Diversity in Games: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Abstract:

Success in games and games writing today can look like many different things: social media presence, number of followers, breadth of audience, specificity of audience, monetary gain, and impact on community, among many others. The value placed on these different kinds of success differs between individuals and between different communities, all shaped and prioritized by a variety of subtle differences in values, experiences, geographic locations, cultures, history, and more. Creating effective inclusive communities challenges members of a community to be open-minded about different forms of success that their community pursues. Attendees who participate in this workshop will come out not only with greater empathy to understand how their community defines success, but also with tools to better support and help others within that community to succeed in ways that fulfill them.

Co-organizers of the Different Games Conference 2015 will lead a workshop divided into two parts:

  1. How a single person’s definition of success impacts their interaction/relationship with community (success defined by community, quantified by community, isolated from community, and more)
  2. How a community can help promote all of those definitions of success (because we want to form communities that help people be successful in the way that they want to be successful)

The workshop will be collaborative in nature and discussion-based. Having an open and collaborative environment is essential to the success of this workshop so that everyone may learn from one another. This workshop will be most revealing if people who represent many different kinds of communities attend and give input. If participants can feed in their own experiences into this workshop, everyone who attends will leave the workshop with greater empathy and a broader view of how different communities define success, and how individuals can help those communities succeed in ways that are fulfilling to them.

Sarah ShoemannBios:

Sarah Schoemann is the founder of Different Games Conference and a doctoral student in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Her research investigates the implications of accessible media and technology as a tool for personal expression and social critique within various creative communities. She is interested in considering the ways the work of individual creators and groups can speak to broader issues of equity and social justice, online and off.