Do you know about the “fake nerd girl” character? Well, here’s another made up cliche from the world of tech/video games, let me present to you: “the marketing chick”.
“She’s not in tech, she’s around it. She doesn’t understand engineering. She’s not a programmer. She probably got her job because she’s pretty. Or how did she get that job, she’s not even pretty. She probably got her job from sleeping with that guy. She probably does social media. She’s helping out with the conference.”
I feel like this hit pretty close to home. I’m not skilled in coding or making 3D props, and there are countless times I have heard “real” developers talk trash about “the women/girls” who only do stuff like “post stuff on FB or Twitter and don’t even know how to basic HTML LOL”.
During last NGC I had a long talk with another woman about this. How she is fed up with people always assuming she isn’t playing games, or people assuming she is even offering sexual services to developers, because she is helping out on game dev conferences world wide (this is a woman who started her own business at 17!). One time when she was the personal assistant to a well know developer during a big conference, a group of business men started making fun of how she probably provided this industry veteran with blowjobs and happy endings. The laughter in the group stopped pretty quickly when one of the men said “hey, that’s my daughter, be nice 
“. That’s the case. It’s ALWAYS going to me someones daughter. Or sister. Or mother. And it’s always fucked up to behave like they did.
I have tried so hard, so many times to prove “I’m not just the marketing chick”. And all that time she did not even exist! She is just made up by developers who don’t know how this business works, or people who think the only skill that’s desirable in this industry coding or crafting 3D (no, not even game designers are “real” game developers according some). People who think that there’s a almighty hierarchy on the studios, and at the very bottom of that, crawling in the dirt: the marketing chick.
I think that to make a really awesome game you need a lot of different people. You need code ninjas, talented artists, driven business people, smart marketing, good community management, artsy sound engineers, nice QA, hard working scripters etc etc. You need respect.
Click here to read the full article about “Misogyny and the Marketing Chick” by Shanley.