Designing for Inclusivity in 'The Sims'

[Music] hi i'm caterina mallet i am so excited to be here with you um last year i returned to the games industry after a few years away and i missed it so much you know there's just nothing like it the creative and passionate people the groundbreaking tech the indies the big shops the art the science but most of all i miss that feeling when a player tells you i love what you made and playing it made my day better our job is to delight people it doesn't get much better than that so there's a reason why gaming is larger than both the music and the movie industries combined yes games are about immersion and play

adrenaline distraction but they're also about choice through the choices that i make as a player my experience will be different from yours and maybe even different from my own experience the last time i played and as game developers we give players the power to make choices that reflect and even change their view of the world the choices that we allow can influence how our players start to see the real world around them and how players feel going back into their day lasting far beyond a game play session you know this better than anyone with games players tell stories they play out fantasies and they even discover what brings them joy and there are few greater examples of this than the sims with over a billion hours played in 2021 alone and over 560 million franchise copies installed just since 2014 the sims has made a unique

mark on the history of games it has a very real impact on the world and few forms of entertainment can do that at scale because the sims is a game about life in the sims we give players the tools to interact with worlds that are new but familiar and help them recreate life as they imagine it but we can't achieve this unless players see some part of themselves reflected in this game as game makers it is so important for us to create contact content that authentically represents the diverse world that we live in so we work hard to make a world in which players can see themselves where they can be whoever they want to be and play with life on their own terms we don't wait for it to happen in society first and even if we know we won't always get it completely right the first time we will keep trying

we've had same-sex relationships in the game from the very beginning in 2000 and earlier this year we previewed our work incorporating gender neutral pronoun options into the game so we want to keep continue expanding the tools that allow players to express their identities this has been a case where society certainly hasn't caught up yet and solving for this across all global languages is not straightforward as i learned through this process it is a lot more complex than adding a they them option but we can start and there is still so much room for us to grow here and just like society we evolve as it does so this work was ultimately picked up by the hill a publication widely read by members of congress it was a powerful reminder to us that what we're doing is so much more than entertainment people are paying attention and looking to us to see how we empower our players

to tell their stories through the sims players learn more about each other and about themselves our base game and expansion packs allow players to explore a host of what-if identities large and small exploring what it might be like to have a family come from a different culture have a new career a different body shape or skin tone to be richer or poorer live in an urban jungle or a tropical paradise have a different fashion sense or be a vampire this is our motivation and why we show up to work each and every day we have a megaphone and we want to use it so we take this work seriously as we progress towards our aspiration for the sims to represent the diversity and complexity of life so i feel so lucky to be part of maxis the ea studio behind the sims our players are so passionate about the

stories that they craft and we love seeing the impact that our games have on their lives this sense of purpose of inspiring everyone to make a better world through creative play and our commitment to our players leads to a truly unique culture at maxis in creating a more inclusive studio environment we provide a better experience for our players and create a place where all sorts of people want to work so in the last year 43 percent of new hires at max's have been women far outstripping the industry average this is an exciting signal that we are making progress but we know we still have work to do our player base is highly diverse and our team should be too and our players have told us that they want to see themselves in the game and bring bringing more of these perspectives on board will help us realize this vision in order to foster an environment where the most authentic games can be made we

need to create a workplace that encourages and values different perspectives but you don't need to hear it from me listen to our colleagues have to say i feel like i belong at maxis because maxis really embodies the people first mentality it goes beyond just platitudes on a wall or in a presentation to the way that we live breathe and act every day creating more inclusive games by working with people and talking about lived experiences and working with consultants to learn more about other people other cultures other experiences creates an opportunity to make our games more approachable for everyone what we do here matters to me because it matters to all the people out there who didn't see themselves represented in games or media before and now have the chance to just explore lifestyle explore themselves and that matters to the team working on a product that's really beloved is wonderful working on one that's beloved and able to enrich the

world that matters a lot to me it's been a huge honor to be able to work on the sims team and be able to see people react to being able to make a sim that looks like them we're inclusive in the real sense of the word the tapestry of individuals that makes up our team is a collection of different life experiences and perspectives and i think that comes through in our game before the sims i worked on a variety of games where the primary verb was kill kill your opponent kill the monster kill the beast but here at maxis for the first time the primary verb what we do is create it's a world of difference we have a very imaginative and creative team and that just creates a space to experiment and to play i think it's really valuable i think there's a lot of one-to-one meetings at maxis so there's a high premium on creating intentional conversations we have people who started working here while the sims 2 was in production and

we have people working here who grew up playing the sims and now get to build it one of the reasons i love working at max is we get to build stuff that no one else in the industry even attempts we joke that we always try to solve the hardest version of every problem but i think that's a good thing hard problems can be the most engaging and fulfilling to work on i've heard this pitch about oh let's add versatility to our game characters i've heard that so many times on every project but these guys who were talking to me they actually meant it and for me that was like oh you're bananas guys i love it can i come work with you i came to max's because maxis has a reputation of being a place that people can make home it's a place where people are taken care of where they're listened to and where they're supported and becoming the best in their craft i've been in the industry for 10 years now this place feels like home that video makes me so happy every time let's see so this team is just amazing at maxis we have such a strong group of

people who've been around a long time these are our cultural anchors they approach their work with humility humanity and inherent curiosity they also set the tone that we are a judgment-free workforce we embrace everyone's unique quirks and weirdness so people can bring their full selves to work to complement this heritage we have an equally strong group of people who are new to the studio and bring a fresh perspective to the way we operate we've been growing a lot over the past few years although our average tenure is eight years over a quarter of the studio myself included had joined since the start of the pandemic so we seek out suggestions from our new joiners on how we can improve and what to try differently regardless of our individual disciplines we are all craftspeople and tinkerers and recognize that we must always be learning there's just no such thing as complete

in our games we're always welcoming new ideas and ways to break the mold to keep things exciting for our players and engaging for our team so for 15 years we had made we had built rigs and mesh in essentially the same way then a few years ago some engineers wanted to experiment with our tech so they huddled together and proposed a new approach they had only been looking for clothing that could be applied to male or female body types but the team saw something bigger so while this could have been a more straightforward tech implementation we saw a chance to provide even more opportunities for our players expression and players can now create sims with any type of physique walk style tone of voice regardless of their gender and dress or style these new sims in any way they choose so not only did this moment expand gender expression opportunities for our players but it also fundamentally changed the way our studio approaches

gender representation and open our eyes to a new way of planning content so i now want to bring you under the hood a little bit and show you how we work behind the scenes to create a game that not only reflects life but helps shape it first we know and use our values everybody wants to be anchored in something they feel good about our values are not aspirational or what we wish we did they represent who we are when we're at our best we recently revamped our values to make sure that they're fresh and that people feel connected to them and we didn't rely on an agency to do this work we had passionate team members conduct interviews across the studio to distill our culture to its key essence so ours are create collaboratively challenge ourselves champion inclusivity and be authentic

company values can be such a cliched trope but they can be so impactful when used well having strong values that help us know what decisions to make when we're stressed or under pressure is what makes the difference between scaling successfully or dramatic collapse i have seen this firsthand when a team is small and everyone talks to everyone leaders implicitly model the team's values through behaviors and interactions that everyone sees during periods of change however growth or a change in strategy or an organizational shake-up or i don't know pandemic having articulated useful values are an important compass so alongside goals or okrs or whatever your model is for saying here is where we want to go values are how you communicate how the

team should get there they become a social contract a sense of cohesion that aligns the team even when they no longer interact with each other the way they could when they saw each other every day championing inclusivity and being authentic are part of our values because it's critical to our game to our players to our team to our business it's not a strategy it's who we are next to build teams with diverse backgrounds to actually inform these authentic experiences we need to ensure that we're hiring free of bias and have teams that authentically represent the diversity of our audiences we look for diversity in all its forms professional skill sets demographics and lived experiences and as part of our hiring process our recruitment panels are trained to understand implicit bias and they're equipped with questions that favor inclusion

plus our job descriptions they're fed through a processor that checks for language that might feel exclusionary we encourage our hiring managers to consider alternative backgrounds and complementary skill sets and are leaning into our efforts to recruit early career talent into the industry and what's a big step for us we've committed to a remote friendly hybrid working model for the studio and can now hire the best talent regardless of location and this gives us access to a much broader range of lived experiences to inform our designs when we review interview feedback we have a third party person who facilitates these conversations to ensure there's no fee there's no bias in the feedback that we give and all of our employees receive training to make sure that they uphold our inclusive culture hiring is of course only the first step though inclusivity isn't just about having a diverse team it's about creating a culture that

encourages diverse perspectives to be heard so we seek to operate in a way that allows everyone to contribute and make an impact beyond the limits of an individual team or function for example to pull off an authentic representation of higher education for our discover university expansion pack a few years ago we knew we couldn't just draw from experiences in the american educational system so as we started brainstorming designs we reached out across the team specifically looking to explore global educational experiences through this process we found tech leads who went to school in india gameplay engineers who went to school in south america and the uk and artists who studied in japan workshops with these teammates helped unearth differences and commonalities across these unique educational experiences ultimately informing the features that allowed our players to feel that their own unique experiences could be represented

if we're exploring a topic that is beyond our team's expertise we'll actively seek out people who have those lived experiences either through the very popular employee resource groups or ergs across ea or by bringing in outside experts for our fashion kits that were inspired inspired by styles found on fashion street in mumbai or the airport fashion runways at incheon international in seoul we partnered closely with external consultants who helped us design collections that authentically celebrated the trends and cultures in those cities this emphasis on listening to the team extends beyond game features to how we operate the studio a few months ago i started what i called a listening tour to meet with employees across the entire studio it was so helpful i recommend it

so highly i sat down with people of all levels tenure and working style to understand how they were feeling about the prospect of hybrid work i wanted to understand their pain points their preferences how they were juggling home life integration and just what they were worried about so as a result of this we decided to test run a large hybrid meeting roughly half in the office and half virtual it was a hot mess half the people were staring at the back of my head while i was looking at those on screen half didn't feel like they could speak up in the conference room and it was just it was just not an inclusive experience so we realize that large meetings are best for virtual platforms focusing in-person meetings on workshops and highly collaborative interactions and this has fundamentally changed the way that we were thinking about the expectations we set for our teams about

working in hybrid we also learned that people love recorded meetings they like having the flexibility to check in and what was shared on their own time we work across multiple time zones and catering to this has made a huge difference most importantly we were reminded that senior leaders aren't necessarily equipped to determine the best working style for every team and every employee instead we're here to set the tone reduce barriers and provide the tools for people to work in ways that make sense for them and their teammates we do engagement surveys and we do monthly pulses and they're valuable but they don't replace just sitting and listening pre-pandemic i would have spent a lot of time just walking around the studio chatting with people but new working styles require new ways of engaging and so i'll be continuing my listening tours and holding office hours

we've also implemented cross studio volunteer committees we call them soul soul after hello in simlish to help support team health productivity engagement across the studio focused on topics like recognition welcoming new team members asynchronous productivity or whatever else the team decides these committees help us engage voices from across the team who are passionate about a topic rather than just going back to the same usual suspects or relying on seniority or function we also engage our community to understand what matters to them at the end of the day our players are at the center of everything we do alongside consumer and player insights research and play testing we're continuing to refine our methods for listening to our community and

finding new and healthy ways to involve them for our work on customizable pronouns we've sought super valuable feedback from not only our external and expert partners but the player community at large sharing work in progress was a big step for us and one we'd really like to do more of we want our game team to be able to connect directly with our players and fans in a psychologically safe way and we're exploring how we can do create even more ways to do so whether it's live streams dev diaries forums listening sessions it's an ongoing journey and one that we're getting better at we all want a relationship of transparency and trust with the community our players care so much about the sims but we've seen at times that this passion can take a turn from positive to

negative directed at our team members on the front line our devs are working so hard to delight our players and when this happens it is so hard for me to watch and it's not okay we value the feedback and insights of our community greatly and are continuing to refine how we engage the community with mutual grace and respect being part of a gaming community should be positive fun fair and safe for all our players and our teams as you can probably tell i am extremely proud to be part of maxis and the sims not just because we make a game that players love but i know what we do matters

our ambition is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play our employees are really good at what they do they have plenty of options for where they could work and we know that this sense of purpose is part of the reason they choose maxis and what motivates us to show up every day to deliver for our players making impactful entertainment is hard hiring the right individuals it's hard engaging and retaining large teams is hard change is hard but working alongside diverse team members makes these challenges a lot easier a lot more fun and a lot more likely to yield successful results i actually think that our new remote friendly working lifestyle is helping us

now we can bring in more geographic diversity and work more seamlessly across north america and europe we're going after the best talent regardless of location and this not only helps us bring in more hard skills but also allows us to open the door to soft skills and unique experiences that help us make a better more inclusive game previously almost all of our developers were based in northern california with northern california experiences and they were mostly only familiar with northern california and the pandemic changed that and we're now able to benefit from this global diversity of experience now we can hire employees who understand what it's like to be a parent in stockholm or a recent grad in toronto so working remotely has also led to a greater appreciation of the complexities of people's lives and it builds empathy

and trust across the team in the beginning of the pandemic working from home was a jarring experience and over time it's become the norm right we get glimpses into our boss's living room children bust through doors cats walk on keyboards we understand that someone needs to go off camera or needs to go run pick up their kid from school and there's less of an expectation that you have a work self and a home self and this openness has really helped lower many barriers myself included i have three young kids i live in the boston area and the majority of my team is on the west coast before the pandemic i'm not sure that this job would have been doable without uprooting my family's entire life and moving across the country i was able to take on a job that aligned with the impact that i want to make not because it was the most convenient

or physically close to home my whole team is now used to seeing my kids come in for a hug when they come home from school and i love that my eight-year-old daughter can see what my work entails when i grew up my mom left home at seven in the morning and she came home 12 hours later and i am so happy to be able to be a much more present role model for my kids our new ways of working are also leading to more inclusive communication we have fun and extremely active chats during our town halls and we have entire slack channels dedicated to giving kudos to our teammates we have shared digital puzzles and impromptu huddles and with digital tools like miro and loom and zoom people are empowered to jump into the conversation and engage with people across teams and seniority levels and it works

people who previously may not have been comfortable stopping a senior leader in the hallway are perfectly happy to reach out on slack and it's leveling the playing field across the whole studio it's fun so i'm clearly excited about our future we are more we are committed to being more inclusive of different backgrounds races genders geographies and ways of thinking than ever before we of course want to attract gaming experts but we realize that there's enormous potential outside the industry we need fashion designers artists architects e-commerce specialists machine learning experts and so much more we view non-traditional experience as an asset not a drawback so pulling this all together inclusivity allows us to attract a broader range of talent and provide a more authentic experience for our players we all know that diverse inclusive teams have better business outcomes plus it creates a more interesting and

engaging environment to work in it's a win no matter how you look at it since the sims 4 launched eight years ago monthly active users has grown every year a testament to the passion of our players and the creativity of our team we are still tackling new technical challenges building groundbreaking new features and finding new and innovative ways to engage with our players for years to come plus we're building something big and ambitious we're excited and we're passionate about what's to come and it's pushing us to examine how we build our teams and how we innovate for the future and all this means we're taking a moment to reflect on our culture consider how we work in this post-pandemic world and take advantage of the changes wrought by the last few years we're 21 years into this franchise and we're just getting started

so thank you all it has been so good to be here i haven't been to an in-person conference in over two years so i can't thank you enough for having been here with me um we don't have time for questions but i am going to be in the wrap-up room over there if anybody wants to pop by and keep the conversation going thanks [Music] you