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Rule Makers vs. Rule Breakers: The Impact of Legislative Policies on Women Game Developers in the Japanese Game Industry

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Feminism in Play

Part of the book series: Palgrave Games in Context ((PAGCON))

Abstract

This chapter asks whether there is a need to recruit and retain more women developers in the Japanese game industry. From a series of semi-structured interviews with women game developers in Japan, I explore this question focusing on how the legal and social dimensions of professional contexts impact women’s participation in game development. This chapter is dedicated to the women who were interviewed for this study, and who continue to pave a path for other women in the industry.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Translated from “CEDEC 2014 Women Creators Discuss ‘Ways for Working Women in the Game Industry!’” Gpara.com, last modified September 4, 2014, http://www.gpara.com/infos/view/16023.

  2. 2.

    See also Shulamit Reinharz and Susan E. Chase (2002) and Pamela Cotterill (1992) for feminist implications of conducting interviews with women.

  3. 3.

    See Nakanishi Tamako (1983), Makoto Kumazawa (1996) and Tachibanaki Toshiaki (2010) on the paradoxes of protectionist discourses and further details on the equality vs. protection debates.

  4. 4.

    See for example, Takahara, Kumio. 1999. “Female Speech Patterns in Japanese” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 92 (1): 61–86. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1991.92.61; Okushi, Yoshiko. 1997. “Patterns of Honorific use in the Everyday Speech of Four Japanese Women.” Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 58 (3): 1–273. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9727271.

  5. 5.

    Translates to “easy” work for women or work that is not physically laborious.

  6. 6.

    Angelique was the first women’s dating-sim game “for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994, published by Koei and developed by Ruby Party, an all-female team within Koei (Marfisa 1999)” (qtd in Kim 2009, 170).

  7. 7.

    Hobbyist groups, which consist mostly of women who create games, manga (Japanese comics) and anime by adapting popular or mainstream works.

  8. 8.

    Morrone and Matsuyama’s study involved fathers who “worked for large, and thus prestigious, corporations with clearly stated policies for paternal leave” (374). See also comparisons made between fathers in Sweden, Korea and France.

  9. 9.

    I thank Mia Consalvo for pointing out this paradox in an earlier draft of this paper.

  10. 10.

    Translated from “CEDEC 2014 Women Creators Discuss ‘Ways for Working Women in the Game Industry!’” Gpara.com, last modified September 4, 2014, http://www.gpara.com/infos/view/16023.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Pronounced as “meka,” it generally refers to machines, technology, electronics and robots.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell and Dr. Mia Consalvo for their unwavering support and generous funding that made this project possible. I am also grateful to the editors for their guidance and many helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AL, Canada

    Tsugumi Okabe

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  1. Tsugumi Okabe
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Kishonna L. Gray

  2. Department of Communication Arts, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Gerald Voorhees

  3. Department of English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Emma Vossen

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Okabe, T. (2018). Rule Makers vs. Rule Breakers: The Impact of Legislative Policies on Women Game Developers in the Japanese Game Industry. In: Gray, K., Voorhees, G., Vossen, E. (eds) Feminism in Play. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_8

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