Girls in Arrested Development

Lisette Kaleveld

Game producer Jade Raymond is articulate, intelligent and capable. During interviews she is careful to stay on message, giving complete focus to Assassin's Creed the computer game she produced. She might be gorgeous, but we all know that if she didn't work in gaming, if she worked in finance or research or advertising, her attractiveness would be nothing more than what it is - a little gloss on an otherwise professional package.

But no matter how qualified or conscientious she may be when it comes to doing what she's paid for, in the gaming industry it's how a girl looks, or how this girl looks, that seems to be the take-home message.

Late last year when Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed, as producer Jade naturally took responsibility for promotions and publicity. Despite a responsive media keen to interview and photograph her, it soon became clear that the audience wasn't just focusing on the marketing message. Instead they were looking her up and down...or objecting to all the others who were looking her up and down - the same gaze either way.

Jade became the subject of more uninvited public appraisal, innuendo, male fantasy, general creepiness and downright nastiness than if she'd posted herself on Girls Gone Wild. But she hadn't posted on Girls Gone Wild, you see. Others did the dirty work for her and the low point in all this was the creation and circulation of photo-shopped, sexually explicit images of her, and a pornographic comic accusing Jade of manipulating fan boys with her sexuality. Others argue that she was the one who was exploited - used and pimped by Ubisoft to sell games. Either way, her gender and sexuality was given the leading role, in the spotlight, centre stage, at the expense of everything else she had to contribute.

Another beauty-and-ruin story of a girl in the public eye? In the book Bitch, Elizabeth Wurtzel writes about the dubious fate of beautiful female celebrities. We all could name at least a few divas who tout the same pretty power that led to the rise and demise of Marilyn, Britney and Paris.

Some court the public with their cuteness and others do not. Some have skill sets apart from their physicality and others do not. It doesn't always make a difference. Anne Sexton struggled to be more famous for her poetry than her red lipstick and husky voice. And Demi Moore, a great actress, is still widely remembered for being nude and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair. "Men want women to be beautiful, but when they actually are they are suspicious of it," Wurtzel says, " - unless all they are is beautiful, which is less threatening." The depressing point Wurtzel makes is that real, sustaining talent doesn't always protect a high-profile beauty from that elastic band of public opinion.

It seems just as women are getting comfortable in professional spaces, in offices and boardrooms, the internet comes along. Women who do business online, are facing new barriers to equality, or the same barriers to equality all over again. It's an environment that's more difficult to 'clean up' than regular workplace policy and politics. Message boards, blogs and forums are where industry news, product marketing and gaming journalism mix happily with anonymous posting, image sharing, uninvited opinion and testosterone-fuelled fantasy.

On the positive side, online spaces encourage debate like no other environment can. The circulation of the pornographic cartoon and later, the threat of legal action issued against the cartoonist by Jade's employer Ubisoft, jolted the gaming industry into discussion and reflection.

What is the state of play for female gamers, developers and users? Who benefits from and is exploited by female beauty, and why is this so? Was the comic just free speech blown out of proportion irresponsibly by others, and were Ubisoft's legal threats proof of exploitation marketing? Online discussion gave vent to all kinds of cynicism, objection and insight around these questions.

The voice of female gamers came through too, in tones of battle-weary frustration. One female blogger describes an exclusive, unwelcoming community of male gamers who lack even basic social courtesy. "They use 'rape' to mean 'beat in a game' and consider 'gay' and 'girl' acceptable insults, " she said. Others recalled Kathy Sierra, a once respected opinion leader who eventually fled the industry's hostile, anti-female culture.

And it's not just women who have a hard time with it. WomenGamers.com columnist Dr Kathryn Wright ran an informal study of men who use female characters online. She found even men were reluctant to play females because of the insults, propositioning and innuendo they faced.

Changing the atmospheres of exclusion and hostility - beyond gimmicks like Frag Dolls and pink game consoles - is not only overdue, but it's also obviously lucrative. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all busy developing more games to appeal to females, to grab market share of 52 per cent of the population. Female gamers and older gamers are the fastest growth areas in the business - both cohorts likely to be repelled by blatant sexism. The days of plot lines based on curvy, full-lipped female characters who can’t save themselves are finally numbered.

But culture change will surely lag well behind expectations if the gaming community remains male dominated ( - 'female deprived' might be a better term for the gender imbalance, if men enjoyed full sovereignty how could a lady going about a few mundane tasks get so many all flustered and hot under the collar?). UK games recruitment agency Aardvark Swift said that of 413 people employees they placed in 2002 and 2003, 375 were men and 38 were women. Most women were employed in sales and marketing. Only two per cent of women were programmers and only five per cent were in senior management.

In the end I'm not so interested in what men are thinking when they look at Jade Raymond. But hopefully the girls have noticed her poise, focus and calm assertion of rights. Despite everything. Perhaps they will become the young women who, like Jade, can push through the barriers to success in the gaming industry, correct the gender imbalance and eventually help inspire the culture shift we're waiting for.