2023-10-24 18:49:17
A few days before the opening of Paris Games Week, the National Video Game Union is releasing its annual barometer and highlighting the ongoing feminization of the profession. Leaving aside other problematic aspects.
This is great news for French video games. Women represent nearly one in four employees (24%), or 10 points better than ten years ago. “A strong trend that continues every year,” notes the National Video Game Union (the Medef of video games) in its annual Barometer. One in five manager positions would even be occupied by women, twice as many as five years ago. Great news – in truth not so new, insofar as feminization has been a major trend for ten years – which comes at just the right time for the upcoming opening of Paris Games Week, the major show celebrating the dynamism of gamers (there are plenty of girls too), e-sport (well, OK, here, we don’t insist too much on feminization) and the players in this modern and innovative sector full of leaders that the SNJV would like to see subsidize a a little more – to your good heart, Mr. Minister.
It will also be an opportunity to remember that all French people play and that it is not dirty. Here, we are rather in the court of the other employers’ union, the Sell (Union of Leisure Software Publishers) which every year delivers its little PDF with guys with smiles like that. “The number of French players has reached a historic record with 39.1 million players aged 10 and over, compared to 37 million in 2022.” This year ? Women are playing more and more, the average player is 40 years old (understand, it’s not just a kid’s thing) and it’s “young people’s favorite media”. Everything is so great, then. A basic legitimation work which seems intended for no one other than the public authorities. We would like to make fun of it but, in fact, that would perhaps be unwelcome when a few months ago the President of the Republic, visibly disturbed, warned his fellow citizens against the “intoxication” of the game video following the urban riots… Before backpedaling (well yes, we are not going to get angry with an industry of the future).
An industry that devours its employees
Obviously, it’s good news to see the video game industry becoming more feminized. But we would also have liked to hear from the SNJV and Sell the day after the cases of moral and sexual harassment at Ubisoft. Or the scandal at the other great Frenchman, Quantic Dream, a few years earlier… We would like to hear them simply on the state of video games today. We must have missed the communications on the wave of austerity which is currently hitting the French video game giant which is tightening the bolts, closing studios, and “restructuring” after dark years. Like everything else in the industry, more or less massive layoff plans have been accumulating week after week since the summer at EA, Epic, Embracer, CD Projekt, Team 17, Telltale… The list seems endless.
Any reading of the SNJV barometer should in truth be accompanied by that composed by the STJV, the Video Game Workers Union which, a few weeks ago, delivered a study focusing not on the video game industry but on its employees. What they say about it, what they experience about it. We see, for example, that although there are indeed more women in the sector, video game professions remain largely reserved for children of CSP+. Studies are long, expensive (25,000 euros on average) and public schools are rare. We also learn that it is an industry that devours its employees (a global problem, highlighted by other studies), since out of the thousand respondents, only a quarter have been in their position for more than ten years. And there is still something worrying when a sector is not able to retain its workers in the long term. We are entitled to say that there is a source of unease here, perhaps even a problem linked to working conditions, career development prospects or the stability of the entire sector (and not summarized only by its industrial flagships)…
In addition to specifying numerous elements which do not appear in the SNJV barometer, the STJV study contradicts certain points put forward by the employers’ union. How can we reconcile, for example, the fact that 22.5% of respondents say they have gone through at least one crunch period (period of intense work) during the year and the declarations of the general delegate of the SNJV, Julien Villedieu, who, interviewed by Libé in as part of an investigation into video game training, maintained that crunch no longer existed in France. But let’s not talk about suffering as Paris Games Week opens its doors on Wednesday: video games are a celebration.
#feminization #gaining #environment #struggling #Libération