According to a recent International Game Developers Association’s 2017 Developer Satisfaction Survey, “81 percent of game developers said that diversity in the workplace is “very important” or “somewhat important,” up from 78 percent in 2016 and 63 percent in 2015.” Despite this uptick in diversity responses, only “42 percent of respondents said the game industry has increased diversity over the past two years, a decrease from 47 percent in 2016.”
When it comes to diversity in character representation, it would appear that diversity has increased over the past few years, yet behind the game, there is still much to be done. In the workplace, “in terms of ethnicity, 61 percent identified themselves as white, 18 percent were East/South East Asian (a higher than previous number of respondents were from Taiwan), followed by Hispanic or Latino (5 percent). Black/African American or African made up just 1 percent. 42 percent of respondents were from the United States.”
“Survey respondents were predominately male (74%). Only 21% identified as female, 2% identified as male to female transgender and fewer than 1% identified as female to male transgender. An additional 2% selected ‘Other’ as their response.”
Unfortunately not much is being done to improve these numbers currently. It would appear that the industry is still collecting data on the subject but at some point, actions must be taken to improve diversity issues, if they can. “The survey was taken by 963 respondents from around the world, with 42 percent based in the United States, followed by Taiwan, Canada and Australia.”
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/8/16855940/videogame-diversity-report-igda
