suggest that a great leader shapes a role around them and what they are good at, rather than vice versa.” “I think it’s down to studios to actively search
Kim Parker Adcock, owner of OPM
for female leaders when hiring to create a gender balance at ALL levels within the business,” adds Adcock. “Whether that means interviewing women who show entrepreneurial experience on their CVs, or those who led teams at University, or in sport etc. Women have different assets when it comes to leadership style and the benefits of this must be recognised. I’ve long been a fan of personality profiling at the interview stage; these can help you pick out the natural leaders.” “It’s a number of things,” notes Channon,
“inclusive hiring, mentorship, training, recognising and tackling unconscious bias, supportive maternity and paternity rights, ensuring women are not side-lined if they have children, or grow old! Creating a culture that recognises that diversity in leadership is not just good for your business, it’s essential.”
A DIFFICULT YEAR As mentioned, this has been a difficult year for women working in our industry. The headlines of abuse and unequal treatment coming out of industry giants like Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft have been a bleak reminder of how the games industry continues to treat women. “The headlines we’ve all seen over the last
twelve months were incredibly challenging,” says Channon. “For many, myself included, they were triggering and brought back difficult memories but they were so very important in shining a light on what has long been lurking in the shadows of our industry. “Being candid I think there will be more of
Cat Channon, head of international communications at Electronic Arts
these moments to come and with them news cycles that call into question the values of our entire industry, not just those at the heart of the stories. There is more action needed at both a company and an industry level to support those who find themselves in difficult situations and each time the debate enters the public eye it pushes us towards positive change. “Increasingly it’s becoming apparent that
culture and reputation can be as influential as revenue on a company or individual’s success, but where the net result of poor conduct can be an exit and a pay out there’s still work to be done.” “For me personally - partly due to the nature
of my job - the majority of the misogyny I’ve encountered in the games industry has been online, on social media, and through the websites operated by my various employers,” says Keza MacDonald, video games editor at The Guardian. “When I would bring my concerns to my
bosses over, eg, being sexually objectified in the comments thread of my own website, or show long exchanges of sexist abuse on our
18 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2022
YouTube channel, the attitude was always: well, that’s horrible, but there’s nothing to be done. I massively object to this. “These are our own channels. Sure, you can’t
control what some dweeb writes on Reddit or what happens on Twitter, but you absolutely CAN moderate your own Facebook pages and comments threads and Discord servers - it’s just that that requires resources that some companies are/were simply not willing to dedicate. “If you don’t care about protecting female
employees from this kind of harassment or supporting them meaningfully when it happens, then you are not doing right by them. (Thankfully The Guardian, my current employer, is very good at this.) “I was dully unimpressed to see the shock
and surprise expressed over the recent run of revelations about abusers and mistreatment of women at game studios. “This should not have been news to anyone
who listens to women. For most of my career we have had to protect ourselves privately, through whisper networks and private warnings, because when women DID speak out they were rarely supported at their companies or more broadly. It does at least feel now that speaking out is more likely to result in something other than the woman in question being subjected to even further unpleasantness. “The media is doing fairly well on this
reporting, I feel, but it is important to be careful with sources. Do not use people. They’re vulnerable. When it comes to stories about sexual harassment especially, a person’s pain is not your scoop.”
THE WORK CONTINUES Among that work is the need to truly weed out the abusers and the enablers who continue to work in our industry, often in positions of power over those they abuse. In the wake of the latest spate of headlines, are we doing enough to purge our ranks of toxic employees? “My own experience is that there is significant
inconsistency across the industry,” says Channon. “I work for a large organisation that is incredibly forward thinking in its approach, that has processes, systems and structures to ensure there is no space for inappropriate conduct. It would be easy to think that’s the approach of all big businesses but as we’ve seen, it’s not. It’s also easy to assume that solutions are easier at scale and that in smaller companies it’s harder to implement supportive policies but I don’t believe that’s true. The values and the priorities that leadership
exhibit will permeate through any and every organisation no matter what its size. Scale should not be a factor in how safe women do or do not feel in the workplace.”
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