erm, well it depends on, er, whose problem you're, you're looking at. Er, it's not, it's a problem for people like Electronic Arts who publish games -
• [SS] Mm.
• [RB] - in that, erm, half the population isn't buying their games so they could double their revenue if they could get people to play who, er, aren't playing, but on the other hand, erm, half the population doesn't watch soap operas, so is it, erm, just a &different strokes for different", erm, whatever the saying is.
• [SS] So are you trying to suggest then that I'm right in my analogy that, that, that women in general watch the soap operas on the TV, and, and, and, and the boys and the men play video games?
• [RB] Well, erm, as I said, it depends on what you mean by a video game. It turns out that, erm, actually many, many women do play video games. Erm, there was a survey last year by the, by the BBC of all people, so we can trust their information, erm, which found out that, er, in the age range 6 to 65-year olds, 59% of all those people played computer games, which is, you know, 3 out of 5 people -
• [SS] Hmm.
• [RB] - and of those people, 48% of them were female. Now the thing is, those computer games that they're playing aren't the ones that you go out and play on a console, or -
• [SS] Ah.
• [RB] erm, go out and play, and sit for four hours playing on your PC every night.
• [SS] So what are they playing?
• [RB] Well they're playing more the casual games, the kind of games that come free with your PC, that you can get over in 5 minutes while you're waiting for something to happen. Er, they'll play games like Tetris, the puzzle kind of games; they'll play like lots of card games, erm, a lot of online poker players are in fact, erm, women. But, the, the problem that we have is that, as a game industry, is that they aren't going out and buying the big, erm, thirty-pound-a-a-shot games. Those have tended to be bought, erm, mainly by, er, teenage boys. Or for teenage boys.
• [SS] Right. So, teenage girls, then? They're, they, eh, does it actually work withthe teenage girls as well, or is it just older women that are do-
• [RB] Well what happens is, erm, a, it's very difficult to talk about these things without being sexist either for or against one sex or, or the other, but in general what seems to happen is, erm, boys grow out of games less quickly than girls do. However, there are certain kinds of games that people don't grow out of, and particularly the er, the massively multiplayer, er, online games which have got an average age of something like 29, 30 for the players.
• [SS] Hmm.
• [RB] And some of these have got 7 million players who play 3 or 4 hours every night, every week, every month, for a year or more.
• [SS] And, and just to confirm, women are playing those games, are they?
• [RB] They are playing those games. Erm, they tend to get involved, erm, by knowing someone else who plays them, rather than just thinking, erm, "oh, this sounds a good game, I like the graphics on there, I'll play that" erm, or "I read a good review on the Internet", it'll be, erm, "come on, why don't you play it, I play it", and then, then you'll sit next to him and they'll sit down and play the games.
• [SS] Is it true though, er, Richard, that most of the games' design, you know, that, the, the electronics boffins, are, are male here, so they are sort of male orientated, these games?
• [RB] Erm, yes it is true, erm, there's a number of reasons for that. Erm, in the, the computer games industry as a whole, erm, you find that there are many women working in the marketing side of it, er, that's completely dominated by women -
• [SS] Hmm.
• [RB] - and a lot of women working in the recruitment side of it, but there aren't many doing the designs and the programming. Erm, there are a, a number of, of factors involved; one of them is that, erm, game designers tend to, to design games that they themselves want to play, on the basis then at least somebody's going to like it, erm, but, er, there are other problems in that, erm, it's alright saying that we want lots of women programmers, but, erm, female programmers are looking at the game industry and think: "you know, they're full of nerds. We don't want to play games, er, we don't want to work -
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] for a company that's full of nerds. So, why would we want to hang around with nerds?". And so, er, it's self-perpetuating. The more, erm, the, the computer game industry is perceived to be full of nerds, then, erm, the less attractive it. it is for, erm, women to come along, so the more nerdish it looks. Erm, -
• [SS] Ss, this -
• [RB] - it's one of those problems.
• [SS] that is really interesting, Richard, because yeah, if you think about a nerd, you do think about a guy, wearing glasses, you know, erm, spends most of his time fiddling with a computer or studing. How comes women have never, have never gone down that road?
• [RB] Er, what, how come women are never nerds?
• [SS] Yeah!
• [RB] (laugh) Er, well, first of all some women are nerds.
• [SS] Are they?
• [RB] None that I'm going to mention.
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] Er.
• [SS] I don't know many!
• [RB] (laughter)
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] Yes, well I, er, I, I'd certainly say none -
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] - but, erm, but yeah, erm, it isn't an entirely male phenomenon, but, erm, it's just one of those, erm, labels that has been attached to the computer games industry. Other creative industries, like, erm, television and film -
• [SS] Mmm!
• [RB] - and so on, they don't have any, erm, any problems with, er, saying, "hey, I work for, I, I create, er, television programmes" people think, ooh, that's quite a, quite a nice job. If you say, "I work in the computer games industry", well, people will think, OK, that's quite a nice job, and you're probably quite a nice person but I don't want to go out with you. Erm, fortunately my wife's a programmer in a bank, so, erm -
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] - I'm alright there, but -
• [SS] (raucous laughter)
• [RB] - but you know the, but in, erm, in general, it's, it, it can be a problem. Er, and, and it, it is, you know, on the whole, er, unjustified. Erm, yes you do get some people there who've got a particularly tunnel vision of what they should be doing with their lives but most people, you know, are well-rounded individuals who happen to like computer games and want to express themselves -
• [SS] Hmm.
• [RB] - through computer games because that's the medium in which they've spent a lot of their formative years.
• [SS] Ah, I, I know there's, there's a report, the University of Derby that had no female applicants at call for it's, it, it, for, at all for its computer games course. Er, is it, Es, is this similar in, in Essex? University of Essex?
• [RB] Erm, no, we do get female applicants, erm, and we do get female undergraduates, er, coming to our computer games course. Erm, that's in part because we, er specialise in a particular kind of computer game, the, erm, massively multiplayer ones that I mentioned earlier.
• [SS] Ng, ng.
• [RB] And those are, erm, far more social, er, than your, your regular shoot-em-up, dismember the corpse and steal the boots kind of game. Erm, these are games which have got, erm, more interaction between people, they feel more like a world, you can do what you like in them, you're not forced to play a certain way, er, and as people are growing up playing computer games and they get older it becomes part of their, erm, their culture, so they know about these things, and those are the kind of games which once you've stopped playing your first-person shooters and your little Super Marios and things, those are the kind you, you like, graduate to, erm, as you get older. So, erm, we, at Essex we're a, erm, a bit of a special case in that regard. Erm, I do know that other universities have similar problems, erm, with, what we've tend to find, erm, is that there are lots of, erm, or a good proportion of applicants for things like graphics and animation are, erm, female, because that's something that doesn't seem nerdy.
• [SS] It seems to me, Richard, as though there's a great opportunity for, for women, for, especially for younger women here, just qualifying, to, to go down this, this road, because there's money to be made?
• [RB] Erm, there is money to be made, but if you really want to make money from programming you should go on and program nuclear power stations, not computer games.
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] Er (laughter), er, there, there are some work practices which are, er, female-unfriendly, erm, like they always change the deadline so that you, erm, never have enough time to finish so you always have to work late, and that doesn't get along with people who've got other things in their life apart from programming. But, erm, on the whole it's, it's a good thing - the only thing, the only problem is that if you want to design computer games for women, the worst thing that you can say, the worst thing you can tell a woman is that this computer game was designed "by women, for women", because that's basically saying, erm, you don't want to play this, this is not the kind of thing you would want to play -
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] - you want (laughter), you're being specialised out for your gender, we're be - we're patronising you. And in the past, this is what the computer games industry's done, they've thought, well, you know, we don't know what women want, so let's get some women!
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] And the women saying, well we know what we want, erm, but sadly, erm...
• [SS] They don't!
• [RB] (laughter)
• [SS] (laughter)
• [RB] (laughter) Er, well I'll tell you that hasn't been the, er, the experience. Er, there are some some, things that, the, the, recently they brought out a pink Playstation. Now that isn't something that is going to attract girls to play computer games.
• [SS] No, you're quite -
• [RB] They're not going to think, "I'll play it now, I didn't like those black ones, oh, no" -
• [SS] (raucous laughter)
• [RB] What they're going to think is, "hey, that's nice, you know, they, they know we exist, they acknowledge we exist, they've given us these nice, erm, pinky ones, let's go get them in, erm, in a kind of, erm, post-modern irony kind of thing. So, it's not going to, erm, attract new gamers, but it is going to sell a few more playstations, because, "hey, you know, it's, it's pink!".
• [SS] Yeah, and I, I'll think it probably become a collector's item in years to come. I'll have to leave it there, Richard, we're out of time. Great to talk to you. Dr Richard Bartle from Essex University, University of Essex.