The “no men allowed” (unless you identify as a female) design incubator from Pixelles has opened up its next phase of cultural edification for “empowering more women to become game makers”.
The event was recently covered by the CBC, with comments on the news page turned off to avoid any sort of feedback that might be deemed politically incorrect.
The Pixelles Montreal incubator is a small workshop put together by Ubisoft Montreal’s UI artist, Rebecca Cohen-Palacios. She’s worked on Shape Up for the Xbox Kinect, along with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.
The goal of Pixelles is to supposedly create a “safe” environment for women in a judgment-free zone where they can work and grow their skills without worrying about competing with pants-wearing men.
Cohen-Palacios told the CBC that the reason that Pixelles was started was due to the lack of women representation in gaming…
“There definitely aren’t enough women in the gaming industry, especially when you get to more technical areas,”
“We show them making games is possible, and that all these people in the industry, they exist, and they’ve gone through what you’ve gone through. You’re not alone,”
Participants take part in six three-hour sessions, with additional assignments requiring around six hours out of the week to work on the projects.
The games that have been made under the Pixelles workshop are showcased in the arcade showroom on the official website.
Some of these projects include zines like Zine Fair Lady, and 2D platformers like Jerry The Last Mini Unicorn.
You don’t need any experience to join the workshop, and the IGDA offered to provide some funding for laptops for those attending the workshop who don’t have a laptop or desktop computer.
This is all part of a concerted effort by gynocentric groups looking to alter global society, similar to the Rad Campaign to raise $20 million in women-led ventures through the Women Who Tech initiative or the Global Womens Leadership Initiative, which is aiming to supplant current parliamentary seats so that there is a 50/50 divide in gender leadership representation around the world by 2050. They claim that only 22% of women hold office in parliament at the moment.
They plan on overhauling governing positions the world around, as detailed via their global initiative map.
These initiatives to force women into positions – especially in the tech field – has been a prominent goal of third-wave feminists. Companies like Blizzard have been instituting hiring programs to force more women and minorities into their ranks, while Google has been desperate to do the same using their Ambassador
Program, along with their new Google Play Initiative, which is themed around sociopolitically enforcing “strong” female charatcers in games.
Even with all the pro-feminist initiatives by some tech companies like Google, it’s quite ironic that Google is also being sued by former female employees for wage gap discrimination.
(Thanks for the news tip Migi)
