Ripple Effect: How Women-in-Games Initiatives Make a Difference

[Music] good morning everybody hello and welcome to our panel ripple effect how women in games initiatives make a difference my name is Stephanie Fisher and I'm the panel chair I just want to remind everyone please turn off your cell phones and please fill out your speaker evaluations after this presentation and before we start I just want to let everyone know how we're actually going to run the panel so all of us up here got our start in games via a community run wig initiative and we're each going to give a short micro talk on so you can get a sense of who we are what we do and how we've gone you know from a program participant to our current positions or something generally like that after that we'll have a conversation that's gonna be focused on providing strategies and resources on how to get more women into games as well as how to work towards creating a more diverse and inclusive industry post panel will be in the wrap-up room but we're only gonna do that for 10 minutes and this is just for exchanging contact info and business cards but please feel free to connect via email and Twitter too ok so Who am I

I am a gender in games researcher from York University in Toronto I'm a co-lead for a research project called refiguring innovation in games or Refik for short I also belong to a lost generation of women who played games growing up but for a myriad of reasons didn't think they could have a career in this industry back then when I was a child there were not a lot or you know none no game developing or coding initiatives that specifically targeted women or girls nowadays this is clearly not the case there's a lot of programs where kids can learn how to make games and how they can learn how to code both in person and online these are just a handful in 2011 I found myself managing one of these kids game development camps at my university and even though my role in this camp was as a manager and a curriculum developer the kids would still ask me for programming or code related questions when they needed help in game maker and it sucked when I

couldn't help them I had to admit that I couldn't help them with their code I felt like a poor role model for the girls in the camp who looked up to female staff members I really wanted to learn how to make more games but I was just the start of my PhD and between work and school more work that really left me with little time or money to do anything else so what was I gonna do and why I can only describe as like an incredibly stroke of good luck my research partner forwarded me over information for a women and games program that was accepting applications in Toronto this program is called the difference engine initiative and it sought to bring more women into the Toronto game scene by helping 12 aspiring game developers make their first game in six weeks for free no experience required perfect by the end of this program I had made a game but I'd left was so much more I was so inspired by the potential of this community program and so impressed by the women who were a part of it that I actually changed my dissertation topic from educational games to exploring the

impact of Whig programs so I'm not gonna bore you with five years of research findings because this is neither the time nor the place but if I could sum it up in two and also that takeaway sentence it's that Whig initiatives that provides free support and training for adult women who want to make games not only gets more women into this industry but it also contributes to creating a diverse and inclusive game culture in the long run oops sorry so while that might be a really obvious statement to someone who's already engaged in community organization work you know not everyone actually thinks this way or sees the value in Whig initiatives some people think that focusing on special interest groups like women in games does not work towards cultivating a fair and equitable industry for everyone and they actually say it's going to lead a further discrimination and division among us so for example in reference to the outcomes of the difference engine initiative specifically these are some things that's been stated about it initiatives like the de eyes don't do an adequate job of addressing or actually

treating the systemic systemic biases that have made the games industry culture less diverse and less healthy the Dei was designed as a creative space where people could challenge themselves develop their abilities and learn alongside each other in a warm and encouraging environment instead it was viewed as a support group scored and necessitated by a reaction to an unequal social world where learning was secondary to the formation of bonds and relationships that description of the difference engine initiative was very surprising to the people who were actually in it we certainly didn't feel that it was this failure in the way it was being described especially when the second iteration of the difference engine initiative received almost a universal praise for being a great success this visualization which was created by the talented you know Lee also a Difference Engine alum and who's in the audience today demonstrates the impact of the program mere months after it ended it's a little small but every node in here represents

the game's Community Initiatives employment opportunities presentations or exhibitions that Dei participants were involved in and this is included you know organizing monthly meetups running our participating in game jams you know speaking at conferences applying for funding exhibiting our games and in addition to that we still did just you know we did this work in our own time and we made more games on top of that so if that's what failure look like it looks like maybe we should strive to fail more often so you know meaningful cultural change is a slow process it takes time a six-week wig program cannot change the industry overnight but that really doesn't mean we should write off or give up on wig initiatives as a lost cause you know all too often positive outcomes of initiatives like the Dei are forgotten or they're overshadowed by this kind of thirst to tell and repeat bad news stories about women in games or women in games groups and you know we all know these stories by heart now women are too

sensitive or emotional we need to grow a thicker skin if we want to be a part of this industry diversity initiatives are negatively framed as handouts or a special treatment my personal favorite that we're all feminist you can't get along and we'd rather tear each other down than build each other up I don't know about you but I think we need some new stories and that's why we're here today as participants organizers and supporters of the diversity initiatives we stand before you today as the best evidence that web programs can and do make a difference and so without further ado I'm really honored to introduce the pan Segan Yi is the executive director of the hand/eye society the video games are collective in Toronto Rebecca Cohen flashiest is the co-founder and current director of pixels which is a montreal-based she

is also a dev at Ubisoft Montreal zoe quinn is an independent game developer and the co-founder of crash override a support network and assistance group for victims and targets of unique forms of online harassment and Gemma Thompson is an independent game designer chair of diversity Sweden co-founder of lady Kaede and Chae hack to save space communities which promote the enjoyment and creation of games respectively [Applause] and so as this panel is going to demonstrate there's many paths to making wig initiatives and diversity initiatives work and they're not always straightforward or expected thank you I will turn it over to sagen hello everyone so I'm gonna blast right through this you don't have a lot of time so I'm sagen ye I'm executive

director of the hand-eye Society which is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to supporting videogames made as a form of creative expression rather than a commercial product and you know they're the ones that sort of organize the difference engine to begin with so now that I'm actually running the show it's kind of this again this whole circle motif I didn't have time to put together an awesome ripple map but I did kind of put together some major milestones and kind of my spiral like journey to how I got here and I think this is kind of important to show these professional and personal artistic trajectories to demonstrate the impact difference engine had on my life because of if it hadn't happened none of the things I'm about to talk about would have happened and I had a slide here with the poster for the butterfly effect with Ashton Kutcher's face on it and then I decided to not do that so first time context I I just graduated in 2011 I just graduated from a four-year classical animation program I moved to Toronto with no job prospects and a lot of time on my hands and I sümbül have found the application for Dei bike

randomly googling Toronto video K and the first thing that came up was this application and they were taking six women who had never made a game before who were interested in and it was I signed up because it was free there was gonna be free food number isn't number one one reason to be I enjoyed playing games but I never really tried making one before and another thing I wasn't making was money and I had really nothing better to do but also one major thing that I only realized later on was really important was that it was aimed specifically at women and I even though I words like feminism and adversity weren't really on my radar at the time I don't think that I'm not sure I would have applied if it hadn't been just for women about detail really caught my attention because it made me feel like my presence would be expected and accounted for and it wouldn't be yet another tuition where I'd walk into the room and be the only woman there and have to navigate that situation socially by myself and I was also working on like this earthbound animation that I don't have time to talk about so Difference

Engine one I made my first game called Icarus which you just saw and we were barely finished with first difference engine when the coordinators asked me if I would like to be one of two different Engine 1 participants to lead the second version of the program the second participant being Yuna Lee who may be amazing ripple graphics that you saw in there in the beginning and I was like I've only made one game in my life and it was the one I just made through your program and it's not even over yet and you're asking me to lead the second workshop and they were like yeah yeah and then this was such a bold move on their part that I assumed they knew what they were doing and um so I don't necessarily think that was the most qualified person to co-lead that workshop but everyone had a really positive time and as we will hear all six participants are still working in or around the game's community to some degree whether working in a studio or exhibiting their work at festivals or in Rebecca's case co-founding their own organizations and I've even collaborated with a few former participants on game projects again I didn't make a ripple

tool this was a six-week workshop for animators like Gordon coordinated in 2014 with Matt Hamill who's the artist on lovers in a dangerous space-time and I bring this up briefly so I can mention paloma Dawkins who made her first game dream warriors through this program and she later went on to make garden area which was showcased GDC mild rumpus last year as well as many other festivals in arcades and that's like another example of how someone goes through a wig program and then they start running nan wig programs but it's still like women mentoring other women because you really want to like pay that forward and gain curious is a really major milestone for a number of reasons this is a program I coordinated from 2013 to 2015 aimed at reaching arts communities outside of the traditional gamer Network and encouraging people to explore the medium on their own terms and I like to pitch it as a book club with buttons and so oddly enough when you start making an active attempt to draw in people from outside the group of people who self-identify as gamers we're actually going to different communities rather than trying to make them come to you

things tend to get less white male and heteronormative so the impact of this was that game curious mature ended up attracting a very diverse pool of participants and volunteers many of whom continued to be involved with hand/eye activities years after the first program it led to an increase of women people of color and non people of nine non-binary genders in paid positions and leadership roles within hand/eye society and it started and because of this then that also in turn led to the inclusion of safer spaces policies conversations around anti-russian frameworks for staff and volunteers and again this is all because of the difference engine initiative if I hadn't gone through that program then I wouldn't have been asked to lead this program and I wouldn't have led it in the way that I had if I hadn't done a wing program in the first place and if you're interested in strategies for growing a diverse inclusive community we have actually gotten funding from an organization called Refik to create a community toolkit and that's gonna continue strategies in programming for creating similar initiatives and that's

we're working with the Mount Royal game Society in Montreal as well and these are some game projects that I've worked on and two of these games a long time coming and plunk prison power which actually ended up being shown at indicate night games last year were both prototype tat Dame's making games jams which is another big program in Toronto so these are some quick notes about just my trajectory and becoming IDI so some important notes was that I was not only supported and encouraged to take on greater leadership positions but also given freedom to make programming decisions with very little interference or pressure and the result was that I never felt tokenized or that I was just being used as a diversity figurehead I was you know really a leader and being accepted for my personal abilities I became involved with other organizations I'm game-related some not for example allied media conference that focused on social justice issues and I learned a

lot of valuable frameworks of equity and community building outside typical sort of gaming spaces and my experiences as both a participant and coordinator of a wig program has greatly influenced how I make organizational programming decisions as actor of a non wig organization that's been around for longer than I have so I kind of inherited this nylon wig organization but it was sort of a wig organization that influence how I ran it and although difference engine no longer exists they kind of ran out of funding they like did it twice and then kind of got forgotten for a long time I continue to be supported by and draw inspiration from other wig programs to this day specifically Dame's making games again in Toronto and pixels and I'm still learning so thank you very much okay good morning everybody you're all awake and that is fantastic

so I'm Rebecca and I am a game developer and Triple A games that Ubisoft Montreal I've been working as a UI developer artist for about two and a half years now but I'm also the co-founder and director of pixels and if you don't know about pixels it's a nonprofit organization well that's me a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering women to create games through self-discovery encouragement community and accessible learning we host a variety of free programs like workshops mentorship writers group yearly incubator and my personal favorite T Cade which is a tea parlor Arcade event five years ago five years ago I was a programmer at a tech startup Silicon Valley style and my only experience with games was playing big ones made by hundreds of people out of renowned

studios I couldn't even fathom how they were made or were to even get started in this like big amorphous cloud that is called game development but one day my friend told me about a video game incubator for women called the difference engine initiative and it helped six women make the first game there was no experience required and this just really reached out and spoke to me somewhere in the back of my mind I had always always always wanted to make games but how do you even gamedev anyway so over the course of six weeks I made my first game and I was with five other really amazing women and we were supported each other throughout this game making process what was really important about this experience for me aside from making a video game was this aspect of solidarity coming from the tech scene where you had to be one of the guys it was really really refreshing to be able to meet other cool women who not only played games but shared the same gendered experiences as me it was a

space where being a woman was okay and that in itself was really relevant it was this defining moment in my life and encouraged me to examine the power my identity had as a woman women are powerful women can make games and exist as women in spaces that are predominantly made up of men and my journey continued on from there I moved back to Montreal and ended up staying there when feminists and games approached me to run a difference engine in Montreal and at the time despite the numerous amount of studios there was nothing dedicated to women in games so in January 2013 my co-founder Tanya short and I ran the pixels game incubator where we helped 10 women make their first game and for this program we received over 65 applications and it was really really clear that Montreal needed some support structure for women who wanted to be in games and from their pixels just expanded we

started a mentorship program where game developers can mentor aspiring women in games and that much dup with a current game designer with an aspiring game designer so it was really kind of tailor made for this personal experience and I was still working for my tech startup at the time so I asked my mentor after I asked Tania for a mentor Nicola and he basically told me like what are you doing you don't need to go back to school you don't need to like hone special skills you have the skills right now as a web designer to do user interfaces in games so go apply and [Music] so I did and I got into Ubisoft Montreal and it was just like whoa its kind of reflection back on this like starting experience in a wig program and I've been I've shipped about two games now and I'm working on my third but just unannounced but it's really exciting and

what's the take of what's important to take away from my life story is that women and game initiatives have these long-term effects they won't solve gender and diversity overnight but they have this incredible power to change lives and from pixels we have a ripple effect which is also inspired by unis fabulous work and it shows the activities participants from the pixels game incubator have done just one year later so they've made like games they run workshop they've gone to game jams they lead their own community programs and it just carries the cycle of new makers inspiring new makers and that is really really exciting so what's important to take away is that women and other diversity initiatives do work and if someone tells you otherwise then they clearly have no idea what they're talking about thank you

hi I'm Zoe Quinn I'm going to be coming at this from a bit more of a personal angle so you don't have sides I'm just going to kind of talk at you probably not surprising for anybody that's familiar with my work I came to the different sunshine incubator shortly after I had immigrated to Toronto with about two suitcases in the cat to try to make it as an artist in the big city because the biggest thing that scared me was possibly getting to 40 and never having tried to do the things I wanted to do somehow this led to beekeeping photography fire-spinning and eventually seeing a Facebook post on a friend's wall that advertised much like sagen free food and live in that starving artists lifestyle made it seem kind of appealing and I had been a huge nerd my entire life so I figured why not six weeks later I had made my first game which was called Dame game it was about

a person that was thought that she was a PI and was basically being a terrible roommate because eventually in an adventure game style because that basically means you're just taking people's stuff and doing whatever with it so I wanted to lampshade that and from there I got involved with a greater indie community and since then I'm going to sort of blip over any of the community organization stuff that I've done just because Sagan and Rebecca have done such a good job at explaining their experiences with their and more to focus on what I've done with my career as a maker so it's not just starting initiatives that that we tend to pay forward from these I've also created things like sorting hat which is actually a twine game that's modified to be a conversation between the player and this sort of sit like list of resources so be like so you want to make your first game cool do you need art and you say yes or no and it gives you a whole bunch of resources based on that at the end and sort of like I'm I've become an engineer like automating those conversations that I found myself having all the time similarly I've made games

are for everyone calm which is a sort of sister site that has a lot more resources for beginning game developers including things like meetups press outlets anything you need to take it forward beyond just making your first game I've also been in and the cool thing about these initiatives is that I'm not just a woman so a few of us are that we have a lot of us contain multiple identities so that this woman in games incubator actually brought a game developer into the space that made a game about mental illness that sort of blew up depression quest before I even got on Steam had close to 2 million players and was designed to sort of brings people who might not understand what living with depression was like into my own personal experiences of it to try to build that empathy and to make people that were living with us feel less alone so in a way this women in games incubator had an unlike probably unintended effect of also furthering the discussion around mental illness in our industry as well and it's important to remember when we talk about these incubators it's not the phrase women and minorities because so many of us are

both and more than that beyond that I've also looked at ways to try to make it more sustainable for people once they're actually here a lot of women in games initiatives do a lot to bring new people to this industry but in my current position I'd like to figure out how to help them stay I think at this point I don't need to explain how I've had an extraordinarily difficult time to continue to make games in this industry I think that's fairly well publicized at this point but I was also one of the first developers to get on patreon and to look at and to try to advocate for that and to look at sustainable production methods for people who you know might not make games that that belong on Steam to help support initiatives like HIO that help people distribute and you know be able to reach their audience outside of going through the mainstream kind of thing I also run I like to experiment with the form of games of games and game jams as well I ran a program called anthology based off of a conversation I had with a fingerstyle guitarist in Leeds where we were discussing our love of short sci-fi anthologies and wanting to be like oh it would be really cool if we had a game

version of that and actually Jemma was one of our participants and I think it was about 15 games that shipped some first time game makers everybody made their first made their games in 15 and srei and one month we managed to publish it and everybody got paid which was super cool the thing with these initiative diversity initiatives is that you have to look at it like planting seeds you might not see the benefit to it immediately because these things need to grow and as we grow these it's important to remember to try to attend our garden as we do it all these diversity if there's one thing all of these diversity firts could do I would also ask to encourage participants to make their own spaces if they enter the industry and find that then still feel like they might not belong here because so many of us have and I feel like when when independent projects like this happen and actively reach out to communities and say you can do this we come from a place where we start with that level of ooo awesome I can do this that means other people can do this let's help other people do this and that's something that gets overlooked a little

bit that this sort of cascading effect happens we start with the belief that it can be done that it's fine to be weird we are all weirdos anyway and telling people that they can build things for people that are they're kind of weird is a really empowering thing to do alongside game development but in the in the meantime I'm focusing trying to figure out how to make more women and and basically make more people that are dealing with any kind of oppression in the games industry stays so going beyond just these starting conversations I'm trying to mentor people mentorship should go beyond just the the initiative the initial things because once you get here it's very easy to have so many questions like how do I negotiate a contract what does porting look like all these things to not just run and start these things but to continue forward and I'd like to see more women stay I'd like to see more women held up as authors and leaders and visionaries for their amazing work and not just the bad that happens to us I'd like to see them flourish and not just survive I'd like to see them not have to fight the same battles we already have or on other

fronts of marginalization because at the end of the day despite the legendarily hard time I've had in this industry learning how to make games is still the best thing that's ever happened to me [Applause] [Music] hi yes my name is Gemma Thompson I'm a game designer and as you could probably tell by my accent I'm not even from the same continent as the rest of the panelists but I did find that my experiences in games culture in the industry forgot to strongly echoed bears my career began really with the game design degree course in which there were four women - some 46 men but things took a prom more prominent turn when I signed up to Europe's first all-female game jam in 2012 but experiences build new confidence in my work it started lasting friendships within this profession and despite that gender segregated premise

it reassured me that I could actually engage in male-dominated game culture or at least hazard was perceived I stand now in 2016 as chair of diversity an organization which works extensively with companies communities and individuals primarily in the Nordic region to promote and support a broad range of diversity efforts in and around games more relevant to this panel however I'm also the co-founder of three separate initiatives which as I'm about to explain have encouraged game creation and the celebration of games amongst hundreds of new shy or disheartened female identifying individuals across Northern Europe so in my case it all began in a 24 hour game jam event in London it was supported by a number of bodies including the UK's next-gen skills campaign and it's called xx game jam it was an all-female event arranged to coincide with Ada Lovelace day in October 2012 it led to the creation of six rather wonderfully with varied games including the first one I could actually claim to have been involved in from

start to finish it was also the first game jam I've ever attended and as I said that the friendships I've forged here had to reach well beyond the British shore line I have worked with xx Game Jam alumni at other events including list summit in Copenhagen and Helsinki and an collagen xx game jam also led 3 of us to found a women in games initiative of our own that initiative is called Lady Kate and I've been running it since 2013 with Holly Pickering and it's McKendrick it's an event which has sadly steadily gathered more pace as years have gone on and it's founded on the simple idea that women who make and enjoy games deserve a hangout space where they can feel safe and comfortable but need not worry about being a woman in industry nor will they have to spend the entire evening discussing how to get more women involved what we do is we hold social events and games showcases to which all genders are invited but where the attendee demographic is at least at least 50% female as in these

snapshots of our first event in Nottingham and later on in London which is the one shown on the right thus far we've held seven gatherings either as stand-alones or alongside an existing event we've worked to create events for three years running at game City and Nottingham and we opened up last year's creative Costa festival in Sweden roughly 450 attendees have come to these enjoying an atmosphere which many have described as disarmingly friendly and this tends to be a sentiment shared mostly by the men in attendance who we've found to be just as tired as we are of my own gender homogeneous events many of these attendees have also partaken at the games we showcase indie titles being made by women some of whom have never demonstrated on a show floor before but have been encouraged to do so after they decayed arcade that particular initiative works towards two goals providing a platform so that more women can feel at ease showcasing their games like that and tangibly proving that women are of course in these local

communities making excellent things it's this last point which I feel most strongly harkens back to my experience of the excess game jam and it's hard for me to understand the importance of this visibility on a personal level not least because as I mentioned that was the first one I felt comfortable attending I knew German to be a challenging activity and having previously not felt comfortable dealing with gross gender disparity at these events as well it added a bit of a relief to be honest well I can proudly say that game jamming is now one of the things I do it's a productive hobby which is taking me all over Northern Europe and it's taught me much about rapid iteration elemental game design as someone with very little coding ability it's also been an excellent me to keep making games outside of work I overcame that initial confidence barrier after having embarrassment about my gender removed from the equation but the same can't be said for everyone in the same way that they decayed drawers exhibitors and creators out into a community which they then realize can be inclusive I resolve to do the same for

game jams so it's a sideways step I am co-founder and vice chair of game jams calm a nonprofit which bears its purpose in its name we've run five events of various sizes so far and although our actual demographics do vary between events the general format has been the same positive outreach towards genders other than male swaging the fears of those who haven't jumped before and feel their skills aren't up to the challenge and ensuring we have sufficiently safe spaces and the facilities to cater for vulnerable people from many walks of life these efforts are being played out long term since one cannot conjure up a diverse community from nothing and in game Johnson's case we work to ensure that the Swedish capital fosters a steadily more inclusive jamming scene to that end here's a rough breakdown of the gender split at our larger events women and non-binary people are represented by the orange and black sections at the top left of each graph after less than two

years of operation it is of course hard to project any sorts of meaningful trends here but the bottom line is that we are bringing more women and girls into this hobby and the local game jam scene we find for example that work will spread among student bodies and local studios encouraging more of the women there to join in a huge driver for this trend is also gained drumstick homes collaboration with another outreach organization which specifically supports girls and women in making games myself and Game Jam Stockholm senior tech man are also cofounders of Chi hack a national a nationwide scheme in Sweden which runs regular game creation Club span of events for girls and women it began in 2014 with a free weekly after-school Club in a suburb outside of Stockholm city centre and this intentional move to bring game creation to families and the less social mobile paid huge dividends particularly for the girls we have involved who are aged from generally about 860 it's a pattern we hope to repeat in the wake of a recently completed Nationwide

Tour which took in seven towns and cities across mid and southern Sweden of those women we've involved in the club to have recently rejoined gains related education on paths towards professional programming and art respectively we've also eased theirs and other members paths into local game jam events what began with the girls and women only pajama Jam at the Royal College of Technology and Stockholm became a 29 member strong mentor their delegation at global game jam Stockholm 2016 the chief hackers got stuck into all manner of games including the one I've got running on a hat Jemma Arduino which I'll be showing later and that's primarily the handwork of ingot Eggman and Amandine Koji it's worth saying that with events like this and she hacks regular Club meetings our goal as with lady Kaede is not a train or push for more women to enter the industry nor are we really there to educate instead we promote the creation of games as an interesting endeavour in and of itself and simply find that as a national natural

extension of that these girls and women and Sweden are having their eyes open to vocations in game development and other related fields this is the essence of the ripple effect for me which I've just represented as a transit map at the XX Game Jam I joined a practical and creative exercise which had previously appeared for sale to my gender in the end I was reassured both in my abilities and in my right to create in all kinds of subtle ways and I have since spread that rather pure message to others in working with diversity I tried strive to pass a garden full message strive to pass that off message on for folks from other walks of life and indeed get involved in explicitly bringing more women into industry as without GDC scholarship this year ultimately though it seems that a gentler splash and smaller outlet ripples have managed to travel quite far enough for me and the things I've been working on given that calm is like 8000 600 kilometres away now

[Music] thank you everybody I think everyone's eager to have us talk about strategies and takeaway points so I guess my first question as are as you know what are some strategies that you guys can share from your experiences that you want to share with the audience who wants to go first I guess I can go first so pry of leading up to this panel and we were talking about well people will probably want to come away with some really concrete strategies for increasing women in their in their group or finding the women who are probably already there and so some interesting kind of observations came up I'm gonna name some of them and then maybe you guys can like chip in as well but like I kind of noticed that because I run a non

Whig organization I'm suddenly facing like a lot of the challenges of like because I've inherited this organization that's that was pretty homogeneous in terms of gender like it's mostly male mostly white males that come out to the events that we do so now that I'm in charge of the organization I just took over late last year so I'm wondering you know is my presence and the way that I run things going to turn that around in the long run because you know the whole reason that I got into this was because difference engine initiative was aimed at women but hand/eye society is not a wig initiative so a game-related event open to the general public with a wig sounding name or theme seems to draw about 50% male/female ratio so a lot of the whenever games making games holds a an event that's not just for women they just open it up to everyone it's always kind of like a 50/50 gender split um same with lady Kate I think Jim told me

coming from the opposite angle we find yeah like it is called lady Kaede and yes we do because it's open to all genders we its kind of worst case we get 5050 so it's mostly women but yeah we tend to get like that yeah so that's like one really really obvious thing just like name your thing something with women and obviously I don't know it's it's that was kind of just a interesting I'm not quite sure what to make of it but I thought that was really interesting um and having events like like I want to do like a game or knitting circle where it's like we learned how to make a scarf and then play like a Kirby's Epic Yarn or LittleBigPlanet or something to talk about textiles and games or like the Tea Party idea yeah the head I was really interested in tea parties so it came from like this personal desire but we ran like a tea partier to parlors /rk party where we had like tea and we just

generally chilled in the afternoon and just that kind of subversive feminine theme brought out this kind of excitement in women and I saw a lot of new faces and equally men were excited about the Tea Party theme so it wasn't explicitly stated that it was geared towards women but I had this kind of fun feminine a femininity to it that games usually don't have something I've found since I primarily run like I've done events for LGBT organizations and other things like that is like having somebody visibly in leadership that's a member of the group is a huge deal obviously like for example we had an event during GDC on Monday where it's like we did not say anything about any sort of diversity or gendering or anything like that but I think since it was being run by me specifically like oh like visibly run by a woman as well as a very strict code of conduct at the door that seemed to take into account things that might like

while writing it it was like okay how can we eliminate potential anxiety that someone might feel walking into these spaces so we stated upfront you know you shouldn't have to drink here you don't like just saying that saying your ID the your wallet name does not have to match your RSVP name and that the doormen have been assured of that to try to be more inclusive to people that don't have that going on for them as well as like just being very upfront with what the rules are that like sort of reverse engineering it without saying you know we want this to be a space for these groups of people but just make like doing the pragmatic little practical things like that seem to do really well for just the the kinds of attendance that we saw I find that invisibility also helps with growing a community or an organization because being somebody who's visible makes you a bit more trustworthy so the original people who identify that who this person is running this thing that seems good for me then that word of

trust can then spread so as you make more events then it yeah it develops and then on the topic of them like safe spaces and code of conducts and stuff yeah you shouldn't just like name your event something that will attract women and people from other marginalized groups and then not have like anything to back it up in case something does go wrong or like if there are if there is harassment or weird microaggressions going on there's like a lot of really small details that like if you're not part well if you're not a member of one of those groups that's affected by these seemingly seemingly small details then you'll probably overlook the fact that you know bars and alcohol do not necessarily result in safe spaces for women and I found that hand/eye society when they first started doing socials they were always in bars there was always alcohol involved and it was almost always just circles of dudes standing around talking and it was like you know we went to a couple after

difference engine initiative we went to a couple and we were kind of like well we did this thing and you know the community's not exactly welcoming us with open arms and soon after that they actually phased out the socials because they just you know weren't very effective at getting people to socialize and from bringing in new people and I've actually taken upon myself to bring that idea back bring back the monthly socials but now I'm having it in a space where there was an alcohol and we have dedicated volunteer greeters who are from diverse backgrounds and a lot of them are also involved with getting curious and just just things like low pressure jams with breastfeeding areas having pronoun badges is something that we utilize and just like all of these things sort of contribute to a much more inclusive environment for everyone definitely and we had a really good experience with creating blanket forts

at our events and these are just really dedicated relaxing spaces where you can just go off to the side and talk or take a break from the crowds and that it's really helpful especially as a new person in the community because you don't know anyone and you just might feel overwhelmed by going to these events so like as they can mentioned all these small details really do contribute to a healthier environment for your organization but we found that with we put a focus at game jam stock on on making sure all the attendees have enough food and drink to get them through but we have found as well that having like dedicated food areas those mean you can have that sort of breakout space and just like you say if somebody's feeling a little bit nervous or something we try to make sure that a mentor is always available there to just like be a single point of contact and help them through and the nice thing about these is like you see so much pushback to any sort of inclusivity efforts as like well special treatment

well a lot of the thing about stuff like that is that's just nice for everybody have you got like that's something like having quiet space where you can actually have a conversation that's everybody stands to benefit from that and similarly having mentorship and stuff like that that's good for all events so it's it's like that stuff should be an easier sell similarly if you do end up having events with alcohol present it's really good to have people who are paying attention to what's going on and the comfort level of the participants that are willing to go in and just non-invasively go and be like hey can I talk to you for a second and then bring the person who looks like they're uncomfortable maybe out of that situation and be like you know is everything okay like in a way that doesn't make them feel cornered or like singled out just be like give them the out a lot of us I think at conferences do that for each other to just be like being able to like be like hey like fostering not looking out for each other thing I think is super important as well I do want to mention that if you are thinking about starting an organization

you don't need a ton of money to do it pick sells ran an entire year on $0 and we are still low a low-budget organization and it's it's very nice actually you don't need to run off and incorporate as a non-profit right away because you have to Texas you have to be liable to the government and there's also a lot of fees associated with incorporating as a non-profit so staying as this community grassroots organization is really a good thing and you can depend on especially if you're in a city I know smaller organizations and like suburbs and whatnot might not not have not have not be accessible to these things but a lot of like co-working spaces studios are willing to donate a space for you for free and you just have to ask them and volunteers a lot of people love to help out and you need to if you have them you need to

appreciate them as well similarly actually but it's almost contrary to the point that at least in in Sweden a number jae-hak and game jam Stockholm are both indebted to a nationwide organization called sphere rock which it's another nonprofit it helps support smaller games clubs and seeking out bodies like that can it should be really beneficial because it it keeps any potential running costs to zero which then allows you to keep in members without having to like put up a price point because I think having free clubs is a huge part of actually thank you keeping it socially mobile but also the bay then managed membership data securely and things like that all sorts of those kinds of things can be worth seeking out yeah just a point about what Rob was saying about if you are looking to start a similar initiative I when I meet people from other cities a lot of times I hear like oh man I wish I had a Dame's making games I

I had a pixel pixels and I like to remind them like what is the bare minimum of these initiatives you need a room with some people in it and they don't have they probably all have their own laptops so there you go sometimes you don't even need a room you can do it in the park but it's basically just a bunch of people and I mean the difference engine initiatives were actually based on like that six week model it's actually based on the artsy games incubators that the hand/eye society even before they were incorporated as organization the co-founders were running them and it was just a six-week model for getting giving people space time and accountability to get a small project done so yeah it was like let's just find a bar or a library or whatever and once a week for six weeks we'll meet up and keep each other accountable and show each other what we've done and that was sort of basically it there was no organization it was just yeah that was the the sort of minimal thing and of course you can

build it from there until you have like larger organizations but then that's what you know people who you can always come and ask us like people who already done it ask for how to build that from that small seed the nice thing about that too is especially if you look to any sort of makerspace or something you'll often find people in that community that can that want to get involved with the aims that are doing their own community organisation and just kind of spirals out from there and I mean every single Jam or organization that I've found it it's just been like asking for things and being surprised how helpful people want to be like it's it's really people there I feel like this issue has hit the point where I think enough people know that there's a problem involving representation and in tech and there's a lot of people the question I always hear is how can I help and it sucks when you don't have anything to give those people and that's one of these is it's like oh give us give us some space give us some support or even just a signal boosting is super

important so you can actually reach the people that want to be involved and that's that's like one of the biggest things that I think you get out of that yeah it's great to feel like you know you're no longer starting you no longer have to start from scratch start from zero it's like now we are getting to the point where we're laying that foundation and it's like kind of historical and awesome yeah and it's also a thing where a lot of people who are not necessarily part of the community like they're not part of the marginalized group that's look that they want to help one of the big ways that they can help is to support the people who are leaders in the and you know looking to start these things in you know doing their own thing like to like give them platforms or resources there's a lot of people doing this this really good work already and another part of that half beyond starting it is seeing support from like major institutions or you know game companies or people that do have the resources that we don't necessarily have access to when we're building something from nothing well not know what are some things that

game studios and companies can implement when they get back to the office next week well you can always see what community organizations exist and support them you don't have to start from zero you don't have to start your own thing because these communities have already gone through lessons and mistakes and already know what their community needs so going and supporting them either financially or with resources or with space is something really important similarly something that everybody can do I think is to just start getting in to start getting educated about what the issues even are and the nice thing is with things like Twitter and social media is there's a very non intrusive way to start learning these things like just quietly going and like searching for who like the big voices are like the people that are talking about these issues I've done the work and just following their work is seeing how these community self describe what their own

needs are in their own words and you can do this without like you know jumping on somebody I mean like hey tell me what to do because like that can also be really stressful if the person especially if it's just like a random person and not someone who does this for a living so just quietly observing is like a really good step one if you're not even sure what the issues actually are or what to do or how to help and it's a relatively easy thing to do at events like this one of major things we do at Diversey at the moment is outreach because diversity has a a network still building of like I said companies and individuals and organizations all working towards the same goal but not necessarily or as one package but when we do come to a conference or something like that then we tend to bring in people from these areas and so it's a matter of what what yeah just seeking out them talking just asking questions I think basically yeah and similarly there's a whole lot of community leaders that because I think one of the biggest things I hear as an

excuse for you know not seeing low representation whether it's like panels or in hiring practices it's like well where do we find them nobody's applying but like to touch on something so you mentioned in her presentation you can go to them like you can go to these community leaders and be like hey um you know a lot of people do you know anybody that like is really good at this thing and I it's like you don't even need to like make it a tokenization thing you can just like ask who these people's friends are because they probably know somebody amazing because I think if there's a tendency in games in a lot of places just just hire people we know and I think that creates a very self-sustaining culture of sameness and it's very easy with all these people doing this really great work and doing this activism like all of like as you can see one of the things with the ripple effects like look how many of us actually talk to each other and know each other so if you need recommendations something like it's not just like look at all this cool work that's coming out it's like look at all these people who know who the talented people are that you might have not seen because you know social circles don't

necessarily always overlap so taking the initiative to be like hey who do you know that's really good at like 3d animation or programming do you like that has time and it's looking for contract work we're looking for full-time employment based in this location you'll see it better like the number of people that don't necessarily look like you applying for those jobs and similarly it's really good that there's a lot of discussion talking about the problems right now but it's I've definitely seen and talked about this with a lot of other people less so about how to actually support the people who are here how to talk about us as more than just a diversity checkmark or some or somebody who has struggled actually supporting the work that's being done like the games that are being made the cool initiatives and make Siri my god it has no shell but actually getting us paid for our work is actually is really important and Sigma boosting that because it's like cool to say oh look at all these things that are being

done and all these people that are brought into the industry but then the path to sustainability there is another core component that enough not enough people are looking at and I would add to that look in the long term I think there's one constant thread through our experiences is that diversity initiatives of any kind are long-term reaching you're you're not going to get suddenly a perverse community within a month or two so investment on the year's scale of quite often because it is a slow process and similarly a beginning game developers gonna have different problems like breaking into the industry just getting the basic skill set there's like a whole other arena of mentorship that it's something I'm trying to step up with more like I'm actually people's agent now like I'm just like a freelance Princess Carolyne for yelling at you about why your contract sucks or why or like why you don't have a contract at all like even just teaching things like how to negotiate what to ask for in a contract the fact that you can push back on a contract because oh my god the

number of starting into the independent developers especially people who don't look like the traditional developer they don't know that they can even negotiate on these things are just so happy to be here in the first place so that's something that experienced devs and veterans can do even if you just like write a piece or like put the stuff out there because that again Internet's awesome we can just say hey just so you know have you even thought about like what your terms of your contract are or you know do you need or like reaching out to people who are like in that middle range where they've made a couple games they haven't really had their big hit or anything yet maybe they don't have contacts at Playstation or Nintendo or like sending an email even just for people like that like that really minor mentorship that that can do everything that for someone who's trying to build their own thing and just not not just be able to make games but be able to do that fold sustainably I'm very excited that we're getting to the point where because we've done a number of like first-time game maker type things and now it's getting to the point where it's like well we have we've done so many of them that we

have all these people that have gone through that program made the first game and they're like now what now what do I do what's a contract how do I go from here and now I'm excited to like start doing those like more intermediate level support jams and stuff like well how do you go from there to like making a career or a vocation out of this if that's the path that you want to go on so that's kind of like what I'm planning to work on next with the hand/eye society where we're definitely with pixels were definitely reaching that point where we need to start offering like support to mid level of beginner developers because they needed to they need to like not be part of a leaky pipeline problem they need support that is kind of away from the studios they just need a place to go to target so we said and it's really important that we start examining these needs in our communities and I just want to say one quick thing about um like experience and reminding sort of everyone of you know

how I came into this leadership role wasn't because I already knew how to be a leader like I had never done any of this stuff when they first asked me to run that workshop they asked me to run a game making workshop and I didn't know like how to make a game still and it worked out amazingly and they asked me to be executive director I had no nonprofit experience but they were like you know what it's more important that you're in the community that you know about you understand video games and you understand this community the other stuff we can teach you and we can mentor you through that and this was like a lot of men saying this to me a lot of men propping me up and supporting me and that was like that meant an incredible lot yeah similarly it goes beyond just like sustainable business enough to but also like how we talk about the games and like what is getting visibility especially if you're an indie game make herbs you probably know that visibility is life or death in terms of your business so like making sure that like for instance on a ward juries it's not just all people that look exactly the same as

people with a diverse range of not just backgrounds but ideally like creative taste as well you know it's not just like five triple-a guys right but like a variety of people from different backgrounds with different you know views on things and because a lived experience is experience exactly its expertise really and and making sure that you know ever it's a holistic approach not just you know how do we get them to start their own business but what are we doing to highlight them and to support them we're actually out of time Oh quick so thank you everyone for coming if you appreciated what you heard today please fill out the speaker evaluations [Applause] you