Widget Talks to Special Guest: Games Artist, Valériane!

Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing French video games artist, Valériane.  She will be discussing her career as a games artist and illustrator, what it is like to be a woman in the industry, and what can be done to attract young girls to video games.

Hi, Valériane!  Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m 32, of the feminine persuasion, French, of average height and chubs, not really girly but working on it and a game and comics artist.

I first wanted to make a living as a cartoonist, but happen in a job in games purely by accident, and decided to stay in the industry.

I have a varied education, as much in traditional art (at Emile Cohl School in Lyon) as communication (Bellecour School, same city) and 3D (Supinfocom School, Valenciennes).  I’m doing a lot of self teaching, especially concerning software imaging.

Tell us about your gaming background. 

I started playing video games when I was a wee little thing.  I used to play with Duckhunt on the NES (the dog’s laugh plagued my nightmares), but also Zelda and Mario.  Then followed the Super NES with all the adventure RPG games (I’m still in love with Secret of Mana), the Playstation 1 and 2, Gameboy and DS.

Nowadays, I’m more interested in PC games, WoW, Dragon Age, Facebook’s casual games, point and click games… it varies!

It’s hard to play and be productive as a freelance graphic illustrator, so I have to reduce my gaming time and only play on weekends.

I love adventure and RPG games, and I have always been a fan of Final Fantasy and other Square creations. I also have a soft spot for retro game like Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore and all the old adventure RPG games of the SNES.

What motivated you to work as a video games artist?  Have you always pursued a career in the gaming industry?

In all honestly, I always wanted to draw for a living, but until I discovered Final Fantasy 7, I hadn’t realized I could be working in games art.  I wanted to be able to create characters and tell stories, and at the time 3D seemed to be the only solution for working in the industry, so I tried to do study in 3D animation.  Afterward, I had been hired as an illustrator for a company of casual Flash games.  Starting from here, I worked for a DS and Wii company, and an online game company, both targeted for young girls.

What was your main role as a video games artist?

I was an illustrator.  Many of the games I worked on needed still 2D illustration of either characters or background.  I also did a bit of 3D, some GUI, packaging for games, flash animation and web-design.

Was there a distinct ratio between the number of men and women in the company that you worked for?  Did it affect your perception of the gaming industry?

It depended on the company.  I worked for a big company (around 80 employees at the time) where men and women were somewhat balanced. There were more men in the technical aspect of work (programming, sound and art department) and more women in the help-desk and secretarial department.  In the smaller studio, there was much more imbalance.  I once worked in a company where I was the only full-time female employee, except for the cook and the part time secretary.  At my last job, there were two women (one in art, one in programming) to a dozen men, but I know they had recruited a lot of women recently to work at the help-desk.

But based on my experiences, and a few of my friends in the same industry, I feel there is a lot more men than women in the video game industry, and women’s jobs are more in art (though, not that much), secretarial and communication.

Were you ostracized in any way by your work associates?  If so, do you believe it was because of your gender?

Ostracized may be a strong word, but I was considered as “no fun” by some of my co-workers. Mainly because, well, male humor. I’m a bit impervious to gallows humor, dick and ball jokes, racist and sexist puns. I’m also very work focused and had trouble concentrating in a noisy open-space work place.  Now it’s more a personal preference than a gender characteristic.  I’m pretty sure I would have been a very boring man too.

But I know that, at least in one of my jobs, I had been hired only because I am a woman.  My co-workers told me they wanted a female point of view about the game for young girls they were doing.

Let’s be honest, I have been a tomboy for most of my twenty one years of life.  I played video games, loved my Lego technique and Mechano toys, read super-heroes comics and manga for boys…  My taste in games go more toward fighting evil with a lot of explosions, than raising my pink pony and dressing her in flowery skirt.  I wasn’t sure my point of view would have been very feminine.

How wrong was I.

I still remember a picture, drawn by one of my co-workers, of a delicate ballerina in an elegant pink tutu, tying her ballet shoes with all the grace and distinction of a war-hardened trooper putting on rangers.

So I gave my “feminine” point of view about elegance, about colors, about game mechanics, about common sense sometimes, and most of the time it was ignored because of (understandable) time or technology constraints, or because the project was “just a game for little girls, they wouldn’t see the difference”, end quote.

I’m still upset about that one.  Not only because it was insulting to the intelligence of little girls, but because it was said in such a defeatist tone.  It was insulting to the work we were doing.  ”Why bother making good work or getting invested in the project?  They won’t see the difference anyway.”  The studio shut down a few months later.

What is your opinion of video games aimed at girls, particularly young girls?

Could and SHOULD do better.

Games for young girls are marketed the exact same way as toys for young girls, that being : The same old thing, but pinker.

Whatever the video game is, it’s often a variant of playing doll, playing mom, playing with ponies, playing fashion model, playing dancing star, etc… Let’s have an example.

We invited young girls once at the DS game studio for beta testing our game and I ended up talking with them about the kind of game they wanted to play.  I had a lot of answer for “wannabe” games. Wannabe air hostess, wannabe dancer, wannabe cook, wannabe interior decorator, wannabe pet owner, but once introduced to these kind of games, the kids got bored.

And went to play football.

With brooms.

So what’s the problem exactly?  The games being boring?  The games being badly done?  The kids being sick to death of the penultimate “pink pony ballerina makeup star happy shiny game”?  I think it’s a bit of all that.

Poor quality, poor interest, and overproduction of the genre.

Don’t get me wrong.  I personally don’t like the “wannabe” game.  I think it’s as stereotyped as the old pink tea set.  But, a well done “wannabe” game, with real game mechanics, a well thought out scenario and a likable, non-pinky-stereotypical-blond-ditzy main character, can get girls more interested in games.  Do a tea set game if you want, but do it WELL.

Do you believe gender segregation is a necessary marketing ploy in the gaming industry?

I’m not sure it is a good idea.  Sure it could get little girls interested in video games, but once passed the “games for little girls” step, what are the options?  Are there games for teenage girls?  Games for young women?  Games for older women?  It will lead to a hyper-specialized category of game which will be probably have the same problem as existing games for girls: stereotyped and unsuitable to women’s wishes.  Besides, a “niche” game will not be successful enough to be commercially viable.

What changes would you like to see in video games to attract more girls to play?

Stop thinking a game for girl must be pink, far too easy, or simple.

Ok, I’m overreacting. A game for girl can be pink, but I’m a bit repelled by a game pinker than the inside of a uterus. I have enough of my own, thank you very much.

I have friends, girl gamers too, who love pink.  There is a lot of giggling about dresses in WoW and bitching about uncoordinated armor sets, but that doesn’t stop our shiny palatank to charge head on on Yogg Saron (and finish him single handedly), or our troll huntress to have the best DPS of the raid.  We go raiding, sure, but we go raiding in style and still kick ass.

Now WoW is more for teenagers or grown women.  I would not sit a ten year old in front of this game, especially one who never played one before.

But what could interest young girls in video games?

Interacting with the game should not even be on the list, but I tested games for girls where we had pages and pages of text to read, followed by three clicks in a boring subgame and again, text and text and text.  BORING.  It’s a video game!  Every one of your action should have an immediate reaction on screen!  Explosions, ponies dancing, sparkles everywhere if you want but action = reaction.

Girls can be as competitive as boys. Having a high-score or an achievement is as satisfying for a girl as for a boy.  So yeah, blasting off aliens may not be most girls’ thing but exploring a world, discovering secret path, hidden treasure, collectible achievements?  Bring it on.

Believable scenario is also a good way to gain girls’ interest in games.  There must be a captivating story with interesting characters, evolutive storyline, choice for the player impacting the story (again: interactivity is the key).  It doesn’t need to be “Game of Thrones” either. “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” is not going to be nominated for the Emmy Award, but it’s captivating, the characters are well defined and a game in the spirit of the show would be an instant hit.  Add in the possibility to make your own pony and girls will be all over the game.

What do you think would be the best way to attract girls to pursue a career making video games?  Are you optimistic about the future of girls in the gaming industry?

The first step is to tell girls that they can work in video games, that it’s a possibility.  That you are not going to mock them by saying they’re going to make a “girly” game even if it depicts Cthulhu at his worse.

I think there is going to be a lot more women working in games in the future.  There is a whole trend of women gamers, girl geeks, sisterhood of the nerds who can only inspire young girls to follow their footsteps.

But the first step is getting them interested in games, and we’re still working on that one.

 

Games Made Easy…Too Easy

I have returned from a long break from blogging due to being busy over the Christmas period and such.  I probably would have written something sooner but I’ve been too bummed out with this head cold I’ve been suffering for the past two weeks.

Firstly, I’d like to mention that upon returning to WordPress, I’ve noticed a spike in my page views this month.  Some sort of WordPress wizardry allows me to see the search terms to which people have happened upon my blog.  The top search term is “Dahvie Vanity” and for some reason this does not surprise me.  Other terms however, include things like “Lara Croft bondage” and “Skyrim porn”.  If you have found my blog by using similar search terms, please be assured that I am judging you.

Judgement Owl judges you

Moving on, I’d like to talk about a topic I’ve been mulling over for a while.  It’s not an original topic, but I’d like to swing a different perspective on it.  It’s something that any veteran gamer will agree with and it’s that video games these days are too easy.  Now there is a merit to this in that it opens up a market that simply didn’t exist in the past.  Many old school console titles required the player to survive an entire level without dying, or they would have to start all over again.  This usually meant dedicating hours at a time to video games.  Nowadays, we are given rechargeable health and an abundance of checkpoints, and while I know that game designers’ hearts were in the right place with this generosity, I can’t help but wonder if we are now being too spoiled or too pampered by video games.

Most games, shooters in particular, have a difficulty setting, and generally “Hard” mode means more enemies, less power-ups.  But I’m not going to talk about these types of difficulty mechanics here and discuss something I’m a little more concerned about.  There’s an awful lot of hand-holding in today’s video games.  I find that if I need to stop and think, for even the shortest time, about what I need to do to progress through a level, the game very intrusively butts in with a glaring hint.  Gee, thanks.  It’s like working on a Sudoko puzzle with someone looking over your shoulder and saying, “No, you can’t put the nine there, it will clash with the other nine.  Heavens, what are you doing?  Do you know what, just give it to me, I’ll do it right.”  Indeed I do find it condescending when the game thinks I’m too stupid to figure something out for myself.  Hints are fine, but not those that tell you exactly what to do.

What I used to like about games was figuring out their mechanics.  After Duke Nukem 3D was released, I used to use the action key excessively in every game since, just to see what was interactive.  Now I don’t even bother because if an item doesn’t glow, jingle or display a giant green triangle when my character stands next to it, then I know it’s not interactive.  Where’s the fun in that?  What’s the point in a game that practically plays itself?  Playing video games has become such a passive activity that it’s really difficult to gain a sense of accomplishment from them.  The stereotype of the mindless zombie gamer may become a reality if video games continue this trend.

To contrast the differences between a current generation game with an older one, I’ll use an example based on my own experience.  My favorite game genre is probably action adventure or puzzle platformer (usually both go hand in hand), so I was quite excited about Uncharted when it was first released, mainly because it wasn’t the millionth sequel of a 90′s title.  I thoroughly enjoyed Uncharted despite some of its flaws.  However, there was one pet peeve I had about it that I refuse to forgive it for.  In a game in which you play an adventurer, you are somewhat discouraged from adventuring.  Like I said before, I enjoy checking a level out, looking for pick-ups or interactive objects.  So when I spend a little extra time searching for the treasures scattered throughout Uncharted, I am often nagged by the secondary characters to hurry up.  Gah!  Shut up and let me explore, dammit!  They even give away the solution to the next puzzle before I have a chance to look at it.  I actually don’t recall solving an Uncharted puzzle by myself because either the characters told me what to do, or the solution is in Drake’s notebook.  Come on, Naughty Dog, give your fans a little credit here.

Make the statue look like this picture. As tough as Uncharted puzzles get, unfortunately.

I have recently started playing Ico, which has been re-released with Shadow of the Colossus on the PS3.  I had never played Ico when it was initially released in 2001, so I suppose my first realization when I started playing was that this game made me sit up straight and pay attention.  There was no tutorial.  There was very little dialogue.  Nothing glowed or jingled or pointed me in any direction.  It was just a young boy and girl alone in a castle and it was all up to me to help them escape.  And this is what I missed about games: the freedom to explore the environment and to tinker with objects until the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.  The game depended on you to unravel it, rather than you depending on the game.  There is nothing more satisfying than logically connecting the elements of a level to progress through a game.

Today, there are few immersive titles that let you think for yourself, apart from maybe Portal and some Xbox Live Arcade games such as Braid.  Why is this?  Why are we spoon-fed in-game walkthroughs?  Why have games devolved from immersive experiences to passive interactive stories?  I had considered the possibility that this generation of young gamers will only play these types of games because anything without hand-holding would be too difficult for them.  I remember an occasion at work where a mother wanted to exchange Lego Indiana Jones because her 8 year old boy could not figure out what to do in it.  Even the mother said she could not figure out how to play it.  Lego Indiana Jones.  With a PEGI of 7.  I’ve played Lego Indiana Jones and heck Tetris is harder than that game.  What has happened to gamers?  I was playing Duke Nukem at 9 years of age and today not even an 8 year old and his mother could figure out Lego Indiana Jones.  This goes back to what I said about being spoiled by video games.  When we’re so used to games hinting and nudging us in the right direction, anything that encourages thinking for ourselves is suddenly off-putting.  Feel free to prove me wrong here, this is something I’m rather upset about.

Lego Indy - It's not for kids, apparently.

So in conclusion, I’m all for making games easier to appeal to a larger market.  My vision of a perfect world is where everyone has some interest in video games.  My problem is when video games start to become so dumbed down that they lose what we loved about them in the first place.  Like I said, what’s the point in a game that plays itself?