Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Junior. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make games. About two point eight
Speaker 1: billion people play video games worldwide, from Fortnite to Rocket League,
Speaker 1: my personal favorite. Gaming is a popular form of entertainment, relaxation,
Speaker 1: and a way to connect with friends and sometimes strangers.
Speaker 1: When I started Girls Make Games, I really wasn't very
Speaker 1: familiar with gaming, and I did grow up playing on
Speaker 1: my Atari and some arcade games like street Fighter or Teken,
Speaker 1: but that was the extent of it. That's Layla Shaber.
Speaker 1: She's the co founder and CEO of Girls Make Games,
Speaker 1: an organization that aims to introduce game design to young girls.
Speaker 1: Many people, including me my, spend a lot of time gaming,
Speaker 1: but rarely take the time to think about who's making
Speaker 1: these games and what goes into development. And that means
Speaker 1: you know, programming your game, designing your character, making art
Speaker 1: for it, animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating
Speaker 1: and recording those sound effects from everyday objects that are
Speaker 1: around you, testing it, and finally implementing and sharing it
Speaker 1: with people so they can play your game. She founded
Speaker 1: a game studio with her husband, but when it came
Speaker 1: to hiring, she realized just how underrepresented women are in
Speaker 1: the gaming industry. She launched an annual summer camp to
Speaker 1: solve that problem. And it was just very shocking to
Speaker 1: me because I'd come from banking and research in all
Speaker 1: these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
Speaker 1: you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
Speaker 1: something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
Speaker 1: but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
Speaker 1: Layla's husband was a professional gamer himself, and he introduced
Speaker 1: her to the kinds of opportunities the world of gaming provides.
Speaker 1: He didn't talk to me about how cool gaming is.
Speaker 1: He talked to me about how powerful and how influential
Speaker 1: gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids play games
Speaker 1: in the US. That's a lot of kids. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of young people being shaped by one medium. Nearly
Speaker 1: fifty percent of people who play video games identify as female,
Speaker 1: but less than thirty percent of game developers or women.
Speaker 1: This is a problem that we can solve. I was
Speaker 1: working in research and kind of on my way to
Speaker 1: getting a PhD eventually and becoming a professor because I
Speaker 1: wanted to do something meaningful with my life. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a teacher, and for my husband. He's a
Speaker 1: fairly intelligent guy and he was playing Halo competitively and
Speaker 1: I just couldn't. When I first met him, it just
Speaker 1: blew my mind. I was like, why would anyone waste
Speaker 1: their life away gaming and call themselves a professional gamer?
Speaker 1: And so he opened my eyes to the possibilities in gaming.
Speaker 1: And I think the way he did it was really
Speaker 1: smart because he didn't talk to me about how cool
Speaker 1: gaming is. He talked to me about how powerful and
Speaker 1: how influential gaming is. Because nine out of ten kids
Speaker 1: play games in the US. That's a lot of kids.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of young people being shaped by one medium.
Speaker 1: So think about the power it has over shaping our
Speaker 1: society and what are we doing with that power. Who
Speaker 1: are the people behind the scenes making the games that
Speaker 1: these kids play. He didn't talk to me about any
Speaker 1: of that. It was something that I discovered on my own.
Speaker 1: He just showed me how influential it was and how
Speaker 1: good it would be for us to combine our interests
Speaker 1: of my interest to teach and his interest to make games.
Speaker 1: And so we wanted to make educational games. So did
Speaker 1: Girls Make Games start as an educational game? Like? How
Speaker 1: did the camp emerge from your work with your gaming studio.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until we started, like we launched our game
Speaker 1: studio that I went out to gaming conferences and developers
Speaker 1: conferences and I would be the only, oftentimes the only
Speaker 1: woman in the room, and definitely the only woman of
Speaker 1: color in the room, woman of color, non gaming background,
Speaker 1: so really complete outsider. And it was just very shocking
Speaker 1: to me because I'd come from banking and research in
Speaker 1: all these other places where we had a lot more diversity,
Speaker 1: you know, even though it was male dominated. It was
Speaker 1: something like maybe fifty five forty five or sixty forty,
Speaker 1: but not like eighty twenty, which is what gaming is.
Speaker 1: So it just kind of shocked me. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about starting a women's organization or a summer camp company.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make games. But I got a
Speaker 1: sidetracked by the shock. So how did you go for
Speaker 1: getting sidetracked into creating Girls Make Games? So while I
Speaker 1: was working on my first game, we were placed hasting
Speaker 1: it all over the country, going to schools and you know,
Speaker 1: little fairs and maker fair and things like that, and
Speaker 1: we would have lots of kids come up having fun
Speaker 1: with the game. But when we went to the developers conferences,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would tell us girls are not
Speaker 1: as interested in making games. When I tried to recruit
Speaker 1: from my studio, we had about eight job openings and
Speaker 1: they ended up being all filled by boys, because ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of the applications we received were from young
Speaker 1: men who proclaimed that this was their dream job. And
Speaker 1: I was just so shocked as I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's going to be just me and ten
Speaker 1: boys making a game. And oftentimes, again in the room,
Speaker 1: I would be the only one with like different opinion
Speaker 1: or perspective, and it's just very natural for me to
Speaker 1: start thinking, if it's gonna be you know, these boys
Speaker 1: making games, is the game gonna end up being more
Speaker 1: interesting to boys? Or world girls play this too? And
Speaker 1: how do I go meet young girls who might be
Speaker 1: interested in playing or eventually becoming developers. So really the
Speaker 1: first camp was a social experiment. I'm an economist by training,
Speaker 1: so it's really important for me to gather empirical data,
Speaker 1: and so that first camp was sort of my research
Speaker 1: ground for our game. But by the end of the camp.
Speaker 1: It was such an emotional experience for so many of
Speaker 1: the kids, and I remember the last day of camp.
Speaker 1: We're all crying. The kids were crying. I was crying,
Speaker 1: the parents are crying. We're all like. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is so weird. This is not what I expected.
Speaker 1: You know, the kids that came in and they're talking
Speaker 1: about this is the one place that I feel like
Speaker 1: I could be myself. This is the only camp I've
Speaker 1: been to where I'm not the only girl. I didn't
Speaker 1: know there were other girls like me who loved playing
Speaker 1: video games. So hearing those things over and over in
Speaker 1: different forms just kind of solidified in my mind this
Speaker 1: something that was needed and it just didn't exist. And
Speaker 1: so I told my team I'm going to go on
Speaker 1: a one year hiatus. And that was seven years ago.
Speaker 1: So I'm still on that hiatus because Girls and Games
Speaker 1: has just grown from that one camp to sort of
Speaker 1: a global organization, and especially during COVID going virtual and
Speaker 1: reaching kids all over the world. It's just been a
Speaker 1: very unexpected journey, but I know it's something that's needed
Speaker 1: and that's why we continue to do it. Can you
Speaker 1: explain what goes on at Girls Make games camps. Yeah, absolutely, so.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is it's like a regular camp.
Speaker 1: You show up, you make friends, you play games. You
Speaker 1: have great counselors who also become your mentors and help
Speaker 1: guide you through the process. But the really magical thing
Speaker 1: that happens is the sense of community and belonging because,
Speaker 1: like I said, for a lot of the kids that
Speaker 1: come to camp, this is the only place they've been
Speaker 1: to where they were surrounded by people who look like them.
Speaker 1: When they have speakers, you know, when we're speakers that
Speaker 1: come into camp, these are women who work in the industry,
Speaker 1: great role models, extremely successful leaders. They talk about their
Speaker 1: journeys and how you know, they didn't know if they
Speaker 1: wanted to become game developers, and how they ended up
Speaker 1: to where they are. These are stories they don't get
Speaker 1: to hear every day, but for fifteen days they're completely
Speaker 1: immersed in this magical place. In their words, there's a
Speaker 1: really fun feature where at the end of camp, your
Speaker 1: team gets to pitch your game to a panel of
Speaker 1: industry judges, and the judges have included people like Phil
Speaker 1: Spend who's the head of Xbox, and Sean Leiden, previous
Speaker 1: head of PlayStations so we'll have a lot of really
Speaker 1: senior leaders who are judges, and the winning game gets
Speaker 1: kickstarted and then professionally developed and published. We published a
Speaker 1: title on the PlayStation. We published a title this year
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of how the game studio side of my business works,
Speaker 1: where we're like, we're taking these girls or bringing their
Speaker 1: vision to life and putting it out on the story
Speaker 1: so people can play them. That's awesome. So can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about your your studios because
Speaker 1: I'm recognizing you have you have separate paths here, so
Speaker 1: one of them's more altruistic and the other is actually
Speaker 1: you creating games. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I really the
Speaker 1: reason I got into the games industry was to make
Speaker 1: games because I wanted to be a part of it,
Speaker 1: and I think I still would like to continue making games.
Speaker 1: It's just in the last years eight years, the only
Speaker 1: games that we've ended up making have been creatively led
Speaker 1: and designed by young girls. Can you take us through
Speaker 1: one of those games? Yeah, like, describe one for us absolutely.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites, which is coming out next year
Speaker 1: on the Switch, is called Shredded Secrets. It's actually an
Speaker 1: anti bullying game. So the game's designed by four young
Speaker 1: teens from Seattle, and each one of them ended up
Speaker 1: writing a story arc. So you actually followed through four
Speaker 1: characters that are in a middle school, three students and
Speaker 1: a teacher. There's a bully and a victim. So there's
Speaker 1: a bully and a girl getting bullied, but you get
Speaker 1: to play through each one and kind of learn what
Speaker 1: they're going through in their life. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was so amazing the way the kids approached it, because
Speaker 1: not only did this show how hard bullying is on
Speaker 1: the victim, the ultra showed why the bully was acting
Speaker 1: out and how his life was kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever he was going through. It wasn't all about hey,
Speaker 1: he's evil and you're the good one and you know,
Speaker 1: go fight evil. It was more about building empathy in
Speaker 1: the player. So as you progress through the game, you're
Speaker 1: getting to fill in all these different shoes and by
Speaker 1: the end you kind of walk away with a sense
Speaker 1: of WHOA, I can't believe thirteen year olds to make
Speaker 1: this game. So that was amazing. It sounds amazing. So
Speaker 1: your company is making all the games from the camp
Speaker 1: or the winner is the only one that's that's the
Speaker 1: grand prize. That's awesome. Tell me a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the tech and the types of skills that girls
Speaker 1: make games actually teaches. You learn everything that goes into
Speaker 1: making a game from you know, taking your concept that's
Speaker 1: sort of an abstract idea, an idea like I like cats,
Speaker 1: to becoming a full game, and that means you know,
Speaker 1: programming your game, designing your character, so making art for it,
Speaker 1: animating it, adding sound effects, sometimes even creating and recording
Speaker 1: those sound effects from you know, everyday objects that are
Speaker 1: around you, and then putting that into the game, testing it,
Speaker 1: and finally implement and sharing it with people so they
Speaker 1: can play your game, so they go through the full
Speaker 1: indie developer experience, which is I have a dream too,
Speaker 1: I have a game. I love it now. Some of
Speaker 1: my favorite games are Fortnite, Rocket League, and some of
Speaker 1: these games are very violent. Yeah, and how much are
Speaker 1: you guys focused on making games that don't include violence?
Speaker 1: Like what role does violence in video games play in
Speaker 1: girls make games? We're very lucky. We've never really had
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone and say your game is too violent.
Speaker 1: At most, we've had maybe cartoonish violence We definitely have shooters.
Speaker 1: We've had fps's first person shooters, But the context matters.
Speaker 1: If I'm shooting fruit at you or if I'm shooting
Speaker 1: paint at you, it feels very different from you know,
Speaker 1: if there's blood all over the screen. So the mechanic
Speaker 1: is okay. The context matters. If TV and movies can
Speaker 1: be violent, so can video games. If TV and movies
Speaker 1: can move you and change you and educate you, so
Speaker 1: con video games. So you have to be able to
Speaker 1: draw those parallels. And we need smart people. We need
Speaker 1: problem solvers, we need writers, designers, we need all kinds
Speaker 1: of people to come join us and help build the
Speaker 1: feature of the industry because we're going places. I mean,
Speaker 1: gaming is growing so fast. It's already one of the
Speaker 1: fastest industries. When I tell people that gaming makes more
Speaker 1: money than music and Hollywood combined, their shock. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: So video games are pervasive, They're everywhere, and they're going
Speaker 1: to continue to be everywhere and grow. So it would
Speaker 1: be awesome if we had more women and diverse people
Speaker 1: come be a part of the movement. Are there any
Speaker 1: pitfalls or obstacles that you faced being a woman in
Speaker 1: the gaming industry that you're able to kind of help
Speaker 1: your creators avoid as you teach them about making games,
Speaker 1: but also about being a woman in the gaming industry. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think if you ask any woman in the industry,
Speaker 1: you'll probably get a similar answer, which is that it
Speaker 1: can be very isolating at times because there's so few
Speaker 1: of us. There's less than twenty percent of us in
Speaker 1: the industry, and it's very very visible when you go
Speaker 1: to events. When we're at home and we're doing our
Speaker 1: think it's mine, but when we go out and interact
Speaker 1: with people and when we're at gaming events, it's painfully obvious.
Speaker 1: And that sort of helps me. Like what helps me
Speaker 1: is draw parallels with my childhood where I grew up
Speaker 1: in the Middle East and I was very very aware
Speaker 1: of being a girl, and I was constantly told I
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this, or shouldn't do that, or I couldn't
Speaker 1: do this or that. And what has really helped me
Speaker 1: in the last almost a decade is the really strong
Speaker 1: community and sisterhood that we do have with the twenty
Speaker 1: percent of women that we do. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what we're building at Girls Make Games. When these kids
Speaker 1: come in, they see each other year after year. We
Speaker 1: have very high retention, nearly seventy to eighty percent retention rate,
Speaker 1: So kids, once they sign up, they keep coming back.
Speaker 1: These are people that are going to be part of
Speaker 1: their journeys and they'll keep in touch and they'll go
Speaker 1: to college and eventually get jobs. And that's really the
Speaker 1: best thing you can help for because nobody can make
Speaker 1: it on their own. We all need a support system
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't exist, we gotta created for ourselves.
Speaker 1: So with the seventy to eighty percent retention rate, how
Speaker 1: are new people getting into this camp? It seems like
Speaker 1: there's spots are going to seem a little competitive here.
Speaker 1: How do you get new people? So the nice thing
Speaker 1: about our camps is that every year, once we have
Speaker 1: our registrations and we can kind of show up to
Speaker 1: our partners, which is basically the whole games industry, and say, hey,
Speaker 1: here are the kids who want to make games. Can
Speaker 1: you support us? And they've always said yes, So it
Speaker 1: really it's we have room for everyone. And while we
Speaker 1: church tuition, we also offer one hundred percent scholarships, so
Speaker 1: cost has never been an issue. If your family can't
Speaker 1: afford it, we will offer up to hundred percent financially, Layla.
Speaker 1: There are billions of gamers, about two point eight billion,
Speaker 1: forty are women. I play a lot of games online,
Speaker 1: and I know it can be a rough space. I
Speaker 1: mean it is. There's racism, misogyny, it's all over the place.
Speaker 1: How do you solving that and how do you help
Speaker 1: other women? Stay hopeful that it will be solved eventually
Speaker 1: when young women kind of come to terms with hey,
Speaker 1: this is probably going to be a rough career path
Speaker 1: for me, or hey, is this even going to be
Speaker 1: possible for me because people don't want me here or something.
Speaker 1: It's really a matter of time because when we end up,
Speaker 1: like I said, building that community and we have enough numbers,
Speaker 1: it's just going to go down with online communities. I mean,
Speaker 1: this problem exists outside of giving to online anonymity is
Speaker 1: just it's just what it is. It's ugly. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, if you can kind of create an
Speaker 1: alternate space, so I will never believe that the world
Speaker 1: is going to be a perfect place for anyone. I
Speaker 1: think as long as we have humans, we're going to
Speaker 1: have cruelty, We're going to have we're gonna have evil,
Speaker 1: let's just put it at that. But creating alternate spaces,
Speaker 1: and I think that's that's where we need to make
Speaker 1: our investments, Like we need to be able to combat
Speaker 1: that with saying, hey, this sucks, but you have this
Speaker 1: other option, that's great. A lot of women play mobile games,
Speaker 1: not playing online or on consoles, you know, and they
Speaker 1: don't identify as game or as They'll just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I play on my apps. You know, I don't really
Speaker 1: play games. I play apps. And I'm like, that's the
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, So how do we solve people being
Speaker 1: mean to people? It's it's a really hard problem. Do
Speaker 1: you think that the solution is having an alternate safe space?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's a viable long term solution As
Speaker 1: a black person, I know, yeah, let's make the safe
Speaker 1: space somewhere, But it doesn't actually get to the root
Speaker 1: of the problem, which is that you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: inherently misogyny here, both in the creating of the games
Speaker 1: and then in the playing of the game. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's the thing that we have to think
Speaker 1: about when we implement those safe spaces. Right, as a
Speaker 1: thirty five year old woman, do why I need a
Speaker 1: safe space? Now? I feel like I don't because I
Speaker 1: needed it ten fifteen years ago when I was much younger,
Speaker 1: and I really I was vulnerable and I needed that support,
Speaker 1: and I needed to feel confident in the choices that
Speaker 1: I was making. Now that I've made those choices and
Speaker 1: I've done well with them, I feel like I can
Speaker 1: walk into any room and make any any conversation happen.
Speaker 1: Like if you go back and study how all girls
Speaker 1: schools influence confidence in girls, why does that work at
Speaker 1: the middle school, high school age, and why does it
Speaker 1: not really matter if you have a whole workplace full
Speaker 1: of women. You know, it doesn't really work at that
Speaker 1: It so you really have to implement it when it's
Speaker 1: needed so early in your career, early in your teens,
Speaker 1: when you're not sure of who you are and if
Speaker 1: you should be making the choices or the decisions, or
Speaker 1: if you have if you have the right knowledge or
Speaker 1: even the potential to succeed somewhere, that's where you need
Speaker 1: the support. That's It's funny because as you were talking,
Speaker 1: I was thinking two things. One, what you're to scribing
Speaker 1: is a greenhouse, yeah, yeah, exactly before you take the
Speaker 1: plants out. And then the second thing is I as
Speaker 1: soon as you said that I started to think about
Speaker 1: all of my friends who went to HBCUs and the
Speaker 1: ways in which they view themselves as black people in
Speaker 1: the world versus people like myself and others who went
Speaker 1: to PWIS who have a quite different experience. I think
Speaker 1: there's some truth in what you're saying. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me what does this look like when it's solved for you,
Speaker 1: like in five to ten years looking ahead, how would
Speaker 1: you want this problem to look If I could talk
Speaker 1: to a young girl about gaming and ask her, you know,
Speaker 1: would you consider working in games? And her answer is
Speaker 1: not because I think video games are for boys, or
Speaker 1: because I don't know any of the girls who play games,
Speaker 1: or any of those things. If it's really because I'm
Speaker 1: not interested because I want to do X, I want
Speaker 1: to do this other thing that I'm more interested in.
Speaker 1: The self selection that happens because of the environment. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's the problem that we need to solve.
Speaker 1: Like we don't we don't have to worry about people
Speaker 1: not choosing gaming because they're not interested in it. We
Speaker 1: have to worry about people not choosing gaming because of fear,
Speaker 1: or because of negative stereotypes, or because they just have
Speaker 1: these misconceptions about it. So as long as we can
Speaker 1: tackle those things, as long as people have real choice,
Speaker 1: that they're choosing because they want X or y, and
Speaker 1: they're not leaning one way or the other because of
Speaker 1: their environment, I think that would be that would I
Speaker 1: would consider a success, And in that case, Girls Make
Speaker 1: Games would be obsolete. It would just be another summer camp,
Speaker 1: not really the summer camp that girls who like gaming
Speaker 1: go to. Are you optimistic that this will happen? Oh,
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand percent. I mean when we started Girls
Speaker 1: Make Games, we were at twenty two percent of developers
Speaker 1: identifying as female, and we are close to thirty now
Speaker 1: that's just in the last seven years. Yeah. Okay. If
Speaker 1: our listeners are interested in learning more about developing games
Speaker 1: themselves or helping to support young women in gaming, what
Speaker 1: can they do and where can they go to learn
Speaker 1: more to get involved? So for parents, I would say definitely,
Speaker 1: if you have a kid, if you have a girl
Speaker 1: who's interested in gaming, center to girls in games. But
Speaker 1: in general, for people who encounter young women, and I
Speaker 1: think I don't want to talk about gaming specifically, I
Speaker 1: think when you encounter young women who are interested in
Speaker 1: non traditional careers, or non traditional hobbies or any of that.
Speaker 1: Instead of pointing out how different it is for them
Speaker 1: to be interested in it, engage them in it. And
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the best things my
Speaker 1: parents did for me, was even though I was out
Speaker 1: in the Middle East and outside, the whole outside world
Speaker 1: was telling me I'm a girl and I need to
Speaker 1: behave one way or the other. When I went home,
Speaker 1: my parents undid all of that damage by talking to
Speaker 1: me like a regular kid. I wasn't a frail little
Speaker 1: girl who needed all this protection in the world. I
Speaker 1: could have all the dreams that I wanted and all
Speaker 1: kinds of ambitions, and I could be prime minister or
Speaker 1: you know, scientists or any of that, all that stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't possible outside. And then for if you're working
Speaker 1: in a corporate setting, the same goes for you know,
Speaker 1: your female colleagues. Like it's it's so much harder for
Speaker 1: us to just try to pretend that we're all the
Speaker 1: same and we're all in the same boat. But life
Speaker 1: is just we've we've had to overcome so many more obstacles.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's seeing a successful woman in tech or
Speaker 1: a successful woman in gaming is really you are seeing
Speaker 1: you're kind of observing a unicorn and so kind of
Speaker 1: making that a norm, you know, we don't. We don't
Speaker 1: need it to be an exception. I've one of my
Speaker 1: least favorite stereotypes on TV is like that trope of
Speaker 1: that one woman in the computer science or in the
Speaker 1: tech classroom who is also a genius. I don't think
Speaker 1: we need that double burden to be like the minority
Speaker 1: who's also a genius. I think, you know, like and
Speaker 1: get to be an average minority because being averages and
Speaker 1: you know that's hourage, that's what normal people are. It's
Speaker 1: a privilege, right, Yeah, So that's just such a burden
Speaker 1: to to be like, oh, I'm a girl in gaming.
Speaker 1: That means I have to be really really good otherwise
Speaker 1: I represent all girls and if I suck, all girls suck. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the progress thoroughly comes down to, like, I'm
Speaker 1: just an average developer. I'm just any one of them exactly.
Speaker 1: So where can we find the games that you guys
Speaker 1: have developed? I know I want to check them out,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure our listeners do too. So we've actually
Speaker 1: developed six games and they are They can be found
Speaker 1: on the Girls Man Games website. There's a tab called games.
Speaker 1: We started publishing in twenty fourteen. Blub Blub Quest of
Speaker 1: the Blob is out on Steam and Xbox. The Whole
Speaker 1: Story is out on Steam. Intrafectorium is out on Steam
Speaker 1: and PlayStation. Find Me just came out on PlayStation last year.
Speaker 1: It's also on Steam, and Shredded Secrets just came out
Speaker 1: this year in twenty twenty two on the Nintendo Switch.
Speaker 1: It's our first Switch title and we're so excited. Layla,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with us today. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's my pleasure. Laylashim Beer is the co founder and
Speaker 1: CEO of Girls Make Games. Layla attended MIT and pursued
Speaker 1: finance at Black Rock, followed by economic research at the
Speaker 1: Brookings Institution before moving into the world video games. In
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, game Industry dot biz named Layla a Games
Speaker 1: Industry Person of the Year. Layla has a personal goal
Speaker 1: to teach one million girls how to make games through
Speaker 1: her work. If you want to learn more about game
Speaker 1: development or any of the games that Layla's studios helped
Speaker 1: to produce, check out the links in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by David Jah
Speaker 1: Booking by Lisa Dunn, Editorial support from Keyshell Williams. Our
Speaker 1: managing producer is Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Mia Bell. I'm Ronald Young Junior. Thanks for listening before
Speaker 1: we go. We know you're used to hearing the show
Speaker 1: every week, but just want to let you know the
Speaker 1: next episode of Solvable will be released at the beginning
Speaker 1: of next month. It will be well worth the way,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned and once again, thanks for listening.