I recently had the opportunity to represent Motive on a panel called Allyship in EA Games and in our Communities at this year’s MEGA-MIGS conference. I’m really excited to share more about the event with you in this blog post, but first I wanna give you a bit of context on who I am.
My name is Alma, and I’ve been at Motive for just over two years. I’m a Development Manager on the Star Wars™: Squadrons team as well as the Montreal chapter lead for the Women’s Ultimate Team (WUT). WUT is our employee resource group representing women-identifying employees - not an all-girl ultimate frisbee team as I thought when I first joined the studio, although that would be cool too. Before joining Motive, my background was in communications and management in the interactive technology space, so there have been a lot of firsts for me since I came aboard. Our panel at MEGA-MIGS is something that will stay with me for a long time because I know that without the active support and advocacy of individual allies, I might not have found this path and I might never have developed this incredibly rewarding career in video games.
Our panel was made up of five employees from Motive and EA, all part of the various Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) across EA. Employee Resource Groups are voluntary, employee-led groups that foster a sense of belonging by modeling inclusive behaviors and elevating underrepresented perspectives. You can read more about our ERGs here.
The ERGs are a fundamental part of fostering a culture of inclusivity at Motive. This year, we’ve been asking ourselves what it means to be an ally. It’s not enough to simply say “I am an ally”. Allyship requires action. But sometimes it can be hard for allies to know what actions we can take or how to engage with these topics if we don’t identify as part of an underrepresented community. I can think of times when I’ve felt apprehensive to engage with a topic for fear of saying the wrong thing, or taking space away from others. However, at some point I recognized that it was on me as an ally, to educate myself. I think we owe it to each other to listen and engage with challenging topics while remaining receptive to constructive feedback. I think about this a lot because although I’m a minority at work, I'm still a white woman from a middle-class background, which affords me a great deal of privilege in the world. All this is to say that I believe we all have the potential to leverage our unique positions and perspectives to act as allies to one another. As far as where to begin, our MEGA-MIGS panel aimed to share key anecdotes and give tangible action items to our audience on how to do this effectively.
It’s no secret that we work in a male-dominated industry that skews very white, so it’s particularly important that we continue to have these conversations around allyship within the games industry. In recent years, we tend to hear more about “microaggressions” or subtle acts of exclusion in the industry. These are harder to identify for their, well, subtlety. Fortunately, a clear way that we can be allies to counter subtle acts of exclusion, is to consider how we might practice “microinclusions” in our day to day lives. I’ll share a couple concrete examples that were raised during our panel at MEGA-MIGS.
I can’t overstate the positive impact these small-scale acts of inclusion can have. A lot of challenging conversations have emerged this year in the games industry, brought on by difficult news cycles. In this sense, it’s been quite an exhausting year at times. Some days it can feel like the burden of advocating for diversity and inclusion falls overwhelmingly on the shoulders of people who have been traditionally excluded, which is another way that allies can make such a huge impact. Allies act as accelerators and multipliers of positive cultural shifts. In order for initiatives like our ERG’s to permeate through our workplace culture, we need to have strong allies.
Allies act as accelerators and multipliers of positive cultural shifts.
The potential benefits of allyship, and diversity and inclusion initiatives as a whole, aren’t just limited to cultural changes in the workplace. The part that really motivates me, and many of my colleagues, is the impact we can have on our players. Bear with me while I do a bit of “Numbers” here. Insights into EA’s 2019 Global Player Demographics show that we have near gender parity across our player base, with our largest demographic being ages 11-17 and 18-24 respectively. Take a minute to consider what an influential time this was in your life; what media you were consuming, who you emulated and your emerging sense of identity. Maybe there were a ton of people in popular media who looked and spoke like you. Maybe there were only a handful, if any. As game makers, we are uniquely positioned to make a difference, and make sure that everybody who plays our games, particularly in that under-17 demographic, feels like they are represented somewhere within our enormous portfolio of games. This brings me to the second half of our allyship panel, which highlighted the impact of allyship in our products across EA.
At EA, we work with an Inclusion Framework, a set of guidelines for our products that aims to encourage and empower people of all backgrounds and abilities to play our games. Having tangible goals and guidelines built into the development cycle is an important part of ensuring that talking about marginalized groups becomes our new normal in games, so that it doesn’t feel exceptional when we encounter diverse representation. A key part of diversity and inclusion in our games depends on authenticity. We have a responsibility when telling the stories of underrepresented people, to do so as authentically as possible. You can read more on our commitments to inclusive design and positive play here.
Part of the reason the Inclusion Framework exists is because in the current context of our industry we don’t have diverse enough talent on our game teams to ensure we’re going to be able to honour the authenticity of the stories we tell. This is something that we are taking active steps to work towards, but until then resources like the Inclusion Framework and partnerships with our internal ERGs are core to driving authenticity. This is another area where our ERGs can provide valuable insight in a way that has a direct impact on our players.
For example, the important role that the ASPIRE ERG, representing Asian and Pacific Islander employees, played during the development of Battlefield V - War in the Pacific. The game team was conscious of the sensitive nature of this particular setting, so the ASPIRE ERG was consulted for their insights. Members of ASPIRE helped navigate the path between immersion and conscientiousness. This partnership helped the Battlefield team make key choices around the use of historical symbols in the game, as well as controlling bias as the franchise strives to make both sides feel equally balanced and playable.
Another great example is when the Sims team consulted the ERG representing Hispanic/Latinx employees, SOMOS EA, ahead of their Hispanic Heritage Month content drop. The ERG members provided feedback and insight into beloved food items that could be added to the game’s menu. As a result, the game added a rich mix of foods to their roster like pollo a la brasa (Peru), chimis (The Dominican Republic) and elotes (Mexico). The partnership between the developers and the SOMOS ERG helped provide player-facing content that was representative of the diverse culinary traditions of the Hispanic/Latinx community.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that we may make mistakes along the way, which is why we need to be self-reflective and open to opportunities to learn.
Inclusion and diversity is a journey, as is allyship. In order to continue to grow these efforts, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we may make mistakes along the way, which is why we need to be self-reflective and open to opportunities to learn. We need to continue to have courageous conversations, take positive actions and use our voices to amplify those who may not have the same representation or privilege that we ourselves possess. I am so grateful to have had the chance to share my perspective at MEGA-MIGS, alongside my wonderfully insightful colleagues - and to again echo this experience here for whoever you are, reading this post.
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