Panel: Diversity Drives Innovation: Overcoming Prejudice & Fostering Inclusivity in Game Dev Teams

I would like to welcome to the stage our final panel now I'll tell you what it's going to be hosted by uh North race from Michael award in Jordan no do you want to come to the station and welcome uh your panelist Charlie sahi and aziat who are going to take and uh take us into the the end of the day good evening everyone so we'll try to make it uh easy on new end of the day and uh actually this is a uh so my name is Noor I'm I'm the founder and CEO of maiselworth we've been doing mobile games for the past 20 years and and uh funny this panel and I think it came random in

terms me to moderate but it comes on the right time because recently myself and my team has been involved in inclusivity in a very strong way we have been doing a lot of efforts in integrating inside our maiselworth team people with disabilities we have our first member a Unity developer and and now an instructor within the team he is visually impaired and and that's changed few weeks change our life as as a company seeing how we can basically be all more open and have more into our operation and therefore to the industry I have hopefully a panel that we will get together to something good and I think ending the day with

something as powerful as inclusive and and seeing how we can set these rules for especially as as game developer this is an important influence on on not only our community on The Wider community so I will leave it to you guys to introduce yourself before jumping into the questions and maybe to talk about your experience in the introduction in such inclusivity and please so I'm Charlie Harbord I'm director of Partnerships for a global game Jam I'm also the applied game designer in residence for women and games I'm also female so I'm already diverse I'm Scottish there's only a few of us as well so I'm as diverse as I guess but I've worked in this space for 20 plus years diversity and inclusion is something that's very important to me my

own research and PhD is focused on the use of games to preserve indigenous languages cultures and traditions and so using games as a forum and a medium to be able to increase diversity make people feel included that goes with localization culturalization all of these are very very important factors so it's not just diversity and inclusion within the office or there's Studio that you work in it's also in the games that we produce and this is the power and also the responsibility that I feel we have in the game industry thanks Charlie my voice is very low currently after two days of the conference so please forgive me I don't know if I hold the mic too tight to my mouth but hopefully we'll get over it so hi everyone I'm saheli vermana with speaking earlier in the day about mental health in games and this is part of what I do I've been in the industry in the gaming industry

specifically for around 20 years I'm currently leading the game studio in Halifax Canada where we develop a bunch of games but I was actually involved many years with education and you know setting up programs for children to you know learn different subjects through games but also I've been part of a project called games for peace where we tried and succeeded I can say to connect children in Conflict zones around the world through games so we did a bunch of Corporations around the world and Nur I think Noor knows me because of that but I've been speaking on stages about using games as a force for dealing with conflicts I'm not saying solving conflicts because it's not a solvable thing it's all about Communications and understanding the other side culture and I think that's highly important when you're running a game Studio which is international especially when you're working remotely

and you have different kind of people from different cultures so for the previous company I work with we had around 50 small teams creating hyper casual games and that was a collection of many three to five people teams that were developing rapidly games but one of them was from India one of them from China one of them from the US and one of them from the UK so that how do you mix that culture together in order for them to create that relationship to work as one unit and the secret one of the key Secrets is communication and tolerance right so I'm I'm not a woman and not trying to be one or not not yet um but uh we have around 40 of our studio women developers and advisors so and and it's not just marketing and PR

and admin which is mostly in the gaming industry directed towards that uh but it's also like yes developers game designers we're trying to be to do that in our own way our own special way so sorry about the long introduction but I I share with you so in in our city we have 60 percent female leaders who lead the team and that was being a tough Journey for us as as a studio in the past 20 years to reach to this empowerment real empowerment because usually it's media usually it's about Trend and and when I as as a you know as a Founder pushed this inside my organization it was not because there is a trend there is a need and and we know the the gender today still in you know across the globe still

there is a a bias in terms of main developers versus female developers and not only about salary about position uh so Charlie you are Scottish which is very hard [Laughter] so and and in the same time a a female who's not only involved in as as in the industry but then also as an organization setting up a the structure of this industry so from your experience if today is a new day and you want to send the message about why we as an industry have to have a female presence inside the studio from your experience so the the first answer is very obvious half of your Market is female and if you are not representing your Market within

your studio and your development then you're missing out on a massive trick the other thing is don't hire someone because she's a woman so therefore she should get the best job hire her because she's the best programmer because she's the best artist or the best fit for that job so no tokenism and this goes beyond gender into different cultures into different colors races religions hire the best person for that job now we predominantly well Global game Jam we all work remotes but I'm a female director of the world's largest game creation it still blows my mind but nothing's on fire yet so it's still it's still okay but Global game Jam the Glorious leader the executive director is male I'm the next in line I'm female we have uh one more female who is full-time and then we have one male who is part-time so we're actually over 50 female-led which is amazing but there's

only four of us so it's it's not that impressive but we were all hired because we were the best fit for that job beware the best for that position and with it being remote you have a much larger talent pool to pick from so you can search a much wider audience and you can find exactly as I said the best fit for that job um but yeah not tokenism and and do you think so why we had this in our history as game developers despise why are they less smart woman um no because we're thinking about how to make a sandwich and iron your shoes all the time yeah no um it's it's absolutely it's an even playing field there's there's no gender in coding there's no gender in art anyone can do it it's just historically I guess females haven't necessarily had the opportunity to learn it coding has always been seen as a very male thing an

art maybe more so for females but now we're doing a lot of work with young girls female identifying people to get them into stem to give them the opportunity and this again also works with different cultures where anyone can do this and to say that I want to be a Game Dev I want to be a game designer is not the same as saying I want to be an astronaut it's a real job and anyone can do it and allowing people to try so game jams are obviously a really good way to start in that and increase diversity within within your group of people and then that will spread out I wanted to comment on that um so that for me diversity is not just a buzzword and from my travels around the globe I find out many different Studios that are doing that because it's trendy right it feels good and I I mean I I work with Sesame Street for example in the past and they started with hey we need that

default representation of different skin colors accessibility a cancer uh eel uh child or puppet that representing I think they try to do that from you know the the best reasons but eventually when you're speaking to game studios if you are not understanding the culture and you're not researching what that specific skin color or culture or or region means for your game and you're not not putting in the time eventually you're just creating stigmatic characters and for me the key is you know representation from the right reasons right do the research understand the culture understand the language hire a specialist for example Kate Edwards who are doing culturalization she's been into that for so many years but then also so education when you are Paving one way for girls to not do

coding or Tech or technological subjects or topics for the elementary school and high school you end up with an industry that is totally diverted into another position right men will do their engineering women will probably do marketing media PR which is very wrong to say because when you look back on the 80s or the 70s early days of computers most of the top scientists were women they paved the way for for for us to be here even so for me it's education and proper representation I have a tough question regarding this for you guys personally I think whenever we create a setup organization women only driven setup I see it as a negative thing and it happens a lot in our industry so we find a woman fun for women gaming

companies or this is a woman Association for women game developers and I think this is this is in my opinion is not helping us to have a diversity I don't know what's your opinion about this okay I want I want to answer that that's that's highly interesting and I'll try to be controversial um so again I'm not a women or I'm not I'm not lgbtq as well but they were debates on whether those specialized organization yes they represent women or LGBT sectors or other ethnical sectors but they highlight the differentiation of that sector why not just call them developers why just do this why we do the separation they are women they are men there are ibinary call why do we need to keep those borders between those terms right if we just break the borders and just I'm looking for great game

designer I don't care the gender I don't care the ethnicity we are creating one culture which is a gaming culture or a tech culture and I think I understand the the the the need to shout hey we are here as well we are 50 of that and I had that debate with Kate as well but I think for long term that is actually damaging the cause and creating the separation or highlighting for companies hey you know what we'll take just one women to show hey we have like two women in the company so we've done we check that's the checklist and I'm I I feel we need to find like another way Charlie you no I fully agree um and I would never say I'm a feminist I'm an equal artist like we're equal there's it's an even playing field um things like women in games it's it's not necessarily just for women's it's women female identifying um allies everything like that but it's

more for networking and mentorship and support not putting tokenism not saying that you have to hire a woman because she's female you have to hire this person of color because therefore you're then ticking the quota of having a diverse crew but I agree with what you say the idea of separating us is putting us back into segregation and at that point it's not very beneficial but definitely it should be equal and and from this question do you think that so we go to a a clothes shop or whatever we see a sec section for women section for men do we need this in our industry do we need to build more games for women no because we play all games I mean some of my friends are really really good at first person shooters and they never use audio when they're in the game because as soon as they're popped for being a

female it then turns not necessarily pleasant but I think no you don't have to this is a game for girls why segregate games anyone can play it's like pink for girls for boys and I'm sat here in trousers as well so my favorite my favorite my team is laughing because my favorite color is pink so I think it's the best I think is the best but I I must comment what you mentioned and and most of the times um you know I had conversation with Mattel and other companies and like yeah we understand the need of breaking those borders between the the dolls and between the toys that we are making but you ask us why we do that why we still do that because it sells it's the main selling point for us and still contradicting my belief when you look on data you would see matched tree games are mostly played by women not that I'm

saying the opposite I'm not saying that women don't play Shooters probably it's originated in our culture right to pave as I mentioned education paved the way for women to play specific type of games and for men to be strong to never cry to be so Fierce it's it's very wrong to be sensitive right that's conceived as weakness I think that is powerful because when you understand and you can be empathic to the people around you and then you can create a healthy workplace if you're empathic to your surroundings so I think that's what needs to guide us but still there's business and there's our otopia which we want to create and I think that the middle way need to happen sometime and I think we are progressing if we look on 19th century the roles of women were so limited over the years

right and of course on different cultures if you were born in Sparta right women were also fighting with the man or the head like substantial roles but in the western world very close to us right it was very different but it's changing and we see the change here as well in terms of roles and understanding how we can promote that culture I was I was so proud this you know I'm very Frank and so we we knew we know that Saudi Arabia was a bit in the past few years before the the big change that happened recently was a bit close when it came to women my first visit after covert to to Saudi Arabia I was extremely happy to see the the scene of female developers involved hands on the product and I was super for me small details and I or I had a Kareem

which is the equivalent to Uber and then the driver she came and she was a girl called Sarah so I thought that was mistake because my name is Nur and nurin it's a you know female male name so I thought they brought me an Uber or a Kareem because I'm Noor so I knocked and I said she opened I said I'm Noor she said I'm Sarah and I said yes I'm a male and she said I'm female do you have any problem I said can I she said of course and that showed me the commitment the region is taking a country like Saudi Arabia the 42 million and and you know to have this change that quick that will support us basically big time and I think it's good to realize in your life that you need to educate yourself you need to understand yes we used to to differentiate races so there was different traces in the past but I think

today for for me as a game developer and wearing our t-shirt we always try to tend to mix different in our characters but still I think there is we don't represent or races correctly inside our games in the industry not even in in that death scene we are more sorry to say that more white always we are more you know so what what's your opinion why why this is happening still is it because there is more they go to the NBA because more black people or they want to African Americans or you want to play in the NBA and not playing with us in in the gaming why we do see less mix of phrase inside the gaming industry I think I mean that's a big question um so obviously in in game industry we we tend to wear many hats we have side

hustles you've got to have a side hustle just to keep your job interesting and so my side hustle is I'm a cultural sensitivity expert and I'm working on two games just now uh one Triple A one double A and it's hiring cultural experts doing your research Wikipedia is not resource like research material it's not good so actually going to the communities getting someone from that community that is representative people are scared to get things wrong as well because when you make a mistake with someone's culture someone's religion that can have a huge huge impact on your productivity but also on your reputation and Industry is entirely based on professional reputation if you're the one person that made that one racist game you might not be able to get work again or your games won't sell you've then got a black mark so it's going into those communities and having first-hand knowledge um as as you mentioned about Saudi we are aiming a global game Jam to set up a

jam within Saudi Arabia that is entirely going to predominantly focus on females female identifying and getting them into stem we'll be providing training in unreal so that they're able to try this sort of role and see if it fits of course men are involved and men are allowed to join but the actual focus is to go directly to the females and it's about getting that cultural input racist people with the mixed in not only in our games but in the death scene we see it less and I'm telling you someone who's been attending conferences for the past 20 years I see it so yes it's like my response relates to what you just mentioned and I think the key word is respect respect the culture

work with locals I had a middle eastern panel 10 years ago I was sitting down in Israeli a guy from Bahrain a guy from Iraq there was a couple other countries and we spoke about games like how do we design and what are the characters and how you do how do you show modesty even and the differences are insane like the the different customs and clothing and how you fold your clothing and in Iraq if you show demons that's forbidden you have so many and the colors that you use I'm not even speaking about Japan in the Far East that if you all giving somebody a white rose or a watch you're actually telling them hey you have a limited time with me it's like something you go to a funeral and give a person so I think you need to know the cultural first the basic things when you design a game right and I think

that's that that's that's the key words and in terms of skin color I think we are still a very stigmatic culture we see a black person for us in our subconscious it relates to our fathers and grandfather's education that is burned into a DNA movies are still doing that and we are doing that less than before but I think we are not that inclusive yet for people of color in the game industry and you've seen that like what is the percentage of black people actually working as key members of game designers again Developers right so we need to be more inclusive we we need to understand that skin doesn't mean anything for us because we see something and it's different for us it's maybe we want to work or want that group like homogeneous group to be similar to us but the similarity

is not external is actually the internal we want great people to walk with us we are we want to create great games together and in order to imagine and create that creativity we need beautiful people inside we don't care about we don't need to care about the outside that doesn't have to be a factor right so that's that's our problem as developers still and I think we need some work as a society to to go next time I value the word respect and I think we should always you know talking you know when we build games and we work together we should forget about religion politics race gender and I think games can really be the powerful tool to change and and impact on such Direction and but again in your perspective and you what can we do to promote this more

again a very big question um I think it comes from education and not necessarily within the schoolyard but when in ourselves learn more about people learn more about different cultures research um if you want to make a game about the Arabian Nights for example talk to people from that region do your research learn get people from that Community involved in the game it shouldn't come down to color or race or religion it's Someone putting information into a computer anyone should be in that position to be able to do it I feel yeah and and continuing what you just mentioned yes it's not just in the schoolyard for me it's on games that we play in media that we consume if we see more black people in key roles if we see more women and more culture not taking the side of stigmatic right when we see first person shooters

I'll try not to be rude but who do you think we always fight the specific races and specific regions that are always the bad guys and there are specific regions that are the good guys we are still creating that differentiation we are basing that on conflicts that happen in World War one and before that right so we are actually making that happen right we are saying that those characters have those characteristics so then when you meet those characters in in reality you like your first impression is like yeah that those are right those are the bad guys those are the mentions those are the guys who haggle those those are the guys which are the bankers right it's and and I'm speaking on myself as a Jewish person right we we went through that for so many years to have that stigmatic impression so I think we need

to create more media we need to mistake more we need to learn more and create that mirror that we all consume more and more especially the Young Generation on the mobile devices and create that narrative that is not one-sided that's how we change and I think if we're talking about inclusive inclusivity and diversity we also have to bring into account neurodivergence um a vast majority of people within gaming industry are neurodivergent I am um the world didn't quite fit us so we literally built our own world that fitted us exactly and so all of this is inclusive as you mentioned with a site impaired member of staff this is also diversity and inclusion it brings in everything and I want to add to uh two more items to the debate so the first one is accessibility we are more and more need to include um handicap people in our process they are not

uncapable there are not a stone that you put at the side of the room because you need an a handicapped person they can do so many things they can compete in Olympics for God's sake day one Olympics so we have to take that into account and also something that we are not talking about in the game industry ageism look on the most most of the of the game studios are consisting out of people around the ages of 30 maybe 40. would you see people with a lot of experience in the game industry that are 55 65 right I'm I'm really fortunate that in another company that I'm part of as a Founder we all of the people there which are nine currently about 10 years over me at least so there are 55 60. amazing guys sex Google and apple but they are if we'll look on that we're like they're

old can they still do something for the society yes old for me it's here it's in the mind I've met I'm I met I met in Sweden the Counter-Strike Champion which is Sweden is 82 I think and I met him and I was like yeah I beat young people all the time they they don't believe me when I show them show them my picture but but he's a champion so we have to think about that as well life doesn't end when you're 50. so it's I hope not I hope not that's two in two and a half years in the future for me so hopefully not good promo for us for our 50s thank you and I I think yes people with disabilities from a personal experience in the past beginning of this year we started to build capacity of certain people with disability mental physical Etc and to be

honest with you I I had to go through building capacity of my team first to make sure that they are dealing in the right way we had we got an expert who helped us to build our you know capabilities in terms of working with those people with disabilities but when when you work with them you realize that you are the one who with disability not taking them in in account all those years and when you look into the you know the culture that we have when whenever we want to build the game for supporting them we build it within their needs of disabilities or within their you know we should know we should you know think about them as as you said they are part of this community they are part of the and they are as much smart as as we are and not sometimes even more our experience with the with our colleague who's visually impaired I joked about it the first I told them

that I took me personally six weeks to train one of my team members to be able to present Unity as a platform it took me less than one week with this person with a visual impaired to present ten times better the unity platform than the one with a a full functional eyes so they they might all sometimes be more clever more smarter and they have abilities that we need to as an industry to start dealing with it and and and the reason for that is that as a disabled person you are overcoming obstacles as part of your day the day-to-day routine what for you is I get up in the morning I go brush my teeth I go to work I go I'll go on the bus I find the data that I need for them it's a struggle but they are getting used to that they are like okay we have the tools we have the methods we can do

everything just understand our limitations but also understand how we turned our limitations into advantages right so I think that's just another breed which is amazing to work with and we need to give them a chance and I think again it does come back to the idea that this is your player's Market this is these are the people that will be playing your games so if you have people of different races different abilities different neurodivergences different Sexes different genders everything that's your player base as well so it gives you a better informed product Charlie from your experience having you know seeing a lot of game developers game companies is it is there a good example worldwide for a game or a studio that you think that they did a good job in inclusivity or in creating a game okay yeah um so I also run the the women in games twitch and we have variety streamers so every week we've got

different streamers they play different games one in particular the outer worlds um my streamer was playing it and stopped and just broke down into tears like proper subs and subs of tears and these were happy tears tears of absolute Joy because she had never seen herself positively represented within a game for her sexuality her neurodivergency and her body type and her skin color and she saw herself in such a positive light that for 20 minutes she couldn't do anything but cry from from just Joy that's the power and responsibility that we have I'm Scottish as I've said the Scottish people are not generally well represented in in media in films Uncharted Journey to the Center of the Earth the King's Men all have the same lazy Trope of the drunk fighting unintelligible Scots

and this is my culture and it's a joke for other people and it takes nothing for a games company to ask a person of that culture to you know can you check this is this okay is that right but I would say the game I'm working on is gonna be awesome and that's going to be a really good example but because of NDA I can't say anything about it good we know that there is a game against coming for for me I want to add something on that and it's not a specific Studio but it's highly important to have a focus on representation um even visually of culture and um ethnicity and gender in games and most of the games we've seen the debate around the latest Star Wars but are you really representing women in role-playing games with the minimal armor on their on the body is this still

happening is still the specific makes will always be that frail person or women and that struggle that Warrior like mascular Warrior will be that huge human being which is mostly tanned and kind of a Taurus like a black person are we still holding on those stigmatic design teams and I would I would love to say that I love games around the ages of also showing the sensitivity of men and how they face stressful situations like this war this world of mind which is dealing with decision making when we are in that situation of a conflict do we choose to save somebody else do we choose to serve ourselves are we helping our children they had that DLC for this war of mine with the kids so I I noticed that I played the game differently when

I'm a father in the game I'm a father in reality and I'm thinking those situations are highly sensitive so how do we portray them to players is it just a game where we're strategically taking tanks and just attacking everyone without the consequences War always have consequences right life is precious and we need to remember that and represent that as well when we are speaking about violence right we don't need more violence we need more peace so for me we have to remember that sensitivity level I I totally agree and I think we are uh you know I think this is a good end of uh the day one of the sessions I'm I'm I'm always and this is a sincere and you know my team Whenever there is a a woman involved in the game industry I always tell my team we have a better games and this is a reality and I see it through my my growing team uh peace is

our talk always since we know each other we have a common discussion always we disagree and we agree but there is a respect despite the complex politics neighborhood and we always meet in every conference and we have this discussion and I think the respect is the common background always thank you guys and I hope that we managed to to get our message out thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you