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diversity

DIVERSITY

There are all kinds of people making games. The industry is very diverse in terms of cultures, gender and identities, languages, religions, sexual orientations, and every lens you want to choose to look at it with. Nevertheless, many events or expositions seem to be overpopulated by the same privileged group: mostly men, mostly hetero-cis, mostly white and English-speaking. What things can we as curators do to help other developers outside those groups to raise their voices and be heard?

There are many tools and steps to try to amplify their work and enlarge the cultural material we have to offer to the audience. Here are some of them:

Curiosity: The first spark to wanting to get more diverse creators is being sincerely curious and interested in listening to other people’s stories. To be open and wonder about what the people that are not like me in some way have to offer and be willing to enrich my own point of view by getting to know a little bit about their world.

Investigation: We all know the mainstream indie games. Even in the indie scene, there are games far more popular than others. It’s easy to think about them, but there are lots of amazing creators that don’t get the reception they deserve. Getting to know these authors takes time and effort, but it’s worth it. Surfing pages like itch.io, Newgrounds, Twitter; getting into Discord servers, talking to devs from other communities and asking for suggestions. We have to be open to and actively seeking devs from cultures and spaces different than ours, and outside the privileged bubble.

Language barriers: Although English is a language used worldwide, especially in people regarding this media, focusing exclusively in English can be gatekeeping to many folks (both artists and audience) that can’t communicate with it. Whenever possible, a part of the budget should be addressed to tackle these gaps. Including translators when having international guests is fundamental, either for the enjoyment of the art pieces, the live talks, or subtitles for the recorded versions of the talks.

Cultural respect: As well as searching for diverse artists, we also need to investigate about their world, culture, language, and ways of referring to them. From small acts like making sure of using their correct pronouns or name pronunciation, to more deep research like cultural or religious protocols, respecting their world and culture is a way of respecting them.

Accessibility: This subject overlaps with the specific accessibility topic, it’s also an important thing to consider, as creator with disabilities are also outside the privileged bubble and have the right to get their voices heard. Checking that their work is correctly placed, that the space of the exhibition is accessible; having people dedicated to help both artists and audience to enjoy the show either with guidance, audio/ visual help; and also taking special care or the readability of the texts, the colours used as for colourblind people, etc. Getting assessment in this area can help to check things that we might not otherwise consider.

Give them the deserved space: A thing to have in mind is also to avoid tokenism and get just a few people from some collective to “fill a space” or check a “diversity checkbox”. A pretty common problem, sometimes born out of good will but incorrect anyway, is to center all the attention over the “diverse ones” around the thing that makes them diverse. Women or nonbinary all grouped in a talk about how it is to be a woman or a nonbinary in the industry. Third world devs all together talking about the third world difficulties. Because although these subjects are important and are necessary conversations we need to have, that can’t be the only or main intervention of those artists in our events. They need to be able to show their work and talk about/show what’s important to them.

Authors for this section:

Mer Grazzini

Editors for this section:

Jim Munroe

diversity.txt · Last modified: 2021/08/31 12:43 by jim