Has the game industry turned the corner on women and diversity? (interview)

After a year of going back to the Stone Age during the GamerGate controversy, the game industry made some progress last week in advancing the cause of women and diversity in the game business.

Kate Edwards, executive director at the International Game Developers Association, is one of the people who is bringing diversity issues to the forefront. The IGDA is now taking surveys that measure concerns about sexism in the industry as well as broader concerns from developers about jobs and platforms. In the most recent survey, about 65 percent of game developers said that “more diversity in game content” was a very important issue for the industry.

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Edwards and the IGDA teamed up with Intel for an announcement that the chip giant wants to double the number of women in gaming. About 48 percent of game players are women, according to the Entertainment Software Association, but only 22 percent of those creating games are female. Intel previously announced in January that it would invest $300 million in programs that will bring more women and other diverse talent to the tech and game industries.

The issue of diversity in game content has been a huge issue in the past year, thanks in part to the Gamergate controversy, Edwards said. She noted that the Gamergate issue — which brings to mind issues around game journalism ethics as well as harassment of female game developers — isn’t over yet, and it is causing a larger conversation at companies such as Intel about the role of women and minorities in game development.

Edwards was part of the conversations that led to the action by Intel. I caught up with Edwards at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: I didn’t see anything in the release, but was there anything related to Gamergate in some way? Anything illuminating about women in the industry or diversity in the industry?

Kate Edwards: In the industry trends report we just released, not necessarily in that one. A lot of the trends we focus on in the report, which is digging deeper from the summary report we released last year, are more about developer behavior. What platforms are they focused on? Where do they see technology heading? Things of that nature.

A lot of the demographic stuff is the same we had before. We do reiterate in the industry trends report from the questions we had about their perception of how the public views the game industry. That was probably one of the more telling things. The second-highest answer for them was sexism in games, and the fourth-highest was sexism in the industry itself.

GamesBeat: That perception … has that tracked over the years? Has it changed any?

Edwards: That was a new question last year. We’ll see, since we just launched the 2015 version today. That’s going to be one of our constant questions.

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GamesBeat: A few years back, after the recession, the outlook on jobs must have been pretty terrible. Now everyone’s a little more positive.

Edwards: I think so. Even though we showed, in the summary report, how the average number of jobs people had in five years was four, almost four. We’re talking about 70 percent of respondents having a permanent full-time job. There’s optimism, even if there isn’t real stability.

GamesBeat: That seems to come with an industry that’s expanding, as far as indies or mobile or online. Everything’s still expanding.

Edwards: I think that also came through in some of the qualitative comments we got in the survey. We didn’t have the room to publish all of that, but some of those — A lot of the optimism people are seeing, in my perception, a lot of it is coming through choice. They have the ability to be independent or be part of a studio. They see that they can have potential success as an independent. My sense is that’s driving some of that optimism.

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GamesBeat: What’s your own view of the state of the industry?

Edwards: My personal view, especially dealing with a lot of developers, interfacing with our chapter leaders around the world — I still think that outside of North America, the optimism is quite high. Some of that is actual, I think, because they’re seeing double-digit growth. Mainly through mobile, but it’s still growth. It’s potential for developers to grow and for the industry to grow.

So there’s more optimism, in my perception, outside of North America. In North America, people are becoming more optimistic as the survey shows, but they’re still — how do I want to put it? I don’t want to say there’s pessimism, but there’s wariness because of what we just went through. I’d say people are cautiously optimistic about where things are going.

GamesBeat: I counted about nine out of 20 top-grossing mobile games that are American made. It seems like the dominance isn’t there anymore. The fastest-growing part of the industry isn’t dominated by Americans.

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Edwards: I read that, and I thought it was great. The emphasis underscores my own perception — I think the anecdotal evidence we’ve been seeing is that the international scene, they’re taking advantage of the mobile space. They can’t compete on the console side. Or they choose not to, because they don’t have to. That’s not where they’re going to find an advantage. It’s great to see.

GamesBeat: Did you agree with some of the rest of that? I was saying that the American industry needs more help.

Edwards: I do agree. By contrast, when I travel — when I was in Bogota at the end of 2013 talking with the minister of IT — when you have a government official saying that he sees the game industry as a potential cornerstone of their economy, because he sees it as a nexus of engineering, technology, and the arts, all of these different fields around which they can design an education system that’s broad and well-covered, that can feed a singular industry that also helps other industries like their IT sector, that’s pretty exciting stuff to hear. I’ve never heard anyone in Washington, D.C. say that.

There seems to be a much more progressive view of what games can be. Naturally not universally. A lot of countries out there are still extremely conservative about games. But the ones that get it, they’re starting to understand that this can be a robust part of their economy if they let it. On an individual state basis in the U.S., we have some states like Georgia that show up everywhere. They’re a good example of a state that understands the advantage it can bring. But there are others that don’t.

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GamesBeat: Intel’s $300 million seems like something nice to pump into the industry. Do you have some feeling about where that’s going to benefit?

Edwards: One of the things we’re hoping to see — obviously the IGDA is one of the many partners in that whole initiative. I know that Intel’s focus is on the entire IT sector, not just games, and from what the numbers show, the IT sector suffers even more from a lack of diversity specific to that industry. But regardless, it’s still an issue. It’s all a problem.

There are two things I want to see come out of this. One, I’d love to see other companies follow suit, saying, “This is not just one company’s problem. This is an industry-wide issue. We’re all going to chip in in some way.” Maybe not to the tune of $300 million but whatever they can do. There’s a lot of companies already doing things. Google, Microsoft, all these companies have all kinds of diversity programs and things that they do. But the real weakness we have is that there’s just not an overarching pipeline.

I know a lot of people talk about the pipeline. How do we get kids down at the elementary-school age? How do we get women interested? How do we get people of color interested? How do we get people aware that these are actually viable jobs? In my experience, talking with a lot of people, a lot of women — especially people who are in college – they just don’t understand that this is a viable job they can do. I don’t know where they get their perception of how games get conceived. I think that’s part of it. I think another part of it is that they do see a gender issue — “It’s mostly guys who work in the game industry, so I don’t want to be in that environment.”

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There are lots of reasons for it. But what I really would like to see is an arc, so to speak, not just getting people into the industry — obviously there are two big components. There’s acquisition and then retention. The retention piece is super important. For people who are already in the industry, how do we keep them here? What kind of issues are making them leave? The blatant lack of diversity is one thing. They feel like they don’t fit in here, that they’re not at home here. Whatever we can do, if we can see some substantial change happen, even if it’s just in a few examples to show we can set up a pipeline and start feeding people into the industry who normally would not consider it—A lot of it is going to be outreach. As an industry we need to do a lot more outreach.

One thing we’re doing right now in partnership with Women in Games International and with help from Google, we have something called the I Make Games Project. It’s just a simple YouTube channel. Initially we’re encouraging women game developers to do a quick three- or five-minute video to go up on the channel and describe why they love what they do and how they got into games. Just something that gives a little anecdote so girls out there can see this and say, “Wow, I can do that.”

GamesBeat: With Gamergate, do you feel like we learned something? Have we gotten anything positive out of this? Can we say that it’s over with at this point? If you’re Brianna Wu (who has faced considerable harassment in the past seven months), it seems like it’s never ending.

Edwards: It definitely depends on your perspective. I don’t think it’s over. Frankly I think Gamergate is a symptom of a larger issue about lack of diversity, about entitlement issues, about exclusionary versus inclusionary viewpoints around a certain type of media. That’s still going to be a debate that will go on for years. Whether it takes the shape of a hashtag and is mainly fought 140 characters at a time is a whole different thing.

My hope is that on some level, there are points to be made on both sides that should be discussed, but not in a 140-character forum. These are important issues that require more than soundbites to discuss. If there’s something positive, to me, that has come out of that whole episode, which is still going on — one of the positive things is just raising awareness within the industry. Regardless of where you stand on the points being raised, there’s an issue here that we need to address and we need to address it seriously.

That’s one positive thing that came out through Intel’s filter. Brian, the CEO, his perspective wasn’t just, “Let’s make up for a mistake by buying ads. Let’s not just throw some money at the game industry.” It was a realization that this is a huge issue that affects the entire sector. It’s not just games. I liked the fact that it galvanized at least one company to take it seriously on a broad basis. I’m hoping that’s going to be the start of something good for games and for IT.

GamesBeat: Do you get a lot of back-channel feedback on the subject? Are people telling you things privately about what they want you to do or what stance they want you to take?

Edwards: Most of the feedback I get is very positive. The IGDA was one of the only organizations that spoke out in August, when our board issued a statement denouncing the harassment that was going on. Not too long after that we issued our inclusivity policy for the IGDA. We’ve been pretty vocal about it all along. I’ve had a lot of feedback where people have said, “I’m glad you said something.” Some of the media outlets I’ve spoken with have said, “You’re one of the only people who will talk about this.” That was encouraging, because I felt that was what we should do. We should address this issue.

There’s been a negative part of it. Some people have said we could do more. Some people have said we should stop the harassment. I’m not sure how that happens, because not even the FBI has made that happen. But I understand. There’s a level of frustration. They want something to happen. They want someone in an authoritative position to make it happen. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the beast we’re dealing with, this social media phenomenon, it’s not controllable. It’s a hard realization for people to have, that there is no one entity — except perhaps Twitter, who could control their own platform — that can make it stop.

GamesBeat: It seems like a fair amount of the agenda here has been shaped that way. I see quite a few sessions related to it.

Edwards: Right. It’s interesting. But most of the feedback toward us and toward me has been positive. There are people who always want more to be done, and I get that, but there’s only so much that can be done.

GamesBeat: It’s very strange to see all the denial that there is a problem on the Gamergate side. “There’s no harassment. We’re not doing the harassment. They’re faking the harassment.” It’s hard to communicate with some of these folks.

Edwards: I’ve tried. I’ve had a few engagements. In fact I just had one recently where someone contacted me via email. We had a civil discussion in which I basically said, “If you want to meet face to face, I’m happy to talk about it. I’m not putting it in email. I’m not going to be tweeting about it. But I’d be happy to discuss it and hear what your issues are.” I’ve said that for months and it’s never happened, because I don’t think that’s constructive as far as the narrative they want to maintain.

GamesBeat: It’s hard to put to bed for all these reasons. But it would be nice to see a much broader response to it, something that addresses a lot of the core issues. We’ll see. Some people seem to be tired of it. They see it as a distraction from things they’d rather discuss. “Talk about games. Talk about game design. Talk about game development.” They seem to be weary of it.

Edwards: And for good reason. Usually, when people come to me, because they know I’ve been a prime target for a while and the IGDA has been a prime target, they ask me, “What should I do?” I always tell them two things. One is, protect yourself. Online and personal safety. That also includes emotional health, mental well-being. Make sure you’re okay. And the second thing is, just do what you love. Keep making games. Keep doing what you do. Remember why you’re in this industry. That’s how you deal with it.

GamesBeat: Do you have any other topics you’d like to cover?

Edwards: We’re launching a leadership summit this year. We used to do the leadership forums a few years ago. Those went away, so this year we’re launching a leadership summit in Seattle in September. It’ll be similar to the forums of the past, a smaller event, but it’s focused. It’ll be focused on not just leadership in the sense of management and executive roles, but also how you show leadership even as a rank-and-file artist, for example. What does it mean to show that as you do your job? That’s one of the things we’re going to focus on this year.