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Capcom striving to make working for them more appealing to women, now 20% female staf

N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Given we've had a few horror story threads in the past, I thought it might be nice to spotlight some success a Japanese publisher is having with hiring a lot more women.

capcomwomenzxjx6.png


Source: http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/annual/2016/annual_2016_01.pdf
 
M

Mesoian

Member
Cool.

Wondering what percentage of them are in the art and design portion of the company since that's where they need most of their checking done.
 
M

mcw

Member
Glad to see this. Street Fighter V had some artistic choices that made me wonder if any women were involved in its development. This gives me hope for the future.
 
O

Otakumegane

Member
A small part in their transition to mobile focus, they need more women in their design teams. Have their mobile offerings panned out so far?
 
M

Mesoian

Member
mcw said:
Glad to see this. Street Fighter V had some artistic choices that made me wonder if any women were involved in its development. This gives me hope for the future.
Click to expand...

Haha yeah.

"I'm not even saying that we shouldn't go forward with Laura's secondary outfit, I'm just saying maybe we shouldn't make that the FIRST extra outfit we release for her, you know?"

Though that being said, Capcom's SF5 schedule is all fucked up, so at this point, I'll accept "we had to" as a valid excuse.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Otakumegane said:
A small part in their transition to mobile focus, they need more women in their design teams. Have their mobile offerings panned out so far?
Click to expand...

Monster Hunter Explore met expectations, but Breath of Fire 6 bombed.

They haven't released a new flagship product since then, but they're planning to release new Monster Hunter, Mega Man, and Sengoku Basara mobile games soon.

I'll have a thread up on their mobile news from this document later, but there's a lot to chew through since it's 56 pages of tiny text.
 
D

Dame

Member
- J - D - said:
Good start.
Click to expand...

Exact phrasing right there: good start.

Sad that companies/enterprises/corporations/entire governments would have to actively work to hire even 20% of a workforce as women. Baby steps at least.

Mesoian said:
Cool.

Wondering what percentage of them are in the art and design portion of the company since that's where they need most of their checking done.
Click to expand...

This...this is actually a great question which may raise some scepticism.
 
M

Mesoian

Member
Otakumegane said:
A small part in their transition to mobile focus, they need more women in their design teams. Have their mobile offerings panned out so far?
Click to expand...

In Japan? Oh hell yeah.

But let's not start saying that mobile sensibilities = female sensibilities. The reason why more women play games on mobile is because it's not an immediately toxic environment if you do so. A woman says she plays Mario games on social media and guys demand to know if she know's Mario's cup size. A woman plays Granblue Fantasy and suddenly it's almost (keyword almost) acceptable because it's perceived as a different scale of playing.

BlizzKrut said:
Weren't some of the designs on SFV done by a woman?
Click to expand...

Some.

Not the questionable ones though (at least I'm pretty sure they're not).

We're at the weird point where, even if (let's say) Mika's outfit was originally done by a woman, the DLC outfits, the ones that are made to make money, are being done by other people and are usually pretty objectifying.

It's a weird issue of strides being made and eyecandy being extra and thus not mattering?
 
D

DrunkShogun

Member
Capcom on the redemption path. Nice to see, I've been surprised how often Japanese art design that I like is from a female designer as well as story so this could be a great move by capcom.
 
T

The Lone Dragon

Member
Great to hear it.

mcw said:
Glad to see this. Street Fighter V had some artistic choices that made me wonder if any women were involved in its development. This gives me hope for the future.
Click to expand...

This is very simplistic thinking.

Kinu Nishimura, a woman, has created some of the most provocative artwork in all of the Street Fighter series, such as the infamous Elena lose portrait from SF3:

Believe it or not, women can make those same "artistic choices", too.


Tizoc said:
Now bring back Kinu Nishimura.
Click to expand...

Lol, ironic. Speak of the devil!
 
P

Platy

Member
Mesoian said:
Cool.

Wondering what percentage of them are in the art and design portion of the company since that's where they need most of their checking done.
Click to expand...

Not art and design ... the people who greenlights those designs.

I know LOTS of stories of people who wanted to make more awesome designs that got received with "but can you make this armor more ... feminine ?" "what do you mean ?" "I don't know ... maybe some boob shapes?" and things like that

mcw said:
Glad to see this. Street Fighter V had some artistic choices that made me wonder if any women were involved in its development. This gives me hope for the future.
Click to expand...

THIS
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
BlizzKrut said:
Weren't some of the designs on SFV done by a woman?
Click to expand...
I believe so, yeah. I recall there being mention of more women being on the DLC staff in terms of the DLC characters, which would explain the edits to Juri's design between her Story Mode drawing & her final design.
 
O

Otakumegane

Member
Mesoian said:
In Japan? Oh hell yeah.

But let's not start saying that mobile sensibilities = female sensibilities. The reason why more women play games on mobile is because it's not an immediately toxic environment if you do so. A woman says she plays Mario games on social media and guys demand to know if she know's Mario's cup size. A woman plays Granblue Fantasy and suddenly it's almost (keyword almost) acceptable because it's perceived as a different scale of playing.
Click to expand...

What I was saying is that since mobile is such a wide demographic it would be dumb not to hire women for the design team especially considering it has the potential to draw in new audiences that aren't catered to by Capcom's traditionally mainstream IPs, with the exception possibly being Monster Hunter.


And it looks like that did well.
 
S

skynidas

Banned
Neoxon said:
I believe so, yeah. I recall there being mention of more women being on the DLC staff in terms of the DLC characters, which would explain the edits to Juri's design between her Story Mode drawing & her final design.
Click to expand...

why would that explain that?
 
D

Data West

coaches in the WNBA
i think the number one people on the internet seem to get wrong is that women weren't involved in sexy female designs in games
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
The Lone Dragon said:
Great to hear it.



This is very simplistic thinking.

Kinu Nishimura, a woman, has created some of the most provocative artwork in all of the Street Fighter series, such as the infamous Elena lose portrait from SF3.

Believe it or not, women can make those same "artistic choices", too.




Lol, ironic. Speak of the devil!
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised how much I appreciate Capcom's 2D artists from their yesteryears ;)
 
S

SolidSnakex

Member
Jeffrey said:
is 20% good or bad for a video games company in japan, or in general?
Click to expand...

It's actually very high for any studio. In 2014 one of ND's female staffers tweeted that 14% of the studio is female. She said that while that may seem low, it's actually unusually high for the industry.
 
L

Lime

Member
I hope they also do something culturally internally within the company, as office environments and social rues are also gendered and usually dominated by hegemonic masculinity.

And good luck combating the patriarchal structures in Japan. I really hope they'll manage!
 
S

Seyavesh

Member
i remember reading a story about how a female worker was driven to suicide working at capcom because of her gender several years back so i'm curious how much of that goal is actually like, legit
 
M

mcw

Member
The Lone Dragon said:
This is very simplistic thinking.

Kinu Nishimura, a woman, has created some of the most provocative artwork in all of the Street Fighter series, such as the infamous Elena lose portrait from SF3.

Believe it or not, women can make those same "artistic choices", too.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. I hope my original post didn't seem dismissive or anything; the reactions of other folks to SFV are varied, after all. For me, the designs for Mika, Laura, and Chun made me embarrassed to play the game or even watch tournament streams when my wife was in the room. In years past, we would watch Evo together, so for me this was a big frustration. To your point, employing more women isn't any kind of guarantee that my frustrations will go away, but it's healthy for the company and the industry in my opinion and gives me hope.
 
A

Adryuu

Member
That 20% may very well be the hope we need. Is Dragons Dogma very popular among women? I know my gf played and liked it.
 
G

Garlador

Member
I have given Capcom a lot of crap over the years pertaining to their business, particularly how they've handled DLC in the past, but I've ALWAYS felt they were one of the best companies in terms of giving us games starring actual, playable female characters.

I could even be wrong, and anyone is free to correct me on this, but I think they have more playable black women in their games than almost any other publisher - even American ones.
 
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