Diversity and Inclusion Manifesto
Disclaimer : This post is a little raw, likely full of grammatical errors and typos. These words are my own and I have no agenda other than trying to make our industry better, more diverse and more inclusive. It is based solely on observations, no big data or machine learning was used in the creation of this post.
I’ve had the privilege of working in the Tech Industry for the past 16 years and the Games Industry for 6 years. Did I build a career on skill, knowledge and being the best person for the job? Or was it simply due to the colour of my skin and gender? If I’m being honest it’s probably the latter, mixed with some luck. This is an uneasy truth which I could simply brush under the carpet or a catalyst to help drive meaningful long term change.
Let’s just jump right in. Why is Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) so difficult to achieve? Is it because it requires change? Change of mindset, change of culture, change from the normal or abnormal? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s one of the few problems in the Tech/Games Industry which can’t be solved directly using money?
A real world example. We are launching a new game and we realize 2 days before launch that we don’t have enough compute resources to service 1 million players. What do we do? Assuming we are using our local friendly cloud provider, we just ask for more resources. We encounter an imminent risk, we throw big bags of money at said imminent risk and in return we receive a “solution”. Problem solved. We rock!
Quick and Easy Fix
A lack of D&I in an organization is a risk. A risk which should be addressed ideally sooner rather than later. There is no “Diversity and Inclusion as a Service”. There is no solution in the cloud and Silicon Valley doesn’t have a solution. There is no quick and easy fix. Creating a diverse and inclusive working environment requires a long term investment which many organisations fail to take into account. There is no end point.
CI/CD = Continuous Inclusion/Continuous Diversity.

I view investment in D&I to be similar to investment in Security and Quality. When a security breach occurs, a bug takes down production or an exposé is published the initial reaction is to invest in “solutions”. Over time as these “solutions” become the norm the argument for continued investment becomes more difficult. We haven’t had a breach, production bug or exposé published in 3 years. Problem solved. We rock!
CI/CD = Continuous Investment/Continuous Diversity
Diversity and Inclusion Manifesto
There are many examples of tech companies investing heavily in D&I for years and treating this investment as a strategic competitive advantage. This is great if you can afford this continued investment. In the Games Industry this may not be the case. Some smaller studios are operating on a shoestring and simply can’t afford this investment.
The “Agile Manifesto” was created in 2001 by a group of 17 software pundits. The goal was to create a set of values and principles which would form the foundation of agile software development. I was looking for a similar manifesto for D&I and while many organisations may publish stories of their D&I success, I wanted more actionable items, values, principles and best practices.
Over the next 12 months I’ll be gathering as much information as possible from everyone who is willing to help. The focus will be primarily on games studios and publishers. When this information is collected I’ll be reaching out to experts in the field of D&I and asking for some help in creating a Diversity and Inclusion Manifesto.
There is currently a landing page available here : https://diversitymanifesto.org
This is a community effort and together we can create a set of values, resources, principles and best practices around D&I which is available to everyone.
We may follow the same format as : https://github.com/matiassingers/awesome-readme
People can submit content as PRs.
Questions?
Are you concerned that this will fail, you’ll be wasting your time and people will just roll their eyes?
Not really. If the content gathered can help one person or one studio improve their D&I then it will be worth it.
Are you qualified in any way to drive this?
Nope. I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s better to try than to accept the current situation as the norm.
How can I help?
If you have some spare time and would like to get involved then drop a mail to : info@diversitymanifesto.org