An interview with Georgina Bensley of Hanako Games

Georgina Bensley

This week, we have an interview with one of those rarest of game developers, a woman! Georgina is originally from the US, but has since moved to good old Blighty. We have given her “Honorary Brit” status for this interview. Hopefully this interview will show that women can enjoy making games and maybe some day we will achieve equality amongst game developers as well as players.

Phil:

I know you are not a native of the UK. How do you find making games here? Do you think there are any major advantages or disadvantages to making games here in Britain?

Georgina:

For a British native trying to start out as an indie, I suspect the existence of Jobseeker’s Allowance and the like is a major advantage! Doesn’t apply to me, though, since as an immigrant I wasn’t eligible, and by the time I got citizenship I didn’t need it.

In the US a lot of people get into game development while they’re still students, because it’s the main time in their lives that they have some freedom to explore their interests and don’t have to work full-time to support themselves. Once you’re in work, and you don’t dare leave it, it’s a lot harder.

Phil:

Your games are based around the japanese anime style aesthetically. I also get the feeling from Science Girls, your latest game, that you like the japanese style of gameplay as well. I know that a lot of japanese media and games in particular have a strong connection with British history. Do you think there are any similarities there? What is it about the japanese style that attracts you to it?

Georgina:

The shallow answer: I think it’s pretty. Especially since I hate 3d.

A more complex answer: When I first got into anime, I was struck by the differences from Western television. I found a lot of stories loaded with symbolism and deep thoughts and heroines who weren’t obsessed with fashion. Animation also allows writers to explore areas that would be extremely expensive to pull off in live-action, so the stories seemed much more varied than what I was used to. Now that I’m more familiar with the medium, I know there’s plenty of anime out there that’s shallow, repetitive, and stupid. Still, I’ve retained a lot of positive feelings towards anime.

Phil:

I know from your site that you feel strongly about making games for girls that arent just patronising “my little pony” style games. Why do you think it is that more people arent making games that are more accessible for a female audience. Are there any games you have seen that you thought could be made more female friendly?

Georgina:

Actually, I’m a big fan of My Little Pony. The original 80s cartoon wasn’t just about cute horses, it was about fantasy adventures. There are big scary demons kidnapping ponies to turn into monsters, potions, curses, careless wishes gone wrong, lost cities trapped in alternate dimensions… If I had the rights, I would totally make an epic RPG out of it.

What bugs me is that so many games focus only on the shallowest parts of girlhood and leave out the adventures. What bugs me more is that many game developers don’t seem to bother making a decent game under the fripperies.

I think a lot of it comes down to lazy marketing. As a little girl, if you find a game in a store covered with ribbons and kittens, you understand right away that it’s for you, it’s not going to turn into a horrible gory deathmatch or make fun of you. And if you’re a parent who doesn’t know much about games, same thing – you see this cutesy game and you assume it’s safe and appropriate.

I think the developers know that a lot of people will pick up these games without knowing anything about the game aspect, and that more traditional game-players who hate girliness will likely avoid them on sight, and the mainstream game mags won’t admit the games even exist, so they just don’t bother making the gameplay anything other than crap. And the cycle perpetuates itself that “girl games suck”.

Looping back around to My Little Pony, I’m reminded of the Wizards of the Coast “April Fools” a few years ago where they pretended to be working on an MLP game. Of course, it was all a big joke. Why would anyone possibly want to waste efforts on a role-playing game for *little girls*? … And there’s the problem.

Even if you’re going to make a game about (wince) dress-up or shopping, it is not impossible to make a fun GAME out of it. Jojo’s Fashion Show is actually really good, in my opinion. The casual market has to put more effort into gameplay because everybody gets free demos before they buy these games, so they’re a lot less shoveled-in than retail girl-games.

Phil:

It is actually quite rare to find a female developer, let alone an indie one. How did you get into making games? Do you think that more women should be making games? I know the games industry would love that, but there simply arent enough women coming into the industry. Why is that do you think?

Georgina:

I got into making games the same way I think most people did – I played a lot of video games as a kid, and I fooled around with game-making and programming tools of varying complexity as I grew up.

I can’t really talk about the industry, because I’ve never been part of it. I’ve never worked for a big company, and I doubt I ever will. For one, my skillset is way too indie-oriented, I don’t think I’d be useful as part of a giant development team. For another, everything I read complaining about how there aren’t any women in game development and how laddish everyone is makes me NOT want to be part of that environment. I don’t want to be constantly fighting with people who think girliness is some kind of embarassing joke.

But reasons are as complex as people. Some women are probably afraid of being harassed and laughed at. Some programmers may be looking at the prospective earnings and deciding they’re a lot better off in mainstream programming than in gamedev, being overworked and underpaid and expected to put up with it because of sheer fanboy glee. Some have families and are expected or choose to be the primary caretaker, which combined with crunch time would just not work.

I’d like it if the initiatives for women-in-game-development gave more attention to indies, and suggested to budding game designers that they could just make games themselves and bypass all that nonsense if they wanted to.

Science Girls

Phil:As I was playing the demo of Science Girls, I got the feeling that story and character was really important within the game. Looking at the games you have on your site (www.hanakogames.com) I get a strong sense that you like story-driven games. Is that a major factor for you? How do you approach the development of a game from a story point of view?

Georgina:

Without a story, gameplay is meaningless. I think all game fans know the frustrated disappointment of playing through a long complicated game to receive nothing more than ‘You win! The end.’ or a loop-around back to the first level.

Without a story, it’s a lot easier to just give up on a game whenever it starts to flag or get too difficult. If there’s no story, it doesn’t really matter what happens next, it’s probably just more of the same.

The very first (I think) games I “made” as a child were with some sort of old Apple software that let you do branching-path stories. I like reading stories and I like telling them. I’ve done pure puzzle design, but I tend not to get past prototyping a level or two because I lose interest. Wanting to reach the end of the story is a motivating factor for me as a creator as well as a player.

Phil:

Indie development is incredibly hard, especially if you are a one-woman developer. How do you deal with the development of your games. Do you find collaborators or tend to tackle everything by yourself with maybe some contractors for the art and music? Who does the story development for instance?

Georgina:

I’ve done a few collaborations. Science Girls! is a joint project with Spiky Caterpillar in California, and in that case the story development was largely shared; we bounced ideas off each other, and then he ran with them, and then I edited what he wrote, and so on. Summer Session was more complicated, as I sort of ‘inherited’ an incomplete project from Winter Wolves in Italy. The art was already in place, so I had to invent a game design and story that would work with the resources available, and then someone else programmed it based on my instructions.

I’d be happy to do more collaboration – I have more ideas than I will EVER have time to finish working on. But finding trustworthy people who have the time and the passion for indie development and will still take orders from me is a little difficult. Mostly I work on my own, plus contractors.

Phil:

I have to ask, have you gotten used to the rain? Are there any things in Britain you find strange? How do you find everyday life here?

Georgina:

Rain? It doesn’t rain ENOUGH! I come from a land of tumultuous thunderstorms and regular hurricanes. I don’t totally miss all that, power outages are a pain for the computers, but it does feel a little tame here sometimes. Now that I’m by the coast I can try to walk down to the beach in a good windstorm, and that’s entertaining.

I like it here. I can’t drive, and that’s a big problem in the States, but here I can do all my shopping on foot, and take the train if I want to get around the country. I do wish more businesses were open late, though.

Phil:

Finally, if there’s anything you’d like to say to readers of this article about being an indie developer in Britain?

Georgina:

Try it yourself?

Tags: Interviews

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 12:22 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.