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Gamecity Hamburg
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This scale creates a significant disconnect between the diversity of players and the composition of development teams.
Gamecity Hamburg announced a panel discussion on diversity management in the games industry, held on August 12, 2021 from 6 to 8 pm CEST as part of its digital "Gamecity Impulse" series. The series runs throughout 2021 and covers diversity-related topics across different fields of games and gaming culture. Its aim is to raise awareness, spark discussion, supply food for thought, and offer industry insights on improving equality, diversity and inclusion. The page, dated July 22, 2021, now marks the event as past and links to a recording.
The central question is what games companies, from large corporations to small indies, can do to strengthen equality, diversity and inclusion, and what challenges studios, publishers and other businesses face in doing so. The panel brought together three experts from Hamburg and San Francisco: Trinidad Hermida, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Niantic, maker of Pokémon GO, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Ingress; Rod Oliveira, Studio Marketing Lead at Deep Silver FISHLABS, with over 15 years of multinational experience; and Maurice Hagelstein, Co-Founder and Game Director at Tiny Roar, who has worked in the industry for more than ten years. Hagelstein's stated focus is why games could lead in making diversity the norm and why that remains difficult. Games journalist, researcher and developer Nina Kiel, author of the 2014 book "Gender in Games," moderated.
The program opened with welcome remarks and panelist introductions, followed by a keynote from Hermida on diversity management at Niantic, then the panel discussion and audience questions.
The framing context notes that roughly 2.2 billion people worldwide play video games across a wide range of backgrounds, identities, abilities and ages, while the communities around games and the teams making them are often less diverse. The German industry has responded with the joint declaration "Hier spielt Vielfalt" and various company, association and individual initiatives. An earlier series event, "Why Video Games Can Save the World," featured Beck Niederländer of "Kein Pixel den Faschisten" on the societal impact of diversity representation in games.
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