Change, skeleton and diversity

Game development started in the 70s, when racism sexism and segregation were supposed to end, or at least they were discussed and people knew they were wrong. To summarize.

Because game development started with personal computers, only rich white people could afford them for their kids therefore game development quickly became a 110% white men. Now 10% of women. About 20% of Asians if not more. 1.5% or 2% of black people and Latinos in 2005, maybe less today. I mean the LGBT community and issues they have are bigger in the gaming internet world than racial diversity is, how is that? I’m not sure I’ve worked with more than 3 black people like me, lost in an ocean of machines and white guys over a decade doing game audio. Trust me it gets on your nerves at some point or at least, a lot of questions come in.

We are now a $65 billion a year industry where apparently in the biggest market that is the US, black people and Hispanics play and purchase more games than any other ethnic group.

You see how wrong all this is?

So post-WWII post-civil rights movement post-feminism generations are allowing the same racism and bigotry as before, only softer (maybe not so soft in multiplayer online games). The system is against minorities (expensive computers were, knowledge and networks are) and education doesn’t shift anything if people are too busy solving crazy game related problems to even think about including change in what they do, diversity is not their problem. They probably think social progress has been done and that it’s minorities’ fault if nothing changes. Game developers understand very well systems (or at least they should) but they are often introverted nerds who really, really appreciate their routines and the coziness of a stable world with no change. Like heroes of their games.

 
Imagine me saying to the 99% white team: “could we have something else than a white dude, just for a change you know? No? Hey come back!”.

Change is a process guys, not a destination nor a light switch. You need to change too. Everyone. Everyday.

Every year the GDC is almost crying for “more diversity, yay!” but the industry is hiring on compatible aesthetics, driven by publishers’ marketing schedule which means that a person like me is not really connecting with the overall white game culture (I’ll never be a Games of Throne D&D board games fan, I come from the play world of musical instruments, 8/16bits and PC games and skateboard sorry). They say designers should be curious and explore plenty of things, I’ve been used to diversity, all my life. It’s the “other side” who’s not despite knowing that they need people like me. It’s just weird.

Where are the black owned game studios oh snap, they don’t exist at all. 30 years in and it’s still not happening? You’d think Hollywood is crazy conservative but they are at least smart enough to understand where the money is how to provide for an audience. The game industry absolutely fails at that, even when the industry has some hints.

You know GTA San Andreas the game around black dudes and crime in California? Best selling game ever on PS2. Third best selling game of all time in 2010. Biggest success for a GTA game at 27.5 million copies, something that will probably never happen again (on a side note, gamers questions about which GTA game is the best always end up with racist slurs).

But I guess we can’t do “black-themed” games without crime in them, can we? *crickets*

Where I lose a bit of hope is that even on simple, not complex race-related things game developers fail at providing or nurturing openness and diversity. The pattern is simple: they assume something and/or you can go fuck yourself. Like considering that everybody is right-handed in a FPS (you’re laughing but aiming accuracy is much higher when the weapon is on the side of the aiming eye and yes, I’m a lefty) or thinking that maybe some people can’t use WASD correctly, game developers fail at being accessible, at opening up to people despite having a medium allowing us to make changes like we want, more than ever today. We don’t really take advantage of this malleability, which is not available for any other medium. What a shame to be so stiff.

Other simple change that doesn’t really happen: audio. We all know that the earlier in the process game audio is started, the better it influences and merges with the rest. It’s not even a game feature, it’s been known since Star Wars at least. And yet at the 2012 GDC the two keynotes on audio highlight that audio was -wait for it- started early in the process and helped make the games stand out (Bastion and Ravenwood Fair). Like it’s a discovery for computer game professionals, really? These games are going to be exceptions in a sea of games with bad audio? We don’t change. We painfully crawl without looking around. The GDC becomes Groundhog Day too often these days. We get stuck in loops of inactions.

Even with words we suck at change. Video game is a terrible term for our medium (it has this immature stigmata) I’ll say it over and over. What “video” means for teenagers today anyway? Nothing. But if in the industry you talk about computer games people think you’re overreacting.

I feel down watching a 1988 Chris Crawford talk because it’s still so relevant to us. 88, it shouldn’t be the case goddamn. How people can get butthurt with Raph Koster’s game grammar or don’t understand how AAA studios close one after another, I don’t know. It’s crystal clear to me. Some people explained very precisely how and why the current way games are produced is doomed if you don’t want to hear it, please don’t. But you should stop doing that if you care about computer games.

I mean if you don’t even care about business decisions and trends of your own fast-moving field, if you don’t try to think ahead of that, how can you think of integrating more minorities or even feel that the gamedev community needs to do something about that? At the end it’s not your problem, right? Wrong.

The game industry and culture are a small island shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, mostly because of the lack of openness and diversity (real diversity, not having black hookers in a “lol next gen” Sci-Fi game). It’s an interesting time with the big studios dissolution trend, small teams are back. Will they think of expanding horizons or will they stick even more to the same paradigm? Unfortunately I see the latter happening more often than not (it makes sense though, it’s a protective reflex to stick with people like you when you are in struggle).

The game industry smart people’s inability to actually provide and support change in a 30 year old industry born after huge social progress -the biggest ever- is deeply infuriating, pretty depressing. And I don’t know what to do. Except my own thing, I guess.