Laila Shabir, 28, was frustrated over the number of female applicants she received after starting her own game studio, Learn District. Shabir, who graduated from MIT with a bachelors degree in economics, was the only woman on her nine-person team. New to the gaming industry, Shabir assumed women weren’t interested in creating video games. Shabir decided to launch a workshop to find out what girls wanted in a video game, and soon found out just how wrong she was.
“I set out to do a little experiment where I was like, ‘Okay, let’s see if we can do a small summer camp or workshop with 9-13 year old girls to come in and make some games with us to see what they’re interested in,’” Shabir told iDigitalTimes. “That’s around the time where a lot of girls think about what they want to be when they grow up. It’s also the time where a lot of stereotypes set in.”
Shabir, founder of Girls Make Games, promoted the workshop on Twitter in April 2014 expecting to receive less than a handful of applicants. The first Girls Make Games workshop received 80 applications in California alone. Shabir’s experiment turned into a global movement.
Without ever holding a session before, parents were eager to sign their girls up for the Girls Make Games workshops. Shabir’s company received emails from Dubai to Taiwan to Australia. Girls Make Games became a global venture in less than a year since their launch. In 2014, Girls Make Games held seven workshops and a flagship camp. In 2015, there will be 40 camps/workshops available for young girls around the world.
This outpour of support made Shabir realize the importance of Girls Make Games. Mothers and fathers would write to Shabir stating things like, “My daughter has always felt like an outsider. She doesn’t have enough friends who are girls that play [video] games. I think this camp would be perfect for her,” Shabir said.
Girls Make Games’ mission is to show young women game development isn’t a “boy” thing, nor is any science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) related-field. Shabir doesn’t believe there’s a stigma attached to girls wanting to enter STEM fields and feels the greater problem is a lack of female role models in STEM careers.
“It’s a conclusion girls will draw growing up. It’s a conclusion our society draws when we look at examples,” she said.
Shabir cited an example she once read in the news of a little girl whose parents told her she would be president some day. The girl’s response? But I’m not a boy.
“To her, it may seem like being a boy is a prerequisite for becoming president. There’s not enough role models in games and tech or any field related. There are few women [compared to men],” Shabir said. “It starts early on. It’s very subtle. It happens inside your mind where it’s like, ‘none of my [girl] friends are doing it."
Enter Girls Make Games.
Shabir’s camp wants to help girls embrace their interest in video games. Girls Make Games aims to teach girls the skills needed to be successful in the gaming industry, not just as a programmer. They learn the development process from start to finish, including an entrepreneurial aspect where the girls must pitch their game in front of judges.
Girls Make Games’ three-week flagship camp for girls ages 10-14 begins each day with an hour of gameplay. They call it research hour, and it is. In order to understand the mechanics of video games, developers will play different types of titles to see what makes them interesting and pull inspiration. The goal is to educate girls about mechanics and genres, but also get them pumped for the rest of the day. Shabir said starting with gameplay at 9:30 a.m. gets the girls excited to come to the camp.
The next step is teaching girls visual programming using software called Stencyl, which is similar to Scratch. It’s a simple drag and drop program teaching the girls the fundamental logic behind code and how to tell a computer what you want it to do. Every girl will learn how to code, even if it’s not the aspect of video game development they’re interested in. The girls who do well and show advanced skills move on to a more complex game development software called Unity, which has been used to create blockbuster titles like Cities: Skylines, Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2.
Girls Makes Games instructors move on to art after the coding lessons. They teach the girls how to make and incorporate art into their game. The girls also take part in an audio workshop where they play with items and record the sounds for a game. This shows the girls what they need for the overall development process, including how to create a design document and spell out the mechanics, levels and concept for game. For every four girls participating in the camp, there's one instructor who's well-versed in code helping them along the way. All the instructors who participate in Girls Make Games know how to code and have some sort of tech background.
The game development process is where things get challenging. Girls will have grandiose ideas for games, but the goal of Girls Make Games is to help them break down their vision for a game into a step-by-step build of the game. The girls learn it’s not easy to just make a character jump and explore every detail of gameplay mechanics.
One of the most unique aspects of Girls Make Games is their entrepreneurial section of the camp session. Girls are divided into teams of four and act as an indie studio. As an indie studio, their resources are limited and the girls must contract their workload. Girls Make Games brings in artists and musicians to help the girls to create their game.
Participants are 100 percent in control of their game. Acting as a studio, the girls direct the art and the sound, take turns writing and coding, and prepare to present their game to a panel of judges. The girls leave the camp with a better understanding of video games and the realization you don’t need to work at a big studio to create an awesome game.
Girls Make Games also offers a weekend camp that introduces girls ages 7-9 and 10-14 to coding software. At the end of the workshop, girls will learn how to use one piece of software that helps them make a game. The goal is to encourage girls to play with the software to get a better grasp of code. Shabir has seen the fresh perspective in the girls who participate in the camp and wants to nurture their creativity. Shabir stressed the female perspective in game development can add depth to titles.
Girls Make Games has received a lot of attention from major studios as well. EA held a fundraiser in their honor in 2015. In 2014, Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, gave the Girls Make Games camp a tour of their California studios. Shabir said the camp has a lot more options to provide for their girls in 2015, and hope to offer internships at the game studios. Girls Make Games wants to get its campers in the environment of a studio and give them the opportunity to shadow developers for a day.
Shabir wouldn’t reveal which studios Girls Make Games have partnered with this year, but promised the girls won't be disappointed. Whether it is the workshop or the camp, Girls Make Games want to keep their lessons exciting and new each day.
“The big thing we had is mind was the feeling that you get when you go to Disney World, where you’re just amazed and excited to be there and you want to try new things and you want to go there every day. That’s the feeling we want to give the girls,” Shabir said.
You can’t leave Disney World without a souvenir. Girls Make Games offered something better for their young developers: the opportunity to create a real game. The camp launched a Kickstarter campaign to help launch The Hole Story, a game created by one of Girl Make Games’ talented group of female designers. The RPG adventure contains 15 challenging puzzles for players. Check out the description of The Hole Story below:
When an unsuspecting young girl finds herself transported to a mystical world, she must rely on her trusty shovel and quick wits to find her way home. After digging up a strange portal in her backyard, budding young archaeologist Wendy falls through time into a strange new land. She quickly discovers that her best chance of returning home is to rescue Alonna, a princess who has gone missing from the kingdom. Her goal in mind, Wendy sets about resolving the problem the best way she knows how – by digging of course!
The Hole Story received the greenlight on Steam! Be sure to watch the official trailer from their Kickstarter below. Check out more about Girl Make Games on their website here.
