By Renee Wood
The Code Breakers: Women in Games exhibit at the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum has been showcasing diversity in the gaming industry to the Yarra Ranges community since it opened last month.
The show features games who have been made by women from across the country, and some have a local connection to the Yarra Ranges.
Game programmer Cherie Davidson grew up in Mount Evelyn, going to the local primary school and later to Lilydale High School.
It was her love for art, digital problem solving and video games that led Cherie to a creative career in the gaming industry.
“I was art captain at school and I also got engaged with some of the digital courses… So when it came time to work out what was next, I found there were courses for video games.”
Cherie first went to RMIT and completed a degree in game making, but further study followed as she signed up for a second degree in programming. This was due to little employment opportunities at the time of the global financial crisis.
Now ten years into her career, Cherie said there have been big changes and growth spurts for the industry.
“I think a lot of companies were very dependent on external contracts and financing coming from offshore various ways,” she said.
“Whereas now I think a lot of these companies aren’t reliant on that they have their own IP, they have their own income streams and that makes us really robust.”
There’s also a great focus on having diversity in both the creators and the games being produced.
“If we don’t have diverse people making games, telling diverse stories, we don’t end up with the best people entering the industry
That’s exactly what the Code Breakers exhibit aims to do, showing there’s a path for everyone to follow if they’re interested in the field.
“I really love what I do and I think there wasn’t much support for me to engage in this when I was younger, there wasn’t anyone that understood games.
“So knowing that this exhibition is there fills my heart, because there’s some version of me who’s probably much more clever and much more engaged, who’s going to see this exhibition and realise she can do it and nothing will stop her.”
Cherie has two titles in the show, the first is called ‘Intergalactic Space Princess’ which she co-directed and describes as a ‘game that is very close to our hearts’.
“The story of the girl who is a little bit lost in her life as a teenager and gets eaten by giant space worm and ends up on the other side of the universe trying to figure out who she is and why she’s there.
“It’s very much a coming of age story and we made that for the version of ourselves that was still a teenager.”
Heart Strings is another game in the show Cherie worked on.
“That game was made with all women and non binary entertainment, which I thought was really exciting.”
“I’m excited to the day that there are literature classes that are studying certain games and they’re treated with that level of respect where we understand the multifaceted and the interesting ways that games can explore topics.”
Code Breakers: Women in Games runs until Sunday 15 May.
