Show Notes
Digital games industry has become the largest entertainment industry in the world and gaming careers are portrayed as a lucrative option for passionate game enthusiasts. However, there has been continued public turmoil regarding the discriminatory and non-inclusive aspects of the industry. We have seen multiple waves of public outcomings from employees of major game studios, who have disclosed systemic sexism, gender-based discrimination and racism.
Building a career in the digital games industry is particularly challenging for women as well as other minority groups like racial and sexual minorities because of the prevailing gender stereotypes and the masculinist culture of the industry, and the gamer culture at large. In the light of all this, it is unsurprising that the efforts to recruit women into coding and the games industry have been mostly ineffective — women comprise one-fifth of the game industry workforce both in Finland and globally.
In this episode of Sustainability Unwrapped, Marke Kivijärvi, Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher at Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics and an affiliated researcher at GODESS institute at Hanken, discusses with Jenni Ahlapuro, a community volunteer at Inklusiiv and a communications consultant working within the tech & games industry at Netprofile, and Marianne Määttä, President of Female Gaming Finland ry about the importance of raising awareness of the inclusion problems in games sector and ways of actively supporting diversity and inclusion. The guests share their experiences as players and members of gaming communities and talk about their volunteer work to support diversity and inclusion in the games industry spaces, and the wider tech sector.