Games provide a window into other worlds, but for many BAME and working-class students that window is shut tight
When the pandemic put the world on pause and we retreated to our living rooms, video games gave us a horizon to head towards when in reality we had nowhere to go. But, as the most recent UK games industry census showed, the people who make those video game landscapes all tend to look alike: 70% of the game development workforce is male, and just 10% are BAME. This creates a sort of gaming Stepford – miles and miles of video game real estate where characters and stories are almost identical to the ones that came before, because the architects all look the same and want the same things.
The survey showed that 81% of people in the UK games industry are educated to at least undergraduate level, which is considerably higher than the 57% average for other creative industries. Meanwhile, 62% of those in British games studios grew up in households where the main earner worked in a professional or managerial role.
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Originally posted in the guardian.
