Panel: Games for Good

[Music] hey thanks everybody for coming over to talk about this very very interesting topic I think there's a lot of interest in gaming now to do good good with games and you guys have all had your experiences thoughts everything we're gonna share a lot today but I wanted to start off with hearing your relationship with doing good with games so let's start the thunders there with the new microphone yeah it works I can hear it myself well my personal experience has mostly been from the game side and that's the signal as a company I think that's like two approaches we've done a lot of learning games which for me has some

kind of games for good incentive as a company as manufacturer we have chosen to do some games other years that that were like maybe not financially the the best choices but I actually had some kind of altruistic value like we did I came for nearly new parents so there's a communication game so they learned to talk to chip to each other and communicate about being parents to help lowering divorce rates in Denmark which was really interesting projects and then our good partner cyber games are part of this playing for the planet initiative I know you guys are involved as well I guess we'll hear more in the next section as well where Sam from the UN will talk about it so so we're trying to get into to playing to the player as well so that's kind of my take on it cats so I had a largely business background so I would always been in

business development a highly commercial companies like Nittis but I'm really starting a journey with doing good with gays with starting wings interactive which is a fund that invests in games of it by female gamers and diverse teams so 97% of game investor's are male there's a 80 cents of game developers also male there's a strong skew in the games industry and that has manifested as well in the content and also impacts the players and I don't think that incidents such as gamergate is really a coincidence I think that is those creditors are born out of the overall industry and content that has arisen from these circumstances so really looking to create a more socially

fair and just industry and content and community a community around peace in control hello so I guess for me personally I guess I've always seen games or our industry as a way that we could somehow do more than we're doing or we have such an ability to reach so many people and I think if we were to use that reach for something good even in small ways we could make a massive difference and so I think at my company now so it's sort of always been the person who would implement any type of CSR initiative if you can call it that we don't actually have that role but so whether it's student mentoring or I'm part of the green initiative in our company as well like Anders mentioned we joined the plane for the planet Alliance and if you're around you should listen to Sam's talk after this cuz he'll talk more about that and then maybe like a year

ago or so I thought oh you know what I'm sure tons of other people think the same and would like to use games for more the same way that we use folks or music or film you know they they tell us about yeah just like what it's like to be human and we can reach people with that and so tomorrow actually we're gonna have an event around games for good on a larger scale and you can see like this room is pretty full our events also sold out there's a wait list like I think there's so much interest in this space in particular which is is amazing yeah glad I got my ticket Early's Nicolina so hi my name is Nick Alina seeded I'm a co-founder and CEO pirate studio it's not that altruistic because reactionary commercial studio but what makes us different is that you know we opposed to making gains for women and lgbtq+ audiences today 50% of the gamers on a mobile erases female

discusses said 80% of the developers a male and honestly I find it ridiculous so I started the studio which default value is diversity if you want to make games for diverse audiences we shall have representative of diverse audiences making those games so be a 70% female 10% and binary 20% male about 60% of our employees represent themselves as LGBTQ plus we have young parents working there who can bring their children to work because we have a nanny on-site we welcome animals at work most of our team vegans so all our events we have diversity of food as well they come from different backgrounds we have people from Vietnam Pakistan I'm Croatian my co-founder is Brazilian you know we have Iranian so the 25 people we come from everywhere and we are really deeply diverse in every aspect I come from different backgrounds as well I have a background in

commercial gaming our corroboree next games a lot of our people are still juniors so we are basically trying to be as diverse as possible to really represent how do we follow that that's tough show isn't it so I work at mag we make quiz and word games and games that you know have a good heart wholesome games I think and I think different states of some of these people which is about three months ago I realized that we could be doing a lot more than we can we have a really good opportunity here to do more things with our games reach more people tell more valuable messages so I'm sort of representing the people that there might be here that have just starting on that journey and I'll tell you where I've got you so far okay I think that opportunity is huge so at least in the last two days I've been talking to four different startups who have a mission to do good there's a lot of things happening on the environmental side so climate change

related missions for companies to save the planet things like that which is like definitely needed but what do you guys think about the kind of for-profit commercial opportunity to build something that's venture back abour ha what do you see the opportunity there to build something a company that could grow huge I mean I can speak for my behalf you know about our company about diversity and inclusion because there's so many studies out there I mean if you just google diversity in industry you will find a dozen be reliable studies which all tell you the same thing having more diverse teams it's more proper thirty to forty percent the numbers vary but these are the numbers to looking at so if you are already successful if you become more diverse you're going to be thirty percent more profitable and I don't see why we wouldn't invest in that because it's just good business you know

so this is just a start up this is not something that's niche or you know good too good to have because we are good people I think it's a necessity for business to develop and grow I see a general trend actually not just in games but in business and as a consumer trend a desire for products which are good in some way so a recent study showed that brands which had a purpose like a good social purpose of where two times the rates of brands which had no purpose what very product ticking like the fashion world which I always live business trends sustainability is a massive issue and some of the fastest-growing fashion brands are sustainably German from the business and the corporate side there's a growing number of alliances that big

ports where of businesses that have a social profit behind their social social purpose rather than do good in society yeah I think it's just like a general shift in consciousness that's starting to happen and I actually think that if you try to fight that current you're gonna get left behind like you see so much more around like impact investing and stuff these days or you know you've got Howard Buffett who started a fun just for companies who are also going to try to make some kind of social impact dude who's gonna be speaking tomorrow she's in Davos right now and they're having a panel with UNDP and CNBC around you know what are some of the ways that we can tackle climate change in innovative ways like these things are coming to the world stage and I think yeah if we don't keep up we're just gonna be left in the dust and example

just last week we had some of our players asking us you know can you create a way for us to be able to donate towards the australis Australis fire relief cause and like when your players are asking you that that means they're already ahead of you right like really we should be thinking of this stuff and that's something we just trialed last week and we created bundles just so our communities could be able to donate through our games and we can donate that money to the estrella the relief effort and we still have to figure out like what are they learning around that is that gonna cannibalize some of our revenue from the weekend that we might have used on the bundle and all of these things but I think we have to start trying this stuff because otherwise our communities are gonna go somewhere else so I've seen their ogre friends that were at slush that made that their business really has environmental issues at the heart and they they found they've find it very easy to get VC conversations released and I think that's gonna work out I think you can't be exclusively hitches environmental things in and of

themselves there has to be a product that people want or in our case again that people won but I think to align yourself with something that consumers want to align themselves with is a good way to get your business going Nick Nick Alena can I ask you how do when you recruit people for like a diversity like what what's it like don't you risk the the like you you choose people for diversity rather than their competences how what's your processor no actually we don't and that's one of the most common misconceptions and there's no competent diverse people of course they are you just have to streamline you have to know how to look for these people have to very careful how you phrase your job ads if you're looking for a rock star you know handyman if you're looking for a handyman how can you expect non-binary person a woman to apply for this job because they already feel this is not for them so it's very careful process and it's like it's a learning process as well that we actually redefine our job ads and our interviewing process to

really make sure that it's that we are open and welcoming to the diverse applicants as well and it's working now we are getting more and more actually diverse applicants and when we started the company so this is something is working those people do exist but very often they also feel they're not really welcomed because gaming industry you know when you walk in a record number average gaming studio ya know it's mostly young white male and it can be very scary and so people just think all you know I don't know Oh they'd rather do something else do you guys think that like gaming game development needs to change what kind of company do you need to have because oftentimes it it is so much about like you know having a game idea building a game what needs to change there to actually facilitate good with games oh I would say like sustainability of the business as well I mean if you're just making one game and this is the whole

core of business if I would be invested with never investing that to tell her the truth yes he's supposed to me that makes no sense have you for trying to build something in a long term just most probably - if it's a team coming together your minds huge pressure for the team you have delivered on time and make the game it's gonna be success otherwise you're running money if you're looking something it's sustainable in a long term you have to look also to build sustainable teams so the work with people with whom you generally want to work because you know I've been a head of production and the worst problem is to work with people who are competent but therefore what to work with because you don't get much out of their competence I would have called in rockstars I will call the problem I think I don't suffice saying that I have a history in games that came from the console and PC games and I think that we didn't realize at the time but we really set back by the fact that we had just a bunch of men in their 20s and 30s making game for men games for people in men

into their 20s and 30s and it took like 20 25 years before we started make a different set of games and as soon as we did then you found out there's a wave the audience than we thought there was it's just we're in a habit and making the same game over and over but they don't think we're all the way over there yeah I mean if as you say if you look in any work environment you can see it's typically the same set of people so there's further to go and I think when we do get a bit further then we'll start to see different results better salts I think to me it's also like I think from a company standpoint I think it just needs to be the founders that have that problem at heart and what to do something about it it's worse starts if there's no like willingness to do anything in the the ownership of the company that's basically nothing to be done so it's often I also think it's difficult to do that with all the companies to make that change it's easier to do that from the beginning and find partners that actually have that the games so good thought and there are the mindset from the beginning turning around an old ship

takes maybe 25 years you know so so I think it's you asking what kind of company I think in a company with owners that care about it listen so many different aspects of way that you can do good with Kings so there is like a diversity aspect there's also things about like accessibility making sure all that your games are accessible to people different accessibility issues and there's even ways where just directly giving fortune or profits to the charity or through your games might say like obtaining directly to players and helping them to donate to charity there's like a ton of different ways that can be done but as you say it's it's pretty about leadership and an intention yeah no I think Cass is right I think sometimes we think like we just have to make a game that to do the good and the premise for the game has to be

this lofty idealistic thing but not necessarily like existing companies who are making games can find small tweaks and their existing games to make a difference or you can just do it through your company culture you know like is it through diversity is it for example like our company is is going carbon- and like everybody is on board with that and we think that's going to make a difference because oh hopefully we can help other people get on board too and other students get on board too so you know can be through your product it can be through your company it can be through your community that you're trying to reach there's not just one way yeah the way I mean what occurred to me before Christmas was that I'm thinking about why why candy crush is worth the same amount of money as Star Wars and at first I didn't understand that mass and somebody explains to me that they reach and the fact that people play can if people want watch Star Wars twice a year where people play candy crush every day you know millions and millions of people play it every day so in our industry our reach is what seems to be the most

valuable thing we have every day for an hour a day people are playing our games and I think we could do more of them we are currently doing as an industry there that seems to be and we can be carbon neutral and carbon negative with the 80 people that we have in our office but it feels there's a bigger win to be doing if we if we're comfortable saying something in our games and some form or other that seems to be where we have the most potential those games are a cultural product I think nature of most gifts can somewhat master the cultural aspects that like Gainesville situated in but actually they will all have messages of some kind like the kind of characters that are the leads in your game we have reinforced certain stereotypes could reinforce as fire types negative stereotypes if you're not careful could reinforce could if you lack certain types of people and your game we don't we'll try them that's also kind of

a political message and that can have a negative impact upon your players say I feel erased so having careful thought about like we thought your contact could do people messages that you contend could happen it's definitely worth fault I agree and implemented that I don't think it's a clear choice anymore and they're like in five years who can make that choice not to have those characters and like that the players are just gonna punished I think there's been a couple of indie games recently we have done well because they've deliberately sort of won for the controversial no blow always be those yeah that's the figure the bigger the games the bigger the companies I think the more the need would be to actually make that change good point have you guys seen really good examples where basically the audience could learn a lot even like if you want to reach out from outside of gaming like why have you

guys seen well I think my child Lebensborn but reward for gives me under the table couple years ago that's why set up the studio and it's I never knew about Laban thorne which is like a children born of German soldiers and local region woman from Second World War who are treated terribly badly when they're growing up in Norway and that's a simulation game where you have to like take care of poor class who think it's bullied at school and you have to choose what dialogue to say to every you feel like terrible and it was like wow it really helps grow your empathy and it really helps them understand what it's like for the situation of someone being born in that situation and sorry and that was actually quite popular in China so now people understand through that game the specific like further empathy

and understanding I think it's very important message or potent empathy to learn at this point tickly with most of those children of Isis soldiers who are completely innocent I bought do be punishment for the takeover for the parents have done if you keep claim my table is like you're really not gonna go down yeah I got obsessed with a game recently and yeah no I just I met with Elin as well who made the game and yes it's like a wonderful way of trying to portray like the other and what do we think of the other and even if we think we're open-minded are we really and yeah so that game really struck a chord for me to find games as a medium whereby the consumer has to interact with it does not not like you there's some other definitions of games where I must have a victory condition

but then in that case with my practice in the game but I think the interactive element of games me is that there are so much opportunities to develop empathy with because you couldn't pay for a first-person perspective so often that game developers could think about ways that they can leverage that to to open Pete plays - to the new protectors I have an example on the other end of the spectrum which is a much more subtle one but different idea so we'll make subway surfers are putting these solar panels on their roofs and we psyche winds in their streets and it's just it's not trying to it's just trying to normalize you know boost sometimes have solar panels on and why wouldn't you have recycle bins and if you can just start to just make that normalizes and there's again we've got two and a half billion downloads just reaching so many people and it's just better just start getting used to it I love that idea

like family inspiring yeah and Sabo games with it the game they're like really also in the forefront of like co2 allowances and green vestments and stuff out like there's a lot of these serious games that I remember from early on like there's one called September 12 where you play as a you basically pump terrorists and every time you bombed them mortars arrived because people are mourning the the casualties and this this remember some of these serious games and news games have been made like an impact for me anyway but but I don't you know there's not not profitable games I guess it's more like art statements or new statements so that's always it like a difference as you mentioned like you can you do stuff like somewhere surface did and like a more subtle messages normalize stuff or you can do like the the news game that really dive deep into a subtopic or you can do a company-wide you know like we took the train took Gamescom you have to prove a point at one point like

it's it's so many ways you can do this I think it's like it's difficult to have this topic games for good as in 30 minutes it's there yeah 30 year talk have been commercially successful and have serious topics I actually think that's a minor trend so for example peace peace that's really dealing with immigration and like will make make an adjustment of choices and it's more of mine as well exploring what it's like to survival in a really serious like that coming out to nature and they may bar fight dances but what can ask a question about that do you think it's better to focus game production energy on to building a game lose you describe that has as probably well it would be a smaller audience or do you think you you in

terms of where to spend energy you're better off spending something that can be a massive audience but you maybe give a more subtle message how do you decide where to spend your energy I don't know ask nobody asked me and you think because no sorry this is something that to be lit because we were looking for investing this is something that you found really often they they're like oh so your founding value is diversity so you're not commercial no you want to make a top 10 crossing game because that's how send a message I think you send a message when you have a billion dollars and nobody can ignore you and then I'm gonna speak on every conference about this by myself so this is our goal so I think that you know when you have that commercial success you've cut it's much harder to be ignored and it is a much harder to me it's not mutually exclusive it okay yeah yeah sorry yeah unfortunately we're

running out of time we need to continue this at the next Pocket Gamer slowly improve so yeah big round of applause people will be outside [Applause] we're gonna take QA outside of the actually we can take a couple of questions here thank you yeah let's see yes they're over there all right let's do you have any thoughts on games in the classroom or is that a little bit irrelevant on what games in the classroom like his teaching methods I like a very disappointed you but I need to teach English and I would always miss games like that was the best way to teach the kids to gain their attention and like it's keeping about things as their system where you train people

again engaging yeah there's lots of exactly even my child leave and scorn is bringing being brought into the classroom now or if you're uk-based digital schoolhouse they do a ton around play based learning which is really interesting I suggest you check them out I think it's interesting with learning games I made a ton of learning games early on in my life and it's really like it's really difficult to I think actually more often than not to learn more from games that are not officially learning games and then the actual learning games because they get to be so like focused only around the learning and actually not the fun I was just thinking I know I know every single capsule the world the cause of where enough is comments on da couch exactly yeah and you know a lot of stuff about history from civilization right and there's all that stuff but it's it's definitely super super effective for the interactivity and learning so yeah I

think if they just said motivation start by playing the dynasty warriors well I hate shockwave the schools before the issue that I have is not making compelling software for to be taught in schools for getting super into schools in the first place it seems that systems for at least getting into UK schools are quite tough so that was a I was able to sell the product I wasn't able to solve the distribution so somebody figures there they love to know we have a question so with any talks of diverse you always get people who will automatically kind of just turn off or not listen to you and give like arguments against and things about how do you find that you often like combat those kind of people especially those in the industry I have a very thick skin you know basically Damona knows that you get I mean I can defeat any other movies numbers then gives me confidence because data is on my side and everything else is noise as

a person I have a thick skin samake yeah yeah you know you can talk but you know numbers work for me yeah exactly exactly much easy honest and I know if eventually everybody has to come with this part because like numbers don't lie and I always some think that like bigotry is very much in service of mediocrity right if so for for example like if you are know performing man one method of keeping of status is by artificially lowering the competition by fifty percent exactly them sorry why do it's great lights that's a discrimination so alright thank you very much thank you the panelists and the moderator please [Applause]

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