Note: I will be using the term “woman” a lot in this post, in part because articles and research tend to use a gender binary. I do however recognise that the biases women face are biases all marginalised groups face in equal or greater measure.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “Yeah, he’s an asshole, but he’s so brilliant and creative”. Usually this is said about men who cut a wide path of destruction through the ranks of the company they’re currently at. Men who are incapable of sharing credit and of caring for their team mates alike. Usually toxic egos like that get to stick around while the people they hurt move on to other and hopefully better things.

This is however a problem in the games industry. It leads to situations such as the Ubisoft, Riot and Activision Blizzard¹ discoveries that can have a negative impact not just on the team around the toxic individual, but several thousand employees. Maybe not in a direct fashion, but do tell me if working at a company designated as “evil” is fun? Because I sure don’t think so. ²

I personally noticed this issue – the idea that women can’t be creative – the most when I switched jobs from an administrative role to a creative role. We’re fine with having women as administrators (it is a form of caretaking, after all), because it doesn’t go against our biases in the same way. When I say “fine” I mean that we’re still going to be biased against her, we’ll still ask her male colleagues questions instead of asking her and it won’t really matter if she’s the subject expert or not. Most importantly, we will attribute any wins to her male colleagues³. This is compounded when women earn their way to “creative” roles. The quotation marks are there because I believe that a lot of professions have the capacity to be creative, but what we’re talking about here are designers. Part of this is good old gender bias. Send out resumes where the only different between the content is a male sounding name and a female sounding name (or heaven forbid a foreign sounding name – yes, racism is still a thing) and the man almost always comes out on top, judged as more competent than the woman.

The same thing happens when we judge creativity. In a study, well several studies to make this even more depressing, everything from business strategies to architectural drawings to TED talks were judged as being more innovative if they were attributed to a man rather than a woman. So if everyone is biased this way, isn’t there some truth to all of it? Well, actually, no.

Research increasingly confirms that innovation comes from connecting with others, as well as holding oneself apart. It involves drawing new connections between existing ideas, as much as inventing new concepts out of thin air. It comes to teams as often as individuals. And, importantly, there are no clear gender differences in actual creative abilities. But women are more likely to go uncredited and unrewarded for their best ideas.
– Why Do We Treat Women’s Creativity Differently? – Melissa J. Williams Ph.D., Psychology Today

So why do we still accept antisocial and toxic dudes at our workplaces, and why do we still ascribe them creative powers that they may well not possess in any larger amount than anyone else? Part of it is most likely due to affinity and similarity attraction biases. People have a tendency to fall in the old similarity attraction bias trap. That means that we have a tendency to hire people like ourselves, who look like us and who are from the same cultural background as us. In other words, white straight men will hire other white straight men. And, let’s face it, the probability of a white straight man being toxic is a lot higher than any other person being toxic. It’s also possible that warning signs that may have been picked up by non-white, non-straight, non-men, simply won’t be noted if the hiring panel is very similar to the potential hire.⁴

I would also argue that part of the blame lies with William Cannon and Dallis Perry, the psychologists that determined – in a survey with 1378 programmers, where 186 were women – that satisfied programmers, a.k.a. “good” or “successful” programmers don’t like people⁵.

Unfortunately, Cannon and Perry were listened to and the myth of the “antisocial nerd” = good programmer was born. Unfortunately it persisted. Since we all know what happens to women who are antisocial – we’re punished for it – programmers started to skew towards becoming a man’s occupation. In addition to that, many game studios are built on a reverence for programmers and to start out a lot of programmers were also designers. We’ve kind of started to turn the idea that anti-social creative lone wolves are the way to go on its head, but the idea still persists, especially in the games industry. Why else would we hire people we pretty much know are going to be problematic, and why do we keep people that have proven themselves to be?

Another aspect of this that plays into the myth of the male genius comes down to knowledge and entitlement. In our culture, who is allowed to own knowledge?

Kate Mann in her book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women is fairly clear when she talks about how the power of knowledge rests solely with men. Men are expected to know. Marginalised people have to fight to gain any level of acknowledged expertise. This is why mansplaining is a thing. Men simply believe – are taught – that they are entitled to and owners of knowledge.⁶

If the truth is not our property, then neither is authority. Listening to women becomes superfluous, except for instrumental reasons – a mere performance, intended to mollify or, perhaps, to virtue-signal. Of course, this problem is far worse and sometimes in sui generis ways, for women who are subject to multiple compounding forms of oppression.
– Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women – Kate Mann

The most frustrating aspect – for me – of not being allowed to own your own experiences and expertise is the fact that at any time, a man can take it away from you without facing consequences and without being called on it. There may be very many good reasons to listen to the women on the team, but a man – any man, with any level of expertise or non-expertise, can negate that reason simply by contradiction. Imagine how infuriating that gets. Imagine how infuriating it is if decisions are made contrary to the expertise of the woman, because a man said so. Imagine the additional insult to injury if the woman gets to take the blame for the decision that was entirely contrary to her recommendation.

It turns out that gender bias lingers—at the top. Women remain singularly disadvantaged in roles where people expect not just competent execution but tremendous creativity, even genius.
– Why Do We Treat Women’s Creativity Differently? – Melissa J. Williams Ph.D., Psychology Today

I’m going to take you on a bit of a detour, but it is relevant, so stick with me. Consider apps like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and just about any other app that has a large user base among marginalised individuals, and then consider the support and protection built into them. Well, there isn’t much, is there? Mike Monteiro in his book Ruined by Design argues that this is yet another way that we allow only certain individuals to conceptualise and create ideas, and that we suffer a backlash as a result of it.

About 80% of all game developers are men in any given larger company. This has an impact on the end product, and as long as the bias toward white, straight, cis men remain, by the nature of who really gets to have creative input on a product, the product itself will reflect that bias. In particular if no effort is made to be inclusive and to create an experience respectful of a diverse audience.

To paraphrase Google Sydney’s Tea Uglow, why teach people to think outside the box when you can hire people outside the box. The last thing I want you to do is take your team of white boys out into the field and “see what women think”. Turns out women like to work. Turns out they’ve been dying to work in this field. Turns out they’re willing to work in the field, even when it means putting up with all the bullshit men like me have thrown at them on a daily basis and then being paid seventy cents on the dollar. Turns out they’re good at this work.
– Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It – Mike Monteiro

There are a lot of us out there, but as Monteiro says, there’s also a lot of bullshit to put up with. The idea that only men can contribute creatively is part of that bullshit.

Research increasingly confirms that innovation comes from connecting with others, as well as holding oneself apart. It involves drawing new connections between existing ideas, as much as inventing new concepts out of thin air. It comes to teams as often as individuals. And, importantly, there are no clear gender differences in actual creative abilities. But women are more likely to go uncredited and unrewarded for their best ideas.
– Why Do We Treat Women’s Creativity Differently? – Melissa J. Williams Ph.D., Psychology Today

In other words, hiring is just one small part in countering bias. You also have to listen to the marginalised people who have already been hired in order to retain them at your company. One individual leaving out of 80 makes a heck of a smaller impact than one individual leaving out of 20, especially of that individual is in a leadership position. I can guarantee you that of the 20% women at most major companies in the games industry, not a lot of them are in lead or senior positions.

But, as Amanda Montell writes in her book Wordslut, we even have a hard time listening to marginalised people. Marginalised people often end up in what’s called a double bind. Either you’re likeable (or, as apparently being likeable as a woman also means sexually attractive to men, fuckable) or you’re competent and strong (which usually means that as a woman you’re a ball buster and/ or ugly, i.e. unfuckable). Either way, you’ll get slammed for not being one or the other. Meaning if you present as likeable, you’re unable to lead. If you’re competent and strong, nobody likes you which makes you equally unable to lead. Double bind. And for heavens sake, whatever you do as part of a marginalised group, never speak up about how you’re treated. That’s a one way ticket to misery.

[…]Time magazine found that in ancient Greece, female outspokenness was associated with “prostitution, madness, witchcraft, and androgyny”. During the Middle Ages, there was a special English word for women who dared to speak in public: they were labeled scolds, meaning women who were unable to keep their “negative” or “insubordinate” words to themselves.
– Wordslut: a feminist guide to taking back the english language – Amanda Montell

There’s a full circle sense to all of this in my mind. We’re so used to seeing men in power and men as creative that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Our biases extend beyond just man = creative. We’re also expecting man = knowledge, man = trustworthiness, man = power, etc, etc.

In order to change that, we have to confront biases, painful as that may be (change is never easy) and allow marginalised people not only to participate and take up space, but to be allowed to own knowledge and be experts. To be heard, supported and celebrated for their ideas.

We open our workplaces for toxic men who abuse their power, and through that we exclude or force marginalised people to leave. Considering how steep the entrance requirements are for those people, most likely we are missing out on some truly amazing individuals, all because of bro code and same-as-me biases and the persistent and faulty idea that antisocial individuals are more creative, and that men by the mere coincidence of being men, are more creative than people from marginalised groups.

It’s time to wake up and smell the fake meritocracy.

Sources:
Ubisoft CEO apologizes for controversies, including one that fired Assassin’s Creed director – Polygon
Inside the culture of sexism at Riot – Kotaku
California sues Activision Blizzard over a culture of ‘constant sexual harassment’ – The Verge
Is Gender Bias Really Impacting the Hiring of Women in STEM? – Forbes
Why Do We Treat Women’s Creativity Differently? – Psychology Today
13 Common Hiring Biases To Watch Out For – Harver
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley – Emily Chang
Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women – Kate Mann
Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It – Mike Monteiro
Wordslut: a feminist guide to taking back the english language – Amanda Montell

1. There are so many articles and texts outlining the issues with these three companies that I had to choose relatively abbreviated ones to give an insight into what’s happened. Rest assured, there’s a LOT more where that came from, and that’s just things that have been reported.
2. EA is still struggling with the “evil” trait that it received in 2004 with the EA spouse letter. For EA, this has been compounded over the years by lootboxes and other controversies, all of them less problematic than the Ubi, Riot and Blizzard accounts, but sometimes its hard to change people’s minds. And maybe we shouldn’t even try. EA has a lot of work to do as well.
3. I’m totally bitter about this, by the way. I’ve been patronised, made to feel stupid and talked over in meetings more times that I can count, and I’ve had men get the praise for my ideas and my work while I’ve had to take the blame for mistakes. Business as usual.
4. Yes, the non- thing is intentional, if only to reinforce that we view white, male, heterosexual and Western as the default for just about everything from cars to medicine. Google it.
5. Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley – Emily Chang
6. An aspect of this is testimonial injustice, meaning that people from marginalised groups who talk about what they experience are often disbelieved. A whole movement was dedicated to harassing and tormenting marginalised individuals in the gaming culture. I am talking about Gamer Gate. The intense gaslighting that came with it in the form of talking about ethics in games journalism or blaming the individuals victimised by attributing falsehoods to them, by turning the tables around and claiming that the harassed person is the harasser were only some of the ways the entitlement of the individuals who drove that movement punched through. Gamer Gate made it obvious to the people on the receiving end that we neither owned our own knowledge or our own experiences in the eyes of these people.