Fireside Chat: Sustainable Diversity - Women in Games

[Music] all right so diversity is probably one of the bigger challenges that our industries facing are and I think it's probably a very well known fact that there is quite a few groups of under represented people so today yin and I will talk about what we do in terms of diversity to encourage it what we would suggest if people got any questions if they need help just to support a positive development in the games industry when it comes to diversity but first of all I want to do a quick intro so that you know who you're actually dealing with and so my name is Mario and fafa I'm SVP for corporate partnerships and business

development agreement gaming I have about 15 years of experience in the tech industry and the MOE belt and I happened to slip into the games industry about two years ago and I'm very very happy about this and this is my lovely co-host Lian everyone I hope you have a great show yes sir my name's me empathy act and I am the PR and Events Manager at Splash Damage and were a studio based over in Bromley and we create games like Gears of War halo and/or throne IP like dirty bomb and myself I have seven years now in the games industry brilliant welcome to everyone in here we're very happy to have you and we also want to we also welcome a little bit of engagement so don't be shy we might be asking questions raise your hands say something actually yeah we want to we want to encourage that a little bit right it's alien let's kick this off why don't you just tell us you know how you got to where you are today yeah sure say growing up I was actually

obsessed games I remember sort of huddling around my family's PC my family's a corn PC in the early nineties playing games like pac-man or snap if you want to be specific and nothing for late nineties playing games like Tomb Raider and I was actually obsessed and I would play for as long as my parents would allow me with that point in time I never knew that I could work in the games industry I didn't know he existed at all so it's absolute dream come true to be sat here today and working in the industry that I've sort of grown to love and understand you also say how do you actually then feel when you entered the industry you know as a professional Yessica Lee working in the place of your child huge dreams yes when I first joined I was really really welcomed I made great friends right off the bat but as my career started develop to develop I started to kind of realize more and more that I tended to be the only woman in the meeting in the meeting rooms and then sort of when I went out to sort of conferences like III Gamescom GDC I found that there weren't really

many other women to network with so that kind of got me thinking about diversity and how the industry could be a little bit better and and that's kind of why we're here today to think about how we can be more inclusive and get more people through the doors exactly I mean you're addressing in by the way right the only woman in the in the in the room sometimes very often so I've heard that from many women before and there is not really an easy solution to that but I think before we actually talk about what we do so what actually is diversity to you let's give this whole thing a little bit of a yeah it's a great question I mean for me people have come up to me and said you know that's not a problem with diversity in the industry and when that happens I kind of come back to my key point and I believe thinking about diversity and inclusion really benefits each and every one of us I mean diversity covers so many things it can mean the person with disability at work he's feeling they're not getting the right access to tools and training it can mean minority groups or people in

minority groups are thinking I don't really see any role models here and I'm thinking about dipping out of the industry and going somewhere else we can also mean the new dad who's really stressed out and he's really in need of flexible working hours but he's really scared of asking for that in case he might miss out on key meetings or you know ruin his opportunities of career development so it's really important beyond that it really is about diversity of thought as well and sort of getting everyone engaged in meetings and getting all those ideas across so we can sort of make the best games and make the best products we can so yeah and beyond that I know diversity when you start thinking about it's not implementing it it can really become overwhelming there are just a million things think about things like neurodiversity things like your social events what they look like you truly being inclusive or you often just at the bar and it does everyone have a fair access of getting to these events and networking so yeah it even looking

it like sort of accessibility in games as well there's just so many things but getting together places like this and networking I'm starting to break it down and can start to help you kind of move forward with your diversity program yeah no I totally agree with you and I've been thinking about the whole kind of topic of diversity myself lately and I think diversity inclusivity and it doesn't only cover gender it covers religion it covers race it covers accessibility and tools as you say right and I actually believe that we're going to bring everybody on board with all of this irrespective of the differences who may seem to divide us at times I think it's important to and how can you beat reality and celebrate all of those differences that we have together right so that's a little bit the whole kind of idea of being diverse means accepting differences for not letting them divide you but bring everyone everyone together and if you're on this video thinking about it's quite the bit my dream is that you know further down the line in the future the diversity won't be a topic any longer

because it is there it's not something that we have to discuss it's not something where we have to start measurements it's not something refined we need to find activities and and and you know suggestions on how to implement it it is there and that's kind of where where I'd like to go with this so I think there are many ways to look at that versity right so but with that in mind let's go to you into Splash Damage right so in 2018 you took up the mantle as Splash Damage diversity and inclusivity for Chief so you've set up a woman and women in splash damage group and how did that come about yeah sure so about 18 months ago I was given the opportunity to run a diversity program at Splash Damage and it's the first time we've really implemented something like this so I've been had another team and we look at so many different things together we look at our recruitment practices so we look at okay are our interview panels diverse do we get a wide range of people interviewing candidates especially at the cultural

fit stage as well to make sure we're not that unconscious bias is not seeping in and we look at as I mentioned accessibility best practices in our games as well and there's just so much to do to do there it's a huge amount of important work and we look at sort of career progression for everyone looking at that across everyone make sure there's a career progression for each and every person regardless of their background and where they've come from and also you know just fostering an inclusive environment so sitting down with the core team sitting down to the facilities team sitting down the hatch our team and going let's just look at everything with the lens of diversity and make sure that we're being the best that we can be so yeah we we've done a lot of hard work one of the kind of key things I think have come out of this diversity program is we now have three thriving communities and so we have a bain-marie we have an lgbtq+ group and we have a women at Splash Damage group as well brilliant so yeah they're just starting to sort of get going as well so

that's been really key to this program super so do you want to give the orders a little bit of an idea of working what kind of activities you're actually spearheading so it's just to know what that actually means and how this is implemented yes so for me the thing I'm probably most proud of is sort of getting the women it's crash damaged group going so when you think about the studio like Splash Damage there's about 350 to 400 people in that building will spread across two buildings and you only have sort of 11 12 percent women there so quite quickly women and not actually seeing each other day to day so they're not networking and I think networking is really key to career development making these key engagements with your peers and things like that so getting them to go together yeah exactly it's really important and also it's important retention as well people meet each other making friends and everything else so what we get together every single month and yes we do network but alongside that we offer training within that group and we we encourage people to go up for

awards as well so it's really nice to see women encouraging each other to go up for different games industry awards helping each other with pitches and just being there when you know there might be an issue that someone wants to discuss engage each other exactly two speakers events yes that's what yeah exactly and so that that's been super important but we've actually just started taking that to the next level so we started using Sheryl Sandberg's lean in circles so I don't know if you're familiar with the book lean in but you can now actually go online right now and you can set this up that is basically I think it's called Lehman org and you can download workshops training workshops so you can get together do this with groups right now and I should say as well that we do open this group up fully so it is open to you regardless of your gender because I think allies ship in diversity programs are super important you're just not going to make

those changes if you don't engage the people that can make the difference across the business so it's it's fully open and that's been hugely successful for us sounds awesome I have to say so congratulations to all of these efforts we've made so far crossing my fingers for you and I'd be interested in the audience who else is working in a place that kind of encourages these kind of activities and who runs these activities idiot can I can I ask you so what's your name why we have similar groups like you just mentioned we have also an LGBT crew we I think every Gamescom we host at a LGBT party one of the evenings we organize what we call it gamers nights in our office in Berlin yeah I think I don't know the actual number but we I

think on like several times per year we present how much women represent the overall company and it's I don't remember the actual number but it's always above average in the gaming industry so that's good well we try to advocate to get more women in higher positions actually yeah we do a lot I'm very happy with with with all the efforts down that will go puts in yeah I think we had another lady you come by there yes would you mind telling us a little bit about that sorry the lady with the glasses oh oh yeah I'm from big pixel Studios okay we currently have women's group but we also try and host other organizations as well so we've got do just Authority you just did the opposite we usually we're doing the ops networking event yes yes that's why I've met ye I'm like a serial of an organised

I can't help it yeah but we found that we were we've we've got quite a nice open planned studio and lots of event space so we contacted groups that didn't have a secure space so we now host black female coders every every month and meetup occur and code we found that kind of worked with a with us quite well brilliant did we have anyone else raising their hand in the back yes please so I work for fuse box games and I'm a junior narrative developer and we have an open whatsapp group so there's no pressure knowing Simon of color we have organized meetings we have a we have like a yoga studio that we intended to use the yoga but now movie night but I think the main thing is

there's no expectation because I think a lot of people forget about the neuro difficulty in inclusion and diversity there's no pressure just come in and it's just nice because it's even in our games or including women in the LA violent games you can robot three minutes okay it sounds really also and I have to say I mean that just gives you a bit of an idea how far we've come right because I think that at some point we should all also stop for a moment which is me out back look at where where we've been a few years ago where we are today to celebrate that and then we can still kind of go forward and you know aim for better and Paul that's fine but just breathe for a moment and just say thanks for where we're coming from so yeah just one more question on that and if there is you know people in the room and and they they say okay I wanna we want as a company you know engage encourage that as well want to enable this so how would you to become more diverse in general what would you suggest how they start what

what what to do yeah I think I kind of look at this in the few key key areas number one is sort of network there's going to be companies here today and you've kind of been there done that so reach out to them kind of learn what worked for them so you don't kind of make the same mistakes at your studio and then next sort of always look at the data you know it can get really hard but we do know when we look at the data that diverse companies they are more profitable they are more successful time and time again so dig that data out things like the McKenzie report get that in front of your leadership team when you're struggling to get budget for something or you believe in something that you want to get kicked off but people aren't quite sure get that data out because it is super important for making change and then there's always like low-hanging fruit work I think in in a company that anyone can get started on what does your website look like for example are you really showing a broad range of people on there like that's your shop window are you really encouraging people to come and look at your studio or business and things like

I talked about like your recruitment practices as well there's always work you can just start right now you don't have to wait and also you know accept that is going to be a long journey when we look at things like we do outreach program at smash damaged we go to universities and schools but we know we're not going to see results in q1 this really is a five-year plan and just be okay with that because it is great work you might not see the results but it is great work and also you know I always think just show up show up to events like this shirts that school event because there might be that young girl in the audience that was like me sort of playing their games and not thinking or can I work in this industry but if they start thinking I could be a developer then that's really what this is all about so yeah it's really important to show up and I know that you Marian have been doing some work that goes beyond sort of businesses and communities and youth innocence as well yeah that's right so I've been

I've been kind of digging into this a little bit and I realized that with everything that like you had Splash Damage that you guys are doing this is absolutely amazing but we also see that sometimes it just doesn't have the impact that we wanted to have yeah I've been thinking to where is that coming from and at some point I realized that I do think that we put the onus on the business to actually make a change and to be diverse although we sometimes forget that as a society we probably have the biggest responsibility to do so so when you think about how kids are raised nowadays and then they become teenagers they go to school they go to university and then all of a sudden they hit the workplace and without having been actually educated on diversity everybody expects them to be diverse so in my opinion we need to start way earlier to actually educate our little ones and I think that despite the fact that all of us probably in this room we

all think that we're we're not biased or we're very open-minded and you know we know exactly what we're doing however the reality is that there is unconscious bias out there that needs to be somehow you know overcome and that can only be done by making a conscious effort of educating our kids give them the right toys you know school uniforms another thing so there is quite a few examples and yeah I'll be putting all of this together in an article at some point yeah and yeah you guys are the read there I think that it's it's a good start if I think it's important to mention as well you know like me and Maryann have kind of met through this talk and I think you know we are both from sort of the games industry slacking things up that so if you do want to reach out and talk about any of these things then anything anytime we're passionate about it so let's work together [Music] [Applause]

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