Improving Diversity in the Games Industry | PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

right i think we are ready to get started back in hello kish um and hello to everybody watching on youtube and uh in the zoom chat itself oh and i've left the youtube video open so i just heard an echo of myself and that was horrible um thank you everybody for joining us and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz roundtable session that we have uh every other tuesday or so uh this

week we'll be discussing improving diversity in the games industry and i am delighted to invite all of the um panelists to now turn on your cameras and your microphones so we can uh introduce all of you and get started on discussion we'll be talking about the problems facing uh the industry at the moment with diversity obviously there's a lot of them and um hopefully we can come up with some solutions for studios and and identify places that we need to be improving um and other topics such as that but first of all i would just like to go around and have everybody introduce themselves so we'll start with kish hi so i'm keshia rani i'm uh the chair of baimian games which is a black asian minority ethnic in the video games industry we formed about four years ago and our primary activity is uh monthly meetups which have now moved to virtual meetups and today will be our first virtual meetup this evening so quite a busy day for me awesome um

sophie hi everyone um sophie so i'm uh working at the moment uh at vodou i just uh created a new studio in berlin so i'm based in germany and uh over my uh past experience over a decade of experience in mobile gaming i've worked at companies like wooga review and gameloft and yeah excited to have a conversation open conversation today with you guys thank you and donald yeah so based in austin texas i run an organization called atx game makers which is focused on improving diversity in the games industry so i'm super happy to be here thank you um dez hello uh ladies dad gayle and i'm the production manager at a indie publisher called fellow traveler and i'm also wonderful oh uh i lost you there dez for a second

sorry okay uh sorry you're a publisher fellow traveler a production manager yep and uh i am also one of the founding members of pocket play which is a diversity and inclusion group awesome thank you and david hi i'm david smith i've worked in the games industry for over 20 years uh i am the founder and now ceo of an organization called women in games which is now in uh 37 different countries i'm all i was also involved in the foundation of failing games so i'm glad kish's also here uh thank you and i was hopefully we will have um emily rose of rebo rebind.io joining us um at some point hopefully um but we will continue and if she joins in we can introduce her into the chat uh so first of all i know we kind of having a discussion about diversity in games feels imperfect

as a whole because there are so many different issues to talk about such as getting encouraging more women to get into the games industry encouraging more uh people of ethnic minorities to get into the games industry and uh different sexualities and all that kind of things so what i wanted to start with to sort of get a sort of baseline of what everybody's talking about what are we talking about when we talk about diversity it's kind of how i'm thinking about it what does diversity mean to you start with david okay so to me diversity means representation it means the need for inclusion as well as diversity it means additional perspectives to bring to the company or studio and it means better decision making both creatively and commercially cool uh i'll leave anybody else if you want to jump in but um donald maybe yeah i'll echo some of david's uh comments there especially about representation uh and

more so um throughout the entire company right so from entry level positions all the way up to senior management right you want to have an organization that that shows diversity throughout that's what a truly diverse organization looks like to me so i'll chop it as well uh that i see two different sort of uh diversity one is the visual uh which is a very very strong message having a visual diversity which i think both of you sort of covered in terms of gender females uh and ethnic minorities so the other powerful which is such a uh uh almost dismissed so is actually diverse thinking which is far more important so you would have somebody who might not look visually diverse but could be brought up in the area of the world and experienced and maybe social classes so can actually bring in some of the diverse qualities which are you're looking at as well so again i'm i'm totally against

stereotype of like if you end up hiring a female if you are and i think minority suddenly they bring in the entire stereotypical thinking you have of that particular race or gender so it doesn't work that way so to me diverse thinking is also equally important when i think of what diversity means sophie yeah i would double down on what just kiss said uh for me i look at it a lot from the lens of traits and there are the obvious ones that has just mentioned but i look at it like really from a cognitive thinking point of view uh and we are if we look at it with that lens quite very different all of us even if you have shared the same country or same gender so that's the way i look at it as well um dez uh i think everyone else pretty much covered it um cool uh we'll move on then so thank you

for that um so yeah we've talked about like what it means to you but so i guess another good starting point as well is um so what are some of the the main problems that uh people are facing so people of color i think minorities are facing women are facing in the games industry uh at this moment so i i'll i'll take a stab at that one um one of the things when i so like how i said previously about uh representations so for instance when i was younger in my career so i've been doing this for more than a decade now when i would go to look at different websites of different companies that i would want to join and you know you go to the about screen or whatever you whatever it would be called and you would see a picture of the entire staff and there would be nobody that looked like me so for me as a minority trying to get into the industry i didn't feel comfortable or feel welcome at that

company like i was like would i be the only person there why am i the only person there that's black you know so for me um you know i think some of the problems is that many people may not feel welcome inside this industry because they don't see themselves inside this industry go without everyone that i speak to um the common theme is like lack of support and lack of representation um in the best intention companies you know we're all supposed to be one family all supposed to work together but um there are some unique issues that you know people would like to talked about amongst themselves um and it's kind of like why groups like you know bear with a gamer pop and play uh those organizations exist right so we weren't getting that in the companies that we all worked for so we said okay well we need to have a safe space where we can talk

as well um it's not that companies can't aspire to be this but you know it takes a long time to sort out and i guess there's one point i want to say about that is um it's going to take a long time for the big established companies to look anywhere near welcoming um to minority groups just through sheer maps right like for the last 30 odd years it's been dominated by you know white males right so they haven't just disappeared and they can't all be made to disappear right so they've all gone to the top of these companies um and they haven't i won't speak for everybody but you know they haven't always had diversity of thought and you know opinion and background in the forefront of their minds to be able to address this yeah this this stuff is going to take years to uh

to take yeah i just want to say that the problems that exist now are the same problems that existed one year five years 10 years and 20 years ago the problems haven't changed you know a a a lack of representation in uh in all groups leads to a lack of role models leads to many uh women and young girls in the case of women in games thinking the game industry is not for them so it's a vicious circle that somehow we have to break out of i'd like to also share my experience here so i more from my own personal experience more as a as a woman as well in the gaming industry and um uh also i'm french but i grew up in france and i have a asian vietnamese background and what was my experience entering in games i can comment more as a woman

but unfortunately because of the lack of women in the industry it's been a situation regularly where you are the only woman in the room and i also made my way slowly to knowledge position and it is a part of the challenges where we myself as a woman norm with the rest of the group so like i've been more in rooms also with uh white males and you start to norm and you don't even notice until you have more women actually in the team in the group and it's something also maybe as an essentially over women we might be part also of a bias that we try to avoid because we norm to the group so that were also the challenges and um also as i coach also over women in games and uh this comes from discussion also with the struggles that come together in the

industry um it's about also having more confidence and having a moral support in the group so when there are actually more women in the group then there's more closeness with others and um feeling safe to speak up uh to also not be interrupted um and that helps to have just more women in the industry overall to encourage other women to come in but there are many many uh challenges when it comes to integrate that i just mentioned there um so if i don't know since uh i'm at the moment the only woman in the room i'm happy also to create a bit of a debate here of how uh yeah how it felt for you or how you were aware uh things you would like to discuss further um so can i just add my bit then we could probably have this so on the discussion topic itself of how i feel the problems uh

so this is a thing which i have observed and became very very obvious uh when i joined baymen games the industry like every other creative industry when you talk about music industry and the film industry so the creative side has always been you're very passionate because you you going you don't even care what you are gender wise or whatever else because you love that game you want to work on that game so i don't think we have that issue so i want to generalize that we've got such a terrible problem attracting people if somebody loves certain games and they're talented in that field they do apply uh but what i've found when i say there's a split you've got a video games industry which is well established you've got accountants lawyers everything else i worked at sony for 80 years every single profession the other part of the industry which is your general everything else every problem you see in societies everything you hear are inherently there and these are our stuff as well

so suddenly when you're talking to people just like wow i've never got into a meeting room and felt i was the only i think minority in this meeting group because we just talked about that the game we were going to work on or the technology etc and that's not been the experience on the parallel side of the product uh the business side of video games industry or so so it has been a split uh but um to answer donald's question of something which i'll give a very practical example uh and i hope it helps some other companies uh roll seven is a very good example who have taken multiple permissions to make sure i'm allowed to use their names so they there are independent developers and uh they are all white guys who are at the studio that's what their website is you can't hide that now this is what we want to make sure companies there's nothing wrong with that that's you should be proud of what you've achieved they must award winners absolutely fantastic uh but they actually so

said what how do we change our website or how do we change our identity so what we did was very interesting in fact uh and amazing what a challenge they took up i said host one of our gaming games meet and ask the ethnic minorities what what they think of your website and just did that and a very very that's why i'm trying to lead it it's almost every studio would be a different case of its own on how they can attract people or so in role seven's case was they gave a history of our role so it began that began in a very deprived area in uh southeast london where they were helping out local community now so i don't go through too much of that story but uh everybody when they replied back was just saying but that doesn't stay on your website he said oh yeah it doesn't but some people are just well you know and most of us are very humble we don't want to show off all the amazing things we do on a website where it's charity yes we would do on the show of our games we said i can put that on your website that

would attract me to join your company and just simple things like that so yeah i'll i'll just end here but i think i've got multiple topics so but i also want to put the debate which sophie wants to put out there unless anybody wants to comment on what i just said well i the one thing i'll go back to what's what still said um in some of her feelings about um feeling safe when there's other women around and uh it's interesting because i feel that same exact way like i have those same exact feelings um you know so one thing you guys can't tell uh because of the video i'm six eight so i'm huge i'm a very tall man and uh being black you know in an environment where typically i am the only black person that's like a lot of attention and so like i feel like sometimes when i'm in that environment

like i have to like be very careful of what i say or like maybe hide my opinions so much and so having having a community within an organization where i do feel safe and that you know i can speak up is extremely important but you know and i think and i don't want to skip ahead but um i think that's also something that's very important that all organizations should do uh to help increase diversity of thought and diversity with people is to make it feel safe that you can express your opinions and be heard not be cut off um that is like a super pet peeve of mine like don't don't cut me off when i'm in the middle of like trying to talk but i i get it i get it definitely uh anybody else have any thoughts or should we move on to nobody's jumping in uh i will just so yeah uh i'll jump in and sort of going off um the end of what donald's saying there

of things that can be done like what can companies start doing right now in the short term to start promoting improving diversity within their teams and within their company overall like are there any sort of really short-term things that people can start doing to make that change immediately so i've been waiting for this question to come up um so i'll go ahead and jump off uh jump off absolutely so and i'll take examples from some of the leaderships uh team members that are on my current team that my day job you know these guys actually these these men and women um actually go out to different events to minority events to like so we will have in texas we have uh blacks in gaming we have women in gaming uh and they will actively go to these events and let them make themselves seen and will go out and and and try to uh recruit there and actively

recruit so you know uh my my bit of advice for companies that are looking to do something in the short term is literally look inside your community go attend the events where minorities and diverse people are look at your look at your your uh team roster make it a goal to hit these other events and say we're going to try and recruit we're going to try and make our name known out here so that you know we do get a diverse a diverse team like you you have to put in the action and i think those are the those are some of the simplest things that people can do right off the bat um absolutely echo that that's what gaming games has been where we want to make sure you physically go to a location or studio where you would possibly be able to work that's what our networking bits have all been about and same with the studio to be able to show look hey uh if even if you have one we had a studio which is indie studio which

just had one ethnic minority stuff we put him on the podium with a fireside chat with me we were not going to compromise and put everybody else on the team just because uh they were there no but that just changed it what was amazing was this gentleman forgotten his name he was only with the company for a month and he knew the company inside out there he was such an amazing thing what powerful message uh he was from france black at his life journey so yes put those people out there that's another thing conferences as well so one of the key things which companies can do is get your ethnic minority female anybody else who fills their minority in whatever way tell them you should put yourself up for this award you should put or nominate them for those awards put themselves right you should go and talk out there because that's another issue which is the case that the exposure which a lot of people hire up can give to individuals

and it's just it's not there so i'm gonna and there's a way to do this you know every company should make sure their managers almost every staff goes through unconscious bias training because those are the simple things or so because a lot of people and i hope everybody agrees that maturity of the people in our industry we work they mean well but sometimes they're just not aware how they're actually stopping diversity from happening just because they're just like oh i didn't know that was wrong so that that's a big big factor where you just train yourself and uh yeah i've forgotten there's one more thing which you can do so i think there's a couple of other other opportunities we'll be able to discuss yeah i think the um anyone that wants to learn more about um diversity should be engaging with gaming games with women in games with uh atx game makers

and pok and play um you know these are the people that are are living diversity you know women in games over the last month has run 30 virtual meetups for example uh in in their current classes um engage with your uh groups women in games has a fantastic ambassador program for individuals as well as uh corporates we have 10 corporates signed up as corporate ambassadors you know we want 100 corporate ambassadors signed up you know engage with your diversity groups that's what we exist uh to do you know we we welcome as much engagement as we can from everyone in the games industry sorry can i jump in because i just remembered what i wanted to end with which would have been great if i'd done it in one go so uh put your awakenesses everything your hr engaging if you're putting on a twitter server you've got swag a magic word very simple we are looking for diverse

talented people say you are looking for that and that makes such a difference uh because then people feel you you are look you want somebody like me uh another uh sort of things uh which you can do and there a lot of professional recruiters as well who can help you if you don't know how to is your job description a very very simple thing which has become a very uh negative is if you have a bullet point job description which says uh must have a minimum requirement uh ideally this sort of candidates and a bullet point unfortunately if people are ethnic minority female or so i mean they shouldn't feel this way but this is a superpower which a man would have you look at a job description and like okay i can do three of those i can't do several of those i'll apply for this job i'll wing the seven i'll learn on the job so unfortunately a lot of people who feel not got the experience not got the confidence or unfortunately phil oh i might

if i mess up i'm representing my kind of the way i look uh and they don't apply for these roles so you need to change that and make your job descriptions and everything more attractive for diverse people to be able to apply um yeah i mean kiss i think you've gone down the whole list for everybody there um but just to uh riff of what donald said earlier like all these talks about diversity and stuff like that like it 100 needs to come from the top um if the leader of the company isn't fully invested either with time or money to change the makeup of their company then whatever thing uh whatever token gesture they try to make it just won't be sustainable um you know someone to get bored or something or more importantly the dni consultant that they hire won't see enough change quick enough and then they'll bounce and do something else

um so yeah i i i'm fully on board with literally being said um another thing i'd like to see is literally just make your company better like full stop just no no you know offer a decent pension like not just the bare minimum not the legally required so okay let's do a bit more you know um private health care private dental they're not super expensive now from a corporate perspective to offer that to your your um your staff and then what i really want to see is all the companies pre this pandemic was saying that remote working doesn't work we can't have remote workers but obviously the last four months i haven't seen a hundred companies fold haven't seen a thousand companies go bankrupt so they dealt with it right so if you add this flexibility to the workplace by default that opens up a whole

raft of employable people to you um because obviously we're talking about physical diversity but obviously there's neurodiversity as kish mentioned but also there's just life happening so for me i'm the primary caregiver for our children so if they're sick that i i've got to take time out of work for that luckily i also work from home so i could be flexible there are thousands of people who don't have that luxury but if they could work part-time they could do job sharing or literally just work from home so they go to the nursery around their corner pick the kids up in their lunch break and then carry on working like that'd be massive [Music] um yeah i think we've covered quite a lot there one thing uh so one thing i did want to touch on more is is the the recruitment process and and you know as you're saying about like uh you know writing your job job posts in specific ways to avoid just

having a bunch of people who say yes i'll do this and yeah and all that kind of thing i'm sorry um how what are some other ways that the the recruitment process could be changed to sort of encourage more diverse applicants um beyond just changing the the job listings or is it is that the most important thing i can jump in as well uh here where um i've been also recruiting um as building the studio and i've been facing actually that same reality where in my intent i i want a very diverse team also for creative reasonable representation reasons like everything we discussed and the reality was just for example pure gender split all the applications i have i would say 90 are men and even like with my best intent i end up uh following like the hiring process to have a good candidate the right fit for the team uh very few women and uh up in the funeral at the end of the funeral so that's one reality

so i would uh look at it and something i started to look at to change a bit the trend it's about the volume of applications you have to look at the like the diversity of the applications uh before you can actually hope to have diversity in the hiring and what does that mean it's also spending time in different network communities different ways of reaching so now we are talking about description that could be generic but we do that all the time segmenting i don't know game game balancing behavior based on different audience and i would approach it the same way here when it comes to hiring when you write a description have a different maybe framing of it also something i did a lot was proactive searching so i just didn't work with the headhunter but i i did uh the direct messages to many women out there because i i wanted to have

an overall picture of what type of candidate i could have for a certain role i didn't want to have for example when i look at pure gender um eighty percent of applications that are male and it was not an acceptable outcome for me so how i had to overcome that i had to do a lot of direct messaging searching and being active in all the communities and for that at the end of the day now i have a bit more i would say diversity in the team um and i look at it not just by gender so in the team where now if i correctly we are still a young team nine people and we are eight nationalities for example and coming from different backgrounds not only from mobile gaming but also console some don't even have necessarily just game experience and also i have gender diversity but that's what you get when you look in a lot of different places and change your tactic of recruitment that would be my recommendation here

based on also experience of how i approach the topic i want to i want to point out something too that that you said sophie is like you did the work and it's like you know like companies will like i don't know how many people are watching this and stuff like that and just watching these talking heads say these things take what sophie said and actually go do the work like nothing is going to change unless you make this a true goal inside your organization to make this change and if you're a leader a ceo or some sort of c-level person watching this do the work make it a goal make it a company goal to say okay well hey i got 90 of these resumes are white males let me go out and diversify let me go and do that work that's the only way this is this is and i agree that if you get only 90 well if it's 90 or applied what's wrong with our system why we got this

rather than just saying this only 10 out there that's why it's not true at all and i echo what everybody has said here uh very simple free for example with being games we've got a facebook page we've got uh amazing companies who will always post every single vacancies no copy and paste with some very simple changing word just saying we are looking for diverse individuals on a bayman games website it's not a recruitment website but that makes such a powerful message and different that's an effort somebody has put to go out of their way and reach out to an audience so i i echo that and sophie well done to have pushed that uh but i i i think i'm sure you'll agree sophie it doesn't have to be a female or anything it's whoever is doing a recruiting or so push them that's their job to go and reach out to the bigger audience uh then yes you're basically interview everybody fairly and hire the best person but increase the probability

that maturity of the people who are applying are diverse applicants as opposed to something which fits the the role of your job description and i think i've got to re-emphasize the bullet point things just get rid of those i i just want to pitch in on on dez's point about making your company better um you can go up there run a fantastic recruitment campaign hire lots of diverse candidates but if your company's not inclusive they're not going to stay um you know diversity um goes together with inclusion there's a great saying that diversity is counting people inclusion is making people count you've got to have the two to change your company culture so you have to uh make an effort to be more welcoming you know have things like you know flexible working policies um you know prioritized uh parental leave um dignity at work policies

all these policies that an hr department or as chief exec can put in place make the company more welcoming and more attractive to uh women and minorities you know so i gotta also touch on this it's funny that this is coming up too so i was speaking with uh my co-worker um and we do a lot of things in that in that very same vein at our company like we you know it's it's all about the inclusion and making everyone feel important and so for instance one of the things that i've noticed some of the leaders inside my organization doing is whenever we're having a big meeting let's say uh and there's multiple people in the room if you see someone not speaking don't call them out but like hey you know des what do you think you know make sure that you make time to make it available and make them feel comfortable

to speak in a company setting and you know make sure that you're being that good shepherd of diversity and inclusion and helping people feel comfortable speaking up with their opinions um and yeah it's just yeah i i just wanted to touch on that point that's just another thing another little thing that you can do to make people feel comfortable um inside your organization and can i add that as well as outside the organization it's such a powerful thing to tell somebody hey look uh this pocket gamer business is coming up you should put your name and if you ask me as somebody uh to take part in this panel yes in the future i'll say i've done this hey i know there's somebody who's amazing uh and give somebody else a it is to say you know when you get up the ladder make sure you don't push the ladder off but actually reinforce the ladder so whoever's then coming up as a easier time and uh please do that

with if you're in a position get get your stuff out there nominate them for awards everything else so so which happens uh which people you know a lot of these awards are so there's no science behind this so people put their names forward somebody else nominates them and then they get an award so do that it's simple yeah i had uh so just just in this little bit i'm sorry just one last thing um i had a a very good friend of mine uh urged me to create atx game makers and like when i say urge me like as soon as i told him he's like man you know i want to i want to make this change inside the industry he was right there supporting me all the way and like and so this is this is my boss and he's like hey stop what you're doing go get this url go you know go i i championed you to go do this and

it was again one of those feelings is like like like keisha saying is like you know promote them push them forward like help from within and leave lead by example so all right i'm done uh dez i feel like you were starting to say something right at the beginning i wonder if if you that's not been covered if you'd like to contribute uh it has no i just don't know just 100 team safety bad like if you want to get people just go [ __ ] get man don't don't sit down nothing nothing annoys me more than good friends putting out tweets and saying oh hey can you just retweet this first like hey whoa just a minute this is your problem right you go and fix it if you want to go and find more diverse people however you slice that up go go look for yourself i can point you in directions but i'm not going to be your loud hailer just go and do it man look around the

room if you all look the same then that's an issue you need you need to address that yourself cool thank you um yes uh so we've talked about sort of short-term things we talked about the recruitment process i wonder if there's any um sort of you know what what are the long-term problems that we need to address and and how can we start tackling those and laying down the foundations for later down the line because desi was saying it's going to take a long time for the change to actually like be fully felt like what what foundations need to start being put down now for like longer term procedures and processes to start encouraging there's there's one thing i want to just bring up um i don't know if it's local to the uk or not but video games as a career has a social um hurdle to get over and even not even

just specifically video games i'd say like the sciences in general right so from a very young age we are programmed by society that certain people do certain jobs so um i'll go for the slight tangent uh my goddaughter i've been very involved with her upbringing and like i love video games and i've been like oh hey try this try that uh we got her a gauge console for one birthday and her response was why did you get me that boy toy and i was just like holy [ __ ] like she never got that from any of us anyone inside the family so the social construct had broken through that and already got to her to say that hey maybe maybe these cool things aren't for you go try something else so you've got that then you've got family social pressure right so when i was growing up um uh the focus for us was kind of like

yeah grades and sports um that's kind of what our family wanted to do it wasn't so much the sort of like uh traditional um professional jobs if you will so you've got to fight that so if you've overcome those two things and you still want to do video games like you're still too late like by the time you find out about us you're probably late teens we need to get into primary schools and be speaking to the kids back then and getting encouraged then so they can speak to their parents and spend 10 years convincing them that this is a good thing to do and from the industry side of things what i would love to see us do is i'd love to see more internships and apprenticeships to get people into games um as someone who doesn't have a degree i i am i mean my career is doing all right um there are other ways to get here and i think by giving these people these vocational routes in

because you know something i don't know what it is again other countries but in the uk education is largely a memory test and some people just don't jive with that so they can they've got all the knowledge up here but they just can't spit it out in 90 minutes and then due to the way the system's set up they get they get punished for that and set down a certain route so i'd love us to do that because it's very easy for us to do um learning on the job i think is for a lot of disciplines um a larger amount of the job than people care to admit um sorry that's a long answer yeah no that was great thank you no i and so i i kind of want to dovetail on the end of that um especially with the internships uh and and outreaching again to younger audiences um that was so in my household i was a little bit fortunate i was more fortunate just simply because like uh both my parents are big nerds and

like my dad brought home an attending 1000 you know when i was like six or something like that and so that's where that love uh started but yeah it's i i've noticed like des how you were saying back when i was growing up our options were good grades military or sports and like i didn't even know until my again my parents had to educate me that like video games and and computer sciences is a way to earn a sustainable life and like that is a perfect living but a lot of people don't get exposed to that and so yeah i think it's it's definitely important to reach down to the youth provide opportunities for um internships at your company ideally paid internships uh you know pay people when they work for you um and again following all the other things like how

sophie was saying about uh going out and doing the tactical work to get the diverse folks into those internships and so on um can i jump in with a uh a few practical things which where you get specific right now but if in your country you have this so uh i'm gonna put a bit of a plug for you they've got the raisin uh race the game yes that's it uh join just camp that's uh i won't go into the detail that can actually be a half an hour to describe where it is or so but having something like that where your company is backing and not just backing because of the namesake or so but actually meeting some of those diversity pledges which are on there that's how we're going to bring bigger changes so i'm answering more longer term what company can do that's a good start uh a few other things this is more uh for conference organizers or more

awards ceremony when you have a conference lecture so we should be in a position where if you cannot have a simple diversity sort of requirements you've met in terms of your workforce uh or your team then you shouldn't really be nominating but be considered for nomination for that award we're not there quite yet but there's certain awards we should we could very very simply start by just making sure uh it's almost penalizing in the sense because you know after your game sells really really well and everybody's playing your games awards is a great way to just get acknowledgement that you did something amazing but if your team is not diverse enough movie industry is pretty safe exactly so uh make sure those things are checked as part of there was applications as well and that's i think more long term i don't know if any awards are doing that already there should be actually uh i i i think there's a couple of uh areas where bafta is working on that as well with buffed awards but that's i think something i i hope

one day we have that where uk just doesn't get an award if your team wasn't diverse enough yeah there are certainly um in europe for example uh government funding in countries like norway for example to games companies if part of the application is to explain how diverse the team is and there are certain rules and criteria and if you don't meet those criteria you don't get the government funding you know that that would wake up a whole set of uh games companies in the uk if the uk government was to start applying uh some of those criteria to uk funding policies uh sophie anything you'd like to add on yeah i was just thinking like with everything that was covered which i agree and the education is a very important

part but i was thinking more on the company level um although it's like more midterm but i think it's part of the long term everything starts from the leadership uh it comes with awareness and i think with regulation in the industry like we talked more about it i think it's uh so i'm positive about the awareness and the more we talk about it the more we have talks about it like we have today uh it's not an it's not gonna be an option uh in for the companies to exist it has to be part of the foundation of a company and part of a mission if and if it's lived by the leadership it translates in the hiring process how it's treated um there's a chart about that um there's education of people working in multicultural teams of what it means to work with different uh uh people with different background uh we talk about diversity here in for gender culture but i like there's disabilities as well so it's about inclusivity that

the world is made of just a lot of very different people and i believe a lot by for with companies taking ownership on that and making it important um to start the change now actually so uh at vaudo i'm really happy about how we take it seriously and there are actions taken when it crosses the line so that's where also it is an example for the rest of the company and i hope more and more companies will become a model and i'm positive about the press i see about the actions taken about that and i just wait for the day where it won't be an option anymore to think about diversity in an organization because that's how the world is these days as well and maybe we won't talk about diversity at all because that's just the norm of the world look at us here in that room today as well i mean there uh i don't know whatever background everybody in the room but that's just a reality

yeah i think a company level um you know it's got to be strategic um you know that not only does it have to come from the chief exec and and team downwards but they've got to be very clear who's responsible for what when it comes to improving diversity and inclusion now they have to you have to set goals not targets or quotas but you can set goals um king for example has some very aggressive goals on hiring to raise the level of women working at king you know other companies could follow that kind of leadership i wanted to i wanted to take a a few steps back just say this one other quick thing when we talk about reaching out uh to the younger generation and the youth and bringing on interns another thing is that i found so when i

go out and i try and find people where i talk about games is that everybody immediately thinks oh well i can't program our programming is not for me there are so many other disciplines inside making a video game uh for one marketing you know uh publishing like you does and stuff like that so it's like we need to also talk about those other aspects and avenues into the world of game development or the games can i just add sort of a practical example of that particular case where uh i was in a fortunate position where i was in the women in games board and we ran a mentoring uh speed mentoring uh breakfast uh at unity in brighton and it was just put out on events bright and everything as as you would publicize a lot of video games industry uh and i happen to be on a mentoring table and this wonderful young lady came along on the table and just just

going through the careers etc and said excuse me i didn't know there was a video games industry existing in britain one two i work in an advertisement job across in brighton down the road i hate my job i could have been this industry with my skill set doing that job and although we you know again we are sitting in here we just know our industry we just assume everybody does but the perception of our industry unfortunately it's not quite what we think it is we need to get out there and see like yes we need lawyers we need any profession you've got you've qualified for if you want a more exciting engaging job then you can and if you like video games you could come into our industry and do that same job cool um so yeah we kind of talked about the longer term things that companies can be doing um for like hiring and and ensuring that their workforce sort of reflects the diversity of the world one thing i was also interested in is the actual games themselves because they

you know i i see a lot of games will set the default as having a white male as the lead character for example and for me that's obviously something that reflects me but it's not something that reflects the world as a whole is that an important or i mean obviously it's important to have representation in the games how can studios make sure that they are accurately accurately representing all different people in their game sorry donald you put your hand up so oh yeah because i i get a story about this um i was at an organization i'm not going to name the name of the organization i've been working on this particular product and this wasn't even a game and so i was being presented with uh basically a commercial for this product and it's going and it's gone as far as commercial and it's like all uh drawn characters and every last one of these characters are white it was just like all different white guys it was just like i i think i think there was a a couple of emails maybe

and then they turned to me like they're all happy and everything's like hey how did you how did you like it and i was like do black people not want to use this product and i and i called them out right then and there uh it is super super important for me to be able to see myself in a game um it is a thing i do i like whenever i'm on involved in any product um i make personally i make sure i make sure that there is a diverse character set if it's possible within the game um the other thing too that i kind of want to touch on like here's something that i think company leaders really need to think about when they're thinking about designers and people who come up with different game ideas within their organization is we all have the same game it's a strong 30 something year old white male

who is trying to like save the world it's the same damn story that i've been playing since i was five right the only way we're going to get a different game is if we have different people making the games if you go and you look at the indie scenes where there is a bigger diverse cast of game makers that's where we're getting the cool stories from like that's what needs to happen in the bigger organization so all right that's that's all i want to say but yeah it's it's you you got to make an effort you get you you have to um can i just jump in on that that you need to make an effort right at the beginning uh if if you can't afford to hire people bringing consultants uh i i'll give you a very this you can hire a lot of people depends on where but directly at the beginning never make diversity or diverse game characters or so on after thought afterwards where it's like oh no okay all our characters look like okay uh you know let's get good reviews let's color

somebody with a different type of hair etc no uh i'll give you a very very simple uh when as a indie you'll be able to so pantone uh the the paint makers uh actually probably not describing the company well they have done an extensive scientific research on every single human skin tone and they have a library of that go and check it out on their websites it's very easy to google up or so but simple things like that just look at the different materials maybe put it a bit away we are a very very serious industry our products out there are now like the movie industries and music etc are a powerful message so we should take up that responsibility and do research on what the product we are putting out there we should have been from day one a serious industry but now we've got this mass audience isn't it i don't know about the rest of the world but in europe and britain we revenue-wise we contribute more than

film tv and music industry combined and for the last three years that's what's been so it's quite a quite a serious industry uh but unfortunately a lot of our products also are still uh developed as a hobby product or so but that shouldn't be no excuse whatsoever play devil's advocate here putting my capitalist hat on uh i think these mega corporations i think the games come second to keeping their shareholders happy and i'll not be listen i would not want to run a company with ten thousand people with it because that is a massive responsibility to do and let's ignore diversity for a minute if you're running a company you run on numbers right so if you know you can sell

call of duty the way is 10 million copies times however and you get a billion at the end anything that detracts from that you're going to be like sure make me give me a reason to do that um at the base level uh but and it's a good reason i said call of duty i see um but there's obviously in that organization they've got good people at a product level who are responsive to what's happening because a couple of days after the i say the flare up uh around the black lives matter movement they actually put a live um update into their game where everyone saw their statement regardless of what game mode they played so yeah i obviously at our level is like yeah 100 you have to do these things but i just it's not 100 clear cut it's just you know you want me to take my billion dollar franchise and maybe make it a million-dollar franchise i'm not going to take that risk but not without enough data and then

spending enough money to make sure that date is accurate like it's horrible to say it but like i i don't think we'd be doing a good job here if we didn't at least there's i was going to say there's there's a few companies that have tried it um i remember battlefield came out there i want to say it was number five or maybe it was battlefield one but it was the first time they had a uh a female playable character and like everybody like lost their craps girls can't fight and i'm like what like and you know it was it was a whole thing but you know it's amazing and you're absolutely right is that that money makes makes people funny i i have a comment about that i think it's so important to remember who is the audience of your game and uh based on that actually you can go really really more representative of the world yes i mean like i we make games for casual audience and

this is important to represent everybody because it's everybody who can play the game um but if you are really going for the core gamers uh whoever they are i can understand that maybe having a female main character may not be the experience you're looking for if you really you know i haven't made games like that but i can understand it so maybe it's also using the lens of the audience and where it's appropriate to really go all in like when uh when it's relevant with the audience um i think it's the responsibility of studios to create billion dollar franchises with a diverse set of characters i mean i started playing you know the last of us part two on friday um you know that is a billion dollar franchise with a with a world-beating game you don't need to give any other examples apart from you know see if you can make a game better than uh you know what naughty dog are

doing uh you know i rest my yeah it's a great example actually and big studios have can have influence to change also uh what a good game can look like and not with the same pattern we have experienced until now and i think you know a lot of that it's it's what we are all echoing higher diverse team and that's how these innovations come in uh it's it's no excuse especially with large cooperation i've worked with large students and so where we know the formula what works are so great then that means you know what the audience you're selling to and they'll buy your sequels etc how are you going to expand that audience it's very very simple make the game a bit more than what your classic audience is uh expecting because that's already sold and uh so yes bringing in more diverse characters etc will just it's good for your business you'll get a bigger audience for that particular franchise which might be going still and stagnating with the same audience

all right just because i'm up for a fight um fifa by this rationale why did they take so long to put female teams in there that's super easy for them to do why'd it take them so long listen like i said i'm just being devil's advocate i'm not saying that these companies are correct i'm just saying they have fiscal responsibilities which is why they want to do these things um uh david like last of us is a great great example um fantastic game and again i'm not trying to be making a generic statement is causing these problems but um i just think it's going to be a long effect how many how many gears of wars were there before we had a lead female character because we had we had the stereotypical black guy who was amazing in all them um was it five before the lead female character came in like absolutely if if you've got two or

three of these franchises and then you've made enough money like why isn't it the first opportunity you get to to create a story around whatever diversity you want to go for um i mean it doesn't open any questions it's not really a statement but um yeah uh yeah so sorry um i know we're kind of we're kind of coming up against time here i wonder if i could just hold hold on to you all for another five minutes or so because there's a question i am really interested in uh and i'm not sure we're going to be able to answer it but it's something that i would like to ask um and it's it's you know we've seen as dez mentioned like the the flare-up if you will of the black lives matter movement from the killing of george floyd and um companies sort of a lot of people sort of paying lip service to it and saying we're going to put this up but we're going to donate this amount of money we're going to start hiring practices how do we how do we hold these companies to account when they make these pledges um is there something we can do as an industry to make sure that they're actually following through on their

plans um or do we just kind of have to cross our fingers and hope that they're actually going to stick to what they do i mean other than them like publishing their their employee records which i don't know i'm pretty sure that gets sticky or weird um i'm not really sure so i i thought about this um i i really did put some some time into thinking about that question and that that's hard because a lot of companies i know of a lot of companies that are doing things and also have been doing things before it was an issue or not before it was an issue before it was in the spotlight right um i know companies that are that are doing the right things so it's just like i don't know i don't i don't know other than like maybe saying oh hey we have this much diversity i don't know that's a tough one

we can't i think the companies that make these pledges and games they're the ones who need to lead with that um one thing i'm a massive fan of is is data right so these pledges are empty without as david said goals right it's like we want to increase by this so okay cool but if i don't know where you're starting from like you could immediately fudge that but oh yeah we hit our target now it's like okay cool um you know donald is 100 correct right there's limits to what can be shared but if there's just some things like this is this is the snapshot of where we're at now and we believe by following these pledges and doing these initiatives we are going to improve see you in one year see you in two years and we will be better um yeah and i guess for the private companies you know they can they can be a bit more liberal with that but the public

companies obviously they can't because there's other restrictions on them but um yeah sharing data being a bit more open i think that's gonna work um and i think kirsch is what you said earlier about um literally just putting your money where your wealth is and getting behind the staff that you already have and just being able to lead from the back as well as leading from the front um because i know especially with fellow traveler you know things like this and other sort of like uh outward-facing jobs are the responsibility and job role of one person but that person is just like listen we're a global team we're a diverse team by our standards um you could take this one or you can do this one i don't need to be the person every single time we're all aligned in the company vision so any one of us can can share that with people uh anybody else any thoughts i i think

it's difficult for everyone to hold these companies to account but you know all companies have stakeholders you know staff employees uh for public companies they've got shareholders uh you know all companies have suppliers uh you know if a company's gone public and saying we're going to be doing this and there is no evidence of that happening i think you'd be quite disappointed if you work for that company so i do think the more companies publicly say they're going to do things um tangible things uh if they don't back that up later uh at a later date i i think they're in trouble and um uh you know it's the onus on all of us you know everyone uh on this podcast everybody watching to hold these companies to account

cool uh i think we're going to wrap that up here because nobody's really jumping in i think we've sort of hit the main points on that um so yeah i'll wrap up here and just say thank you so much to to the panelists for joining uh it's been really interesting uh and really insightful and yeah thank you for for giving us your time to talk about this um and thank you very much to sophie um for being the only woman on the panel about diversity which is a kind of a failing on our part but um you know thank you for for coming in and taking that role for us um it's yeah it's been really interesting i'm really grateful for all for for coming along to do this um we will be doing another round table next week on uh i believe it's an introduction to blockchain if that's of interest to anybody currently watching uh please do um come and check that out there will be an eventbrite link for that available on the podcast website and we do have blockchain gamer live coming up in a few weeks i think it's like the 13th of july but i

couldn't be entirely precise on that um so yes thank you all for joining us thank you for watching and being part of the the panel the um attendees in the zoom chat and thanks for watching on youtube if you follow on youtube and uh yes goodbye and have a great day bye thank you everybody bye guys

you