Game Changer: Empowering Others in the Games Industry

now we're going to be talking to publishers uh or a publishing protect in in particular in the form of uh miniclip a massive publisher of casual games um and they're gonna be talking about um how they've succeeded through empowering others in in the games industry i think are we talking about publishing they're talking about other initiatives they've worked on um so we'll be talking to um uh javiam i think that's probably a terrible pronunciation but they'll be coming up shortly i hope um after that we will be moving on again we've got uh mixie uh the guy's jv and there we go see i i wrote your name wrong on my notes so i missed it the way yes it's just hey hey jamie how are you

doing i'm good at yourself yeah not so a bit tired a bit tired but not so far so i started drinking for my joke at the start of the uh the start of the the show and now i'm feeling it don't don't drink it that's not a good idea um so where are you based where where are you in the world i am currently in london oh london so not too far not too far no yeah i know it might as well be we don't go into are you going into the office are you having it no no no london is weird at the moment i went for my first um sort of boozy lunch long lunch uh last week and uh it was great because everything was kind of empty but equally it was weird because i think it was empty but anyway we can chat about london another time i'm gonna let you are you ready to crack on with your presentation yes yes excellent i am gonna i'm here in the background any problems give me a shout out i'm just gonna disappear and get out of your hair so off you go um let me first try and share my screen as always yeah i'll i'll stay here till the screen share goes hopefully it doesn't try and throw

you out like last guy the joy of tech yes that's good um i like your very own brand as well i like the mini clip t-shirt that's good always always there we go you look like you're sharing fantastic are you seeing i'm seeing empowering others in the games industry game changers i like it yes i'm muting i'm out of there over to you awesome thank you so very much and thank you everyone else for joining us this amazing um webinar that chris is homesteading as well very pleased to help have you here and these days when i look at you know 2020 the first thing that comes to my mind is like two meters probably like what james said um it's almost unthinkable at the start of this year that physical disconnection is what that's going to help to save lives and never have i thought that traveling and big group gatherings of more than six people could be such a luxury in this day and age and the global pandemic has certainly brought many new experience including you know working

from home having online webinars instead of in person conferences and so many more and it's also unsurprising that these lockdown periods these isolation periods have have increased the feeling of loneliness for many people but thankfully we can all turn to games for some online social interaction i've watched first hand how my husband reconnects with his uni friends over world warsi in the past couple of months and these connections have definitely helped him to provide some level of support and routine when we're stuck at home of course we have articles in the new york times that describe how games like animal crossing have provided people some relief from isolation and how multiplayer games are helping anti-social people to talk to each other and bring together communities of people and this doesn't just apply to pc or console games in fact mobile games have seen its

largest quarter for games downloads in the la in q1 2020 and of course this applies to a high diu spike during lockdown months and an increase in revenue because more people were spending time at home playing mobile games but what i want to talk about today isn't really about these record-breaking revenues or the sentiments around how the games industry is booming because i think while it's great that our industry is getting more and more recognition that it deserves i think it's also important that we talk about the increasing power and influence that our industry have over not only players who play our games but for those who work in the industry over the years i watch as our industry comes comes under fire and get called out on issues around diversity and diversity comes in many different forms it could be gender race religion

age culture socio-economic background and so forth and studies have shown that our players the gaming community has becoming increasingly more diverse in race and in gender in fact women gamers are the reason for the growth of the mobile gaming market in recent years but unfortunately like many industries the diversity in race and gender is not fairly reflected in the hiring processes of many video games companies the 2019 igdh survey shows that almost 70 percent of game devs who took the survey identified themselves as caucasian white or european and only 24 percent identify as women and even less non-binary people so when you look at these stats it becomes clear as to why to this day there are so many poor representation of

race culture and gender in games because if you put the same group of people in a room they're likely going to come up with things that will look just like that according to what they like fundamentally the representation should start from having teams of people with different cultures and backgrounds in the room in itself so that they can come up with different ideas um different points of views or even provide their unique experiences in the matter on the matter that's been discussed or whether it's game design or team structure and so forth and when these individuals of different cultures or different race gender whatever not gather together in the same room they may see that actually they have more things in common than they thought they had with one another or they may find that they are still remarkably different and that's okay too because increasing familiarity with these differences can vacillate acceptance and it

diminishes the misconception and prejudice that fuels discrimination in the first place but even as i know you know why it's important to have diversity the bigger question that i've been asking myself is is how you know what am i actually doing to contribute to this change that i want to see i read all about these negative issues on twitter and i share feelings like anger and frustration each time i come across you know news and issues about how people have been treated badly and my normal reactions is you know i like and share these social media posts i rant about it or i complain to a friend or colleague but it doesn't actually do anyone any good in fact over time these feelings begin to replace my ability to react as i get more and more bogged down by this anger frustration and helplessness

so i decided that instead of waiting for the change i hope to see to happen i begin to focus on two issues that speak to my heart recently and really commit myself to make the change or take actions on those fronts to give you an example pre covet i love learning about different perspectives ideas and views from industry peers attending you know gdc pgc um all of these game events but of course we don't have to luxury to meet in person now so i turned to all of these um online channels to get my learning fix and all these online webinars but if i'm really honest i think we can do a lot better with giving more women room to speak on some of these online platforms because we know there is a strong positive correlation between higher levels of employee diversity and stronger financial performance across industries and geographies and games is no different

so i can't help but think where are our amazing women leaders we are already underrepresented in the workforce so why aren't more of them especially women of color be given a platform to voice their views or share experiences and having them representing women in the games industries on on these platforms and be vocal to share their perspectives and views it's so important because it breaks down barriers and show us what women can and should achieve it also helps to encourage more women to join the industry as they turn to see how successful these role models are and this is something that's really close to my heart so i really wanted to do something to address the under representation of women leaders on these platforms so a few months ago together with my friend cat chu we decided to start game changes it's a monthly live zoom webinar where we invite everyone to

join and learn from women leaders in our industry and we cover topics such as market insights production team management game design and so forth we want to focus on showcasing the capabilities of our speakers at their roles and hope that our attendees will walk away with knowledge and practical advices through game changes we hope that we can move the perception away from our speakers as women speaking about being women in games to a perception of our speakers as role models in games or women and this ship in perspective will hopefully build more confidence in people for equal ambition and that they someday may make future decisions that treat all genders equally so today we've done two episodes so far and we're very very humble and blown away by

the support we see i guess in particular i cannot thank my colleagues at many club enough for being so supportive and helpful for this project they've been cheering me on from from day one even when i didn't know if this was the right thing to do i want to give a special shout out to saad rachel kelly emma sarah and becky and so many more of many clippers who have been so supportive on this initiative and of course massive thanks to all of these amazing women leaders who have joined us in the past two episodes if you're interested to learn more about career insights from lena kathy and elizabeth this episode in particular is now available on youtube and as a sneak peek exclusively for you who are attending this presentation we will be running our september episode on the 24th this month at five o'clock and this month we will be talking about one of my favorite topics in games which is data with alisa and tammy so if this is something that's of interest to you then please tune in to our website

globalgamechanges.com and the registration will open sometime this week and another thing that's really close to my heart is community because i think we can do so much more when we're together and sometimes we can be afraid to act when we're alone of course myself but when we harness the power of community we are empowered by this connection and collaboration between people and it makes such a huge difference when you know you're part of something bigger and have a sense of belonging in the teams and in this industry i also find that broadening my sense of community really helps to foster new ideas different practices different perspectives that stimulate and inspire me in my day job i think our differences is what makes this community fun and beautiful and this should be something that is shared

highlighted and celebrated so alongside game changes we also start the safe spaces where we gather up to six people who share a common interest and connect them to moderator these groups will then meet once every two months to share ideas build and discuss on any topics that's of interest to them our hope is that through building these friendships more and more of us will have a sense a stronger sense of belonging in this industry and will have more opportunities to learn from one another our unique experience growing up on cultural differences and also our our diverse experience in the games industry so i leave you today with a with a challenge today and that is to ask yourself what are the issues that are close to your heart that you've been willing to commit to and make a difference on those fronts it doesn't have to be another game changers or safe spaces

it could be building a more inclusive environment for your teams it could be promoting the women and pocs in your team it could be calling out discrimination when you see it happening in front of you or it could be encouraging more people to play games whatever it is if you're already working on something congratulations have faith that you know you're planting seeds that will ultimately blossom into positive changes but progress takes time so don't stress out too much if you know you're still at early stages of what you're doing and whatever it is i hope that my very new experience here will give you the confidence and encouragement that if i can take a step up to raise my voice and try and make a difference then so can you and we're all in this together to try and make this industry a more diverse inclusive and welcome environment for everyone and with that thank you very much thank you thank you very much that was a a very um

very uh interesting uh uh uh talking very it's topics and themes are very kind of close to our heart as well i think um not that we're we want to be doing the virtual signaling but i i think we we have always tried uh with our conferences to have as much diversity of all kinds in in in uh representation of who people speaks and the topics covered and i think we've got a whole um whole theory oh there's an arm in the background the mysterious armor has appeared yes we have we haven't haven't given that much uh space to disembodied arms so that's uh there it's good but no that we we've got a uh uh company culture um uh late in the week i think it's thursday maybe coming she's always always good and often covers all these topics but it's good to get it up front right at the start of the show so we've got loads of questions so that's that's good that's good um um yeah let's let's have a look at this look at the questions i've got a few of my own but um okay so yeah here we go you've obviously started some some great initiatives here and it's fantastic the mini clippers are supporting

supporting you in this g do you see there is positive change in the industry um because often we have these talks it's all so terrible and there's no any this percentage of women and everything's come to culture is terrible involved but do you do you think that has we are moving in the right direction and what what are the most encouraging developments you've kind of seen recently or are there only hopefully there are yeah so i think my biggest surprise you know running game changers was at the beginning i i didn't think or expect that this would be something that people really wanted to come and learn from um i didn't expect to have so many people in the audience who resonate um with what was being discussed and the the goals and ideas behind game changes so i definitely think that you know we are moving in the right direction but although a little bit slower than what i hope i would hope to see um but i definitely think that you know given the responses that we're getting um a lot more women speakers are actively participating each time when i flip these ideas to them when i reach

out to them to say hey would you be interested to participate in this um the responses that i get from both speakers and audience have been really encouraging um so i do think that you know this is something that people want to address and want to change and definitely something that i think will progress soon as well yeah i mean i think i mean obviously you know uh sadly sort of prejudice and discrimination all these issues are not are not unique to the games industries would you do you think the game's injury as a whole is is i said at the start of my talk that i think the game since she's done a lot of good uh in these times and and has an important part to play as you said it's a huge industry now do you think we're we're kind of ahead of the the wider kind of cultural curve or are we just you know are we the same as everyone you know is you know i think it's important we we do become a a sort of beacon and a leader but do you think we the games industry is marginally better than other other industries well i think we can do a lot more better i think we're going to where are you going to say that i'm

people like to feel we're getting somewhere right because it's yes yeah i i can't i can't say with that yet um you know personally my own experience i suddenly think and even just recently talking to some of these speakers that i'm trying to invite and hearing them talking about how you know in the past last you know six to 12 months they were invited to seminars and conferences because they were women and not because of their talents and capabilities those kind of still shocked me because you know i thought we would have gone past that um but it's still happening right now so i think we can certainly feel better is i mean tokenism is difficult and it is it is as someone who arranges a lot of events i will say it is quite hard to find that balance because you know one hand everyone's going you need more you know if you put up a a panel with like 10 old white men you know and then go away where's where's the diversity so then you go but then if you go and you go oh well we've invited five women oh well that's well it's not yeah it is i guess there's

a little bit of a um this is not an excuse but it's a little bit of a of a kind of uh what's the words oh i can't think i'm so tired but chicken neck chicken and egg situation right because until there are more women in in in prominent roles in the industry you know then there's not as many women in industry so there's not as many women to speak from so if i want you know i mean there are a lot of amazing women we've got yourself loads of amazing women and we want you know we don't really necessarily select on that basis we select some people doing interesting stuff and are compelling speakers but it you know i think i think tokenism can it's not ideal but it can play a bit of a role it's better at least to have representation than no representation right well so i'm an old white man i shouldn't be saying anything well my goal with game changers is that you know like because there are not enough of us in the workforce maybe the goal is to have more people coming up more women coming out and say hey actually you can have a career in this industry because it's scary right people you know women like myself we think about so many things before we

step into this industry but having these rural models to tell us actually you can have a career here you can develop yourself here um it kind of encourages more people to come and then from there hopefully widen your pool and then you can promote more women but of course for those who are already in this industry i do hope that companies will work to promote more women so that they are in the leadership position and then yeah and then and it is it is going that way there are more and more powerful women in the industry and also not women it's also other you know the other other groups that maybe have not been well as well represented which are we are is i think the industry is working in it i'm not going to forgive us sins but i do think it it's definitely the conferences we run on people we talk to is definitely this is a topic that's not in in the background it's something people are constantly thinking about i think it makes in games it makes so much sense as well because actually our audience is you know it is everybody right so you need to you know and that apparently or around half the population uh a female and there's also people so you need kind of you need to have those voices and those uh in insights uh in there so so agree that

moving as aside from from the from from that particular topic so to looking at more this idea of games for good which you kind of kind of touched on more generally i i think there's been some great initiatives that we mentioned here like play a part together was a thing i think started by throwing zinger a few people a lot of people got bored that trying to combine useful messages and information about kovid and keep people connected there was a great initiative to do with climate change our brains completely gone with um we're involved in loads of game developers ibo and super sun everywhere and we're there at the un talking about that um and and there are a number but what are the most what sort of positive campaigns have have you seen what are you most heartened by in these sort of activities to be honest i'm more focused on the indie campaigns i'm bigger on supporting those indie campaigns that i know friends um are organizing because having gone through game changes and safe businesses myself i appreciate completely appreciate how hard it is for one or two persons to be handling you know many of these organizations so

i have been focusing a lot more on on these smaller poc or in the organizations um some of them that i think you have personally featured as well chris is like limit break the mentorship program that lisa is doing um it's a lot of work organizing some of these events and and seeing how she's able to to um to join you know one-on-one mentorship in this day and age is really interesting and really helpful yeah and i mean there's a lot of great stuff we we're you know we're as long when we find out about stuff we try and we try and promote it i mean we're not you know we're a media source we we hopefully can use what influence we do have to promote these these issues um do you think obviously we're in a slightly weird time now as well you know on top of everything else when all in our own houses a lot of the time we're all kind of a bit more isolated than otherwise do you think that that um that isolation is causing more issues more kind of that is there more need for for for activism and these sort of groups than ever before or or is it in

the way somehow this isolations may be leveling the ground a little bit i don't know does is how do you feel the kind of covert is affecting affecting these sort of issues that you're engaged with i think it's it's up and down so at the start of it um because the nature of my work which is in business development i could work anywhere and so report working isn't something that's that's new to me um but i i personally felt you know in the last in the first three months after it it kind it kind of gets into me as well because it's you know not seeing anyone and getting a little bit fatigued over online online interactions and seeing the same people over and over again without you know having online conferences without having the conferences to meet other people in person because part of the fun in the business job is to go and meet new people right and thanks to this lockdown this doesn't happen anymore so i did get a little bit fatigued and tired in between and this is also why game changes and safe spaces opportunity came out because it was like how can we get more and more new people to be in the same room and start chatting about things who are

not our usual friends and family but also things that people that could stimulate and inspire us um so for me i definitely think that this knockdown has brings has bring up more needs for these kind of gatherings and conversations in fact i think it's great for smaller groups of discussions because you know online interactions it's quite hard to have 50 people talking at the same time but it makes um groups gatherings and group discussion even like this one-on-one that we're having even more valuable yeah than it was before because you know in the past conferences i may only have 10 seconds to chat with you so many people want to have your time and now with these online games they're very popular what can i say it's exactly i have this one on 100 is with you and this these precious time to just converse and interact with you right i think this is something that's becoming even more valuable in these times yeah i will i'll be setting up a channel that he wants to talk to me if anybody finds my time i don't think i'm that much so after those are very nice to say so i am definitely missing the uh i'm hugely missing face to face i do love that um i do love meeting

people and chatting and going out and having a drink and then yeah i think i think the games industry is phenomenal for that it it it it's it's an incredible it's not all it can you know the camel's been a dark side to it but i think generally it's a very caring it feels like a family that's what we always try and do with pg connects and our activities is make the gaming family feel and and you know and i i do miss that i think i also said i'm feeling very weird about not getting on a plane i think it's the longest time 15 years i am now missing it um we're gonna have to move on but i'm sure people can reach out uh reach out to talk to you uh jabian and uh you'll be in discord and obviously uh everybody should go and check out uh uh game changers and yeah what you've got actually advise you've got some talks coming up and we will obviously suggest to us we are always open for new ideas for smart speakers or interesting people got things to say so keep those suggestions coming thank you so much for your time

well thank you very much for having me as well you