Eugene weekly., September 28, 2017, Page 17, Image 17

GENDER
AND
GAMING
Two women discuss their experience
in the game making industry
RO SA L I E
VILE
BY COR I N N E B OY E R
R
osalie Vile began making games at
age 12 when she got her first copy of
Game Maker, software that she uses
exclusively now when she designs
games. As an indie game designer at
24, she’s involved in all creative aspects of a game’s devel-
opment — from a game’s inception to writing the narrative
and seeing it through to a completed final product. She pro-
grams games and crafts the art and music, too.
“I really like doing different sorts of thing — like mak-
ing the types of games that I would like to see that I don’t
really see being made because they don’t have massive ap-
peal,” Vile says. “I like to make games with a cooperative
nature or with a deep narrative — mostly just experimental
games is what I focus on.”
Vile develops games for fun and enjoys the process. She
sells and distributes them as well, but it’s not her fulltime job.
Although game design serves as a creative outlet for
Vile, she says she faces challenges within the gaming in-
dustry.
“I feel like especially being a queer woman in game
design, in Eugene, which is where I make indie games, I’d
say that the scene here is a bit of a boys club,” Vile says.
While there are opportunities aimed at diverse gaming ex-
periences — at places like Game Pub (formerly Shoryuken
League) in Eugene and XOXO Fest in Portland — she
says, “There have definitely, in the more day-to-day sense,
been more examples of leaders in the community being
less than inclusive of queer women.”
Rachael, who doesn’t feel comfortable using her last
name or the names of her games because she doesn’t want
to receive “horrible messages,” is a two-dimensional asset
production artist. “I draw environment tiles for 2D games.
I draw monsters and character portraits and character con-
cepts and stuff like that,” she says.
Both Vile and Rachael say they’ve felt the effects of
GamerGate. In 2014, women game developers were tar-
gets of online rape and death threats across multiple web-
sites and social media sites. The threads of misogynistic
hate still trend on Twitter under the GamerGate hashtag,
where anonymous gamers whine about women becoming
“famous for doing nothing” because of the coverage wom-
en in gaming received from the media.
"GamerGaters" blame political correctness for the ex-
plosion and justification of threats to women. More recent-
ly, updates published in Vox and Now This about equality
efforts for women in gaming are the subject of taunts on
Twitter.
“That is the one reason I decided to go anonymous.
I wanted to be safe in my own home,” Rachael says of
GamerGate. “I also wanted people to appreciate what I’d
done and not for what I am.”
Rachael says there’s a benefit to being part of the small
indie gaming community. “Everybody knows each other,
so if anybody pulled any shit, they would instantly be os-
tracized. It’s a very close social scene going on, and it’s
professional.”
Currently, Rachael is working on three games, but
doesn’t feel too overwhelmed. “Its not that bad, I just
scribble on something like a madwoman for about an hour
on each project a day and send them off. Then whenever I
get feedback, back I go and mess with it more,” she says.
And her advice for women game designers: “If you’re go-
ing to put it out professionally, go gender neutral or pretend
that you are a guy — if you can stomach that sort of idea.”
She adds, “Get people to recognize your brand as some-
thing that is good, reliable and worthwhile.” She says, for
added safety, women have the option to reveal their gender
after getting a job offer. ■
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