Friends and Soon-to-be-Friends,
We’re in the Steam Women’s Day Sale event! If you haven’t seen it, it’s a showcase of games from teams led by women and other gender-marginalised developers. You should check it out!
If you’ve found us via the event, or maybe you don’t know much about us…
Hi! We’re Massive Miniteam and we’re making Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure.
We consist of 26 people, and 12 of those human beings are women! From Animator, to Art Lead, to Software Engineer, they have a wide range of seniorities and titles and are not just part of the team but have lead the team to where we are now.
It's not an overstatement to say that Oddsparks (and Massive Miniteam) would be much poorer without their incredible skills and talents, their hard work and creativity, and their joy and existence. Unfortunately, the games industry in general can be very hostile to women and we’d like to take this occasion to actually celebrate these wonderful human beings and uplift their voices.
We’ve asked a few of them three questions: What do you do, what’s your favorite part about the job, and what advice would they give other women seeking to enter their role. From these little interviews, we hope you gain a new appreciation for the hard work of making games and of the women in the industry.
Tori, Animator
What do you do?
I am an animator and rigger.
That means I put the skeleton into the puppets and make them move!
What’s your favorite part about the job?
I think it's to think about what personality each character has, and then putting that personality into the movement. I also enjoy having little chats with my co-workers about funny things the Sparks could be doing and then secretly adding those into the game.
Any advice for other women seeking to enter your role?
Listen to yourself, think about what you enjoy about it, and follow that intuition.
For example I really like animating animals and I had the most fun doing this. And by doing it, I improved. That's what brought me here!
Understand that there are lots of opinions, because everyone is a critic and that you don’t have to take all of them to heart.
Learn to understand which feedback is reasonable and use that to improve yourself. It’s hard to find the right balance here, because especially women tend to be brought up to become people-pleasers, but learning to overcome this urge will help you to grow beyond and not force yourself to always only find a happy medium as the only solution.
Christiane, Art Lead
What do you do?
I am a coach for my art department.
And even though I'm called an Art Lead, I do less “arting” than “leading”. It enables me to support my artists to the best of my abilities and have them out up the best work that they can, in an environment they're comfortable in, and their voices are being heard.
What’s your favorite part about the job?
About this job, here… It’s the team. I've never worked with such nice, open minded, and diverse team. It just makes working much much easier. When I said that I enable my artists to be heard, I'm also being heard here, which is relatively rare for a woman of my position and that’s very nice.
Of course, I tremendously enjoy all the different ideas my artists come up with. All the different solutions they come up with their mind. Especially when they surprise me, it's always fun. I was once told that I should embrace solutions I don't expect, or even don't want. Because putting them out there will give me a new perspective on things that I will not have anticipated because I'm just one person.
And I'm now here in the very privileged position of having many many creative people around with great ideas, great impulses. This helps me to grow and appreciate my everyday work-life.
Any advice for other women seeking to enter your role?
Sadly, being a woman (and in general, being a non-cishet white man) in Game Development and in a Leadership role requires you to have a thick skin. It's gotten better, but it's still really hard. The most important thing for everybody out there is to just network.
You will not get a job if people don't know your name. Because our industry is really small, we want to work with people we like, and people we know. I think that's valid, but it does mean that just because you're incredibly talented or very very skilled, people will not just pick you up from the street and put you on a role where you can actually do some cool work.
You have to put yourself out there.
Find the people you want to work with. Find your peers. Because not only will they help you find opportunities, but they will also be a support net if things going down.
It's never been easier to make games. It's never been harder to join this industry.
Layal, Software Engineer
What do you do?
I’m a game programmer.
I currently work on Oddsparks, previously I worked on porting games (in Massive Miniteam). So what I’m doing right now is dealing with UI, implementing features related to UI... I’ve worked on the notebook, video options, the keybindings. Accessibility is something I’m a big part of, which I’m very happy about!
What’s your favorite part about the job?
My favorite part about the job is that my colleagues are mostly down to earth. There’s no barrier to communicate with my colleagues. We’re all very easy to talk to. And what I like about is that there is this diversity - we have people from different countries. We sometimes cook for each other and share our country’s food. I like the openness about this stuff.
And it’s not very serious, (but we’re still serious about deadlines). So these things are what I really like about work. People are very nice, very openminded and communicative.
Any advice for other women seeking to enter your role?
My advice for women who are seeking to enter this role is first focus on your skills, on what you would like to work on and to create. Always try. Even if you think it’s impossible to join this space because “I’m a woman” or whatever gender you are. So think above this gender, even if it’s hard. But like, follow what you want to do and just do it. Take care of your portfolio, and apply.
My advice is: Don’t put a barrier on yourself.
That's all for now!
Thanks so much for reading, and if you haven't tried it yet, we hope you enjoy the demo! We're coming out in Early Access on April and are busy working on creating and polishing up the content. Some of you might have noticed a previously unseen building in Layal's image!
We'll talk more with another devlog soon, a much deeper dive into the mountains! We're looking forward to showing you some unusual logistics tools, some fun enemies and some very special Sparks. So tell your friends about us, and tell us your feedback and thoughts over at the Steam Discussions, our Discord, or even email us at [email protected].