The $150 billion Video Game Industry grapples with a murky track record on diversity

The video game industry may be booming in the covid era but it continues to face intensifying pressure over its handling of diversity and inclusion. For years, gaming has been criticized for fostering a culture that excludes and is even hostile toward women. Stereotypes surrounding so-called “gamer girls” for instance have led to harassment of female gamers online and resulted in a perception of the $150 billion industry as one dominated by men.

The industry has been trying to change this by highlighting the variety of people that play video games and throwing the spotlight on initiatives to engage women, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) for instance notes that American gamers are almost evenly split between men (54%) and women (46%). But industry employment demographics show a different picture.

The industry is overwhelmingly white and male. According to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), 71% of game developers globally are men while just 24% are women and 3% are non-binary. And when it comes to race and ethnicity, just 2% of developers are Black while 69% identify as white. Increasing diversity and inclusion in the sector has been a “work in progress”.

Big industry events like E3 which is usually hosted by the ESA every year and Gamescom happen to be very male-led.

Even the way they are designed, marketed, and structured is very male-focused. It is hard, especially now, to tell what action on diversity and inclusion is actually being taken as opposed to performative narrative. This year, the issue of discrimination against women in the industry in particular has manifested itself in a number of ways. Last month, Ubisoft announced plans to shake up its work culture in response to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company.

Former creative chief Serge Hascoet behaved inappropriately around women and even prevented a female character from becoming the only playable lead in the game “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey”. Hascoet and two other top executives of the company resigned following an investigation into allegations of misconduct. When asked about the allegations, Ubisoft did not have anything else to share at this time.

Meanwhile, the trailer for a full-motion video game called Gamer Girl received sharp criticism for its portrayal of a female game streamer whose actions are controlled by the player, which assumes the role of her livestream’s chat moderator. The trailer was subsequently pulled, but its publisher, Wales Interactive, claimed it was created to raise the issue of the toxic environment which can often appear online behind the anonymity of a username. A string of controversies in the industry has exposed the gaming industry’s murky track record on diversity.

It has been years since the so-called Gamergate scandal, which saw women in the industry subjected to coordinated harassment.

The episode at the time highlighted a toxic culture in gaming that enabled sexism and harassment of non-white male gamers and developers. The industry has not progressed, especially with all the folks being outed as abusers, rapists, and harassers on the developer side. It is far too common to see threats, hate, and other vitriol flung at community managers and developers when they are more public facing or have any kind of social media presence.

Sony-owned video game developer Naughty Dog faced an online backlash over its survival horror game “The Last of Us 2”, with one of the game’s voice actors, Laura Bailey, receiving death threats on social media. Sometimes this just gets a little overwhelming. The games industry have not been able to keep the Black, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, and women safe.

There is a lot of abuse in power in this industry which opens the floor up for incidents to happen. There have been some positive steps around diversity, particularly in the creation of video games. Titles like “The Last of Us 2” and “Tell Me Why”, a Microsoft exclusive from French developer Dontnod Entertainment, have won praise for increasing the visibility of LGBT characters.

And in the competitive e-sports scene, several top executives at professional gaming organization FaZe Clan recently quit to start a competing venture focused on bringing more women, people of color, and LGBT people into the mix.

Investors have a particularly important role to play in helping diversify talent in the industry. The bulk of investment that goes into e-sports tends to come from venture capital investors. Part of the e-sports problem is there are not a lot of diverse owners and founders in the space. Even though it has changed over the past year, the type of investor profile that is interested in a space like this tends to be venture.

To be diverse is to be successful, investors need to play their part. Big triple-A developers need to be ready to take more risks in game development. Indie developers are less constrained by established dogmas that take a long time to chip away. The bigger a game, the more risk averse that production has to be. In doing so, naturally they tend to perpetuate dogma, whereas smaller games can be more risky in that regard, even though there is no risk at all to being inclusive and broader.

Demand for gaming has exploded during the covid pandemic. A record $11.6 billion was spent on video games in the United States in the second quarter, up 30% from the previous year. Major companies in the industry such as Nintendo and Activision have benefited as a result, posting better-than-expected earnings.