DEI is DOA: What's really failing inside the game industry's diversity efforts

gamedeveloper.com:

Researcher and critic Anita Sarkeesian has traditionally spoken at the Game Developers Conference with her acclaimed video series Feminist Frequency at the forefront. Last year, that took the form of a retrospective that explored what her team's video series has accomplished over a span of ten years, with equal eyes towards its past impacts and its hopes for the game industry's future.

At this year's GDC, Sarkeesian approached the podium with no designs on either recapping or resembling that series. Her speech was not about tropes that reinforced negative representation on gamers' TV screens. It was instead about an industry-wide status quo that, according to her research and insider sources, continues to reinforce negative representation inside the companies who make those games.

"Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are framed as attempts to transform workplace environments into spaces that are welcoming for all people, especially those historically underrepresented," Sarkeesian said. "I'm not here to tell you that DEI is broken. I'm here to tell you that DEI is working as intended. And that's the problem."

Sarkeesian began by recounting increased public scrutiny and conversation about representation inside tech companies, particularly gaming companies, in the wake of social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. She pointed to a measured surge in DEI hiring throughout 2020, though she questioned the motives for these games industry hires. "Some were doing this with a sincere hope for making their studios a better place to work for their marginalized workers," she said. "Some of them were doing it as a performative response to social pressure."

Thanks to her work at Feminist Frequency, along with her