The video game industry
may be traditionally male-dominated, but Electronic Arts is working to inspire future female video-game creators with its camp.
MAITLAND — As Cara Crawford, 17, sets up a demo she has helped create at Electronic Arts this past week, she explains how her game works: move a character across the screen toward its goal, avoiding obstacles along the way.
It’s a basic game but takes dozens of lines of code to work right.
“We had to think about the sound, imaging, the art, character development,” said Cara, who will be a senior this fall at Lake Brantley High School in Seminole County. “We think about how the pieces move together and translate what we want to happen into a coding language.”
Cara was part of a group of 10 girls invited to EA’s weeklong “Get in the Game” workshop, which ended Friday. The goal was to encourage young girls to consider a career in the industry of making video games.
The video game industry has traditionally been known as one dominated by men. In 2017, 21 percent of video game developers were women. That number dropped slightly from 23 percent in 2016.
At the workshop Thursday, Katherine Winter said she has felt the tinge of self-doubt often in her seven years as an EA software engineer.
Despite a career during which she has worked on one of the
company’s biggest projects, the popular video game engine known as Frostbite, Winter still occasionally experiences “impostor syndrome.”
“I have to tell myself sometimes that I am not a fraud,” said Winter, who met with the girls multiple times at Electronic Arts’ Maitland campus, helping them build their video games. “But I know my voice is just as valid as anyone else’s in this room.”
Winter has faced other challenges as well. Gender roles in the industry have been the subject of a nasty and public battle of the sexes that has played out on social media in recent years. The controversy has been marked by sexist attacks on female video game journalists and players.
Known as #Gamergate, it has been fueled primarily by a small group of online trolls, Winter said.
She said the kinds of experiences can be easily overcome if girls see women who succeed in the industry.
“It’s a very vocal minority,” Winter said. “You don’t encounter them much. What’s important when coming into the industry is having a support network.”
Daryl Holt, the company’s Maitlandbased vice president and chief operations officer, said the workshop helps the girls see that game development could be a viable option for a career.
“There is a comfort level when you establish that relationship and trust that you now have a confidante, a guide, a mentor,” said Holt, who said he often tells his 13-year-old daughter the importance of learning the sciences. “That goes a long way beyond the STEAM camp.”
If the girls graduate high school and complete relevant college courses, they will be invited back for an internship interview with the company — which builds some of the most popular video games in the industry, including the Madden football series, in Central Florida.
Cara said beyond building the video game, meeting the other girls and sharing their experiences has been helpful, too.
“To see a program that promotes minority groups to be here is great,” she said. “I have not seen this many women enjoying their work at once in my entire life.”