Women in Gaming
Business School Professor Shiona Chillas and PhD student Melinda Grewar are analysing results from an international survey of people working in the video games industry, focusing on diversity management activity in their studios.
While video games and interactive media have grown to become the most economically valuable of the world’s creative industries and are making strides to improve their equality and diversity, they also consist of a predominantly white and male workforce, are known for role segregation. Most female employees work in ‘soft’ roles such as HR and design rather than tech or senior management and, as revealed through public media attention such as Gamergate and #MeToo, have a reputation for misogynistic workplace culture.
Data from the questionnaire also were used to update WIG’s first edition of its guide for videogames industry businesses, ‘Building a Fair Playing Field.’
Melinda and Professor Chillas, Director of the School’s Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, collaborated with Abertay University researchers and advocacy body Women in Games, who issued the questionnaire, as part of InGAME, the Arts and Humanities Research Cluster (AHRC)-grant funded research and development programme based in Dundee’s videogames industry cluster.