Inclusive Marketing for Indies

[Music] thank you hello and welcome to inclusive marketing for Indies how to be in sectional I'll introduce myself before I get started my name is Melissa Chaplin and I'm a consultant at robot heady um before I started in this role I have a background in Indie Games marketing over the past year and a half I was head of client strategy for a PR and marketing agency focused on indie games so I worked on a lot of projects um in you know rapid succession on the strategy side of things going further back in my origin story uh before that I did a PhD in Intercultural communication and intersectional feminism so that's part of why this topic is so close to my heart and hopefully by the end of this talk it'll be close to yours as well

so um what I'm going to speak about today is first of all I'm going to Define intersectionality uh What on earth does that mean and how are we going to be using it in this presentation uh once we've established that I'll explain what on Earth that has to do with Indie Games and in particular Indie Games marketing uh when we've got through that initial hurdle I will apply intersectionality as a framework to different elements of your marketing campaign so content Communications and Community for each of those I've got examples of uh you know games and projects that I've worked with and how they've approached um an intersectional sort of marketing and you know how you might be able to apply that to your game as well and finally we'll sum everything up uh before Before I Let You Go so what is intersectionality this is a

quite an academic term um but it became quite popular in mainstream culture over the last decade or so it was uh originally uh coined by Kimberly Crenshaw um who's quoted here from Time Magazine last year um describing it as a lens or prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other originally uh Kimberley Crenshaw came up with this as a way of explaining how black women experience oppression both in terms of their race and in terms of their gender over time since she coined it decades ago it has grown to include other uh aspects of identity so things like sexuality and you know disability and so on and so forth and so that's that's what intersectionality means is an awareness of those different aspects of people's identity and how they can relate to them experiencing systemic

oppression one Earth has got to do with Indie Games marketing you ask uh well I'm glad you did um I have been pleasantly surprised by how useful I have found my PhD in my job um in particular I have found this grounding in an in-sectional approach and that toolkit really useful for approaching difficult uh decisions and conversations and uh Concepts in marketing so the way that I see it the principles of intersectional marketing are first of all humility um you can't possibly get everything right and at some point you are going to offend and upset someone and get it get it wrong um no matter how hard you try um if you start from the point of I don't know everything and I'm gonna mess up sometimes you will respond much more appropriately when someone does call you out on you know a mistake that you've made

the next one is empathy um you've got to be compassionate and have uh you know have empathy for other people whose experiences might be different from your own um you know this is this is always something you're going to need in any intersectional approach um finally inclusivity um you should be trying to be as inclusive as possible if you want to be intersectional that doesn't mean that your games have to appeal to everyone you know it's totally fine if someone doesn't enjoy your game say because they don't like the genre um you know if they're like oh well you know point-and-click Adventures aren't for me it isn't okay if they don't enjoy your game because your game is homophobic and uh you know all your marketing messaging is homophobic and that's you know upsetting to them and so that's what I mean by inclusivity so I'll start with that first pillar of content um you know this will give some worked examples and the first way in which content is relevant is representation

um now the reason why this is important is because if your game in itself is you know reinforcing Prejudice or stereotypes and upholding you know in inequality then it doesn't matter how inclusive you try to make marketing campaign and ultimately it's going to fall flat because it doesn't mesh with the game itself so we'll start by talking about a representation in a game that is uh you know one of my favorites uh Star Seeker and the secret of the Sorceress standoff and I challenge you to say that three times quickly um this is a um you know Murder Mystery Game um very kind of um small but perfectly formed is how I describe it and in it uh star the main character who you can see on the left here um has pronounced default to they them but one of the lovely options that the developer provided was

um to add in a choice in the options menu you could choose any pronouns you wanted for Star it didn't affect the story at all and doesn't affect their presentation at all um and it's just something that was a real kind of Nod to um to inclusivity and people really appreciated it and responded to this um you know reviewers picked up on it when they were writing about the game and said how much they loved this feature um it definitely you know made people feel welcome when they were playing this and I thought it was just a lovely example um we did highlight it and advise the developer to highlight it on social media because we're like actually you know what that's really cool that you did this um and I think that um you know he was he was pleasantly surprised that we thought it was that it was even worth mentioning but it absolutely is another game that I want to represent as as good for representation is guildlings um so we worked with guildlings on their kind of second uh installment

um it's an apple arcade game and it's absolutely fantastic if you haven't played it I really really recommend it um it is an RPG in which um you know battles are fought with emotions and feelings and mood um it's a lovely game and one of the things that makes it so lovely is that it has such a diverse cast of characters so um you know the characters are diverse in terms of race and ethnicity um in terms of not being stereotypical uh you know in terms of gender presentation um and in terms of sexuality um one uh fan of favorite uh character from the first installment was this very dashing mailman that you can see on the left hand side of the screen um who is the object of affections of a boy who is one of the playable characters Chas and Chaz has a crush on the mailman throughout this features in both you know both installments of the game and the community really loved it

um one of the things that I thought was so fantastic about this was it wasn't made into a kind of tokenistic element it wasn't like this kind of oh and you know Chaz is gay or coming out or anything like that it was just like oh yeah you know and obviously Charles has a crush on the mailman which um you know is part of why it was so beloved by the community as a feature because it wasn't uh it wasn't there in a sort of obvious oh we're making a point sort of thing it was more just an element of this character and it was a really great example of representation John Wright um I can't recommend this game enough um I really want to give a shout out here to um wholesome games um who have specifically said that for them to consider a game wholesome um you know it can't be upholding any sort of systemic inequality um you know and that it should be uh inclusive um I really I really appreciate that they've said that

um that doesn't mean that all the intersectional games have to be wholesome you know or have the kind of aesthetic that we associate with wholesome what it does mean is that uh if you want to consider you know your game in this sector if you want to be considered for features and things like wholesome direct which you know I've worked with several games who have been featured by wholesome games and have found it really really helpful um you know it's given a massive Community boosts um then you need to be thinking intersectionally in your design and in your comms because otherwise you know you you will not be considered for this another totally um separate element of um you know content is the accessibility of a game and increasingly this is something that journalists are you know aware of and writing about and picking up on and there are a couple of games that I've worked with I think really stand out here and first of all blind Drive uh which came out earlier this

year um is a game that can be played with no visuals whatsoever um which has made it really accessible for any players who have impaired vision and this is something that was picked up on by reviewers and repeatedly as being you know really great element of the of the game um you know Ollie Smith for pocketgamer I've quoted here who talked about how fantastic it was um that this was an option um the very minimal UI that you can see in the screenshot there can be completely turned off um so you know you can play it just with headphones and no visuals whatsoever um and the other thing that was really wonderful to see was the um Joy of vision impaired streamers when this game came out and some of the launch Day live streams and things like that that people did um you know it's in terms of its content it's not a cutesy game at all intersectional doesn't encute c um but it is a game that has opened up

possibilities um and you know was very conscious of accessibility from the um absolute beginnings of the design uh another one I'd like to give a shout out to that isn't so um off the wall in its um accessibility options you know isn't so unusual um is eater which is published by armor games and is a bullet hell um Ito was praised um in reviews as you can see from this quote here for accessibility options um in E2 you can turn your damage up so that you do exponentially more damage um which is great if you're finding it too challenging but you still want an element of risk and you can also toggle invulnerability if you're like me and you just want to enjoy the story but you um you know couldn't get past any of the bosses um without that um it's actually it's a really great option as well because it's not something you have to um you know have on and that's the whole

game you can toggle it so when you struggle you can switch this on and off as needed um again you know not not a particularly kind of um cute game although it may look at from the cat and the little character I've put here but you know it's quite um it's got some quite gruesome villains in it but this uh this element was something that was really appreciated by by a lot of people so okay fine we've made a we've made a game with intersectional content we've made something that's Progressive and inclusive what about Communications like how do we how do we start to put this into action as we are actively in a marketing campaign so the first thing I want to say is you should absolutely be reaching out to diverse creators and I've got the logos here for black girl gamers and rainbow arcade who are groups of streamers who are black women in the first instance

and lgbtq in the second um there are diverse creators out there and um you should be prioritizing having a range of representation in um the journalists and writers that you contact and also in any influencers and streamers that you contact UM first of all because it's the right thing to do but second of all because you should want to have diverse voices and representation um who are playing your game and promoting your game because that's how you access diverse audiences your audience will not be a monolith um you know gamers are are a diverse bunch of people increasingly there are studies that show that so as a priority you should make sure that you are um demonstrating that in your PR approaches um you know it's it's good business it's

common sense it's also the ethical and moral thing to do with that being said there are also other things that you can think about in terms of taking a intersectional approach to Communications and one thing I want to highlight is the attitude that you take to other games and you know other developers and professionals and stuff like that um and the example I have here is from the big adventure event which was the brainchild of um uh Jordan who works at hit sense which is a small Indie publisher um the big adventure event brought together uh developers from you know loads of different games um hundreds uh all of which were adventure games many of which were not published by hit cents and didn't have any connection to hit sends um it tend to organize this with an attitude of um you know a rising tide uh brings with

it all boats and um included developers in this event that um you know maybe wouldn't have had the opportunity the access you know small solo developers who have self-published and things like that um and what happened was that actually the strength of numbers of the event meant that it got some fantastic PR coverage and as you can see you know there's an article in polygon about it um and the developers who participated uh saw increased sales as a result um I think that one of the wonderful things about Indie Games is the attitude of camaraderie that we see and I'm you know I'm sure there are examples of this not happening but I've been really heartened by how many people I've seen um support one another um how developers share each other's work and uh you know tweet each other's launch announcements

um and how there is this sense of um you know shared experience and uh and support and Community um people are not going to buy just one indie game broadly and they will buy multiple indie games um you will you will be able to approach things in a much more intersectional way if you look at uh people as your peers rather than your competition um and embrace this community Spirit um you know it's it I'm getting mushy um I think that this is one of the most wonderful things that we can have as uh you know as people working with Indies and it's also a way that we can push back on and kind of the inequalities of you know uh Studio size and funding and um you know accessibility to

um you know promotional events and things like that and I think initiatives like this are fantastic and a really great way of working intersectionally foreign Ty and which is obviously significant for almost every indie game um and I'm going to start with a game that you might not think of immediately on this topic which is not for broadcast um not for broadcasters far from a cutesy game um in it you are managing the news and you have to select camera angles um and in one part of the game uh there's a Streaker on a football pitch and you have to manage the camera angle so that the audience don't see uh you know the the streak as genitals um it's not necessarily what you think of as as kind of you know In The Same Spirit as some of the other games I've mentioned um but one of the things that was really interesting about this game is that it was very

um political very obviously and explicitly political um and that actually sparked a lot of very difficult Communications for the developers to have with their Community um especially because people were trying to interpret the game and how it reflects on the developer's personal politics um and and actually misinterpreting the developers personal Politics As a result um it's set in a dystopian future and the um the government in it are a left-wing government um no people started to therefore assume that um that meant that the developers really supported um you know kind of far-right movements which which they didn't and they wanted to clarify that um throughout this process of having to kind of you know explain and have these conversations the developers were always super patient with um you know their Community they never got frustrated they

were never defensive they're always very open and I've got a screenshot here from a steam a steam update um what they wanted to do was really challenge people's sense of comfort in their own ethics and they also wanted to set up a situation where you know people who consider themselves to be Progressive could look at it and say well you know these people I might have voted for um and that's um you know that's a really really difficult thing to deal with in a video game um but the way that the developers approached this was very much with a sense of transparency with that humility that we talked about earlier um and always being kind of empathetic to the concerns of the community so I thought that was just a really great example another example of um really empathetic Community Management uh it comes from another game that I love very much weaving Tides which just came out recently

um so a little uh you know little mention for them um weaving Tides um I was working with on their Kickstarter campaign and we were planning to launch as you can see from the screenshot in late March 2020 which was around about when the pandemic uh stopped being something abstract that we were seeing occasionally in the news and started being something um really quite scary that was very close to home um for for you know us here in uh I'm in the UK and the developers were in Austria um and we had a really tough conversation and a really hard call to make to delay the kickstarter but um you know developers felt very strongly and we felt very strongly advising them that it wouldn't be appropriate or sensitive to launch the

kickstarter when everyone was suffering from such you know instability and you know uncertainty about things like their livelihoods um so we made the decision to delay and in the end it was absolutely the right thing to do um you know the kickstarter went really well a month later um but also the community really appreciated how thoughtful the developers were and they continue to be really empathetic and thoughtful throughout the entire pandemic and they set it in their Discord so that people could opt out of seeing any updates that referenced um covid-19 um you know particularly if they were you know if someone's in the Discord because they want an escape from you know kind of difficult news so they wouldn't have to see anything that referenced that and that's just you know an example of how thoughtful they were throughout the whole process

and it's something that I really admired and appreciated about their approach and you know it was a starting point of trying to make everyone feel welcome and included um and you know it's also reflected in the game which is lovely I really want to give this as an example and this is not a game I worked on at all um but it was such a fantastic um you know moment of intersectional marketing that I just needed to highlight this here I experienced this as a community member so from the reverse side um nusia is again a brilliant game this is um it's a werewolf game but single player and it's on the Nintendo switch and it was translated from Japanese into English and released in English uh earlier this year in that translation process um there were some issues um so

no she is broadly you know it's it's quite good for um you know gender representation um setsu this character on the right uh with the blonde hair is non-binary they're one of the main characters that you interact with um this character rachio on the left is also non-binary um but there was a really uncomfortable scene in the original release um which um focused on uh you know a discussion of rachio's physiology that was not really appropriate um and it felt a little bit misgendering um and unpleasant um and people picked up on this and uh were talking about it on Twitter saying like oh I love this game but what's that about and uh you know the people who were tweeting about it hadn't tagged plaism at all but the community manager spotted this um and uh you know immediately said thank you for pointing this out I'm so sorry we will fix it right away and

um you know the person the person who'd made the original comment started saying oh my God you know I feel bad that you saw this you know not thinking you know I tweeted it thinking that you wouldn't that you wouldn't you know be looking and the community manager handled this absolutely appropriately and from an intersectional standpoint and said don't feel bad at all we screwed up and you know thank you for bringing this up and we don't want to cause um hurt and suffering um you know we can't leave it at this and within you know a few days I think it was that weekend they had patched the game to alter that scene and make it much more inclusive and you know to remove the uncomfortable misgendering and um you know it's it's a better game for it this is such a great example of best practice for so many reasons um first of all um because it's it's made the game better you know by listening to this feedback and responding to it swiftly um it changed it from being something

that could have you know become a real sticking point for a lot of community members and uh you know made people think less of the game into something that was dealt with and now people who buy the game you know won't even experience that original um you know misused pronouns because it's not there um second of all you can absolutely see that um all of those principles of inclusivity empathy and humility are at play here there's no defensiveness um or protesting or anything like that nor do they ignore the situation um instead they absolutely admit fault straight away and uh correct which is you know it's all anyone wants really um people don't you know if people if people call you out on something if people say this isn't right or this is uncomfortable it's not because they're trying to um hurt you or your game it's you know nine times out of ten because they actually love you in the game and they

want to they want to help and you know help fix a problem um and this is this is a perfect example of this and how it can be done right so to sum up the main takeaways from this because you know I think it's good to get to reinforce what the actionable points are um the first thing is that you can use intersectionality as a framework for approaching your Communications and you know when you're doing your marketing you can use this as just a way of thinking about um you know how to make decisions how to frame things how to understand the viewpoints of your community the next thing is resist unjust power structures in everything you do um intersectionality is not something where you can talk the talk if you don't walk the walk um you have to really commit to this um like I say that doesn't mean making one type of game it doesn't mean you

know that you have to have a certain aesthetic or anything like that but what it does mean is that you need to think about you know am I helping marginalize people with what I'm doing here or am I hurting them um it's not easy um but it's it is important um and it's something that we all contribute to if you're not if you're not part of the resistance then you're part of the Empire um finally mistakes happen own them even with you know all the preparation even even if you spend four years doing a PhD on this you will definitely still have moments where you think oh you know I messed that up I said the wrong thing I've hurt someone um if that happens then the best thing to do is to just own it let go of any feelings of Pride or ego about it and just approach it with that sense of humility and that is what will lead you to the best possible outcome for

yourself for your players um and for the rest of your team thank you so much for listening to this and um you know if anyone wants to ask me any questions or anything like that um you can find me on Twitter and um I'll I'll leave it there and enjoy the rest of GDC [Music]