A while ago I was asked if I was interested in writing a Fireside article about my experiences. This was inspired by my Post GDC Writeup.

Maybe even write my younger self a letter? It’s an interesting proposition since my younger self was out to change the world, and prove everything/everybody wrong. Hardcore naive, but that’s a good thing. My older self envies my younger self for all that motivation. You go, girl! Today, my older self doesn’t care and would like to watch the world burn. My younger self would probably love that about my older self. We make an excellent team!

Before starting, tho… My intention of this article is to offer personal stories, as difficult as they may be, but also offer some positive conclusions and a constructive retrospect. I am not setting out to be negative, or vent, but when discussing this it is hard for me to stay positive. Which brings me to the title of this article…

“So, how’s it like being a woman in tech?”
(“tech” can be substituted for anything else)

There was a period where this was a popular question, and if you were a woman, you’d probably be asked this. This question has always puzzled me because it seems like the kind of thing where the person asking, isn’t really interested in the answer.

Sort of like when you’re asked “how was your day?”, and the proper reply would be “fine, thanks”, or anything else superficially short. Not a lengthy response with how your day actually was.

When asked “How it’s like being a woman in tech?”, I had been tempted to answer with sassy things like “what? do you want me to cry on your shoulder?”, but I don’t because I am a very polite person.

I would equate the difference between a “guy being in tech” and a “girl/woman being in tech” to the woman climbing Mount Everest, where the guy gets to maybe climb some crevice in the Grand Canyon. Once on top the woman will say “wow that was hard, I don’t ever want to do that again”, the guy would respond with “what are you complaining about? you’re on top too!”. You both have to climb something. It’s just unfairly difficult. I base this metaphor on real experiences.

As a woman I have always been treated as a “novelty” for being here. I remember having built a (very cool) web experience for a client, and he was ecstatically telling me how his reviewer friend kept asking “a girl did all that?”, “No! a girl did all that??”. It’s a good example that illustrates something that I have constantly had to deal with.

Being a “girl” on any team has always been treated more like a novelty act, a charity case, or some “feminist thing”.

There had been cases where I show up at the office, and somehow me being there is a feminist statement. Like I’m not really there to work, or something.

In any case, it felt like I never really belonged and my skill set was never really enough. The mentality of my surroundings has most of the time been that my work, code, art, is not up to par with work done by men. Before you say “well it must not have been that good”, let me make the defense that I have been very desperate and tried all sorts of tricks. As soon as I lied, and credited it to some guy, it was suddenly a work of genius.

There was consistently an unbroken pattern that people LOVED my work, but they hated me. The only problem with my work was that I did it. The fact a woman made this suddenly meant it was unusable or unsellable.

I remember submitting my things to festivals (big ones—unrelated to games), and it never got accepted. As soon as I hid behind an anonymous gender-neutral alias, fictional team, or male credit. My work started winning awards.

These are all things a lot of women in tech have encountered, to just “get work” or “get recognition”.

For a very long time I used an alias, or let them believe that I was a guy (since they did this anyhow), just to get visibility.

It hurts a lot seeing how your skill-set will, and can, literally run circles around any male counterpart, but you are living in poverty (because you just can’t get work), and others will literally steal your ideas, or work, put their own name on it, and then it sells. This has happened, and not only to me.

Interesting story… by a rare stroke of luck, I ended up nailing an interview at a very large, (reputable), design firm, using my real name. Someone online, that had worked there, referred me because they thought my work was amazing. The whole team was sending it around, and thought it was great.

As soon as I got through the door, the lead (studio head) that was interviewing me was obviously caught off guard. He shared his thought of my being there was “a joke or something”, before asking me how I pronounce my name because he had never heard it pronounced that way. I guess “Nathalie” could somehow be a guy’s name.

I did not intentionally mislead anyone in this case.

Things went sour really fast. He could barely shake my hand, and the interview degraded into lecturing me about my “attitude problems”, and how “I need to be tougher to make it in this business” (he was right about that last point). We never met before, and I wasn’t there long enough to exhibit attitude or problems. At the end of the interview he asked me, “Will you have trouble working with men?”

He loved my work, and kept commenting on how amazing it was. When it came to me, it was obvious that I was the problem.

This is the pattern my career has followed. I have plenty of stories to support the fact that the tech world has some serious problems.

I am very sorry for the negativity. I am not trying to vent. I am trying to paint a picture of how it is for many women (and has been for me).

On the bright side this has all made me stronger. I am self-taught. To give myself a competitive edge, I taught myself how to program by dissecting code from popular programmers (any open source project I could get my hands on). I taught myself animation, and then I taught myself music. I did this because there was no way I could find anyone that would want to work with me, and I wanted to make work that competes with all the other work that’s winning awards. It gave me good competitive motivation.

Things become painfully difficult when you see how good you are, and how much harder you have to work, for free, while non-female peers (who don’t work half as hard, or good) are flying high.

When I got into this (experimental web development), the scene was very different. Think late 90’s, when the dot-com bubble was a thing, and Y2K preparation was a great industry to be in. My first official “big release” launched in 1999. That’s pretty much when I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. It was all new, and very exciting. The possibilities seemed endless, and web development was not being taught in school. My work was used as examples in colleges, as part of curriculum in some cases, but suffice to say we were all making our own rules. I never went to college because of that.

This “cowboy country” setting also meant that brogrammers were a dime in a dozen, and it was ok, popular even, to be outwardly sexist. Somehow that is a demonstration of superiority, or skill, or something… I never really figured out why that is “cool”. Perhaps they are compensating, but I found out the better you get the more intimidated by you they are, so you have to play your own skills down in order to get through the day.

There are a lot of bad habits I picked up, and I would encourage any woman never to do this. Putting yourself down in order to maybe spare yourself potential insults is one of them. You start to believe it. It took me a long time to start believing I was even talented, or good at what I do, because of this.

I do believe that survival depends completely on your ability to be a “bitch” and be confident. There is no such thing as a “bitch”, only strong, stubborn, women.

I eventually concluded that I was tired of web development, IT, etc… and decided to get into games. I was very desperate too, and this is a critical mistake. NEVER be desperate.

Here is why. Short story…

Sometime in 2008, a popular game studio contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in designing, and helping them build, an ARG for their upcoming IP. I was excited. It was a long hard road to finding clients, and here was one!

If it would have worked out, I would have a juicy credit and an amazing bragging right that would surely silence the haters.

I was very desperate to keep this job. I worked long hours late into the night. Left the majority of that unbilled (free work), so they would keep me.

The game industry (big games) itself has many problems with the way it treats its creative folk. Because so many people want to “break in” you have a lot of very eager, very talented people, willing to go through all sorts of abuse. This is true for any creative industry, but I feel more so for games. Kotaku had an excellent article of anonymous people sharing their stories. Mine was similar.

Their team leads would often openly take credit for an idea I shared with them. I would work long hours into the night to finish a prototype, and a lead would throw that out because they had a better idea or changed their mind. I put up with all that because I was desperate.

I had two ambulance trips to the emergency room, one from being overworked. I also got flagged for re-entry into Vancouver, Canada (that means getting in is a bit harder).

Each time my contract was about to expire (and I really wanted to quit) the boss would promise me that “things would be different”, how he “appreciated all my hard work”, they are in the dark here because this is the first thing like this that they are doing, I’m the expert, they really need and appreciate my help, without me there would be no ARG, I am the ARG, etc… You get the idea. If this ever happens to you, don’t renew your contract.

Painful ending was that one week before launch he fired me for “not putting my best foot forward”, not working hard enough, that my work was a failure, that they expected more of me… The email was painful, but also unbelievably relieving to put that behind me.

Then they didn’t want to pay for it because of how much of a failure my work was.

After launch, and a humiliating termination, the project ended up being featured on Wired, Boing Boing, The Guardian, etc… Everywhere, basically. Not a single mention of me working on it, or a single credit for me. The final invoice is also unpaid.

After working for them I was contacted by another company. This was in 2010, and took place pretty much back-to-back. Someone I had met there also wanted an ARG (my big second chance!). That project played out in a similar way, almost to the dot, but slightly more humiliating, sexist, and dehumanizing. I will spare you the details, because I feel like I’ve shared enough, and made my point.

Ok, then. I am very sorry for the negativity, but this is important.

As creative people we are VERY passionate about our work. We are OK with working long hard hours into the night, or enthusiastically working for free with the promise of payment later, because “oh man, this project is so cool!”.

Passion is blinding. It’s good to be in love with what you do, but also dangerous.

Every creative industry has these stories. For pretty much every success story, there are many “burnt” creatives that were abused for that success story. You have to be careful. In many ways Silicon Valley’s idolized “eccentric, genius, brilliant, yet socially awkward asshole boss” has given us unrealistic standards for what we should tolerate.

When a project, product, game, etc… is a success it is NOT because of just that one person, but because of the many people around him that made it possible. The people working on it brought it to fruition. Not just the idea guy in charge.

I said it once, but I can’t say it enough. You HAVE to be careful about what you invest your passions into. Your passion can get so abused that you no longer want to do what you love doing. It took me a very long time to recover, and be able to even read places like Gamasutra again. To me video games, tech, anything, was an abusive shit-show that idolize the creeps. I thought that any “big name” was someone that was just really good at taking advantage of people, and reached a point where they are “so famous, they are untouchable”.

I was very naive and desperate. Because of my previous experiences I was willing to tolerate a lot. It got me majorly taken advantage of.

I conclude this story (again, sorry for negativity, but it needs saying)…

While working for that second game company (my big second chance!) I worked so hard that I basically went a year with dangerously minimal sleep. When I quit in 2012, because it was obviously not going anywhere, and I finally admitted to myself that I was being taken advantage of, my health completely deteriorated. I was basically stuck sick in bed for a month. After fighting through that I noticed that they didn’t pay. When I asked them to pay they threatened to sue, “I’m such a horrible person”, etc… Same poor reasons.

I was really at the end of myself. At the time I thought I had two choices. Suicide, or pursue my own games (Tetrageddon). It was a shot in the dark, so I chose Tetrageddon as the final option.

I guess, if nothing else, do it out of spite.

So for anyone in the same place, and maybe thinking about suicide, somehow it gets better. I have no idea what happened to me, or how it suddenly improved, but it does. Please don’t give up.

I submitted the project to IndieCade and it was accepted into the E3 showcase. I really do believe that, in many ways, this saved my life (or sanity). It completely changed my perception of the game industry. I think I entered an alternate dimension where people are nice, and give hugs, and show enthusiasm for each other’s work (instead of being intimidated). I remember standing there, showing my game to people, and a guy (man) was totally blown away by my technical know how. We talked a bit and he was like “I’m not going to lecture anyone that can make all that!”

Guys (men) even interviewed me, and the woman thing wasn’t a problem at all. It was even a good thing. I have no idea how that happened.

Eventually I won a Nuovo award.

Hilarious thing here is that these companies, that threatened to sue, and didn’t want to credit, or pay me, are suddenly crediting me for my work. Like I was a good thing, and even brag-able. Interesting how that works.

Never give up.

I do admit that I have had a lot of bad luck. It is not this bad for a lot of women, and for some it is.

After my experiences I became a bit obsessed with finding out how other women have it. I researched blog post after article of women sharing their experiences and “horror stories”. As important as it is for us to talk about these things, that is not enough.

It also seems like the only people interested in these stories are other women.

By all accounts, men have to be made aware of this, and it will take the help of men to make this better. I would have killed for a guy to intervene, when I was being bullied, with a “Hey, that’s not cool!”

It makes a big difference when a guy does it.

This is as much of a “men’s issue” as it is a “women’s issue”.

Every creative industry has these problems of abusing their artists. It comes with the turf of being a place that everyone wants to be in. For women it is harder.

We have an opportunity here, as an indie community, to build something different. If it weren’t for IndieCade, I don’t know where I would be now. We need more festivals, events, places, publications, critics, championing diversity alongside experimental and groundbreaking work. We need to change our view on what is acceptable treatment of artists and what is not.

Just working at a company, or on a game, or in an industry, cannot be a reward in itself.

We need more KillScreens, Offworlds, Warpdoors, IndieCades, Fantastic Arcades, GaymerX’s, itch.io’s, GameJolts :) etc… It’s not only about the people making the games, but also about the people promoting and giving us a space to thrive in.

This is an exciting (new) ecosystem that could have, and I believe has had, a positive influence on the rest of the tech-sphere, in general.

I do believe that it is because of all the hard work of journalists, and writers, talking about how women are treated, how minorities are treated, how anyone is treated, that has pushed companies to start taking sexism and diversity serious.

Today, it is a lot harder to be outgoingly sexist (at least compared to how it has been).

Take Microsoft’s last GDC fiasco. I could name numerous articles that have gone viral, about some asshole “lead” that said this sexist thing, followed by insightful observations about how that’s not cool. These things finally backfire!

A lot has changed over just these past few years. Like I said, when I got into this it was all very experimental, exciting, and new things were constantly being built, but experimental is not enough. I believe any good thing cannot last if we do not have a healthy, diverse, and inclusive community to support that.

If I met my younger self today I would congratulate her on her strength, and encourage her not to give up… but also not be desperate.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to kick-ass.

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