Meet the all-woman gaming community igniting creative culture in Saudi Arabia
Gaming, they say, can
make a better world. Games make us better at being hopeful,
forming social bonds, being productive, seeking meaning in our
lives, and surviving suffering, gaming expert Jane McGonigal has
argued.
Yet gaming today is just as known for its dark side: its bro
culture where
sexual harassment is commonplace, calls for more female
protagonists earn a
stream of vitriol on Twitter, women executives are
viewed with skepticism, and
88% of employees are male, despite the fact that
almost half of gamers are women.
One of the places where that is swiftly changing is perhaps a bit
unexpected: Saudi Arabia.
While the tradition of gender segregation in the Kingdom poses
challenges for its workforce (and gender segregation isn't a
recommended solution for sexism on the whole), the realities of
Saudi society have allowed a group of female gamers to forge a
community, foster solidarity, and reclaim gaming as a tool for
cultural transformation.
Bringing over 2,000 women together for three days, G-Con (short for "gaming
convention") is now one of the biggest women-only gaming events in
the world. Led by 23-year-old Tasneem Salim and a band of
female computer science graduates-turned-game-developers, the
event, held in Riyadh this October, consisted of gaming tournaments
for Call of Duty Black Ops and The Last of US, a game
developer competition, a variety of game trailers, and even a
cosplay (short for “costume play”) competition, in which
women dressed up as their favorite game characters.
And with the support of gaming heavyweights PlayStation, Nintendo,
and Ubisoft, along with Verso, a local business
incubator, G-Con is working to translate the hobby into a
route to employment. In a country where only 20% of women are
present in the workforce, gaming is a powerful option for those who
prefer flexible hours and working from home, says founder
Salim.
“Many studios allow you to work remotely, as programmers, artists,
and testers,” she explains. “Especially when building for mobile.
You can also self-publish on iOS and Android, and have your own
income, without the need for a publisher or to work with a studio.”
As local women increasingly seek out
computer science skills, G-Com (the community connected to the
conference) hopes to channel those skills into viable careers, by
hosting training sessions and allowing women to post and publish
their games online.
Yet to position G-Com as a driver of employment alone would miss
the power of its message. Salim and G-Com aren’t aiming only to
create new jobs; they’re hoping to encourage newfound creativity in
Saudi Arabia.
“We are calling upon people to imagine a future through games and
through creative industries that we can apply to our culture,” says
Salim. “We believe that societies that don't have a sci-fi culture
don't evolve. We're hoping to start a spark and talk about local
sci-fi, and how we as girls can develop the future.”
It’s not just gaming that suffers from stigma, she explains. “When
you work in gaming, people don't take you seriously. The same goes
for related fields, such as animation, art scripting, and
development; [those industries] have only been developing for the
past two to three years.”
Yet creative culture, and local sci-fi, is evolving. Case in point: one of the trailers shown at the event, from the first Saudi sci-fi novel, incorporated traditional themes, such as the idea of jinns, into a futuristic narrative. “It has a very local flavor, in a very unusual setup,” Salim describes. (For more, watch the film’s creator, Yassar Bahjatt, explain how Arab Sci-Fi can dream a better future, in his TED@Doha talk).
G-Com is also plotting to improve the quality of local education. Naming education as the theme of its game development competition, the convention awarded games that could teach complex concepts to young children. The winning game (trailer below) featured an alien teaching physics, while a runner-up created miniaturized characters that journeyed throughout the human body, teaching biology.
“Our hope is to get these games used in schools eventually, once they go through the incubation process at Verso,” says Salim.
These aspirations may seem large for a group of college
graduates, but it’s clear that G-Com has broad support, especially
from its male counterparts at GameTako,
an indie gaming community also based in Riyadh. Led by founder
Abdullah Hamed, GameTako “were one of our first sponsors, and
we always collaborate with them,” Salim says.
Women in the digital community are also rallying to assist. Salim’s
employer Esra Assery, the energetic founder of local digital
marketing agency eTree, is
“very supportive,” Salim says. When Assery attended our
Wamda for Women roundtable in Riyadh to debate workplace
policies and role models this May, it was clear that eTree was
focused on empowering creative thinking in its employees over rote
task completion and set hours.
These days, Salim doesn’t have a lot of time to actually game, she
admits. Having grown up on Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers,
she and her team now have to carve out the time to finish the
latest titles. “Occasionally, we can squeeze in an hour or two,”
she admits.
And as if its ambitions weren’t enough, the team is now using
those extra few hours to finalize a documentary on local female
game developers and members of the Ubisoft team, revealing growth
in gaming across the Arab world.
The hope is to document those who may become the community's next
breakout stars. "Hopefully, by next year we can start to see a
success story, whether from us or someone else," says Salim. "We
hope to support that story, be a part of it, and just keep on
growing."