Stephanie Harvey | Challenges in front and behind the screen

In life, some people never bend to game over. This is the case of the designer and champion of video games Stéphanie Harvey, who returns to missharvey, gamer and proud of it on his teeming journey through competitions, studios and challenges of all kinds. A work going beyond the professional biography, since the queen of electronic sport seeks at the same time to raise awareness among the general public about the sanitation of the digital world.

Sylvain Sarrazin
The Press

From his debut on Super Mario Kart to his studies in architecture, his world titles in counter strike to her career as a developer in the studios through her collaborations and interventions with large companies or broadcasts (she won Big Brother Celebrities), the Quebecer known as missharvey is not one to press Pause. In collaboration with writer Joanie Godin, she retraces her journey from gamer with a mind of steel and a woman with a thousand projects, while putting into perspective the challenges of the video game and digital industry, recalling that navigating there as a woman can be a real way of the cross (directional).

“This book is a long-standing project to debunk the myths around video games, educate the world about my profession, reassure parents, but also to send a message about cybercitizenship”, explains Stéphanie Harvey, five-time champion of the world on the famous first person shooter counter strike.

She therefore took advantage of the drafting of misharvey to expose its model of the “4Cs” (cyberaddiction, cybersecurity, cyberbullying and cyber-well-being), while insisting on the outlines of solutions, such as better supervision and better education in the face of this specific challenge in the 21st century.^e century. So, what would be her first law presented, if she were appointed Minister of Digital? “Surely it would be to create some sort of mandatory cyber-citizenship training for all people in public employment, which they could in turn disseminate. Today, the problem is that Mr. and Mrs. Everybody have little or no support, at school or in business,” she underlines.

A long-term fight

Narrating his rise in the video game world, Harvey tells how his aspirations were often followed against all odds and machismo, in environments where men are in charge and largely allow themselves to be done on the backs of women: misogynistic remarks, touching, hints of incompetence…

After three waves of #metoo, the last of which rocked the giant Ubisoft, a studio for which the champion has already worked, have mentalities ended up changing? “It’s not moving as fast as I would have hoped. I’ve been in the business for 20 years, and we’re only just starting to see things change. »

A paid contribution

Recalling that video games are consumed equally by men and women in Canada, she pleads for instilling this parity in development studios and electronic sports, which would, in her view, be beneficial to all. “There is a huge market if you are interested in diversity. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also something that will generate more income for those who get involved: everyone would win,” she believes.

What about on-screen changes? Does she feel like we’re seeing more heroines and fewer stereotypical female figures featured in popular gamer titles? Here too, the video game mammoth is slow to react. “The offer is more and more diverse, observes Stéphanie Harvey, but it’s a bit like what we have seen with the cinema or on TV, where there has been a cultural and artistic evolution of offer. In video games, we are still in our teens in this respect, but certain studios and certain games make the difference,” she says, citing as an example thatgamecompany, developer of Flower and of Journey.

missharvey, gamer and proud of it

Stéphanie Harvey with the collaboration of Joanie Godin

Editions of Man

248 pages