Disrupt the Game Industry Culture for Good: Starting from Square One

[Music] [Applause] hi everyone and welcome to disrupt the game industry culture for good starting from square one my name is trinidad hermita i'm the head of diversity and inclusion at niantic and i would like to get this party started by jumping in quite frankly into the deep end and we're going to start with square one in order for us to really truly dig deep into this conversation around culture around diversity and inclusion and equity we really have to get on the same page and i'd like to use this exercise of asking a couple of questions that are questions that we might not ask every day but are telling on where our journey is question number one diversity asks who's in the room equity responds who is trying to get in the room but can't whose presence in the room is under

constant threat of erasure inclusion asks have everyone's idea been heard justice responds whose ideas won't be taken seriously because they aren't the majority diversity asks how many more of black people in the group do we have to have this year or encourage in recruiting or how many more latinx hires do we need equity responds what conditions have we created that maintain certain groups as the perpetual majority here inclusion asks is this environment safe for everyone to feel like they belong and justice challenges whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing views pretty tough questions huh but these are the questions that we need to tackle in order to disrupt game industry

culture i'd like to start with a quote from one of my favorite pokemon wink wink of course i work with pokemon go but we mewtwo is one of the strongest pokemon and in all of my interactions with pokemon go i love catching mewtwos because i feel like if i got the strongest pokemon in my deck that i can conquer and do anything one quote is i see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are and i'd like to unpack that a little bit with what is our gift as humans we all have a genius inside of us and that genius is something that the universe has given us as a gift to the world and how are we using that gift let's go back to those questions and talk about how we can use our gift to counteract and use our privilege to counteract some of these questions

question number one was who is trying to get in the room but can't how can i use my privilege or access authority to fix the problem who's in the room if i see everybody who looks like me in the room how do i create access for people who don't look like me who can bring a diverse thought to who can bring different ideas that can make us more innovative whose presence in the room is under constant threat of erasure how can i stand up and be an ally advocate for this person if you're in a meeting and someone is saying a great idea and then people just overlook it and keep on going as another person in the room who noticed this great idea you can stand up and say wait wait wait wait let's take a moment to hear laura's idea let's take a moment to hear sam's idea that's using your privilege your access your authority

to create space for someone else another question whose ideas won't be taken as seriously because they aren't in the majority thinking back to myself how can i back up innovative thinkers who don't have support because they are not in the majority how do i open doors for people who have great ideas but just don't have access seems so simple doesn't it next what conditions have we created that maintain certain groups as the perpetual majority here i'd like to talk about the systematic cracks that are blocking the minority to access stretch roles promotions or even clearance to go to the next round in interviews how are we utilizing these systems and saying you know what there's some cracks in here that are blocking people with access have you ever thought that maybe maybe just maybe bringing someone

on site who doesn't look like you maybe the interview didn't go as right or as perfect as you'd like it but saying you know what i'm going to pass them through so they can have an on-site interview maybe they'll do better in person next which i do not want to look over because as you know right now in the game industry we are grappling with a lot of things whose safety is being sacrificed and minimized to allow others to be comfortable maintaining dehumanizing views how can i support people who are bringing up ideas that might threaten the majority on their practices how can i support people who have ideas that might threaten other people i think that's something that we sit back and we think about and i'm like wow me as a woman in the industry that is majority men you know i go out to a happy hour and

i'm in the happy hour and i feel uncomfortable so i leave when i bring that up to someone are they gonna say you know what you shouldn't have felt uncomfortable let's address it let's call on the people and make sure that you feel safe working in this environment that's an ally that's an advocate the opposite is pushing it under the rug and not giving the right energy towards something that could eventually help generations to come so i'd like to move on from that but i just want you to know that there's no way that you would ever hear me say that this is okay i truly believe that if anything our jobs and our opportunities in the game industry should be safe just that little tidbit now let's talk about ways that we can move it to action i did talk about some questions and some questions that had answers on how to be

an ally but a lot of us are stuck in either one of these places head heart and hand head is i'm convinced that we need to change but it's stuck in my head i know that there's data out there i know that i've heard it on harvard business review i've heard it on bloomberg i've heard it everywhere there's so much that we need to do and it's going to help our bottom line this is stuff because we have facts on facts on facts that this diversity and inclusion equity work will increase your bottom line will make your employees happier we'll create an innovative work workspace but if it's stuck only in my head how am i going to get to action so moving on to the heart there's a distance between the head and the heart it's a little bit shorter than the heart and the hand but this is where i observe i feel i want to change like hey

everything that's going on in the world right now with the black lives matter commitment and um we can see that it's wrong people are dying on without any type of regard for human life wow i want this to change that's when we get to the heart but if we want it to change and we stop right there no action is actually done so how do we get from the heart to the experience to actually try and change the capability to change that's a vulnerable place y'all so many times we in this industry love to fast fail let's try a new game and see if it works put all the effort behind it put it out there and watch it but when it comes to humans when it comes to people we're a little bit more apprehensive to actually empowering that change and that ability to fail we are going to fail just wanted to let you

know that there is no silver bullet to this and as we move forward and try new things we may not do it exactly the right way but does that stop us from actually doing something you see one thing that businesses really focus on is the bottom line revenue but one thing i can say about niantic is we focus on our mission which is to get people out active in communities and at niantic we focused on we want to reflect the communities that we supply these games for what do these communities look like well they look fifty percent female and thirty percent under represent a minority but do we look like that internally are we building the infrastructure internally so that we can make sure that whatever we design and create has our players in mind it's a work in progress y'all but we can

do it together the reason why i brought up the head heart in the hand is because in education it's called the activation trinity there has to be a process whether you start with acting like hey i want to go protest i want to get out there and that's your activation and then your heart's connected and then your head you're like wait i get the understanding i i know what's what information's out there but if you don't have some form of understanding feeling you are not going to be effective in your actions so what does that look like so let's talk about how we develop our games when you look at the life cycle of a game you think of the concept you go in depth on research on how much you want to make sure that this is applicable to the environment and to the people who are going to be playing this you don't cut corners

and one thing when you're coming into the dei work and cultural work a lot of companies love to focus on low-hanging fruit why because low-hanging fruit gives you that direct access to external media oh y'all are doing great giving back to the community y'all are doing great with your employee resource groups these are things that are low hanging fruit because they're easy to accomplish with less overhead but they are not sustainable for the long systemic change high hanging fruit is not sexy high hanging fruit means looking at your board and seeing is there any women on your board is there any underrepresented minorities on your board high hanging fruit is looking at your leadership team and saying hey do we have any black people who are director or above quick question these are things that could be done but once you recognize that there's a lot of work after that that has to

happen so i would like to actually go through each i'm going to give a couple examples of what high hanging fruit is and what low hanging fruit is and give some examples on how we can address these things are you ready for the journey i am let's go low hanging fruit by no means am i talking negatively about anything on this chart but what i'm saying is that these low hanging fruit examples are not going to continuously create systemic change within your company employee resource groups are amazing they're great to gather people together collectively to get people excited about the business imperative of having a balanced workforce and giving people power and the ability to assemble and educate people at niantic our pillars are commitment community and partnerships and culture

and in our employee resource groups their leadership focuses with those pillars on how to educate how to reinforce commitment and how to create a safe culture for everybody is that important yes it is but is that systemically going into the cracks and and using power to change up things that have been going on for so long not at all another thing is sponsoring diversity conferences i believe conferences are great for development empowerment and getting people out one thing that i love about afrotech is that as a black person in tech i can go to this conference and see people who look just like me in so many ranges of different places and different levels and senior leaders and i'm like wow okay i need you to be my mentor i need you to be my mentor it's fun but it's not addressing the fact that we struggle at hiring people of color in tech

and not addressing the reasons why we struggle hiring people of color in tech compensation evaluation i think if your company hasn't done this this is a great start checking your comp eval and seeing where people of color fall where women fall are women and people of color being promoted as fast as everybody else this is a complete overhaul of going in to benefits you know some companies have better benefits than others and if i'm if i'm a company and i'm like hey okay this other company over there is getting all the talent because they have child care i'm gonna think okay that's a low-hanging fruit let's just get some child care and then we'll get some more people that will want to work here community partnerships again i'm not knocking any of these things these are all very important but it's very easy to to partner with community organizations that are doing

the hard work and you just provide funding and you think that you should receive all the praise because you're just providing funding that's a great thing you're providing funding but what are you doing internally are you utilizing these tools and these things that this community organizers are using to impact the backyard of your company are you bringing them in are you creating access it's one thing to provide funding for a community partnership it's another to create an internship program where there's direct access from that community into your organization social impact we all love to give back i promise you whenever we think about donating our time or our resources it's usually something that's near and dear to our heart and what i'm fighting for in this call

and this talk is that dei and having a balanced workforce becomes our passion and it's near and dear to our heart just like saving the world so that we can live here obviously we want to make sure that we have air water food but also sometimes it's easier to impact a culture outside of your own because you can provide resources instead of looking hard at in the mirror at yourself and saying what am i physically doing in my space to empower people another thing is socializing culture values if a company if you're going into a company and you don't know their values this is a problem because you are not necessarily seeing leadership resemble them so re-looking at company values is important and being able to say are we practicing what we preach as leaders are we practicing what we

preach as middle management and being able to sit back and say wow you know our values are trust accountability and guess what i have all those things that's an a plus right there but if your organization if your employees see these values and they don't see them emulated in their leadership through action it's just lip service and guess what the next generation to come actually cares about these things they look into companies evaluate and say where best should i take my talent and as a company that provides entertainment so to speak for people you definitely want your employees to feel empowered valued so that they're bringing their genius to work let's talk about some high hanging fruit you know i said not as sexy

the board and executive leadership seats if your studio doesn't have an underrepresented minority a woman or a person of color in a director level or above then you have a problem because as someone like me who may be an individual contributor if i'm looking into the company and i see no internal growth you're not going to be able to keep me for long so understanding also promotions are people of color and women getting promoted less than their asian and white counterparts i think you should check into that data it's pretty telling also with attrition regretted versus non-regretted are people leaving faster as they're coming in it's one thing to take so much effort into recruiting and then to getting people in through the door but if you haven't changed your

management and changed your leadership on how to empower develop and actually give feedback to people they're going to run out the back door and there goes all the hard-earned effort and time that you've put into recruiting people i talk about minnow management all the time i call them the frozen chosen i know it's not the best term but i call them the frozen chosen because middle management has so much weight on their shoulders to manage to evaluate to promote to develop but they're the most under-resourced employee are we giving our middle management the right training are we empowering them with coaches so that they know how to get to the next level are we giving them the ability to really look at the whole nucleus of the company and see how they are imperative to the bottom line of our company's

resources middle management education and realignment is imperative to seeing if your company can actually practice what they preach there are times when in my career it's been hard for my manager to give me feedback and i've always thought why is it so hard to give me feedback but i realize i'm very different i'm very vocal and i'm not afraid of leadership and that could be intimidating so one thing that i in my own journey throughout corporate america throughout the game industry has been to remind my manager that feedback is feedback to me means that you care about my development and you care about me growing within the company if you don't give me feedback if you don't give your employees feedback you're not truly invested in their growth and sometimes that feedback may be hard

but the fun fact is that if you tell me as a manager that you would love to develop me and you're giving me opportunities to do that i am now more invested in this company because this this company's invested in me and then guess what i'm gonna bring all my innovative ideas i'm going to go above and beyond because i know that you have my back i'd like to highlight the bad apples how many times do we go into companies and we see people who are bad apples and we just go oh they're untouchable they're untouchable they're very they're just making a muck but they're untouchable and guess what that's a problem one way to build trust with your workers with your community with your employees with your partners is to identify those bad apples and make a stand that you value and whatever the values are of the

company across the board you're going to make the right decision that's a tough one because guess what that decision might be your best friend that decision might be someone who helped you start the company but guess what if you engage with your board if you engage with your executive leadership team and you make a plan it doesn't have to end all bad it doesn't have to end in a scandal it doesn't have to end in a media frenzy because something that was done in the dark is now in the light getting rid of the bad apples sooner than later will prevent not only a huge pr issue but it will prevent you having to use lawyers and different things different executives in that state to make statements to cover up or to justify situations that have happened our industry is hurting right now and we need people who are have integrity we need

people who are willing to step down if they know they're not the right person for that position or they've reached their their journey's end i'd like to dig a little deeper i put some random stuff on here but i'd like to dig a little deeper into the green light process when a game is coming to green light what are the questions that are being asked are we asking about the environment that it's going to be in are we asking about the people that it's going to touch are we asking about the team that's going to be creating it is it a balanced team is it a team that is open to unconventional ideas is it a team that's open to constructive criticism and feedback these are all things that are imperative to building a world-class game now granted when i say that in my head the counteract is well the game industry has been

predominantly white and asian over the last 20 years and they've created world-class games but at the same time you have to understand that your people are your capital your players love the game loving the game coming back with feedback taking that and actually implementing it that's what makes you agile that's what makes you someone who can fast fail another thing i'd like to talk about is product development and evaluation when we're dealing with products we know that products have a life cycle from the beginning to the end with just the death or maybe another reiteration of it but at each step within that life cycle where are we asking the questions of who's not in the room where are we asking questions on how is this product this game this platform going to affect the people who are engaged that leads me into accessibility

accessibility in games is huge just because the majority have access to using both hands both feet being able to walk being able to dance doesn't mean that differently abled people might not have struggles in those areas and if we really want to build world-class games and build a world-class culture we have to make sure that our culture is accessible to all people and when we're building games not leave people out just because it's it's a little bit more difficult to develop we have these timelines that we create because we're so we're so excited and we have crunch time and all these different things but i beg you to think about all the people in the world who love entertainment who love playing games who may be in a wheelchair who may be colorblind

who may not be able to use one or both of their hands what are some things that we're doing in this innovative space with augmented reality with virtual reality with triple a games and all these different games that we have like we the world is our oyster so why not start making that a business imperative and making that part of even the green light process are you asking in the green light process is this game accessible is this platform accessible so all that to say is there's a lot of things that we can work on here and honestly i've only had 30 minutes to share with you which is not enough time i can i can't boil the ocean in 30 minutes and i also can't write a book in 30 minutes but i really do believe that these are all great principles that we can take that i would love to discuss with you further in the future uh to really create opportunities for

change in this space we are a special industry an industry full of creatives an industry full of people who love to have fun and get excited around community let's start allowing our internal community to look like the communities that we live in and let's start allowing people to have access without jumping over hoops i i strongly believe that there are a ton of people out there who don't even know that the game industry is a thing growing up i used to play nintendo don't understand don't talk trash but you know i wanted to make a game and at that time my parents [Music] were like no you need to be a doctor a lawyer a teacher a preacher why because those were things in their head that they thought was was sustainable like if i become a doctor then i can provide if i become a preacher i'll have a job forever you know if i

become a lawyer i can i can get access to areas that i wouldn't have access to but i'm telling this generation stop playing the game and start creating the game with all that said there's more to come so holler at me here's my information i would love to hear from you and i would love to also work with companies that are interested in starting the journey so let's get this party started and thank you for your time