Gaming is a wonderful space that brings many people together to enjoy various experiences. However, this space isn't without flaw. While most gamers nowadays are women, the game industry did not start out this like, with the majority of players being men. Games reflected this and so games mainly features male protagonists and playable characters. Women usually were side characters or love interests. This space built and led to online communities for multiplayer games rejecting and scrutinizing women players, making a space that is unwelcoming to women. Female gamers report countless anecdotes of mistreatment in online games, bullying, and harassment. In recent years the games industry has made efforts towards reversing this effect.
It is necessarily to then engineer more inclusion into this space, such as the ability for players to play as a character from a range of ethnic backgrounds, male or female, different shapes and sizes, and more. More and more games now include accessibility features for disabled players to enjoy games, such as color blind settings, all the way to auditory features for blind players.
Incorporating inclusion into your game is important because it helps players feel represented. The representation of many different types of people in any medium, such as movies, can make a big difference for some people.
Additionally it is important that this inclusion is authentic. For example, movies have been criticized for a long time now for including "token" characters, simply to seem like they are including a diverse set of characters. These characters are often limited in potential and importance for the story, involved much less, and tend to be side characters. Its important to be inclusive not just for the purpose of being inclusive. By including female characters that are just as likely to be morally flawed in a game's story there is a representation of women in the game that is realistic and builds a sense of equal representation. It is things like this that will build a more inclusive space in gaming with the least complaints from gamers, and the most benefit for those that need representation in this space.
The shear amount of mistreatment of women in the online gaming space has made way for a new development in the games industry, which is management of disruptive gameplay. Of course, by minimizing toxicity in online games we can avoid these problems, however this is much more of a complicated process than many people think. This has made way for lots of jobs and new ways of considering communication between players, freedoms players should and shouldn't have, and exactly what is considered "disruptive".
I think there is a long way the games industry has to go before it perfects multiplayer interactions. I believe it is best to continue striving to minimize toxic behavior in online lobbies, however I think this needs to be coupled with the ability for players to still communicate and socialize freely. As the article "What Inclusion Means to Players" by Jenny Shi, "the majority of players consider inclusion an important factor that can influence their decision to play a game, but there is still much to understand about disruptive behavior and toxicity".
This problem is also perpetuated by those that run the gaming industry, of whom is mostly white and male. This problem works down from the top, and has been for a long time now. According to Jay-Ann Lopez, founder of the online community Black Girl Gamers, increasing diversity and inclusion in the sector has been a “work in progress.” There is slow progress on all fronts for this, and it is required that more diversity makes it into positions of power in the gaming industry, whether it be investing, publishing, or studios. This would be the most meaningful progress the gaming industry could make to improve inclusion in the games they are creating and their own workspaces.
Overall, the gaming industry is lagging behind in terms of diversity and inclusion. It is important that young people like me entering this industry, especially white males, keep this in mind as we enter the space to make an effort to work towards better inclusion. There is a lot to be gained in this venture and a lot of work to be done. An open mind and eagerness to putting in extra work is necessary.
