Keep Redlining OUT of the Metaverse

[Music] all right let us get started with uh let's keep redlining out of the mid multiverse metaverse multiverse all the verses all right let's define it keep that in your brain as we're going through this and then keep this one too this one's a little bit more loosey-goosey all right well who are we and where are we from that's me this is all i have to do for kelly that's it a long time ago i worked on that game uh so after uh that game i left that game company um

i think they're i'll briefly touch on sort of the through line here and certainly that game company and my tenure with them um was at a time when digital distribution really exploded and i saw just this huge shift in who gets to make a game and what games are about and that really fascinated me and i moved more towards looking at these different levers and mechanisms in the industry and how they do determine who gets to make a game and why and what they're about so that moved me more into publishing and business development and developer relations and kind of working going from one game at a time to like 200 at a time when i was at ouya and then 100 at a time when i was at google daydream and now work with external developers um creating experiences with niantic for the real world that's awesome i still go kelly equals journey to me that's all i needed all right i'm a little different so i'm a senior producer at niantic working with the black developer initiative which we'll be talking about before then you'll see a pair of keys so

before i got in the business i was at concierge i used to tell people where to go where the bathroom was realistically just where the bathroom was when i was working there i had a colleague who was just like you like video games you should work in video games and to me that logic is like infallible but the same time was like not smart enough i don't think you know how i don't have an n i'm going to be a concierge she said nope when my boyfriend has an opportunity at his work you're going to apply for it fast forward a few months she calls me up and she's like there's an opportunity you're gonna apply for it and she's like okay so i'm gonna tell you the website have you heard of a place called lucasarts and i was like i have such things so there i was a contract qa tester where i worked on star wars and indiana jones from there

i got promoted to assistant qa lead where i worked on some lego games you name it pretty much near the end of lucas arts from there i ran into a couple of old co-workers who were like you need to leave lucasarts and come over here we got a laptop you're getting a phone we got snacks and it's a mobile space so i said okay cool so i went over there became qa lead at dna west which used to be ng moco from there uh at some point i guess i did good enough job where they're like hey do you want to be an event producer i said sure i'll do it until you find someone better a few months after that they asked me if i wanted to be a product owner of transformers legends and then eventually i became a product owner another transformers game and then i became the lead event producer for a marvel game i'm the ip guy that's where i got started i moved over to wargaming from that point and then worked some other spots until kelly found me for

this program we're going to talk about and kind of where my focus has been the last bit so what is the black developer initiative at niantic it was founded during the blm you know the height of the blm error we're trying to figure out a way to do what was right so we founded a program to promote and empower black game ar developers geo-location developers to give them opportunities we want to see their experiences and that's what we're working towards but what we're going to kind of go through is certain things that we kind of learned along the way you want to add anything going uh uh no i don't think i think are we gonna yeah we're gonna show the developers next though it is yeah yeah yeah we got this cool slide that's my favorite yeah so today these are the developers we've currently worked with take a picture reach out to them they're amazing developers even not in the ar space they

deserve the recognition that they deserve they have some of the hardest working people i've got the pleasure to know during this process um all of them are you know starting up up-and-coming developers in the space that you know needs more of these voices needs more of this representation um some of them go from adventure games some of them had some really crazy ar like audio ar stuff it's really dope um i do want to call out should i call it wicked saints now or leave it for later no go for it yeah yeah so wicked saints is the actual first team to go through our cohort experience the the first bdi program and though they necessarily move forward with us the way we would like them to they were able to take their prototype their pitch deck and everything that they built and they were able to get a pre-seed round of 1.1 million dollars so pretty soon that's pretty awesome

really quickly just because yeah this isn't about bdi but it is the context in which this talk isn't about but this is the context in which we work together and obviously our foundation for our learnings here um and so just to give a little bit more context when we created it we really initially took the model of external publishing and the way we engage with developers through funding a concept phase we made some adjustments and tweaks added additional programming and mentorship to it and kind of that was the first iteration of bdi that these teams went through and then we have since taken some of these learnings that were talked about applied them to reformatting it and are um going through uh kicking kicking off a new quarter cohort now that's sort of that's the general context okay said it better than i could all right i

doubt that yeah all right let's define the problem we are going to define the problem here's the problem this is from the igda in 2019 81 identify as white seven percent hispanic plutanic two percent identifies black african american african afro-caribbean guess what if i was to go back to 2014 it's the same statistic hasn't changed we have newer newer dni initiatives but at the same time that number has not moved up so part of the problem is access opportunity and funding right we know this we offer this this is what kind of most of these programs do but it's still imperfect it's not a way for us to be able to fully engage a team beyond one of these length of time like if we're just

sitting there doing this for five months what happens after the fifth month what happens after the sixth month because we're finding that in certain instances with people go through these groups confirmation biases appear people playing or having issues asking for help they don't want to go through this program even though or a program like it be even though we're offering access opportunity and funding because it's seen as uh you know a weakness even people who go through programs like this who then hear of other people going through programs like this offer prejudice against programs like this that's was good for me at the time but not necessarily good for me is in my next position or my next spot my next group whatever way it goes it's the same win states using the same success metrics

so here's the thing i don't know about all of you but i know that whenever i go to a company or every place i go to i feel like i have to be the hardest worker in the room i have to be exceptional just to be normal and this is exactly what kind of happens within programs or initiatives or anything that runs like this is you're just looking for the exceptional instead of just a perspective a new point providing experience it's like when you're at that point looking for those metrics of success and then you look at what your company is going to establish in terms of experience and what they would green light or publish or produce or whatever a lot of times they'll just then go well they don't have the experience well here's the thing how does a team get experience if they're never given opportunity in the first place this one i thought was really clever hopefully you'll see the dichotomy in

this so here's the thing right we at niantic people who are part of the web 3 wave blockchain crypto however you name it we are in this emergent technology we are now at a moment of time where people are starting to establish themselves and given potential opportunities but the problem is emerging technology is the divide between resources excuse me people with resources and those without eventually when the divide is kind of nullified by the fact that there's been mass adoption it's no longer valuable it's no longer as opportunistic as a lot of people can kind of grow up with this and i mean look this doesn't just happen in tech it happens everywhere any place you work any place you go you will see that there are those with resources and those without but i say that all kind of doom and

gloom like we can change that everyone in this room at least is interested in learning how to do more or learning what we did so that's the start but overall the current message is the buried entry changes but the message is staying the same the more we innovate the more we discriminate the industry is kind of optimized uh with a certain person in mind with a certain amount of education biases intertwined in a pipeline um i call it a pipeline of privilege um you know and when we have teams that kind of go through this who might not necessarily have same access to these pipelines like the teams we showed you earlier um those buying sees the those biases play against them it's not built for teams who are just up

and coming it's built for established status quo we need to think about creating pipelines that provide those opportunities that avoid you know the social economic side of things that look to provide opportunities for people who are interested in this space because it's a huge heaven problem the current message is we all need to work on this together uh spoiler to the end of this niantic can't do this alone we are just one company pushing our one objective our one of our one mission with this and wanting to see the spaces diverse but everyone here who has opportunity to work with the company we're gonna need your help the industry needs your help

so here's where the metaverse comes in i'm sure some of you are interested john hanke put out a blog post about defining the metaverse niantics is very real world based but this quote specifically is what stuck with me helping to achieve this meta shift is our purpose at niantic but we recognize that it won't be solely our work such a massive evolution will require the work of big companies startups and individuals around the world to become a reality i don't want those individuals those startups and those companies that be only certain companies certain individuals if we're going to be looking at a new boom a new opportunity here moving into the metaverse or whatever we need to define lines that are free and open for all to be able to express themselves show opportunities and present you know growth

why it needs to be done this one's probably a silly slide but it's true so this starts with i have a friend yes i have friends believe it or not um and this is kind of what got me thinking about this and wanting to work in this space and understanding that maybe the origin story i gave you of me was probably a little bit uh i don't know rare for this space so my friend she reached out to me and was like hey my son's really interested in video games and he wants to know if there's an internship at your work and i said nope and he's like well can you set up something for him i was like no we don't really have any type of internships that doesn't count into like the senior year of college in a role or something specific like that we don't really have anything for someone younger or someone looking for other opportunities or space

so i took that and i was like okay i can't i could be like you can come sit at my desk but it's not the same thing as kind of experiencing it and i felt it would be disservice to be like hey you know what wait till you're in your mid-20s you're working at a desk someone's going to offer you an opportunity of a lifetime you're going to have to take it you're going to have to nail that job and then you're going to have to work really really hard to stay in this industry but then you'll be in it i felt like that was not the message i wanted to be able to give them because it's not fair i know my journey some pun intended uh i know my journey is different than yours but i wanted to be able to provide a more open space so that's kind of what got me thinking about how do we increase the devs in this space what can i do more devs in the space equal more experiences more points of view wouldn't

you say kelly yeah they make different stuff yeah like i'm gonna tell you some of the designs that i've seen come through the bdi program that we've had show a lot of different experiences that other game designs don't they're not just match threes they're built on experiences that they have from soft post-apocalyptic worlds that are founded because they are negativity in the world and everyone was doing wrong and just wanting to write those rights to those showing the whole world covered in water because humans need to do better um to one's being able to want to be able to just print their words and have them be seen on the streets through special locations to social economic based ones that and social activism games that are wanting to empower kids of the future so that they can have courage

i mean that's not like no knock and candy crush but that's not candy crush right this is something that someone is experiencing and they need to tell these stories i want them to be able to tell their stories i want them to be able to see their lights because i think more points of view broaden everyone's horizon wealth let's just face it independence begins with money with money you can have security you can have longevity because one of the biggest things that we all know those who you know work in the industry for a while is longevity is tough if you're able to survive a space or be a dev in the space for longer than a couple years you've doing something all right but for that means you need security you need wealth uh one of the tenants one of the massive tenants out of all the things that we think about in bdi and this is truly almost nebulous is thinking about it in

terms of you know generational wealth being able to have someone be able to provide for someone who can provide for someone provide for someone having those opportunities to have access to wealth means that they can tell their stories being able to tell their stories mean that they can be able to keep telling their stories for generations but it does start with money we need to be able to provide money in some way shape or form can i add something to that please please because you know i like this one uh you know going back to that statistic that we found reach back all the way to 2014 of two percent of developers in the industry that identify as black um i'm assuming it was there at best the previous decade likely even lower and i think about again my own journey um through independent game development that explosion of digital distribution

how many people were shut out of the wealth that was generated by that shift our industry and right now with xr we're in a similar state it's a new opportunity the developers that get in now will have more opportunities and we'll be leaders just a year or two or three from now i think we're already seeing that in the vr space and we're seeing the trends of that in ar again so this is a really big deal it's like you know striking when the iron's hot yeah this is the moment like we could do a lot we need to be able to do a lot together with this type of stuff because we don't want to wait until web 4.0 whatever that is i i don't i don't want to know what 4.0 is but yeah kelly jumped the gun over the time he goes off oh sorry oh no worries you're good you're good

all right because what i found is representation is both inspiration and innovation i actually wrote this i'm pretty proud of it to be honest um the tldr of this really short sentence is if we are to grow as an industry and as a people we need to pave the way for others and stop following the same cycles that we find ourselves in and you know it can go from the ways to how you produce things to how you hire to how you are looking for devs maybe with more experience but maybe you might want to take a chance on somebody to kind of go back find that experience help them grow in this industry instead of discounting them right off the rip like i said earlier we need your help in this this is something that we need to all be aware of we need to make changes

you know initiatives and programs like this live or die by participation so if you have one or you know of one help with it so what can you do though so we have these these are just some ideas these are some things that we kind of take and look at when we work with our teams our current cohorts and our new cohorts as well yeah share your cheat codes which i got from the incredible trinidad herman dye uh you know the idea of just all those little things that we've all picked up along the way and in the jobs i know especially in i think our generation and older we didn't have a lot of formal training on the job we picked up things as we went how can you take a moment um share with someone else like that trick you learned or that template you always use when you're starting a game design document these little things i think i sometimes don't even realize that i picked up

along the way and um yeah let other people into that i'm a big fan of the kobayashi meru from star trek um because i like the idea that you know kirk didn't believe there was unwinnable scenario and so when i think of cheat codes that's what i think of just because someone says you can't do it doesn't mean you can't find a way to cheat it because sometimes cheating is good sometimes uh look at a way to be less optimized you wrote this one so yeah it goes back to what john was talking about earlier i think when i think of um the system like how how do we do things the fastest way possible and that is often including biases that come through these systems that have been sort of copy and pasted throughout the history of industry from who we hire the colleges we're hiring

from the way we organize our meetings the way we communicate online um there's so many ways in which uh it's just easy to do it the the way we've always done it um and it's not really about becoming less optimized but it just takes that little bit of extra effort to think about how can you do it differently how can you um be including people in a conversation how can you be looking at uh taking your university outreach efforts and like shifting them to colleges your company normally hasn't looked at and it just takes a moment and then it becomes the optimized way and you become it becomes a new process but it just takes a beat to to create a different system yep yep but also spend time elevating your black indigenous other people color at work one of the big things that i have to shout out is that through my

journey through my way of getting through here i had people who believed in me uh people who i normally wouldn't expect to believe in me but they believed in me they supported me and they pushed me through um and you know i'm completely 100 grateful for that and i can guarantee anyone else in your space who might be like hey maybe there is a qa guy there but he's really interested in you know production take a chance or maybe someone seems really confident about game design take a chance or when you're meeting other developers in the space if you have the option to work with them take a chance see what they can do because i guarantee you'll get some stuff that's going to be great do you have a dni program in your team or office offer your support offer your time off your help if you don't make one or go ask how to make one or go try to work towards that or build ergs you know that are within your company that you can kind of help support and perpetuate

this stuff i mean this i love this note that kelly had at this like last minute so i was surprised but literally consider how you your team your company is setting up you know black indigenous people of color employees for future success this is include pay equity career development opportunities for advancement again i was fortunate but i know i'm an outlier i know i'm in rarified space when it comes to this i would like to change that and like i said don't have a dni program work find out how to start one maybe if it doesn't have one maybe find one that does have one whatever works with that space yeah two um if i may go ahead and ask you first okay uh john as i have a proprietary just like jump in when i know the answer and stuff so i'm like john just don't tell me exactly when i'm supposed to talk um so uh

the um two ways i see that most of that second and last bullet point um uh teams falling short because one is um kind of related to this actually they're both kind of related to the same thing which is like giving teams that uh do the work in um hiring more inclusively but then uh are either under leveling or underpaying those people which then set them back for the next three to five years at least on their career direct trajectory because as you know a lot it's becoming a less uh popular in some sectors but for the most part you negotiate your next job you know based on your last salary based on your last title um so that's something to consider and then the second is again like i think we come from the school of we learned we got uh promoted by you know what it's like battlefield promotions like somebody uh suddenly the

opportunity came up and it was like you do the job and then you figure it out and we succeeded in that but that is definitely not the most inclusive way to go about promoting and fostering talent and so become a better manager or get your managers to become better managers really think about how you're you're fostering uh career development and um and those opportunities for advancement be clear on your job ladders i think would be the third one that's great yeah like those battlefield promotions i can guarantee i didn't have as much gray in my beard as i do now [Laughter] well i mean that's all we have uh i will say that at niantic we try to move quick through meetings and give people some time back but you know i guess i cut through this a little short but um i want to thank you all for taking the time to sit down and listen to us and to talk about it uh a real tl dr tldr of all this is if

you're working in the metaverse you're working in these spaces make them more inclusive please it starts with you okay [Music] you