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The Game Awards jury lists only 2 women out of 32 jurors (sites selected jurors)

Of course this type of thing leads to passionate and heated attention from all facets of the industry, but it seems a little overblown when considering the lack of details.

I mean, did Geoff/staff allow each individual site to choose their own judge? Did they all act independently from one another without meeting or interacting as a group aware of the makeup of one another? Being specifically hand-picked would certainly be more damning than simple coincidence.

Just continuing from the train of thought above, the panel could hypothetically have had only 1 male. This may say quite a lot about the structure of the industry and the makeup of the websites and publications that the judges come from, but to boycott the show and point fingers without solid clarification is pretty embarrassing-- condemning the industry itself for propagating this inequality is perfectly reasonable, but not the award show for having to pull from that environment.
 
People going off on merit like a diverse panel doesn't better represent the gaming audience of 2015.

People need to unironically check their privilege.
 
I don't get it anymore.

Why is this even relevant to a videogame ?

The show is about games award not some fashion/talent show.

*sigh*

What the fuck. Yeah, women should stick to fashion shows.

Jesus Christ.

And yes - obviously the most IMPORTANT thing is that the jurors are qualified. But an effort should also be made to aspire for diversity. People of different backgrounds (race, religion, gender) bring unique viewpoints and approaches to things including critiques. This isn't specific to video games.

Surely you people can see why having nothing but 30 year old white dudes evaluating the same things is a problem.

You don't think it's worth looking at why this body is NINTETY THREE PERCENT MALE when both the general population and the game playing population look absolutely nothing like that?

This. Half of gamers are women. They aren't represented here. If you think male and female gamers both have 100% identical perspectives on what they enjoy in games you are off your rocker.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
yeah eff this, pick qualified journalists. if its 32 qualified people, fine. if its 32 qualified women, awesome. forcing a 50/50 spilt is silly.

You don't think it's worth looking at why this body is NINETY THREE PERCENT MALE when both the general population and the game playing population look absolutely nothing like that?
 

Mesoian

Member
Maybe the outlets they pick from don't have enough women that are in positions or have the length of 'experience' to be considered "qualified"? Perhaps most of the women he did ask to be on the jury didn't want the spotlight or something? I doubt Geoff has a malign agenda or purposefully left out women.

This in a nutshell.

It's not that the selection for this award ceremony was slanted, it's that the industry itself is inherently slanted and that makes it difficult. Most of the big names of women in games journo land are freelancers and have no permanent home.
 

Ascenion

Member
What does a 50/50 gender split mean?

Is 50% of the gaming media female?
Or is it because 50% of the population is female?
Or 50% of gamers are female..?

At the very least, it shouldn't be 1/32... but I don't know what an appropriate number would be.

I'm asking myself this same question. I'm not sure how you can mandate such a ratio. I agree that 52 men and 2 women isn't right, but then neither is having women on the panel simply because they are women. It's a very complex situation imo. But yeah again 2 women against all those men is unacceptable.
 

fernoca

Member
I'm all for diversity...
But diversity for the sake of diversity is just bad. Is like they're doing it to attract attention rather than actually caring.

Heck, of the jurors, how many are hispanic? Asian? Gay?

Is like when movies, games and TV shows that put one black guy, one gay guy, one woman, one lesbian, one asian, along the main character...to cover all bases.

50/50..of what? Men and women only? Quite diverse! :p
 

aly

Member
No but he or others could've taken a more active stance when reaching out to outlets to get jurors. Just say that the Game Awards promote diversity and would emphasize non-default identities on it.

Something about saying prefer just doesn't sit right with me. Especially if it's true that these are mostly the lead editors of whatever gaming place they picked or they picked who to send.

Edit: Wait, I think you edited that.
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
Don't see why they needed individual people from each site, just have each site submit their choices.
 

LewieP

Member
To the people saying "just pick the best critics".

There are dozens of excellent women critics/journalists that could have been invited to participate. TGA just instead decided to almost exclusively invite men to participate.

In my view Keith's decision to withdraw was the only honourable course of action, and I respect him greatly for taking it.

The other male judges are participating in erasing women's contribution to games.
 

ultron87

Member
Jeff Gerstmann on the jury selection process:

http://jeff.zone/post/133377547466/whats-it-like-to-be-a-judge-for-the-game-awards

I send three emails. One is me saying “sure, I’ll be a judge this year.” One is me filling out a list of nominees. One is me picking winners from the list of nominees. I don’t even know who the other judges are.

Not sure if that first is response to "Would you like to be a judge this year?" or "Who from your publication should be a judge this year?"
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I'm assuming Keighley just selected the sites and let them decide who to send.

Edit: Yeah, looking at Polygon's note they selected their own person.

I imagine this will be a slow road since looking at the list, sites overwhelmingly chose their EIC or longest running review editor.
 
I dont see what the issue is here. Something tells
Me this wasnt meant to be a direct mysoginistic attack on women in gaming, but rather just the way the cards worked out. They got 32 well qualified game critics, their genders are hardly the most important thing.
 

Mesoian

Member
I don't get it anymore.

Why is this even relevant to a videogame ?

The show is about games award not some fashion/talent show.


*sigh*

HAHAHAHA, oh you poor naive soul. This is ABSOLUTELY one big fat fashion/talent show.

There was never a harder time to justify yourself as a white male than now. :(

HsOuOzK.jpg


I mean...sure?
 

Platy

Member
FORCING 50/50 SPLIT IS SILLY says you, but FORCING 96% MALE is as MUCH more silly.

Because there is NO WAY you get 96% male randomly choosing good jury
 

Reallink

Member
Maintaining a strict 50/50 split and only involving yourself with others that do the same is a flawed way of dealing with this issue, though.

Sure, you'll get what you want... an equal split. But it isn't realistic. Most of the judges come from gaming websites. And we all know most of them are male. That's just a fact. That's the root of your problem right there.

Is it Geoff's fault that most gaming critics are male?

Exactly, what an incredibly ignorant, try hard sensationalist stance. No idea who/what killscreen is, but they should direct their ire at the media outlets, not Geoff or the awards show.
 

Montresor

Member
Having women on the panel simply because they are women is only a problem if you can't find enough women who know video games.

You can find 16 women who know games easily enough.

Forcing a 50/50 split will never be a problem.
 

weevles

Member
Maybe the outlets they pick from don't have enough women that are in positions or have the length of 'experience' to be considered "qualified"? Perhaps most of the women he did ask to be on the jury didn't want the spotlight or something? I doubt Geoff has a malign agenda or purposefully left out women.

.
 

Ralemont

not me
What does it even mean to be qualified when someone's job is just telling you what they think of a video game? There's no video game bar to pass or entry exam. The usual arguments against diversity affirmative action (which are flimsy anyway) etc are absent here.
 
What the actual fuck?

Females are better suited judging fashion shows than video games, is that what you're saying?

Sorry if I'm reading that wrong.

haha no.

I'm saying it doesn't matter who the judge is. Just pick the suitable judge and that's it.

The pic from kieth about 1 women is absurd. Who cares of all the judges are women ? or men? If they are suited for the job, it's done. That's what I'm trying to say :)
 

Lime

Member
This in a nutshell.

It's not that the selection for this award ceremony was slanted, it's that the industry itself is inherently slanted and that makes it difficult. Most of the big names of women in games journo land are freelancers and have no permanent home.

1. They could have taken a more active stance
2. Plenty of sites have women and/or no-default identities as their employees and/or editors.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
There was never a harder time to justify yourself as a white male than now. :(

oh poor fucking baby

people actually questioning whether literally everything on the planet should be filtered through a white man's point of view

how will you survive?
 
The obvious problem is that there weren't enough women to select from the various sites and publications asked to participate. Basically, very few of the top editors or critics from gaming sites are women, or even non-white. I think Polygon's decision is a good one as they clearly had staff qualified for the position and thus took the opportunity to provide some much needed diversity. However, I don't see this as a problem with the Game Awards itself; this is definitely an industry wide problem of lack of diversity in the gaming press. Perhaps a solution would be to ask people outside of the typical gaming editorial community to participate? I.E YouTube people, Twitch people or something?
 

salromano

Member
If Polygon was able to choose Megan to represent their website, I would imagine the rest of the jury were selected as outlets, and the outlets themselves picked who best to represent them?

Edit: The point I'm making is that, if that is the case, I doubt every outlet had a discussion with each other about what gender the representatives of every other outlet are.
 
If they're qualified or established critics, I don't see the problem. Also, don't they need a large portion of the judges to have played every major release?

I hope that terrible female critic for Kotaku doesn't get drafted in.

Per the page, The Game Awards provided advance copy to the jury members in some cases.

The awards had the exact same problem last year. Anyone doing their due diligence should have noticed this and fixed it a long time ago. There are plenty of women who are perfectly qualified to participate--there's no reason that one should need to be an EIC to pick a preferred game from a small list. It's untenable.
 

pantsmith

Member
I like Killscreen's stance.

Seems like its an unfortunate side effect of the industry being a sausagefest, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try harder to make things better.
 

Lunar15

Member
The actual problem is that games criticism needs more female critics, but the sexist institutions of the industry complicates their ability to form a presence.

The panel is not the problem. But it reflects on the well-known state of the games industry and highlights an issue we already know: there are too few female voices making, playing, and writing about games.

Basically this.

EDIT: Well, no, sort of. I think you could find plenty of female voices to include. You could probably even make the whole panel female if you wanted to. It's just that none of them are really in the positions at this point to be nominated by their host outlets. So, it's a weird bit of both.
 
The obvious problem is that there weren't enough women to select from the various sites and publications asked to participate. Basically, very few of the top editors or critics from gaming sites are women, or even non-white. I think Polygon's decision is a good one as they clearly had staff qualified for the position and thus took the opportunity to provide some much needed diversity. However, I don't see this as a problem with the Game Awards itself; this is definitely an industry wide problem of lack of diversity in the gaming press. Perhaps a solution would be to ask people outside of the typical gaming editorial community to participate? I.E YouTube people, Twitch people or something?

I am absolutely positive you could find 15 women people from major gaming press to be jurors.

Hell, IGN and Gamespot alone could probably provide 10


But yes, the lack of women in the gaming press is a problem entirely
 
I'm white, straight, and male, and most of my favorite games this year are ones that probably resonate best with a female audience. I don't even feel represented well and I look like 93% of the panel.
 

geordiemp

Member
It depends, how many women actually WANTED to be on the panel.

If only 1 or 2 women expressed an interest ?

Not everything is as simple as it seems.
 

massoluk

Banned
Isn't this the problem with game publications/websites rather than the Game Awards itself?
It certainly is the problem with gender bias, but the one to fix this should be the publications. It's not Geoff's role to dictate who they send to represent them. Shouldn't Killscreen or Guardians let women cover for the award instead?
 

ultron87

Member
I'm assuming Keighley just selected the sites and let them decide who to send.

Edit: Yeah, looking at Polygon's note they selected their own person.

Though it sounds like they only asked for that after they heard about the make up of the whole jury. At the top of the story Chris says "I did not know the makeup of the voting jury when I agreed to participate." Which sounds more like going "yeah, I'll be a juror" then "I choose myself to be a juror for my outlet".
 

Steel

Banned
I'm assuming Keighley just selected the sites and let them decide who to send.

Edit: Yeah, looking at Polygon's note they selected their own person.

I imagine this will be a slow road since looking at the list, sites overwhelmingly chose their EIC or longest running review editor.

Isn't this the problem with game publications/websites rather than the Game Awards itself?

Pretty much.
 
To the people saying "just pick the best critics".

There are dozens of excellent women critics/journalists that could have been invited to participate. TGA just instead decided to almost exclusively invite men to participate.

In my view Keith's decision to withdraw was the only honourable course of action, and I respect him greatly for taking it.

The other male judges are participating in erasing women's contribution to games.

Okay seriously? I think thats a bit much. Gender should have nothing to do with this. They chose who they felt was the most qualified. Thats not to say there arent really great women games journalists. But something tells me this was chance coincedence rather than some attack.
 
haha no.

I'm saying it doesn't matter who the judge is. Just pick the suitable judge and that's it.

The pic from kieth about 1 women is absurd. Who cares of all the judges are women ? or men? If they are suited for the job, it's done. That's what I'm trying to say :)
If that's what you meant, then I have no idea what you implied with your fashion show comment.
 
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