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'Debugging' the gender gap in video games

Alumna Rebecca Cohen-Palacios empowers women to find a place in the once male-dominated gaming industry
March 28, 2017
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By Jeremy Glass-Pilon


Video game development has long been considered a male-dominated industry. According to a 2009 study by the International Game Developers Association, less than 25 per cent of all developers are women.

Rebecca Cohen-Palacios, BCSc 09, is defying those odds, and with great results. 

Rebecca Cohen-Palacios, BCSc 09 Rebecca Cohen-Palacios, BCSc 09, loves being able to help women looking for a way into the world of video game development. | Photo: Mat Barbeau

Although she works as a user interface developer for Montreal’s biggest video game company, Ubisoft Montreal, Cohen-Palacios is turning heads with Pixelles. Her not-for-profit community organization promotes and provides resources for women who are interested or curious about video games, whether as a career, hobby, artistic medium or form of personal expression.

Cohen-Palacios and game-designer Tanya Short, who also runs the Montreal-based game studio Kitfox Games, co-founded Pixelles in 2012.

The initiative offers monthly workshops, mentorship programs and activities, completely free, including a “Make Your First Video Game” program. What they focus on the most, however, is to offer women a safe place to learn and get some experience in the primarily male industry.

“When you’re the only woman in the room at a games event, you can end up feeling like the representative for your whole entire gender. It’s a huge amount of pressure,” Cohen-Palacios says.

“We offer a space where you can leave all those bags at the door, where you can learn alongside other people for fun,” she adds. “We offer a feeling — an ability to become empowered by your own self, wrapped in a video game package.”

Although Pixelles focuses on providing the necessary resources for women, its monthly workshops, social events and some select programs are available to all genders. In addition, anyone with the expertise can volunteer as a mentor.

Teach-typing game In 2011, the Difference Game Engine Initiative allowed Cohen-Palacios to develop her first game, a teach-typing game that was heavily focused on the internet meme lolcats.

Pixelles began after Cohen-Palacios participated in a similar program, the Difference Game Engine Initiative, hosted by Hand Eye Society and TIFF Nexus, when she was in Toronto in 2011. At the time she was working as a web developer; this six-week-long workshop was her gateway into the world of video game development.

“From then it was a lot of excitement and passion,” Cohen-Palacios says. “It was this whole new domain in which to use my skills. At that point the seed was planted.”

Cohen-Palacios was contacted by Feminists in Games to run a similar program in Montreal. She jumped at the opportunity.

She believes that Concordia provided her with the base knowledge to enter the field. Cohen-Palacios completed a double major in computer science and computation arts.

The blend of computer logic and digital art gave her the right attitude to tackle video games, she says. “It was kind of clash of two worlds in a way, but it worked out in the end because developing video games is a combination of logic and conceptual thinking and arts — it’s like a big hodgepodge of everything.”

Cohen-Palacios has had the chance to work on some of the biggest projects in the industry, including Assassin’s Creed and a new Ubisoft project that she couldn’t talk about yet. 

Although she says she still faces misogynistic treatment from time to time, Cohen-Palacios believes women are gaining traction in the once male-dominated industry. If anything at all, she is happy to be able to help other women who want to get involved in the exciting field and is exceptionally proud of the work she can do at Pixelles.

Cohen-Palacios says, “If I had multiple re-spawns in my life” — referring to a common video game trope of giving players multiple retries — “I would always be involved in Pixelles.” 

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