Game Girl Workshop is a short and intensive workshop where young girls are inspired to have fun with technology. The girls get introduced to audio, graphic and coding programs in order to build their own computer game – based on their own imagination and experiences.
The girls go through a brainstorming process, where they come up with a game idea, they learn to create all content themselves, and build a playable, and also very importantly they learn to collaborate as a team.
Interactive entertainment is tomorrow’s culture.
Women’s voices must be represented in our cultures.
Yet women are overwhelmingly underrepresented in the games and tech industries.
95 % of game programmers worldwide are men.
The percentage of women working in technical fields and the percentage of women earning computer science degrees are not only low but are both declining.
22% of game developers worldwide identify as female, 1.5% as transgender, and 1% as other. And these numbers fall further when only creative roles are considered: 10% in game design, 11% in visual arts, 10% in audio, and 5% in programming.
At Facebook, 33% of employees worldwide are women. Women’s representation in technical roles is 17%. At Google the representation is almost the same. 31% of employees worldwide are women, and 19% of technical employees are women.
In America, in the 1990s, 35% of people working in computer science-related professions was 35% and is now 25%.
In Europe, 26% of computer science degrees went to women in 1998, and 18% went to women in 2012. In the USA, 27% of computer science degrees went to women in 1998, and is between 14% and 18% now.
The decline in working in technical fields and in studying technical subjects both seem to be linked to the messages in media, advertising, and pop culture about geek culture. This tells us that girls making games are revolutionaries!
In a Game Girl Workshop not only do we teach the girls how to code, but we are teaching them the various different disciplines of game creation. Graphic design, sounds production, game design and project management. Furthermore they learn to work together in a group, and to cut down on the scope of their project in order to finish the game on time.
Game Girl Workshop is not only about creating games. It is also a crash course in a collaboration process – just like in a real life work scenario. Through the application of standup meetings and dialogue, they learn the skills of collaboration and time management.
Nevin Erönde and Andrea Hasselager began Game Girl Workshop as a response to the significant lack of women working in the games and technology industry. Through positive motivation and inspiration, Nevin and Andrea create a dynamic learning environment in which the teenage girls discover the various methods of game development.