Do you believe that diversity is an issue in today's game industry?
If you're talking about EMPLOYMENT within the industry, I don't think the problem is at the studios.
I'm reminded of a joke where a young stupid soldier is firing his gun and missing the target. He decides to troubleshoot the problem. First off he wanted to know if the bullets were actually getting to the target. He places his fingertip over the muzzle, shoots, and loses the tip of his finger. He concludes "Nope, this isn't the end with the problem."
If there is a problem of employment discrimination I don't believe it to be an issue of corporate discrimination. Any problems there are likely to not be something inside corporate management. There is a lack of gender and racial diversity in games employment and in tech jobs generally. But I don't blame the employers for that lack of diversity. Employers can only hire the applicants who are in the job pool, and from that pool they'll choose the ones with the most documented experience that they can do the job.
There are few women getting into computer science. Many drop out, so even fewer women getting CS degrees. It is well documented that many of those never go into the workplace at all, and for those who do enter the workplace, still more will leave to be a parent to their children. That is not the game industry inherently discriminating, nor is that an employer being unfair to workers. That may be a separate issue of society or the individuals self-discriminating.
I don't see that aspect as being any different than other fields: Women are dominant in nursing today, a century ago nursing was a male-only field; Women are dominant in primary education today in the US, but gender in education has varied over time and locations. In some regions men are still dominant in primary education, or secondary or post-secondary, in others each of those is female dominated. Within post-secondary education (colleges and universities) teachers of different fields are dominated by different genders. A trade school of cosmetology (basically cutting hair, styling it, and other beauty stuff) will be dominated by females both for teachers and students. A trade school for auto mechanics will be dominated by males, both in teachers and students. A degree covering early childhood education will be filled mostly with females, both teachers and students.
So I don't see a low number of women in CS as a problem any more than I see low number of men in early childhood education as a problem. That is a trend in society, currently people feel like one job is a "boy job", the other is a "girl job".
As for pay and compensation, that's another systemic issue.
There are known concerns about women not asking for good or fair pay, and not asking for raises or promotions. There have been many good books written on the subject, like "Women Don't Ask: the high cost of avoiding negotiation" and "Nice Girls don't get the corner office", that talk about study after study of gender-based research. When being hired, most men negotiate salary and wages. In various studies across broad cross-sections of jobs, education, race, and more women don't negotiate, sometimes it is as high as 30% and other times as low as 8%, but compared to the 70%-50% of men who negotiate salaries, women across all fields have a systemic issue of not fighting for themselves. The most common cited reason is that women -- who generally tend to be more social -- fear social repercussions; basically along the lines of "If I ask for more, they'll think poorly of me". The second biggest reason was that many women (wrongly) assume that pay and salary will be divided up fairly based on merit. While that may be a gender-based issue generally in business, the simple fact is that almost everywhere in business you earn what you negotiate, not a fair balance. If you want a raise or a promotion you need to push it on your boss or even your boss's boss and leverage the social networks in the office to get what you want. The "nice girl" attitude of not disrupting social norms and expecting others to stand up for you doesn't work in most environments.
But that is not specific to this industry. And I think most companies within the industry are basically fair in compensation in large part because pay is already relatively low compared to what could be made in other fields.
Generally once they are employed, women are given more latitude in our industry's workplace then men are given. While not true of other industries, I've seen women held to lower standards for dress code, lower standards for behavior, allowed more leeway for grumpy attitudes and occasional negativity, and more. There are likely some hold-overs, but it isn't like women in a game studio suffer from cat-calls or unwanted touch. That type of behavior is quickly and firmly dealt with by HR, usually by immediately firing the person who did it and launching another round of anti-discrimination training.
So no, I don't think women are discriminated against in the games industry. If anything, for employment women are usually shown additional courtesy and additional social space and accommodation. There may be a few independent problems, but as a whole women in the industry are treated quite well in their employment.
if you're talking about CONTENT OF GAMES, I also don't think that is a problem generally.
Games where humans are depicted make up an extremely tiny slice of all games. Easily under 1%, most likely under 0.1%. So for this 99% and maybe 99.9% of all games, there is no human diversity issue.
Probably the most prevalent of the human games are the annual sports titles. No diversity issue in the games themselves, because <sport> 2015 reflects the actual major players of that sport. If those are the players of football/fifa/NBA/WNBA/tennis/hockey/whatever, and they didn't recolor anybody's race or gender, then that's just fine. Possibly a diversity issue within the sport, but no diversity issues in the video game.
Games that do have humans very often have building tools where you can customize gender, skin color, hair color, clothing, and more. For online games where everyone can bring their own avatars, no diversity issues. Each person built their own avatar, and as long as all the options are available, no diversity issues at all.
So those few games with lots of human or human-like characters in the game, and the subset of those games where characters are all generated by the studio, and the subset of those games where studio-generated characters are not readily configurable to fit the player's preferences, then in that tiny slice of games, you might have a diversity issue.
For that extremely narrow subset of games, a lack of diversity in the characters still may not be an issue:
Remember that first and foremost, games are entertainment in fantasy worlds. Different people have different preferences in their entertainment. In movies they run the gambit from children's animations to Korean dramas to action, horror, drama, sci/fi, fantasy, art flicks, and even hardcore adult films. There is an enormous variety in entertainment options. If your film is set in Japan it makes sense to follow their demographics, lots of Japanese race characters and Japanese themed environments; if you've got a Korean drama it makes sense to have almost exclusively Korean actors and Korean settings; a film set in India is going to have a lot of Indian actors. The setting and story are going to define the race and nationality.
People have talked bad about race and gender in Disney's princess movies. But it makes little sense. You've got Cindrella and Sleeping Beauty and more that are set in various late-medieval Eurpoean times and locations. Unsurprisingly, 1700's Germany was almost exclusively Caucasian, 1600's France was mostly Caucasian. When the set a movie with native Americans in Pocahontas, they drew the natives with light brown skin and the English colonists as white, and that isn't racism. If your game is set in a different time or a different place, it is not discriminatory to have them match the time and place. If you're playing Assassin's Creed Unity and the level is set in Versailles, don't expect to play as an entitled black woman. In that game setting, in order to move freely around society the only option is a nicely dressed white male.
So if you've got a game, and the game is based on humanoids, and the humanoids are all studio-created, and they're all or nearly-all the same race because that is the setting of the game, then there is still no problem even though the races are not diverse.
It is only when the game uses humanoids, and the humanoids are studio-created, and the race distribution does not match the expected demographics for the game, or the character is unable to choose their character. A small number of high profile games have been like that, but they are very rare and mostly before the year 2000.
As a whole, for game content there is no industry-wide problem. There are a few small cases where some games have a bad distribution that doesn't match the game, but they are very rare when compared to the number of games out there.
With over a million games on the various app stores, steam, and other distributors, the number of games with race and gender discrimination issues is an extremely tiny percent. That tiny percent has become even smaller as the companies get feedback about their discrimination.
Then you've got the players and their message boards. And other real life encounters with protesters and extremists.
Many of these are great. An enormous number of highly inclusive communities have been built up from and around many games. There are a large number of wonderful online communities out there.
They are also a bunch of hateful vitriol-filled cesspools out there. Many of these have serious problems around race, gender, and other issues. However, as someone who lived through Usenet in the 80s, I can tell you that type of cesspool has existed on the Internet since long before 4chan.
The politely-worded "Online Disinhibition Effect" or the less-politely worded "Greater Online Fuckwad Theory" is alive and well.
In that arena there is an enormous problem with racism and sexism.
