Starting diversity efforts for gaming during college
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The games industry has a skills problem. More precisely, it has a retention problem. It’s hard for companies to hang on to talent. Crunch, salary disparity, and burnout, not to mention harassment, are all factors. One issue discussed during the GamesBeat Summit 2022 “Building Diversity and Equity into the Games Industry Through College” panel is about the way we look at diversity.
“I think people can get really stuck on diversity being a single characteristic particularly within the games industry, it’s about women and the lack of women, but I think diversity is much bigger than that, ” says Gina Jackson OBE, founder of GameDev Bootcamps. “The work I do is really to counteract the skills crisis we’re in at the moment where we need more experienced people. We can bring people in from university, and we can bring in people in their twenties, but the people we need, at the moment, are more experienced people.”
Working in games, to many people, sounds great. However, many jobs are highly sought after, not to mention the barrier to entry. In order to work in the games industry, most companies require you to have experience in the games industry. Whether it be shipping a game or having worked on a franchise, it’s experience most people do not have.
“Part of the work I try to do is bring these people in and give them new skill sets,” said Jackson. “But then we still battled with those who insist on having people who’ve got a games relevant degree, or they’ve at least produced one product from start to finish. Well, you’re naturally excluding huge portions of the industry by saying that. It’s in your diversity of thinking and
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