Develop Conference 2015 - Being a Mother != the End of Making Games

What is Develop Conference? 

If you’ve not been before, Develop Conference in Brighton is probably the biggest UK developer event.  Amazing talks, free expo and of course fantastic networking opportunities (read parties).  This year marks my fourth conference, and this years felt very different as it is the first where I’ve taken on more of an active role.  Don’t get me wrong, attending the talks can be incredibly insightful and inspiring (check out Rami’s keynote for example).  Even if you just rock up to the bar and chat the day away with fellow developers you can absolutely get a lot out of the three days that is Develop Conference. It’s just this time I decided to sign up for the game jam and put myself forward as a speaker.  

Taking Part

Way back in the year the call for speakers happened and so I threw my name in the hat.  Alex and I put forward a talk on how not to indie, Des put me in for a panel on how being an indie is not easy and I nominated myself as a noob speaker.  Well after the first two talks got rejected, third time was indeed the charm (pro tip here, if you really want to take part put yourself forward as much as possible!).

Closer to the day the announcement for places in the game jam surfaced and as it’s been such a long time since I last jammed (and I already had a babysitter for the week - thanks again Aunty Vicky) I booked places (Alex needed more convincing, but I booked him in anyway).

The Game Jam

So 16 hours is a super short amount of time to make a game, but this is a jam and we’re all about the challenge!  Oli teamed up with us once more and we felt good about having a bit of fun with a silly little game.  So the theme was announced as ‘Pebbles’ and we were off.

Alex was all about using the pebbles as counters and to maybe revive ‘Trowerstone’* but this seemed really dull for me, and as the artist it wouldn’t leave me much to do apart from making the best goddamn pebbles 16 hours can buy… So I put forward the idea of using the pebbles to make tiny golems and BOOM!  Tiny Golem was born.  The POA we settled on was that we would have a box of procedurally generated pebbles with different statistics attached to them - big pebbles were slow with lots of health, small shiny pebbles were fast and flat pebbles were stable - the player would then pick 6 (head, body arms and legs) to create their golem who would then be unleashed on a sand castle.  The golem would attack the castle whilst the castle defended itself with cannons, the aim to destroy as much as possible before the tide came in.  The player would have indirect control over the golem, choosing to be defensive (and slower), normal or charging (fast but vulnerable).

We began.  Oli created the pebbles using shader magic and Alex wrote the animation (all in code, none of these fancy Unity animation tools) and I got onto some UI and sand castle production.  There was pizza and drinks provided (thanks Square Collective for sponsoring!) and by midnight on the first day we were quietly confident that we would get what we set out to do done.  If you’ve not game jammed before, this line of thinking is basically what gets you in trouble.

Next day and the final 8 hours and we had lots of lovely visitors and could see we were going to have to drop some stuff.  So Ken (Wong) was kinda right, he said we would get 45% done, I reckon we managed about 60%.  We also had a fab visit from Luca (Redwood) who gave us loads of coffee (if you want to make friends at a game jam - bring coffee).  So the tide was dropped (because don’t do water in a game jam) it became golem vs. castle and the indirect control was dropped so you really had to choose your pebbles wisely!  But we finished (right on the nose) and have a very playable game!

A very playable game that only went a won!  I knew there would be judging and a prize, but I didn’t realise the trophy would be so nice!  Now we can get the asymmetric multiplayer in where one player builds the castle and another the golem, and more defences, leaderboards and sharing to social media.  If anyone would like to fund the mobile release we also have plans for golem resurrection, gatcha special pebbles and for monetization ;)  

Micro Talk

The jam was a nice distraction from the bubbling fear that was starting to surface as the talk drew nearer.  I maybe didn’t really think this through. I’m not very good at public speaking, I absolutely want to be a positive influence in the games industry and particularly for women and parents, but that means I have to put myself out there, so here I am bidding for a full talk slot at next years conference.

The format for the talk was, a group of new budding speakers had 3 minutes each to talk on one of a collection of topics and then be rated by the audience.  I chose ‘What I Learned by Accident’, which basically gave me license to talk about anything in my indie career as it all began ‘by accident’.  I almost didn’t talk about being a parent and an indie developer, but after a confidence boosting chat with another female game lady dev and on reading an article about ‘mother shaming’ in the workplace (it’s not just games that struggle) I decided to run with it.  

There is a drop in the number of women in the industry in their mid 30s, and we think it is because they are having children and not coming back to the games industry.  The point of my 3 minute rant was we should hire more parents. Why?  Because if you want team members who are not just committed to making good games but also committed to your business succeeding then hire people who have responsibilities outside their work that mean they really, really need to hold down a job!  Obviously we’re not going to want to work overtime, or crunch (because no one does), but to make sure we can leave the office on time we will work harder and smarter in the time we have.  No one multitasks like a parent.  For example, whilst waiting to give the talk, I was texting my sister instructions on how to prepare dinner for Willow.      

Well the talk seemed to resonate with the audience, after all the talks were given and the cheer-ometer had whooped it’s last whoop, I was declared the winner!

So What Next?

Now I have 12 months to prepare to do it all again, but this time maybe stress less about my talk!  So back to work it is, and hopefully some more talk opportunities along the way!  

*A game for another post methinks.

Tiny Red Riding Hood: Dev Diary 01.

So here we go, a dev diary!  I'm going to try and document my first bash at creating a game myself.  Obviously I will have help along the way, I've already had help up to this point, but for the most part I will be flying solo on this.  So episode one of the dev diary - what I intend to do.

Aims

The major force driving this project is that I make something Willow enjoys interacting with, and can learn from.  Also I want to try and make an interactive book app that improves on what's already available.  What this app won't do is replace parent and child time.  There will be no narration, mommy or daddy will still have to read along with Willow and give praise when she gets interactions correct.

Things that I will be keeping in mind throughout the project:

• Short and simple
• As my first run at this, it needs to be short enough and simple enough for me to finish it before getting distracted or disheartened! 
• Fun for Willow!
• This is important as what I think might be fun is probably not entirely in line with what is actually fun for a toddler!
• That it's a learning project
• As much as I would love for this to be my first solo released game, this is my first go!  This is for me to learn and to try and make something fun for Willow, if ultimately I need to throw this one in the trash and start over, that's what I'll do. 

Vertical Slice

Looking forest-y! 

Normally I don't like this approach but there's a couple of reasons why I'm going this route:

• Show and tell.  Brighton Indies meet up is in a week and a bit, I want something to show off!  It's really important to get a broader opinion on what I'm making and I know there are a few parents who attend so hopefully they might have some insight, or if their wee ones are of the right age they might help with some user testing!
• Proof of concept.  Mostly to myself over anyone else, show that I can do this.
• Test the waters with Willow.  I don't think there's such a thing as too young to try and teach Willow, but there may well be too young to get any meaningful feedback!  Will she engage with it?  Will it seem like she likes it?

The section of the game I will be making is what I'm dubbing a 'forest section'.  Story wise Little Red is pretty simple.  Mom sends you off to Grans, you meet the woodcutter or wolf (depending on the version) along the way, you get to Grandma's and the wolf has taken her place, you stop the wolf.  That's it.  Just the 4 beats.  As with the other Little Red Story apps I've played the meat of the 'game play' is in the walk from Little Red's to Grandma's house, or the 'forest sections', and there can be as many of these as I like.

For this vertical slice I will be making a game where you need to collect apples.

Where I am so far  

So far I've started on making the art assets having decided to go for the low poly look.  This means getting back into 3D, and how I wish I was using Maya!  Now Blender is pretty good, and considering it's free, it's actually very comprehensive.  I just wish it was more intuitive!  It took me such a long time to make a simple tree, but once I got my head around Blenders many hotkeys the following tree took a mere hour and a rock no time at all!

Perhaps foolishly this has encouraged me to attempt a 3D character for the game.  Now I know it's going to take me some time to make, rig and animate, but I've gotten much faster with Blender after only a couple of days so I hope that in a weeks time I can have a rudimentary character up and skipping.  As I've said before, this is a learning curve, I'll probably re-do all of the art as I get better.

By this time next week

• A skipping Tiny Red Character
• Forest section, apple tree and apples modeled
• Sample level of picking either red or green apples
• Some basic UI in place    

Wish me luck!

  

Women in Games

I've been taking part in a few Women in Games type things recently, and there's been one major theme throughout; if we're going to have a positive impact on diversity in the games industry we need to talk about it.  So here's me talking about it.

But before we get started on all the good and positive stuff, there's a not so quiet elephant in the room that I'm going to address now.  This post is not about GamerGate.  Maybe that will be a post for another time, but all you need to know from me right now is that I do not support GamerGate and if you have genuine concerns with ethics in journalism, I implore you to adopt a different hash tag.   

Empowerment

Recently Next Gen Skills Academy conducted a survey, of which 40% of the women employed in the UK games industry took part in.  The results from that survey show that 45% of women have experienced barriers to their career due to gender and 16% of the women who took part had experienced bullying from a superior.  

Personally my experience working in the games industry has been amazingly positive in terms of my co-workers and employers.  However, at both Game when I was a manager and at conferences such as Develop Brighton I have had to more than once defend my validity in that space.  At Game I can remember very vividly being asked on more than one occasion if there was a man around who knew about a certain game/console/accessory.  The absolute shock that caused one customer to not only double take but also completely spin on the spot when told I was the resident PS3 expert will stay with me for a long time.  And the number of people at Develop who would assume I worked in HR or PR and would be genuinely shocked that I am in fact a Designer.  One gentleman (who worked for Konami but i don't believe his actions represent his company) told me I was 'far too pretty to be in games development'.  I later found out he made one of the students there feel so uncomfortable that she had to leave.  So there are still dinosaurs in the industry and indeed in the consumer space who feel girls aren't welcome in the tree house, but thankfully this is happening less and less and soon I'm sure we'll only remember when it was an issue.

Yes I'm a gamer, no not a fake one!

Based on the information collected by Next Gen Skills Academy a series of workshops were set up, the first of which was an Empowerment workshop with speakers covering 'Finding Your Voice & Understanding Your Personal Branding' and 'Cultivating your Capacity for Creative Leadership'.

My takeaway from the work shop is that I'm already a fairly empowered individual.  I've been fighting against the boys' tree house rules since SEGA vs NINTENDO was the playground banter, I spent most of my first pay as you go top ups helping male friends complete Soul Reaver and Metal Gear Solid and yes I am buying XCOM for myself not my boyfriend, and no I don't think it'll be harder than Dark Souls so are we done here?  It's not that I would say I'm a confrontational person but I won't let people think I'm less capable at (then) playing and (now) making games.  

The second talk was really useful to me in terms of learning skills for delivering talks to groups of people.  As I said, a theme running through these past few weeks has been we need to talk about this more, especially to encourage the next generation of game makers.  When I was at school I was told that making games wasn't a real job (!), if I can make a difference to any young girls playing games who want to make games in the future I will happily go to schools and show them that they can absolutely do that and it's not just for the boys.  I agree we need more female speakers to step up and get involved by being positive influences, it's why I was happy to talk at the Eurogamer careers surgery, why I wanted to talk at Animex and why I'm putting myself forward to speak at Develop.  So to pick up a few tips on how to do that was very useful indeed.  

Eurogamer, Konsoll and Animex

Unity and Cake

Kerry Turner is an experienced developer and coder who decided to start a meet up to teach a group of her female friends how to make games in Unity.  Kind of like a knitting circle but with laptops instead of knitting needles, retaining the tea and cakes of course. 
 This is a perfect example of how to influence and change the industry (for the better) from the inside by helping empower a group of women to be able to create their own games.  

Aside anything else it's an amazing evening spent with wonderful women, and on top of this we are learning invaluable skills and will (eventually) have a game at the end of it!  I can't thank Kerry enough for setting it up and inviting me to be one of the 'guinea pigs' for the courses content.  I do need to decide what my game will be, so far I'm making a Myst like but I'm not sure that's what I want at the end of this.  What's also very cool is that I get to come home and teach Alex some tricks he didn't know, he's already very upset that my code best practice is better than his.

MCV Top 100 Women in Games

Awesome networking.

So this is the big one.  Making the top 100 women in the UK games industry list!  I was very shocked!  Especially when you read some of the other women on this list.  Putting me up there with Dr. Jo Twist, Gabrielle Kent, Roberta Lucca, Siobhan Reddy and many more industry veterans, studio founders and women who have a profound influence on our industry.

Attending the awards was another really positive event with lots of talk about being strong role models for other women in and coming up in the industry.

So when I told my mom I made the list she asked 'what for, you haven't done anything?' (thanks mom), but it did get em thinking about why I should be on the list, or rather if I should be (impostor guilt).  And you know what, I should be.  I don't think anyone should underestimate just how hard it is to make video games, or rather make successful video games as it is, never mind the fact we completed and released two games within a year AND had a baby at the same time!

I hope my story is inspiring to women in and choosing to be in the games industry.  Yes you do belong here and no having a baby does not end your career if you don't want it to.  I worked on Glyph Quest full time until two weeks before the baby arrived, and even then I was still doing press and community management.  And we continued to work even with Willow crawling around, sitting on our laps and otherwise bothering us for attention.  Full time mum and full time game developer.  

It's not easy, but then anything worth doing never is.