EQ2 Guide Torrie Dorrell on the G.I.R.L Program  

Torrie Dorrell on the G.I.R.L Program

SOE recently announced a scholarship for women pursuing careers in game design. This scholarship offers ten thousand dollars and a paid internship at an SOE studio to one talented student. We both had a lot of questions, so Calthine, with her amazing bard skills managed to track down Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing for Sony Online Entertainment. Since people will do anything to get a bard to STOP playing, Torrie agreed to sit down and answer some of our questions about the new scholarship program.

Calthine: So how did you guys come up with the idea for this program? What sparked the "omg this would be great" moment?

Torrie: This all started when I was putting together some goals for the company's long-term strategic plan several years ago. Diversifying our business beyond our comfort zone, MMORPGs, has been a very important goal for us. That includes new game genres, expanding our reach into new territories, and tapping into a wider base of the population. And when you're focused on diversifying your game lineup, you naturally think about diversifying the talent behind those games. As part of this large scale company goal, I decided to form an internal task force made up of mostly women from around the company to discuss issues and initiatives we could take on. And G.I.R.L. (Gamers in Real Life) was born.

Kiara: What's the ultimate goal of the G.I.R.L. program? More female gamers? More women in the industry?

Torrie: We have several goals. We want more women playing our current games, we want a larger female audience playing our next-gen games, and we want to bring more women into SOE and the industry in general. So taking EQ2 as an example, since that is my game of choice, we're not recommending the devs add pink weapons, we're trying to figure out how we make it easier for a woman who has little to no experience playing an MMO to come in and enjoy this vast, beautiful, virtual world. I used to be primarily a console player (though I thoroughly enjoy FPSs), and I really wanted to like MMOs, but amongst the 15 or so MMOs I've tried over the years, I never got past about level 20 before quitting. For me, it took one player asking, "Can I help you?" in EQ2 at a critical juncture (you know, the "lost in a dungeon of spiders with bad maps and no clue" scenario). That one player friend turned into two and so on, and joining a fantastic guild was the secret sauce for me. I'm now a level 80 with a penchant (yeah, that's marketing speak for obsession) for raiding. So it's not like we women need "girly" things in a game to enjoy it, I think we publishers just need to figure out the nuances of making these games sticky for both men and women.

Kiara: On the EQ2 Forums it was asked why this scholarship was only being offered through the one college. Are there plans in the works to widen the scope and give this excellent opportunity to more women looking to get into the industry?

Torrie: We started this initiative in the middle of the fiscal year, when budgets were already planned. But we wanted to get this scholarship idea off the ground this year, because we're very interested in actually DOING things and not just TALKING about them. So we carved the scholarship fund out of our current budget to make it happen and partnered with The Art Institutes, which is actually a system of schools with more than 40 locations. We hope to grow this into a much larger scholarship program in the next few years, and I would really like to bring more publishers into this effort.

Calthine: Why did you choose to start with an art design scholarship? Isn't that a bit stereotypical, starting with a "soft" discipline instead of a "hard" one, like coding?

Torrie: We chose to start with an art design scholarship because we conducted a poll through The Art Institutes and asked women what fields they were interested in. Design was top choice.

Kiara: Are there other programs like this within the industry or is SOE breaking new ground with this? And is this strictly a design initiative or is it going to be spreading through SOE as a whole into other areas besides just design?

Torrie: I'm not aware of any other programs of this nature outside of our efforts here at SOE. We are focused on diversifying our company across all departments. During our G.I.R.L. scholarship event in San Francisco, we featured a short panel discussion with some of the women from our Seattle studio who are working on The Agency: a media producer, a game designer, a game producer, and two women from marketing and PR. The Agency has at least one woman working in every discipline, and this is very indicative of our recent efforts.

Calthine: Is there any concern about providing competing design studios with awesome designers?

Torrie: While G.I.R.L. started out as an internal task force, we would be quite pleased if this became an industry-wide initiative. Bringing more women into the traditionally male-dominated environment of game development is good thing for all of us.

Kiara: So how does SOE stack up in the female game developer department? Obviously you want to increase your numbers, but does SOE have more than, less than, or about on par with the average number of women in the industry?

Torrie: I believe we're on par with the rest of the industry, which is why we're looking at diversifying. But in no way is this an affirmative action plan. We are simply seeking out more women for the interview process, and after that, may the best person win.

Kiara: Courtney Simmons said in the CNN interview (grats on that btw!!) that she feels like women are "gamed down to." I happen to agree with this in many situations. We all know that tastes in all people vary widely. Is the goal here to provide a more well rounded product or to produce games marketed directly to women?

Torrie: The goal is to provide more well-rounded games that appeal to both men and women. We're not looking to create a game specifically for women, just as we never consciously focused on making games geared toward men. But it's no news flash that men and women can have different tastes, different sensibilities. So what we really want to do is simply widen our perspective, and not at the expense of either our male or female audience.

Kiara: One of my personal concerns when I hear things along the lines of making more games for women is the segregation of the gaming community into "boy games" and "girl games." I'm sure this is also a concern for SOE, not to mention a fine line to walk. How will this concern be addressed?

Torrie: I don't think it's such a fine line. If you turn a primarily male dev team into a more balanced dev team with both men and women, you get a more balanced game. And if you are creating games that are more balanced between male and female sensibilities, you will have more women playing your games.

Calthine: Is this a one shot deal, or is it just the start of something big? What does the future hold?

Torrie: We truly hope more publishers will become involved on a myriad of levels. I honestly believe G.I.R.L. exists because we are correcting the current market. I seriously doubt there will be a need for this type of initiative 10 years from now (at least I hope not). There is not nearly as much boy-girl separation between entertainment and career choices today as when I was growing up. Even Barbie and G.I. Joe are trying to blur those lines!

Calthine and I would like to thank Torrie for her time answering our questions and invite all of you to discuss the program here on our forums.

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