The first words I hear Liz England say at the Xbox Women in Gaming Rally are, "Oh, I'm not good at shooters either, but I still love them. Don't let that stop you." England is speaking to an attendee of her "Gaming for Everyone" talk, in which she and a peer are discussing design inclusivity. The remark is emblematic of the kind of person England is: someone who recognizes and embraces her passions, and refuses to let anything keep her from them.
As a game designer, England is responsible for building the systems that make games dynamic and fun. While level designers sculpt environments and decide how to populate games, England and her team design systems that dictate how the game is played by deciding things like how the player moves, how they interact with enemies, how quests work, or how characters level up.
Growing up in upstate New York, England initially studied Medieval English literature. Afraid she might not find a welcoming job market, she enrolled in a Master's program in game design at Southern Methodist University in Texas. After graduating, England worked at 5th Cell and Insomniac Games before joining Ubisoft two years ago. An Assassin's Creed fan since her first Leap of Faith, England is particularly fond of the Ezio trilogy, mostly because of her experience exploring Italy herself a few years before the launch of Assassin's Creed II.
**Was there a specific moment when you realized you wanted to work in games? **
Liz England: The first time I thought, "maybe I want to make games" was when I was 14, playing my first Final Fantasy game. I was watching the gorgeous cutscenes, and I thought, "I want to make this!" The first time I ever became aware of what a designer actually does was when I was playing Ratchet & Clank when I was 16. There were so many cool mechanics and aspects to those games, and I thought, "I want to design something like this."
It's funny, because the first time I ever used an editor to create game content, I was only 10 years old and it was for Heroes of Might & Magic. The game came with a level editor, and I used to go in and give myself a whole bunch of black dragons, and then slowly over time I began editing the maps themselves. Eventually, I just started making my own maps. It's weird because I had been doing it at such a young age, but I had never thought that it could be an actual job.
**Why do you think you're good at what you do? **
LE: I'm not entirely sure why I'm good at it. A piece of advice a friend gave me a while ago was, "find what's easy and do that." What she meant by that is find something that's easy for you, but hard for everyone else. That way you can complete a task faster and easier than someone else, and then elevate it to the next level. I think identifying that thing that fit me was key to my career. I really enjoy looking at complex problems that have a lot of ties to a lot of systems. I like to look at all those connections and balance them out together into a cohesive whole. I like thinking about how one thing can affect all this other stuff, that's why I like open world games so much.
**Why did you want to give this "Games for Everyone" talk? **
LE: I'm not a UI/UX designer, I don't necessarily work in accessibility. What I do, however, is look at the kind of content and the game that we're creating and think about in what ways are we excluding players and including players. How are we excluding players, and how can we remove those barriers? From a content standpoint, from a game-design standpoint, we make a lot of small decisions based on our biases, like "we play games all the time." Our audience is much wider than that, they're much more diverse than I am. I can only represent one person. "Games for Everyone" is a good way to think about how I can look at the game I'm making and see what kind of assumptions am I making that are the wrong type of assumptions. It helps you take a step back and think: What are we really doing and representing in this game? Are we leaving people out because we're not like those people?
Poor representation is a usability issue, and as a game designer, I know how to tackle usability issues. You start doing playtests, you gather feedback, you start to iterate and make changes. I feel like you can do that when it comes to representation in games or accessibility features. It's difficult to do that when you're worrying about all these other things, like how to make a game fun, but they're important considerations.
**Why do you think there's such a large gender equity gap in game development? **
LE: It was actually a strange experience for me when I went to game development school, because before that, I was an English major. English literature programs typically skew female, and then I showed up at game school, and there were only two other women.
I think there are a lot of reasons. I like to point out the phrase "leaky pipeline," because I think it embodies the problem as a whole. A lot of people say it's just about getting girls interested early on, and that is part of it, but the leaky pipeline is meant to signify that every step of the way, people can be left out or can fall through the cracks. That kind of thing happens a lot to women. I was lucky to grow up with a family where gaming was universal. But as I got older, my brother was typecast as the "computer person," and I was typecast as the "books and art" person, so he got a computer in his bedroom and I didn't. That was a point where I could have easily slipped through the leaky pipeline.
I think another problem is that there aren't a lot of role models for women. If you don't have early experiences with female role models and women in games, it can be difficult to see yourself in it. There are a lot of little steps along that way when people can feel excluded, or even just don't feel included, and that all creates that pipeline issue. When you add all the little things together, that's where you get the major disparity.
**Do you think representation within games has anything to do with it? **
LE: Probably. I know for me it wasn't so much of an issue, because I grew up on adventure games that often had women as protagonists, so I actually felt well represented. But there were always games that I felt weren't for me, games with a lot of violence and weird power fantasies. I think there's a lot of gender disparity in a lot of the fantasies we expect of a player. Even now, I gravitate to games where the power fantasy is more social, like romance games, or games where you manipulate people socially.
More recently, I find myself less interested in a game if it doesn't have good representation and a diverse cast. There's so many games I could be playing; why would I play something with a character I've played 20 times before, when I could play something new?
Credit: Techvibes
**Have you ever had any female or non-binary role models? **
LE: Yes, but I won't name them, because they're all my friends now (laughs). One of the reasons I like the Xbox Women in Gaming Rally is that you can meet women you look up to and form relationships with them. There's an added element to the connections you make with women that share your same interests that is different from connections you make with men who share your same interests. I have a lot of life-long "career buddies" that I used to admire, and then realized we had similar interests.
**What advice would you give to young women who want to do what you do? **
LE: Well, I have negative advice and positive advice (laughs).
**What's negative advice? **
LE: So there's a big difference culturally between the game industry and gamers. A lot of students in school bring gamer culture with them. There's an attitude in gamer culture that's unprofessional, and there's a way of talking about games and understanding games that's different for people in the industry versus just someone who plays games.
Women can feel isolated in gamer culture, whereas the game industry culture is a lot more professional and welcoming. I find myself respected in ways among game developers that I might not be among gamer consumer culture. I think for a lot of students going through school, they're not in game developer culture yet, and it can feel like a major turnoff. There's a lot of questioning of whether that person belongs there or not. I find the game industry is a lot friendlier than that, no one really gets mad if I say I don't play many AAA games.
**So what's the positive advice? **
LE: It can be hard to get into games, and there's not really a formula for it. But we're in a time where there is an abundance of tools and ways in which you can make your own games or art. There are plenty of ways to develop the skill necessary to work in the games industry. It's a hard industry to get into and it's very competitive, but there are a lot of paths in. My advice would be to make games. Make games that speak to you, and put them on itch.io. You don't have to make super-large games, you don't need a degree, you can get all this experience in a way that I wasn't able to when I was in school. There's a democratization of game-development tools, and it's becoming more and more accessible to make stuff. There's no excuse to not make a game if that's what you want to do, and the best part is that as you create, you'll learn what your favorite part of development is.
What does the Xbox Women in Gaming Rally mean to you?
LE: I value the ability to go to a place where there are a lot of women and allies and connect with people who on some level have a certain amount of shared cultural experience. Because there are so few women in the industry, it can feel isolating at times, and I often rely on the Women in Gaming events for opportunities to connect with more women. I've met people today that I'll probably talk to for years.
