Honoured as WAITTA Incite\u2019s Professional Achiever of the Year for 2015\/16 for her work supporting diversity and growth in WA\u2019s games and tech industries, Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie is an entrepreneur, diversity expert, researcher, educator, community activator, game designer and advocate for women in tech.<\/p>\n
We recently spoke to Kate, who is a Curtin alumna and now Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, about the state of the games industry\u00a0in WA, her passion for diversity in games and a gender gap that\u2019s changing, albeit slowly.<\/p>\n
Yes, it\u2019s a huge honour and is helping me to help a lot more people.<\/p>\n
Right now I\u2019m working hard to support game developers who are not receiving the support they should be. This means game developers from diverse backgrounds \u2014 I’ll speak in more detail about that later on \u2014 but also areas like Western Australia where we have historically not done much to nurture our games industry despite it being worth $100 billion globally and an important art form and driver of innovation.<\/p>\n
Victoria has supported its industry for a while now through government grants, loans, and other initiatives like a game industry focused co-working space called The Arcade. As a result they create 50 per cent of Australia\u2019s games. WA produces 7 per cent, which is actually pretty good considering what we have to work with! Imagine what we could do with the same investment from our government that we see in Victoria.<\/p>\n
So what would I like to achieve in the future? I\u2019d love to see 20 per cent of Australia\u2019s games coming out of WA. As part of my role as the Director of Games and Interactive at FTI<\/a>, I\u2019ve been working to get support to take our trial games co-working space, called LEVEL ONE<\/a>, to the next level. Our state government has just announced $20 million to support innovation in WA, so I\u2019m hopeful we\u2019ll see some of that going towards our games industry.<\/p>\n I have so much more that I want to do, so I\u2019<\/strong>ll get back to you on that!<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always been passionate about trying to leave the world a better place than I found it and have been actively involved in fighting for environmental issues and social justice. I see supporting diversity as an extension of that. Obviously, also being a woman in the field also makes it a very personal issue. I don\u2019t want anyone else to have to go through the stuff myself and many of my colleagues have.<\/p>\n I have a lot of favourites, but the one I\u2019m currently enamoured with is The Witcher 3. It’s an open world game where you ride around a ye olde fantasy countryside helping people and slaying monsters. Often games where you can\u2019t pick what kind of character you want to play (race, gender, orientation, etc.) are heavily geared towards straight, white male players, which is, let\u2019s face it, representative of so many blockbuster games these days. But the Witcher 3 is great because there\u2019s something for everyone \u2014 silly quests, a great story with strong female characters and what I like to jokingly call \u201cequal opportunity sexual objectification\u201d. There\u2019s female AND male \u201cstrumpets\u201d and the very attractive main character, Geralt, is often featured with no shirt on \u2014 it\u2019s a nice change from games where it\u2019s usually only the women wearing next to nothing.<\/p>\n I want to see the demographics in the industry match the demographics of greater society.<\/p>\n When I was a kid, Nintendo had lots of advertising on TV that featured only boys. I used to write letters to them about it. I didn\u2019t realise it at the time, but it turns out that around 1984, after years of being on the rise, the number of women going into computer science started decreasing\u00a0and has stayed that way ever since. There\u2019s a great Planet Money<\/a> podcast about why this is the case\u00a0\u2014 1984 was the year that video games and personal computers were really heavily advertised on television, using mostly men and boys. In the podcast they argue that this started telling women and girls, and their parents, that video games and computers aren\u2019t for girls. The rest is history.<\/p>\n Right now 50 per cent of gamers are women, yet only 10-15 per cent of the people actually making those games are women. Racial minorities, including Indigenous creators here in Australia, are also hugely underrepresented. It\u2019s a problem in the tech industry more broadly.\u00a0But things are slowly changing.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a lot of research showing how diversity supports innovation and increases profitability for companies, so it\u2019s not just about doing the right thing.<\/p>\nYou were a finalist for the Curtin alumni achievement award: What achievement in your career are you most proud of and why?<\/h4>\n
You\u2019ve certainly done a lot for gamers and to improve the industry. What motivates you?<\/h4>\n
I expect you get this one a lot: What\u2019s your favourite game personally and what do you like most about it?<\/h4>\n
You\u2019re obviously passionate about the inclusion of women in games and tech. What kind of progress would you like to see on that front?<\/h4>\n