Women already purchase over 50% of all games, and they play a growing percentage of them.

I would actually be interested in looking at any comprehensive stats about all that. In this day and age, saying "~50% of gamers are women" is almost a truism…

But that's not what I said. I was quoting an old ESA stat I assumed would be familiar to this audience, which is about game purchases, not play—i.e., women may be buying games for their children or significant others to play. The closest source I can find is this press release (the report is linked within), but it focuses more on women comprising "40% of gamers"—whatever the fuck that means.

Yeah, I know, I was just citing the most common statistic I've seen mentioned. Thanks for the link.

Furthermore, even though I'm currently an immigrant, my light skin features help me "blend in" much more easily - people may or may not have some negative reactions if I mention I'm Greek, due to our reputation recently, but I can choose not to, and most people I meet just don't know; they just know I only speak English. Especially with my light skin appearence, light hair and green eyes, I could be from Sweden or Finland for all they know. These things *were* kind of "handed over" to me, and there are many other people that didn't have them; that doesn't diminish my own effort though. It just means we should work so those privileges are accessible to more people.

(My apologies that I'm reaching back a few pages--my schedule presumably doesn't match those of the more prolific posters here, and I think that most of the points made that I might have addressed already have been by others.)

One potential answer might be to start looking--depending on the internal structure of the development studio in question--for game writers or game designers that already have experience as writers, including experience in non-interactive media. While writing for games is somewhat different to writing for a non-interactive medium, I do think that the experience with writing characters would largely, perhaps entirely, carry over. (Additionally, doing so might further improve the average quality of the narratives in games.)

Finding people with that experience is likely to be a problem, ...

I don't see why--there are an awful lot of writers out there, I imagine. We needn't restrict ourselves to major authors--one potential pool might be those who write short stories for magazines like New Myths or Fantasy Scroll Magazine (my preferences are for fantasy works; I imagine that there are non-fantasy magazines out there, too).

Even if you could improve your talent pool (and not distract them from their current roles), you are only likely to succeed in increasing the number of White Dudes working on a project. You might get a couple more women involved but again likely to be White Women which suffers the same diversity problem.

I was specifically addressing the question of writers working on characters other than themselves, I believe. (I think that when I came to post, someone else (Oluseyi, perhaps) had already provided at least one answer to directly changing the pool of applicants.)

However, I'm not sure that it wouldn't help, even if only a little: seeing more representations of people like them might encourage non-white/non-male people to enter the industry in greater numbers. The less the industry is perceived to be a bastion for white males, the more inviting it is likely to be to people of other demographics, it seems to me.

Changing the demographics of game development studios needn't be achieved through a single solution; multiple efforts can work together, I feel.

Even if you could improve your talent pool (and not distract them from their current roles), you are only likely to succeed in increasing the number of White Dudes working on a project. You might get a couple more women involved but again likely to be White Women which suffers the same diversity problem.

I was specifically addressing the question of writers working on characters other than themselves, I believe. (I think that when I came to post, someone else (Oluseyi, perhaps) had already provided at least one answer to directly changing the pool of applicants.)

However, I'm not sure that it wouldn't help, even if only a little: seeing more representations of people like them might encourage non-white/non-male people to enter the industry in greater numbers. The less the industry is perceived to be a bastion for white males, the more inviting it is likely to be to people of other demographics, it seems to me.

Changing the demographics of game development studios needn't be achieved through a single solution; multiple efforts can work together, I feel.

Very much agreed. And I'd go even further and say that artists and writers should create characters unlike themselves just to hone their craft. Besides any moral good you might be able to do, besides any underserved niches you might be able to profit from, improving as a creator includes pushing your comfort zones.

I'm a moral individual, but that doesn't prevent me from writing a psycopathic villain. I'm middle class, but I can write poor or rich. I can't claim any first hand knowledge of the female experience, but I listen to them, I read what they write, I imagine myself in their shoes and so I learn to create fictional versions of them. Then I see where it feels fake, and I improve.

It doesn't have to be a 'what it means to be Mexican memoir', just convincing, interesting characters of many backgrounds who are shaped but not defined by their culture. Even if they don't make it into any games, modelling a chubby woman instead of another 36-24-36 babe in a skimpy outfit is great practice: many classic artists found fat a far more interesting and challenging body type to hone their skills with. I don't think "I can't create that" is ever a good response by a creative type.

life story

Wow, thanks for sharing, inspiring.

As for video game content diversity.. I somehow feel like it would fit under #FirstWorldProblems. "Oh no, my video game character doesn't come in my skin color".

I'm really trying to understand that people think this is a problem, and I'm very sorry if someone is offended by that, which I very much don't want... I really hope someone makes a thousand games with characters just as diverse as you or anyone else wants, I might even try to make one if I find a reasonable incentive.. but I really can't bring myself to really care, or find any rational reason to care..

That does in absolutely no way apply to people having a difficult time finding work in the industry.

If there is a group of people in a society that want to work with something, have the skill to do so, and there's a market that can satisfy more people working with it, then that's a very big problem in society that those people are discriminated against. That goes no matter what people the group consists of (provided they have reached adult-hood, under current laws and agreements in most countries as far as I know).

The rest of this post ignores discrimination in the hiring-process and is only meant to be a reasoning concerning the availability of people to hire (as I know absolutely nothing about the hiring process or how it discriminates).

That said, it seems people see a problem in that not enough people that look different are available for hire with the proper skillset.

That branches into two possible reasons:

1. People that look different have trouble getting the proper education.

2. People that look different don't really care as much about games or for some other reason choose other venues.

Where (1) is true we probably have a problem, and a solution should be sought and promoted. Don't see how this has anything to do with the game industry though... though of course there could be a problem in the game industry at the same time, so there are two separate causes.

Where (2) is true... I don't see any problem and we're back to "oh no, not enough people that look different surround me in my workplace".

Considering the size of the game industry most things can probably be estimated with statistical significance. Say we have ethnicity A defined as some common employee in the game-industry today, and ethnicity B defined as a rare employee.

First we calculate the percentage of A in overall society that has an education of about the same level as required for game-dev, and call it a0. Then we calculate the percentage of those that has chosen a relevant alignment to their studies to fit game-dev, and call that a1. Then we calculate the percentage of those that actually want to work with game-dev and not something else that their skills can be used for and arrive at a relevant number a2.

If educated people of ethnicity B are at all prevalent in society, then we can do the same calculations to obtain b0, b1 and b2.

When b0 is significantly smaller than a0, there is a potential problem with availability of education which should be investigated and where reasonable mitigated.

When b1 is smaller than a1, there could theoretically be a problem... but that would be some seriously precise discrimination.. but sure, if that is the case why not ask some people in b1 and find out, sounds like a good idea just for curiosity reasons anyway. Doubt there would be something relevant to discrimination there..

If b2 is smaller than a2.. that has no relevance in respect to discrimination.

If someone has those numbers they would be very interesting to see.

It seems as far as I've seen that b0 is smaller than a0. This is sad and is hopefully in the process of being fixed. (Though I don't think the that number in itself has an "absolute meaning", in the sense that they will likely never be identical, as there are other dependent variables that divide people from A and B into many more groups on average, statistics only take us that far. I do think the variance is greater than it should be, so I very much support working to narrow the gap).

There does however seem to be a difference between a1 and b1, and/or a2 and b2. These numbers should not be different at all if people that look different have the same desire to make games.

If a1/a2 different from b1/b2 then there will be lacking diversity in the game industry even when b0/a0 become equal, and that is the difference I find no reason to care about.

If you wish to run a campaign to convince people that look different to join the game-dev industry then I still wish you best of luck, I like games, but don't ask me to sign anything.

I fully recognize the possibility that the entire difference in the number of available people is in a0/b0, just seems to me there are other reasons as well.

Even if you could improve your talent pool (and not distract them from their current roles), you are only likely to succeed in increasing the number of White Dudes working on a project. You might get a couple more women involved but again likely to be White Women which suffers the same diversity problem.

I was specifically addressing the question of writers working on characters other than themselves, I believe. (I think that when I came to post, someone else (Oluseyi, perhaps) had already provided at least one answer to directly changing the pool of applicants.)

However, I'm not sure that it wouldn't help, even if only a little: seeing more representations of people like them might encourage non-white/non-male people to enter the industry in greater numbers. The less the industry is perceived to be a bastion for white males, the more inviting it is likely to be to people of other demographics, it seems to me.

Changing the demographics of game development studios needn't be achieved through a single solution; multiple efforts can work together, I feel.

Very much agreed. And I'd go even further and say that artists and writers should create characters unlike themselves just to hone their craft. Besides any moral good you might be able to do, besides any underserved niches you might be able to profit from, improving as a creator includes pushing your comfort zones.

I'm a moral individual, but that doesn't prevent me from writing a psycopathic villain. I'm middle class, but I can write poor or rich. I can't claim any first hand knowledge of the female experience, but I listen to them, I read what they write, I imagine myself in their shoes and so I learn to create fictional versions of them. Then I see where it feels fake, and I improve.

It doesn't have to be a 'what it means to be Mexican memoir', just convincing, interesting characters of many backgrounds who are shaped but not defined by their culture. Even if they don't make it into any games, modelling a chubby woman instead of another 36-24-36 babe in a skimpy outfit is great practice: many classic artists found fat a far more interesting and challenging body type to hone their skills with. I don't think "I can't create that" is ever a good response by a creative type.

OTOH, there will be some that will say "oh look, a white dude made a movie/book/game with a strong black woman as protagonist and he gets showered with appreciation for doing so, while actual black women have trouble getting support/funding to tell their stories".

I've heard feminist women of color saying white male writers *should* write characters like that, and that "it's out of my experience" is not an excuse for someone that it's his job to create characters, and I've heard comments like the above too. Both have merit, and I'm kind of confused of what's "right", or maybe one should just go ahead and do what they think and accept the fact they're inevitably going to get flak by some people no matter what they choose.

Let's focus on game content diversity, as that is the primary topic of this conversation.

@Erik

I feel it's a problem simply because people don't even think about it. A vast majority of game developers/designers don't even think about it. A shocking number of people seem to have a "default" mindset when it comes to character design, and it shows in nearly every game that contains humanoid characters. The point is that some of us are as tired of "default" as we are of "save the princess" plots.

That is what we need to address.

OTOH, there will be some that will say "oh look, a white dude made a movie/book/game with a strong black woman as protagonist and he gets showered with appreciation for doing so, while actual black women have trouble getting support/funding to tell their stories".

I've heard feminist women of color saying white male writers *should* write characters like that, and that "it's out of my experience" is not an excuse for someone that it's his job to create characters, and I've heard comments like the above too. Both have merit, and I'm kind of confused of what's "right", or maybe one should just go ahead and do what they think and accept the fact they're inevitably going to get flak by some people no matter what they choose.

My personal opinion is that both are issues, but that the depiction of characters is the only part in an individual creator's control. For example, Mackelmore has always acknoweldged and accepted that he's recieved more promotion by the music industry because as a straight white male he's viewed as "safer" for a mass market. He hasn't stopped advocating for gay rights and racial equality because of it, though, and I don't think he should. Some disagree, but I think equality should be pursued by pulling each other up, rather than holding ourselves back.

Maybe not a call of duty, because they need to target the biggest market they can to make the money back, but risking a game's profitability just to increase diversity is crazy.

So, you're saying that representation matters -- profits would be affected negatively if representation were changed in some way. I'm glad we agree on this point.

Where I disagree is that *increasing* representation could have a negative impact on profitability. If, by your own logic, having characters that represent you has a positive correlation to profits, surely having more character types that represent more people would increase profits, no? Maybe more Asian and Indian characters, since they have all that disposable income -- why is no one milking that cow? Representation of one group does not *have to* come at the expense of another, though it mostly has in the case of overwhelmingly white/male/hetero heroes. We can have white characters *and* black, hispanic, near-eastern, and far-eastern characters; we can have male *and* female characters; we can have straight *and* queer characters. We can have characters of all body types.

Besides, short term profits aren't all we should be striving for -- certainly corporate culture pushes for that, but we can strive for more than profitability as the single marker of success. And financially speaking, creating a games industry that attracts more types of individuals is one which is larger and more profitable in the long run. Imagine having a mainstream market that's so wide and inclusive, you actually *could* make a game that tried to appeal specifically to a minority population, and *that* game would stand a chance at being profitable in the same way that the mainstreaming of games in general has made more and more niche genres viable. That statement may seem at odds with the rest of what I'm saying, but being able to do that would be a sign that the industry as a whole is very healthy and inclusive.

It isn't just about profits. It is also about where the game is being released. If you are selling a game in a region, and you want the game to match that region's demographics, I see no problem.

Selling the game in Korea, and you want to make all -- or nearly all -- of the characters and art to appear Korean? Go for it!

Selling the game in Japan, and you want to make all -- or nearly all -- of the characters and art to appear Japanese? Go for it!

Selling the game in the US and Europe, and you want to make all -- or nearly all -- of the characters and art to appear Caucasian? Go for it!

Selling the game in central Africa and you want to make all -- or nearly all -- of the characters and art to appear African? Go for it!

I don't see that as discriminatory, any more than I see localizing the text as discriminatory.