Hey YOU! Nice of you to stop by even though I haven’t been posting a lot here!
This Fall I started having fun with a podcast! I’m still quite the amateur, but I’m having a lot of fun talking to interesting people about subjects that really interest me.
When I first started Hitchcock Barbie, I thought I would talk about everything that interested me. Music, books, films and a little bit of games. But, so far, it’s ended up being just about games. It’s fun to have my own thing and talking about things that interest me. It feels a little selfish and self indulgent, but whatever … I’m enjoying myself and please come on by and listen!
I’ve spent the weekend reflecting on what it’s like for me to be a woman this International Women’s Day 2021 and I’ve come up with a list that sums up some of my reflections of this last year:
My wish for improvement in the industry I work with
A personal incident that I’ve spent some time dealing with this year
What cause I want to get engaged with this year
1. My wish for improvement in the games industry
There have been so many issues brought up about sexual harassment and misogyny in the games industry it saddens me. I feel sometimes that we take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. But I think that it’s more to do with institutional misogyny finally being exposed and that women everywhere are standing up and saying that they’re not going to take it anymore. This must be a great thing, right?
I’m very thankful to be working with a young game studio that has an incredibly thankful attitude when it comes to women in the games industry. They often disagree with me, but I have never felt that it is because I am a woman. I also have 4 female colleagues that are pretty exceptional at what they do and it’s an honour to be working with them.
Game Developer Barbie
There is one field, however, that I would like to see a little more improvement. A large part of my current job is to find business partners for the growth of the company which means reaching out to “money” in the games industry. Now, please let me be very clear in stating that I’ve met some of the most interesting and inspiring people in this category. People that have taught me so much and that have been great role models for the type of business developer that I want to become. But it is way too rare that I talk to women. I really want to see more women representing money and investment in the games industry. I mean everything from investors to publishers to platform holders. From my view, and lets keep in mind that I’ve only been at this a short while, there are not enough women in the position of business strategies and it feels like most of the gatekeepers in the games industry are men. They’re lovely and smart men – but I’d really love to see them disrupted a little by some wild, adventurous and smart women.
They most definitely exist! I feel like I meet smart business savvy women in this industry all the time, but I’d love to see more of them representing money in the industry. A little actual disruption instead of just talking about disruption would fill me with glee. And just answering this call by referencing the exceptional WINGS isn’t good enough.
This is my wish in the upcoming years.
2. A personal incident that I’ve spent some time dealing with this year
I don’t like talking about my own personal experiences of misogyny because I have a lot of layers of hurt, disappointment and anger to deal with on the subject. And I need to deal with it all at some point. But a lot of it is very personal and private. I started talking a little bit more openly about it this summer because I realised that on one hand I saw and industry that I adore patting themselves on the back a little too much for being misogyny free and on the other hand I had game developers telling stories of harrassment where my advice to them was to go to the police. Something wasn’t right and I felt that I needed to be an adult in the room and say that there’s room for improvement.
It’s kind of in that spirit that I want to share this with you. There’s one thing that I’ve found to be a recurring problem for me and that I’ve been very ashamed to be a victim of. It has been implied way too many times while I’ve been on this path that I should find a partner that earns money to survive. I’ve been through a lot of patches without pay and that’s been extremely difficult, but I’ve been willing to go through it for the team to achieve the best result. During one of these patches, a few years ago, a man sat me down for a serious talk and told me in all sincerety:
“Linn, let’s come up with a plan to fix this financial situation you’re in. Let’s get you on a diet so that you can be more attractive to a man with money that can help you through these first few years in the industry”.
It’s upsetting for me to write this because I didn’t get angry and throw my drink in his face, which he totally deserved. Instead I just walked away and ignored him while the words dug their claws in my soul. It didn’t shock me, I was used to hearing it. If not so directly, at least very much implied. It gave me a feeling of not having any value. That my work was just a hobby, a past time. And that I wasn’t a good enough woman to sell myself to a man that earned money. There were so many insults in there.
And it’s given me a lot of insecurities that I’m still dealing with today. But I am getting better at understanding my own value. And I hate the thought that this might be normal and other women are going through the same issues. I read somewhere earlier this year that someone went through something similar, where a leader wouldn’t give a raise to a woman and suggested she get a rich boyfriend instead. It set me in a rage and it made me realise what a deep impact this had on me.
I’m in constant fear that I’ve worked so hard for years and not given any value. That it hasn’t been worth it and that I bring nothing to the table. But I’m working on it. I’ve slowly started to convince myself that I am valuable and that I do deserve to be paid for the work that I do. It is work. I may not always do perfect work – but I do bring value. This has been very difficult for me to come to terms with but it has helped putting price tags on the work that I do. I’m getting better at valuing the work that I do and I honestly don’t think that I could have done that by having a knight in shining armor come and rescue me. Perseverence has been my strategy and I’ve tried my best to keep the voices that insist on bringing me down outside my window.
Income has been way too powerful in surpressing women and this is just a personal story where I’m trying to give a little insight into how these attitudes have an impact. I hope that my story can help other women who are struggling with the same issues. If you have the same problems – don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. It’s so much easier to see the injustice when it isn’t happening to you and you’ll find a willing soldier in me to help you!
But please, dear reader, do not take pity on or feel sorry for me. I’ve come this far and I have absolutely no intention of stopping now. And to be honest – I’m fine with being my own knight in shining armour. I enjoy a free life where I don’t need to ask for permission to do the things that I’m passionate about.
3. What cause I want to get involved with this year
I feel I need to get involved with more of the injustices I hear and see in the world. So this year I wanted to make a pledge to do what I can in research, engagement and perhaps money raising for a cause that I think is important.
I feel like this past year I’ve been hearing about more girl school kidnappings from several places in the world. Latest being Nigeria: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/world/africa/nigeria-kidnapped-students.html . It’s something I want to learn more about. Why is it happening and what can I do to protect these girls and help them be safe in getting an education? I can’t just listen to the news and be heartbroken about it anymore. I want to get involved!
I’ve started working on my own game! I’m not putting too much pressure on myself and taking my time with it. And oh my goodness – I did not think I would have as much fun with it as I am!
I am loving being creative just for the sake of creative and also being totally amateur. There’s something very lovely about being completely clueless about something that you start.
I’ve been thinking a lot about one of the characters that I want the protagonist to meet along her journey and I started to draw what I wanted her to look like. I came up with this:
I’ve had to hustle a lot to get into the games industry. Who I am kidding? I still am. I’ve been thinking a lot about this during these weeks of GDC-prep. Getting meetings has never been easy for me, I don’t just write to whoever I need a meeting with and say … “hey! let’s meet up at GDC” and get a positive answer. Nor has it been easy to get a hold of the right people to book meetings with. I’ve had to ask a lot of favors to get e-mails, telephone numbers and introductions. I have to work at it. I’ve built up a few relationships in the games industry and a lot of these are very dear to me. I believe that’s because I’ve made a very conscious decision to be as honest and true to myself and in my communication as I possibly can in all this hustling. True… I’ve lost myself several times along the way and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve tapped in to the darker judgmental me a few times, too. My goal is to keep hustling but to treat people with respect, kindness and sincerity, because I believe they can work well together.
By hustling I think I mean walking into a room of people that you don’t know and selling … something … and not giving up at the first try. Approaching people via e-mail or in person and making them aware of what you are selling. This word gets a bad wrap sometimes, but if you’re attending conventions for your game, you need to learn how the hustle can work to your advantage.
Finding the hustler within myself hasn’t always been easy. I need to believe in who I am and have self respect when I’m selling because people react very differently to my pitches, approaches, conversation, appearance, age, gender and humor. I have met so many people who have been rude, been disgusted by me or refused to take me seriously, but it all becomes much more tolerable if you are fighting for something that you believe in and are comfortable in your own skin. It’s so much easier to shrug it off and move to the next “victim”. Asking for money is hard. And I fuck up all the time. I take it too far, or I say the wrong thing. And sometimes I laugh too loud and hard at something that was only mildly funny. Oh … I’ve totally sat in bars in San Francisco with my head buried in my hands having a martini and thinking (sometimes loudly) “why the HELL did I say that?”. Just last year I left a lunch event in tears because 2 people told me that what I do in the games industry is vile, 1 person I had just started doing some extra work for made it very clear that I was not welcome to talk to them, 2 people I was looking forward to seeing were definitely not pleased to meet me and another one insulted me in another way. To be fair, I think that after the first hour I was starting to feel pathetic and must have reeked of insecurity at one point. And right when I was about to leave, a person that I care about gave me a heartwarming hug that completely broke my defensive walls and I had to put on my sunglasses on my way to a pitch meeting, to hide my tears.
Almost ten years ago I was hanging out with some non-game industry friends and we were playing Buzz! – a well known quiz game at the time. I wasn’t working in the games industry yet, but I was well into writing my Masters thesis on MMORPGs, if not completely finished. I was blogging about games here and I was a contributing writer on two other games blogs. I was giving lectures on games and I was constantly procrastinating reading about games. So my friends cunningly tried to avoid the “Video Games” category in the game feeling fairly confident that I would beat their asses without breaking a sweat. Eventually one poor sod had to go up against me. And you know what? I couldn’t get a single answer right. Not one! I didn’t recognize any of the games that were mentioned and I remember the room becoming eerily quiet. My friends were awkwardly embarrassed for me and I was stunned. The only games that were mentioned were kids games that were associated with kids movies. I had no clue about any of them. I didn’t have kids, none of the games blogs I was reading at the time had even mentioned any of these.
Discussing the awesomeness of Firewatch to the a room who hadn’t even heard of it
I think this is one of the first times I really understood how segmented this industry is. And now that I’m in the industry I’m constantly disappointed with the lack of knowledge of indie games when I meet gamers. Last year I was in a panel discussing something about games, I forget the theme, but after the panel had been discussing Firewatch passionately for 10 minutes, I asked the audience who had played or even heard of Firewatch. One person raised his hand acknowledging that he had heard of the game (this may be a slight exaggeration but it was dramatic). We were in a room full of people who play games with a passion.
I remember feeling a bit saddened by this. How can we discuss the awesomeness of games when the general public has only played 1% of them (totally a made up statistic by me)? The value of us discussing it to this crowd is that they probably went home and looked it up after. But it seems too small to me!
With so many indie games struggling to reach profitability and yet the number of gamers seems to be increasing, I wonder if there is something more that we can do to remind the average game consumer that there’s a rich variety of amazing games out there.
From the inside of the industry it certainly feels like the platforms and consoles are doing their best to promote games and they always make sure to bring indie game titles to their shows and more. I think that’s brilliant. But a friend of mine, who recently left the games industry to work for a young and hip internet company called me one day and said with amazement “Linn! These guys haven’t even HEARD of Steam!”.
Defining and reaching a broader market
This has to mean that there’s an untapped market out there, right? How do we tap into that? Here are three of my thoughts on the topic:
A marketing campaign for games in general. I sometimes feel like the world of video games is an exclusive club and it’s
Taken from a Code Kids event at The Bergen Public Library
dangerous to tell others about its wonders and gorgeousness. I guess we’ve just been through a scandelous time because of it. I believe that reaching new markets will take some capital investment. Whilst the industry recognizes that it’s the games from the independent game studios that are pushing the boundaries and coming up with new creative gameplay expressions, more often than not, these studios will not have the funds to market to new audiences. Even if they’re signed with a publisher, I believe the marketing budget is targeted at the audiences that they know.
So I’m wondering if we should gang together and create a campaign to spread the incredible diverse array of games that are out there? I have no idea what it would look like and where to target such a campaign. But I wonder if it would be worth some time and effort to look into what we can do?
More visibility in mainstream media.
This is half the reason why I’m so intent on getting more articles about games into women’s mainstream media and magazines. I want games to be more accessible. I certainly don’t want anybody to feel like they don’t have the skills to play games. There will always be room for specialized media for games that has the knowledge and experience to cater to devoted gamers. I would like to expand our reach to more mainstream media as well, but to do this we need to find another form of rhetoric other than consumer journalism. The work that Spillpikene (Norwegian group of women writing about games) has done on this issue is really impressive and should definitely be considered an example.
I keep having the same discussion with with people in the games industry and journalists. All of us agree, but we never seem to be getting anywhere. Particularly on my end of things. I keep wanting to start things but never truly following through.
I’m very impressed with what Brie Code is doing by designing games for non-gamers. I love the attitude and vision of her work. But I also genuinely believe that there are so many undiscovered games out there which the sceptics, the ones who think gaming is a waste of time and boring, would love.
In search of the right rhetoric, I’m currently working on curating a talk for people who’ve always been curious about games – but have yet to understand their appeal. First I’m organizing a dinner with a bunch of local business women I’ve met on my journeys that are keen to get engaged with games, but have yet to understand their appeal. We’ll see where it goes from there.
Festival/Award/ – Sundance/Cannes for games
I know what you’re thinking! Not another one, right? We’re all already constantly exhausted and jetlagged because of all the trade shows for games! Yeah …. I almost didn’t put this here. It’s just when I think of the films industry I’m not so knowledgable. Sure … I’ve picked up a thing or two from our local film festival and I’ve been a member of a film club or two through my life time, but I’m not one of those that actively seeks out indie films on iTunes or something. I think of myself as a mainstream consumer of film. But when I see the words “Sundance” or “Cannes” on the film – I instantly think that it may be worth my while. I think BAFTA has done some great work there and many many others. But I’m not finding it hitting home among mainstream consumers yet.
Clearly – I don’t have the answers. But I would like to contribute to the conversation and this is my start of that.
This has been a subject that’s been buzzing around in my head for a while. Should we focus on advertising more games specifically to women, in which case, what would this look like and is it really necessary?
It seems to me that there’s still a template for advertising games that focuses on a predominately teenage male audience. Which makes me feel uncomfortable at times. I also often find myself wondering how I would learn about all the beautiful and amazing games that I play, if I didn’t work in the industry. I follow game developers, game media, game journalists, game academics, game musicians and game artists – so of course I get access to great new games, because this is my life. But if I were just a woman playing as a hobby, where would I go for my information, who’s opinion would I listen to?
We know that women play games. We play quite a lot actually according to the last ESA report:
Adult women represent a greater portion of the video game-playing population (31 percent) than boys age 18 or younger (18 percent).
So I guess we’re doing rather well without having female targeted marketing? And that’s awesome! This makes me so happy! But I wonder if we’ve only scratched the surface?
On April 23rd we got the sad news that our dear friend and best “sound guy”, Jory Prum, had passed away after a motorcycle accident a few weeks before. He had been slowly recovering and we were hopeful that he would soon be with us again complaining about a tiresome recovery period. It was therefore a painful shock to many of us and I, for one, have been crying in many public spaces since then.
Jory had an enormous influence on the Norwegian game development community. Not only did he work on the sound for many of the games but he was also an essential team player of our sales force. We don’t actually have an official Norwegian game sales force, if we did, Jory probably would have led it. Jory understood the importance of networking and communication. He has played a vital role in placing Norwegian game developers on the map in several ways: by introductions to his vast and rock star network, by carrying around and distributing pamphlets on Norwegian games at GDC, by making sure to invite his amazing network to our conferences and events, by giving talks at our schools, by giving talks at Norwegian gamedev events, by giving talks at events that have nothing to do with game development, by naturally taking on the mentorship role for both students and first-time game developers and by constantly rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the Norwegian reluctance for selling ourselves.
But without a doubt he was a champion of sound and he was brilliant at reminding us how essential good sound is in game development. He fought for sound to be taken seriously in both budgets and planning and it infuriated him when it was suggested that students could do sound for games for free, that there was no need to pay professionals to do it. Jory was a champion for real professionalism and can take a good deal of the credit that so many of our game studios are running successful companies and churning out top quality games.
Here are some of the Norwegian games that Jory worked on:
For me, personally, he seems to have been a larger part of my life than I thought. He was with me when I bought the computer that I’m typing this on (and warned me that I would regret not getting more memory – which I, of course, do), he graced Konsoll with his presence twice, he had faith in the work I’ve been doing and I was privileged to know a good deal about the project he was working on .
It’s unbelievable that he is gone and left this deep void.
Yes! Of course we’re doing a Konsoll 2015! This year I am so far behind on everything … hence this post is way too late!
We’re growing into a conference that I’m extremely proud of! We’re inviting speakers back that we love and it genuinely feels like we’re forming a special family.
It will be exciting this year, I promise!
So please join us on the 29th and 30th of October.
My good friends at Antagonist are in the middle of their Kickstarter campaign and you should definitely support them! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1854868411/through-the-woods/widget/video.html
It’s a promising game with many very specific nordic features like art inspired by Kittelsen and Hertervig. The nature of and the forest seem to be extremely Norwegian as well as the folklore and mythology that’s put into the game. But nothing is more Norwegian than these guys with their lumberjack beards and Norwegian sweaters.
They’re a determined group of developers and I believe in them. I believe that they will reach far! I love that audio is such a core game mechanic for their game and it seems they’re trying out some good new ways of thinking about narrative in games. What’s not to love?
They’ve also received some love from the Norwegian game developing community, which says a lot about them. So much love, in fact that a new hashtag was born #ThroughTheBeards. Please join us!!
I asked to talk at TEDxBergen months ago but it took me ages to figure out what it was I wanted to talk about – so little room to practice + I was promised a timer on stage – but suddenly realised that there wasn’t one when I needed it! It’s such an honour to be asked … I hope I get another TEDx chance someday!
My favourite was Jill Walker Rettberg talking about wearables and data! So interesting and well presented!
I’ve had to hustle a lot to get into the games industry. Who I am kidding? I still am. I’ve been thinking a lot about this during these weeks of 
And now that I’m in the industry I’m constantly disappointed with the lack of knowledge of indie games when I meet gamers. Last year I was in a panel discussing something about games, I forget the theme, but after the panel had been discussing 
he work on the sound for many of the games but he was also an essential team player of our sales force. We don’t actually have an official Norwegian game sales force, if we did, Jory probably would have led it. Jory understood the importance of networking and communication. He has played a vital role in placing Norwegian game developers on the map in several ways: by introductions to his vast and rock star network, by carrying around and distributing pamphlets on Norwegian games at GDC, by making sure to invite his amazing network to our conferences and events, by giving talks at our schools, by giving talks at Norwegian gamedev events, by giving talks at events that have nothing to do with game development, by naturally taking on the mentorship role for both students and first-time game developers and by constantly rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the Norwegian reluctance for selling ourselves.
Remember What The Dormouse Said 