Making Games Industry Job Applications Accessible and Inclusive — Part 3

Published in

Crayta

9 min readMay 17, 2018

This is part 3 of a 4 part series written about a survey we recently performed to try and figure out how to improve the diversity among applicants for jobs we advertised within the games industry.

If you missed the previous parts, you may want go catch up. We’ll be waiting for you here!

Part 1 — Background
Part 2 — Method
Part 3 — Results (you are here! ;) )
Part 4 — Conclusions

Results!

At risk of sounding like your secondary school science homework, these last couple of sections (excluding the footnotes!) will be about the results (analysis of the data we gathered) and conclusions (what this means, what actions we’re going to take as a result).

So, bring on the stats! The following is based on 41 responses out of a total of 42 — we only saw one blatant troll, whose answers were deleted to preserve the integrity of the data set.

First up, the demographic data.

Pie chart showing the % of each gender. 29.3% Male, 53.7% Female, 14.6% Non-binary, 2.4% Genderqueer (submitted as a write-in answer).

We explicitly asked for only respondents from under-represented demographics, so it’s no surprise that Female was our clear “winner” on this one. We were definitely glad to include an “other” option though, and I imagine some may be surprised at the relative proportion of Non-binary respondents!

Pie chart showing the % of whether the gender stated matches that the respondent was assigned at birth. 73.2% Yes, 24.4% No, 2.4% It’s Complicated (submitted as a write-in answer).

Again, we were asking for under-represented respondents so it makes sense but it was still a little surprising just how different our respondents were compared with the (estimated) figures for the UK (not that all our respondents were necessarily from the UK, but we are and it makes a good comparison case).

It’s estimated that (very roughly!) 1% of the UK population are trans¹ (their gender does not match that which they were assigned at birth), compared with almost a quarter of our respondents.

Pie chart showing the % of respondents in each age group. 37.1% 16–25, 51.4% 26–35, 11.4% 36–45.

This was a fairly even split, although we did find it a bit surprising that we didn’t have more in the 36–45 bracket. We didn’t see any respondents under the age of 16 or over the age of 45, which is a shame because it would have been interesting to see how thoughts on diversity within the industry vary at the lower and upper ends of the scale.

Pie chart showing the % of respondents who said they identify as disabled. 17.1% Yes, 82.9% No.

Interestingly, this means that our survey respondents are slightly below the UK population in terms of percentage with a disability. Around 18% of UK working age adults are disabled².

Since we didn’t get very many respondents who said they were disabled, there’s little point breaking this down by “type”, but we were primarily informed of physical disabilities. The more interesting part of this was the accommodations that people said they required, which is just below!

The Good Stuff

So, that’s the demographic stuff out of the way, so we have some idea who our respondents are. But what is it that they need in order to feel comfortable applying to your company?

Well, we’ve got the obvious (as in it’s obvious that there need to be some rather than necessarily what they are) accessibility accommodations for people with disabilities.

Accessibility accommodations mentioned as being useful were :

wheelchair access at work and in living space if needed to relocate
ability to work from home
ability to use guide dog
understanding and acceptance of potential inability to work long hours at events
ability to customise lighting at desk

And how about that inclusivity statement we mentioned earlier?

We aim to build an inclusive and diverse development studio. We therefore strongly encourage applicants from backgrounds that aren’t always well-represented within the industry.

We asked whether it made people more or less likely to apply for a job.

Pie chart showing whether respondents were more or less likely to apply for a job at a company with the inclusivity statement above. 70.1% More, 4.9% Less, 7.3% No Difference (collated from write in answers), 17.1% Need more info (collated from write in answers).

Almost 20% of respondents wrote in answers saying that they needed more information. Most of these respondents said that they did consider the statement a potentially positive sign, but were wary that it’s easy to say things that often aren’t acted on. There seemed to be a feeling among those specific respondents that it’s becoming a “trend” to use this sort of language but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything positive for minorities.

Now we’re onto the free text fields. This is a bit more complex to sum up (for obvious reasons!) — we’re just going to pull out specific comments, and how often they were mentioned (most commonly mentioned at the top). Bear with us!

These percentages are going to add up to a lot more than 100% because many people mentioned multiple aspects.

When looking at job listings and company websites, are there any things you especially look for that make you want to apply?

Visibly diverse team — 40%
Talking to people who already work there or researching the company culture in some other way (e.g. Glassdoor) to make sure it’s not aggressively competitive or brogrammer-esque — 35%
Flexible working (both in terms of time and location) — 20%
Clear salary and benefits information — 20%
Training and genuine entry-level positions offered — 15%
Clear job descriptions — 8%

There were some other items mentioned which didn’t fit into the above categories:

Diverse characters and inclusive games
What technology is used
Where the job is located
What the game is (e.g. genre)

World cloud in the shape of a tick showing words used in answers of positives when looking at a company.

And are there any things you look for as “red flags” that the company is not going to be a good fit for you?

Appearance of brogrammer, lad culture, or other exclusive “club” feel — 56%
Mention of crunch (explicit or euphemistic!) — 15%
No salary specified — 10%
Mention of meritocracy — 8%
High turnover of staff — 8%
Masculine pronouns in job descriptions — 5%
Long list of “requirements” for a role — 5%

Other items which didn’t fit into these categories but deserve a mention:

Being hired “because we need a woman on our team”
No clear progression for advertised job
Offensive promotional art
Inaccessible office (e.g. mobility, gendered toilets)
Lengthy application process (e.g. including long unpaid tests)
Rigid software requirements (e.g. “you must use Maya”)
The job advertised being temporary rather than permanent

World cloud in the shape of a cross showing words used in answers of “red flags” when looking at a company.

Do you have anything else to add on the topic of inclusivity or accessibility of careers within games?

Honestly, these ones were all pretty great and wide-ranging. I’ve censored anything I think may be even very slightly personally identifying (and removed the comments that were just saying “none” or “we need more diversity”) and tidied these up a little, but it’s worth reading these in their mostly-non-summarised form.

A company that has initiatives that target school age, older or non games peoples is a great sign that that company wants to help tackle wider structural issues with under representation in games.
A company’s history of approaching diversity in their games is important too. They can say they’re looking to be inclusive but if their most recent game is still filled with scruffy straight white men and heteronormative story tropes without even a minimum attempt to reach out beyond that, it’s hard to believe they actually practice what they preach in their hiring posts.
Age is a big factor, I’d be more open to work at a studio with a diverse age range than one that’s all graduates or all older guys.
As a young person in the industry, I don’t have a lot of experience and a team with no other woman scares me because I won’t have any idea if I will be treated the same way a guy would have been.
Ask your own employees, ask for anonymous input, prevent toxic work environment (e.g. “it’s only a joke”), promote and organise activities with LGBT/feminist groups i.e. having workers doing workshops and talks to girls, etc.
It would be good to have internship and apprentice schemes open to older people transitioning into games, who have extra skills to offer.
Games companies tend to have a severe bias towards people with lifestyles that can be subordinated to the career. I’d like to see a job listing or a company that talks about supporting flexible schedules, maternity policies, mental health and team building.
I didn’t see any mention of sexual/romantic orientation in this survey. How a same-gender partner gets received is a big one. Which is why I try to talk about my partner a lot early on to make sure I catch any potential issues as soon as possible. And still, just because there’s acceptance, doesn’t mean one won’t feel lonely. It’s just a big plus to see that there are people like you there.
I feel like games like all jobs suffer from the same stigmas to disabilities that most jobs have. Typically though people in the industry seem to be better at handling it.
I feel like it is constantly improving. The indie dev community is a good sign of things changing for the better, I feel this will happen in the AAA space soon as well. However, I feel like change will only really be seen once AAA companies push for inclusivity and diversity within their studios — without fear of backlash for ‘forced diversity quotas’.
I think more employers need to realise that just saying “the door is open, enter” or “the ladder is free, just climb it” is not enough. Discrepancies in diversity and representation happen because playing fields are not equal. It’s the same reason women don’t get paid the same for the same job as men do, it’s the same reason black people escape generational poverty at much slower rates if they ever do, it’s the same reason so many minorities grow up not even realising certain jobs are possible due to not having a representative figure show it’s possible. It’s not enough to pretend that the playing field is equal because it’s never been equal. There needs to be active and concentrated effort to reach out and pull under-represented minorities through the door and up the ladder. That’s the only way it’s really going to change.
I wish more studios would support remote or part-remote roles! We’re a tech-savvy workforce and have so many tools at our disposal for keeping in touch remotely, it’s disappointing that geography and house/commute prices still keep so many people from being able to apply for jobs they could do. Especially given so many games hubs are located in expensive cities (London, Cambridge, Guildford etc).
It’s so important — I’m a white woman so I’m aware a lot of the diversity conversations centre around that, it’s really important to look at and highlight other areas of diversity e.g ethnicity, sexual orientation, even socio-economic backgrounds. Growing up with less money than most makes the game industry inaccessible for some.
Need more focus on Assistive Tech in terms of both hardware and software compatibility for games. Need more a11y awareness and emphasis on initiatives to educate developers, designers and everyone involved in production.
Not sure if you’ve tried this, but going into specific POC/women/disabled/LGBTQ game dev groups will heighten your chances of people from those groups applying. General game dev groups will always be majority white dudes.
Right now having a job in the games industry with a severe disability is very difficult because of the lack of help and empathy. And nowadays working remotely is still a difficult path, even more if you’re a junior programmer/artist.
The industry’s come a long way and I feel fortunate to have got as far as I have — I’ve had to work for it and prove I’m more than I appear, but I’ve still been accepted. I appreciate that this may be because I’m a white male and if I’m sitting/standing still, it’s hard to notice my problem… only walking around does it become obvious. We still have a long way to go though and the sooner we can push out the negative element, the better. Sadly, I suspect it’ll never completely go away… that’s humanity for you. :(
Try to give opportunities to people from countries like Sri Lanka and other small Asian countries since they don’t have chance to be part of Game Industry.