Now You See Me: Representation as Innovation

I'm Kim Belair. I'm a writer. I'm a narrative designer. I'm extremely nervous and I'm the co-founder of a little narrative development company called uh Sweet Baby Inc. We do narrative development in games and kind of beyond and we try to bring a lot of inclusion, diversity, and new ideas kind of to the industry. So, just as a kind of fun fact, um last year was actually my first GDC and I first pitched this talk as part of the program Amplifying New Voices, if anyone has heard of it. Yes. Uh I think it's also kind of appropriate that that's where I talked about this because it's also what my talk is about in a lot of ways. So, hi. Um for a little bit of background on me, um I've been a professional writer for about 12 years, but I've always written stuff. I think that's always the way, um but when I was a kid, and I want to start at the beginning here because I think that it's

important to kind of give context to the way I learned about representation as a woman of color, and I think the way that a lot of marginalized people kind of get socialized when it comes to topics like this. So, when I was small and starting to kind of express myself creatively in either writer writing or stories or art, I wrote about myself a lot and I would put myself into a lot of art into a lot of narratives and I put my family and people who looked like me in all of these cool scenarios and I was telling all these stories where I got to see myself, I got to see people who looked like me and kind of a rainbow of people who were kind of adjacent to me in a lot of ways. And I think it was really neat and I was really fostered in that. So, when I hit elementary school, I think that I was free to tell those stories because a lot of the stories that you hear in elementary school are about like, "We should be friends with everyone. We should be inclusive. We should preach equality and build communities." And I think this was really really wonderful, but then I got to high

school. And suddenly for the first time in my life, I got told that the stories that I was writing and the things that I was creating for and about people who resembled me were not real stories and they were not right stories. And this was to the point that I received a list that I'm sure many of you have received that was here's a list of authors and stories that are legitimate. Um here's a list of people and stories that are important. And as you can imagine, they were, you know, mostly men and almost exclusively white. And so were the subjects of all these stories with a couple exceptions um of people who were there to teach lessons to the white male characters or people who were there to express pain or people who were there to be the target of some kind of hate or conflict. And if we ever did read, you know, here's a book by like a an African-American author, here's a book by a woman, here's a book by a Japanese author, it was for a lesson that was about this is what life is like as a

woman, this is what pain and suffering is like as a black person, this is what pain and suffering is like as a Japanese person. And so through that and kind of unconsciously, I started to learn that books by and about white men were literature. They were classics. They were important. And everything else is just special interest. They're very very niche. And then meanwhile, there's like a young me. And all I wanted out of this whole life was to be a writer. And I wanted that so bad that I kind of said, okay, well, what do I need to be legitimate? And I just internalized everything that I had learned. And I did that for years. And I spent like actual actual years just writing about white men because I thought, okay, I'm making art now because I can look at the stories that are being told that are being held up as legitimate and as classic and they look like the stories that I'm telling. And for so many years

I did this that I think it was probably only in my early to mid-20s that I started to realize that I had internalized this like deeply deeply uninteresting idea that in terms of narratives and stories white and male are, you know, neutral and universal. And I say that even as a woman of color. So, while we don't all fall into that trap, I say it to kind of illustrate how easy it is I think for us to kind of take on that narrative even as people who are marginalized even as we're fighting. Because we've kind of created this normal that we all unconsciously follow and it affects us even as we advocate for change. There are things and times like back in the day if you'd asked me, "Oh, are you doing this on purpose? Are you only telling stories that fit the dominant narrative?" I would never have said yes. But I think that a lot of people end up doing it even as they're saying we have to do better. And I think that that's actually shown in the way that we manage representation, which we still consider it this like deviation from something

that is normal. And representation is this like very very scary and very uncertain thing and if we do it wrong or if we don't do it, you know, accurately or if we kind of take a risk, we might get shouted down and that fear is enough to stop us. And I think like that sucks. And it's such a bummer because it's the only way sometimes that we end up talking about it. We end up saying we're going to share our stories of microaggressions, which I am going to do today, but we share stories of trauma and of doubt and when we're dealing with narratives in advocacy, we end up going like, "Okay, these stories are stirring and they're beautiful, but they're also very sad and very heartbreaking." And I think it's important to do that. It's important to share like all of those painful stories if we're going to actually understand the struggle and convey the struggle, but I think today I'd like to take a moment and kind of assume the best because I want to assume that all of you are here in this advocacy talk because what I've said so far is already

familiar, already painful, and I want to kind of assume that you have sat with that or if it's not your experience, you've already sat and listened to that in other areas and rather I think than spending the next 15 or so minutes kind of sitting in that pain, I want to share some examples uh from my own experience and then kind of discuss how we can do better and find different and more interesting ways of talking about this stuff as creatives and as advocates and as people who overall want practical solutions to these kinds of problems. So, let's talk about video games. Um to begin, a lot of the work that I do is in narrative consultation and narrative design. And one of the things that I offer as part of, you know, my list of services is risk assessment and sensitivity reading. And so recently I was consulting on a project that was a dating simulator. And I was faced with like a very simple decision point that the writers were trying to achieve and it was this interaction between the female-identified date and you, the

protagonist, and you could customize your gender, you could customize your appearance, and everything. So, the love interest is on a date with you and they ask you a very simple question and it's what was your ex like, which is a bit much for a first date, but um the player can either choose to say, "Okay, my ex was a good person, but it didn't work out." They can choose to say, "I don't know if I really want to talk about that." Or they can choose to say, "My ex was a monster." And choosing my ex was a monster, the woman on the date with you goes like, "Yikes. You must be so immature if that's what you're going to say on a date about your ex. Like you must be not over this, you must be figuring something out. And I think that you lose favor in that moment with that character. And I can see where the design was. Like, I understand that what they wanted to do was just have a very simple question where if you respond, your ex can or your date can say, "I like that." Or "I don't like that." Or kind of be neutral about it.

But I played through that and I realized something that they hadn't really seen. And it's that this question was deeply gendered despite the fact that they didn't even intend that. When we treat, I guess, cis hetero male characters as the default, we end up with questions like this. And I say that because while it's a generalization, when we have those characters and they say something like, "Hey, my ex is a monster." What we're being asked to assume is that that person has a crazy ex-girlfriend. We're being asked to assume that they're being immature or they might have, you know, a real harpy at home. It's almost like a laugh line a lot of the time. So, I ask, "Hey, what if I'm playing as a woman?" Because what I had to explain very delicately was that if I'm playing as a woman and I'm assuming that I'm interacting with a woman and we don't know about my ex, there's an upsettingly high likelihood that when I say to another woman, "My ex was a monster."

What I'm referring to was an abusive situation rather than just an immature joke. And so I actually said, "You know what though? Don't worry about it. We can create a condition for this because if you respond to that person by saying, 'Hey, my ex was a monster.' What if she digs a little deeper? What if she checks and says, 'Hey, is that a pain point for you?' Or says like, 'Oh, is that something touchy for you?' Or maybe says like, 'Do you mean that as a flippant remark?' Because I think that even though, you know, this game is light, it would be a genuinely important moment to be able to express that sentiment in a game. And when I suggested that, the writing team was like, "Okay, thank you for this insight." And then they just like took it away. They got nervous, and I think that is the problem that we face when we think of rest representation as a challenge that we just need to like surmount. We could just like go Nope, solved. We did it because we took it away and we don't have to face it anymore. But I thought here, this was an opportunity for innovation. Here we had

the chance to make a woman who has been victimized see herself in a game, be able to express something to another woman in the game, and kind of actually relate to it, and we had that opportunity, but instead we pulled back because we thought it was safer not to push forward. And after the whole thing was done, the team thanked me again, and they said like, "Thanks so much. You really mitigated the risk." And I think that the way that we talk about this kind of thing is itself a problem. We need sensitivity readers. We need risk assessment. And these are like, again, important services that I literally like list on every PDF that I send out to be like, "Hey, I can do risk assessment and sensitivity reading." But I think when we do that kind of work and we make it seem like what we're doing is, you know, very being very careful, being very scared, we end up just kind of sanding down all the rough edges instead of building something new and building something out. And that means that we feel daunted when we discuss representation because we talk a lot about

representation as the mitigation of pain, but we don't talk about representation as a creator of joy. Because I would genuinely love, just once, to be called into one of these consulting sessions, and instead of being asked like, "Hey, can you tell us how this is going to hurt people like you?" just be asked, "Hey, what would you like to see people like you do in this game? What experiences can people like you bring to the world of the game that we haven't seen before? What's a cool thing that you want to see from characters who look and act like you?" And it's not the way we're taught to talk about it, but I think it could be. Because even when we're doing narrative design, we're looking at archetypes every time we want to have a set of answers, right? We're looking this is what a rebel would do. This is what a jerk would do. This is what a more straight-laced person would do. And I think I would love to start thinking about more like what option can we make for people who haven't been seen? What can we add that provides a new perspective that we've never explored before? So, I think if we prioritize joy and

start to frame representation as, you know, a new form of innovation rather than as pain avoidance and like surface level diversity, we're going to actually start to win a few more battles and generate moments of actual happiness. So, this is kind of all up in the air, but I want to give an example of what these kinds of wins can look like or at least what they have looked like in the past for me. And I kind of want to say, "Okay, imagine me now as a player." Cuz this is my go-to example and it's something that like I talk about all the time and it's the first time that I ever made a black character in a video game. And this is genuinely embarrassing to relate to a crowd of people, but for a really long time before this, when I was offered like a character customization screen, I was like, "Well, I can't put myself in there because that that's weird and not what video games are." And so, I like made some like stubbly white dude protagonists even when I had like every option available to me because I didn't want to feel like I was putting

too much of myself into this world where I didn't belong. And it's wild to think about like I just created Nathan Drake and was like, "Go. Explore every game." Um but anyway, the first time that I actually made a black protagonist was in Mass Effect in 2010. And that felt really, really great. And I know that everyone at GDC has seen like has seen a lot about Mass Effect. So many talks talk about Mass Effect. So, I think it's very important. Um but for anyone who's never played it, I'm just going to give you like a little rundown of the first playable area. Basically, your fully customized Commander Shepard has to enter a space station and rendezvous with two characters, Jacob Taylor and Miranda Lawson, but you meet Jacob first. And for those of you who don't know, Jacob is a black man. He's a marine, and he's your first kind of like point of contact, so your first interaction with him, you're like crouching behind cover, and you're having like a close-quarters conversation. And when this happened in the game, it was this really powerful and remarkable moment for me because it was two black

characters talking one-on-one, and neither of them is cast as a criminal, they're not a sidekick, they're not a savage, they're not a stereotype, they're not a gang member. And they're the only two people on screen in this moment talking about something much greater than them. And it was just like really really really nice. I did I left off a really. But um I was so happy about this moment that I actually took my phone out to text my white best friend, and I was like, "Wow, it was really just cool to see this scene in this game. Can you believe it?" And I was halfway through the text when I realized like oh, she isn't going to see that because her Shepard doesn't look the same as mine. But I texted her anyway because I thought, "You know what? I'm going to share this moment of joy for me, and she's my best friend, so she has to be happy about it." And her response, while not surprising, was still very touching because she said, "I've never seen that either." And holy moly, that's cool. And I told some other friends at that

point. I was kind of like excited about it, and they weren't all black, these friends. They weren't all targeted by this moment that I had experienced, but they all felt the same thing when they heard me tell my story, when they heard that it was a new kind of term, and that the the general idea was holy moly, representation is cool. But in my Mass Effect experience, this is almost an accidental form of representation because it's something that's a possibility. It's not guaranteed for any player depending on the kind of character in the Commander Shepard that you make. So, I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if this wasn't an accident, but it was actually the intention of the game designers. What if they actually said, you know what? We're going to set out to create a moment of joy in people who look like this. People who feel represented by this. And that I think would be amazing and it's totally possible for us. Because these are things that we can actually create as designers and as writers and as creators. And not only are they new, but they're very very narratively compelling and I think that that's ultimately what we should strive for. Because the

newness of it works not only for those who are, you know, being immediately targeted, but it works for everyone in that group. Everyone who kind of receives it and who's never seen this before. Because keep in mind that when it's new for you, odds are they've never seen it either. So, you're not actually catering to one tiny group. You're catering to everyone who's going to be playing it. It's across the board. And that's a lesson I think that we keep failing to teach. Because we keep saying, okay, this one's for you guys. This one's for you guys. And like this one over here, like you can have it. But we can't keep looking at representation as like we're catering to a tiny little corner or like a direct marketing effort. It's what everyone I think or hope wants as an audience. And stepping back, it's not just I don't just hope actually. I actually think, okay, we all do want this. And I think you know, especially the people in this room can actively say, yeah, that's what we want to achieve. But then the question is begged, why aren't we doing this? Like why when we're talking about it, when

we're so enthusiastic about it, what's stopping us? Like why are we still being told, oh no, that's not what players want. Why do I keep hearing that it's like an uphill battle for people to bring representation to what should be a very inclusive environment of creativity? And I think, you you are a lot of answers. There's the fact that, you know, the industry is stuck in its ways. Uh the industry isn't as diverse as it should be or could be. Um we're all socialized in this society to kind of act against it and to fall into what is normal. And there's like a dozen other answers that are all like variations on those themes. But kind of like a pseudo fun fact about me, that's slightly fun, is that I actually have a marketing degree. And so I want to put on that like very mercenary hat for a second and talk about the way that we decide how we're going to sell the art that we make and how we're going to approach the audiences that we make it for. Cuz I think so often when people like us get told, you know, from higher-ups or from society at large, this isn't what players want, it's not a conversation about

demographic, sorry, content. It's a conversation about demographics. And I think that in our industry and in so many creative industries, if you want to look at film and television and any art form, we start treating our core demographics as a fixed and static value, something that does not want to change and something that is locked in place. So despite like the changing face of audiences, despite the changing face of conferences like this one, we still look at our core demographics and say, "Okay, they're white, cis, hetero males." And we cater almost exclusively to them. And the problem is that we don't just cater to them like, you know, here, here's something that we think you'll enjoy. We cater to them the way that we cater to like a picky baby. We feed them the same thing that we know that they love and we keep on feeding it. We're like, "Here you go. We you love it. Eat this. Eat this. Eat this." So that then when they get anything else, they react as a picky baby would, which is be like, "Woah, no, thank you. I do not want this." And we've actually done this so long that what we're doing is creating an entire nation of

picky babies and they make us scared to deviate from what we actually want to do. Just in case these picky babies don't want to play our games. And we've made a lot of progress. Obviously, like I don't say this to completely go like, "Just give up. We've We've screwed it." Um but I think it's still amazing that I can be seated in a meeting and told that out of 12 characters, we already have one black one, so there can't possibly be a second. I get that way too much. And I once worked on a project where they had an all-white cast, and they expressed a desire like, "Okay, we need to mix it up a bit. How about this character is kind of like stereotypically French? So, they have a beret, and they have like a striped shirt." And I was like, "Okay, if you need to do that, can we at least make them a person of color?" And they said, "Oh, no, that would be weird. They're already French." So, I want to do better than this. Because and I like I don't say that to be like, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to dismiss all the hate and the abuse in our communities." But I do like to

imagine that when we look at uh white guys and there's several of you here, um I think that when we look at you, we say, "Okay, you can't possibly enjoy this." But I think they want also and maybe you want also to experience new and different stories. I think we need to step out of this rule that like white men can enjoy fantasy worlds, aliens, sci-fi, monsters, anything, so long as it's through a lens that looks exactly like them. Because if that's the kind of person that we're always going to cater to, you're never going to innovate. You're never going to change things. You're going to keep feeding the picky baby. And we cannot continue to try to create art under a system that is going to bar innovation for fear of a picky baby throwing a tantrum. And I really don't think that it's impossible to change this because as like a woman of color, I have played with and like empathized with a lot of white men. I have played as Kratos, who's like literally white. I've played as Nathan Drake. I've played as Arthur Morgan, and

I've loved it. And I don't think it's like pie in the sky thinking to go like, "Hey, maybe we can invite white dudes to play as other people and experience different things through someone else's eyes. And if they don't like it, we have to start thinking we're not losing, they're losing, and we're losing because we're going to let them stand in the way of our progress and our innovation. And I think that we need to stop thinking that our like core marketing demographics have to define the exact demographics of our playable characters and of our cast. And instead, we start to have to assume that players do want new stories. And that if we bring joy to our broad audience, it's going to encompass our core audience as well. And similarly, I think we need to get out of I'm glad you're here, but I think that we need to start getting out of just advocacy tracking these discussions because ultimately we're seeing like representation as this abstract idea. We're seeing it as this weird kind of thing that we can paint over what we're currently doing, but if we start

having these conversations as facets of narrative, as facets of marketing, as gameplay, as art, I think that we're actually going to be able to move beyond it because when we sequester advocacy into this one series, what we risk is like preaching to the choir. And while you guys already know this because you're here, what's old to us can be innovative to somebody else. And that's still incredibly important. Like all of these things that I'm saying today, I'm sure you understand, but you can go out into the world now and other people will hear it from you. Because ultimately, I think that is what we need to figure out. It's how to bring these discussions out and make innovations in content like the way we make them everywhere else in our industry. But how do we do that? Um, I think it's one thing in narrative because honestly, in narrative, it's a little bit easier to implement because we have the power to go like, oh, we can build choices that consider, you know, marginalized identities and just write them into our work. We can decide to tell stories that present like, you know, very rare narratives and representative experiences. Um, and we

can kind of work on detokenizing our minority characters. And so in that way we do have like a lot of power to actually affect the change that we want to see and to work all of these concepts in our material as narrative developers. But, we still work for people and it's another kettle of fish I think when it comes to like the structures that approve these choices and we have to kind of look at them a little more institutionally because we can write all the stories that we want but that doesn't mean that anyone's going to buy them, anyone's going to market them, anyone's going to let us do it. Um, so I think I want to use my last section here to kind of outline the tools and the techniques that I use and that my company has used to make representation very much a staple of our offering outside of just the work that we do internally. So, first and foremost, if you're in creative development, if you're building a world and a story and you're including characters and concepts that are borrowed or inspired by or based on the lives and the lived experiences of marginalized people,

firstly, I would say do not be afraid to create moments that are intentionally targeted and designed to create joy in the marginalized. Um, they are going to appreciate this on a level that your core audience won't but it doesn't mean that you're going to exclude your core audience in doing that. Do not make it so that marginalized people, when they're playing your game, have to do all of the work to create representation themselves by creating that custom character. And also don't fall into this trap that I think a lot of people fall into which is they think, okay, don't worry. We can include everyone by making this like single default universal experience that is universally representative. Because usually like all that means, as it did in the dating example, is that you're aiming at your core demographic and you're probably invisibly leaning towards the dominant societal voice even if you don't realize it. Um, and if you're in development and you are part of like that dominant voice, you're like a cishet white dude or just adjacent to that, do not wait until the end to call your

consultants. Bring them in at the beginning and instead of asking them, "Hey, is this very racist thing we did very racist or is this deeply offensive thing we did deeply offensive? Are you hurt by it?" Ask them what they want to see. Like ask them what would thrill them, what would bring them joy. And if you have a team lead, put that request to them very, very early. Um if you're a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, um put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don't see the value in what you're asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what's going to happen if they don't give you what you want. Because they have to consider like I I say that all out as a joke, but it's actually very, very true because if you start to consider the people who are player and audience-facing and who have to deal with mitigating harm and with keeping the sentiment around their game and their project positive, there's like a genuine value you could impress upon them with um both ethically and financially. You could say that this is important. And it's also a valid

discussion to have because if you're working with a very thin narrative budget and you're working in AAA, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised or dismayed by the amount of money that marketing can give you. Um if you're not in AAA and if you're indie or if you're freelance um and you're building a budget because you still have to and you're writing up a pitch, I would say that you should consider adding the necessary funds for representation into your scope as you would any other item. Um when we budget as Sweet Baby Inc, uh we actually add about 10% of our entire narrative development budget to hire storytellers and collaborators who can kind of help us see where our blind spots are. And if they aren't in this industry because a lot of the time people are like, "Uh-oh, they're not in this industry." We can actually bring them in to help us consultants for areas where like, you know, they can start learning. We can help them learn, they can help us learn. So even if it's just a small part of a project, all parties are going to gain something and you're going to get a perspective you really need. Next, um if you're in communications or you're

part of that like scared marketing group, assume your players want new stories and treat representation as a facet of innovation as a selling point. Leverage your game's ability to explore new perspectives, um and there's always going to be a positive impact in assuming this. Finally, um if you're a studio building a team, hire diverse creators and pay them. Please pay them. And don't stop there either. Don't just go into creatives and with, you know, narrative and stuff. Make it across your team because there are a lot of unconscious biases in other areas, um but always consider the ways that you can support all of your people. So, like don't just put, "We need diverse input." Explain how you're going to support them once they're there. Because none of it we're doing is about ticking boxes or about a veneer of wokeness. We actually have to care about making this stuff. So, to close, um for those of you who are marginalized, whatever space you occupy in this industry, and I I I want you to know that I see you and I recognize you and I'm doing the work along with you. And if I can suggest to you one thing is that you take kind of a moment to think

about times when you have felt seen and representative and share them as loudly as you possibly can. Be loud about it. Don't be afraid to ask for more of this and what you felt and seen already. Um cuz we have to make sure that our tech and our mechanics and our teams and representation are equal parts of our of our entire project, right? Inclusion and representation are tools for creation and will shape the final product. And for those of you who kind of represent that dominant voice, I want to invite you to be brave and to be empathetic and to open yourselves and your teams to the voices that you haven't heard enough. Because if you do, I think you'll be genuinely amazed by the stories and the new directions that you'll be able to explore together. And you're going to be inviting people into this feeling of representation and empowerment that you have been very lucky to enjoy your whole life. Because I think at the end of the day, what we have to say is that video games are fun. And if we work hard enough, we can actually make them fun for everyone. Thank you.