I felt that article so much. I see comments about Donald but you guys miss the biggest point:
Tina Fey, the show’s creator and star, told me that the answer was in large part yes; she admired Glover’s talent but hired him because funds from NBC’s Diversity Initiative “made him free.”
There’s a wildly missing consciousness in game development and computer entertainment. Yes, some kind of affirmative action needs to take place. This is how we got the very refreshing and needed Atlanta show. Black people have been waiting for years to get their own quirky, special thing that makes us giggle and memorize lines (I still haven’t recovered from the fact that once a black teenager asked me if I knew Gucci Mane on the playground and that I didn’t reply "I locked that nigga up too"). It all happened thanks to a Free Donald Glover, subsidized by a giant company. Sometimes capitalism does things right to un-do the things it did wrong. It’s rare, but it happens.
Any kind of affirmative action ideas are not frown upon in the computer game industry, they’re not even on the table in 2018. "There are already pushing for women so much already!!" would say the average dude working on games. And yes, it’s messed up that we need those kinds of initiatives but as you know, we didn’t create the unfairness in the first place. Accountability needs to happen. And yes, the laws of survival and progress suggest that people who can survive for years, maybe decades in an unfriendly environment have to probably be skilled, reliable, talented, driven and pretty good. It’s just mathematics. We have to overcome more. We have to deal with so much more. That makes us stronger. The fact that we don’t get hired though, is just politics ("meritocracy" and "culture fit" spirit humming around in games).
It’s dramatic that none of that is discussed at all in one field but is an open secret and prints money in the next field. Both being about entertaining people in the evening. It’s crazy.
10 months that I’m doing some help desk stuff every day in the middle of black LA. Basically working at a version of Issa’s We Got Y’all only for adults. GDC is coming, there will be a few discussions on the topic, most white people will be like "interesting…!". Most Asian folks will not even care for a second, a handful of black folks will hope things will happen and then nothing will fucking happen. And I’m supposed to remain calm, witnessing all that year after year.
I’m a little tired to see everything unfold or not unfold.
It’s not too late though. It’s never too late.