[Release Date: July 6, 2021] Gamers and non-gamers alike have plenty of complaints about the ways game companies supposedly act irresponsibly. But in this episode, we’re going BIGGER than that! We’re going to look at 4 ideas about what any corporation is responsible for and apply these to today’s game companies. Which idea is right and how might these companies do things differently if they were convinced to see their responsibilities differently?
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
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A Ashcraft: In this episode of ethics and video games, we have a very first guest she is a ux strategist writer and speaker she has a PhD in psychology and has worked for ubisoft you’d be soft.
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A Ashcraft: Lucas arts and epic games, I read her truly amazing book called the gamers brain, which talks about the neuroscience of the user experience.
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A Ashcraft: And i’ve attended her excellent webinar about how our implicit biases hinder our efforts to make our industry more diverse she has a new book the psychology of games that I have not yet read.
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A Ashcraft: Please, welcome to the show Celia hood done.
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Celia Hodent: No.
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Shlomo Sher: Thanks for me.
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Shlomo Sher: I feel like we should clap you are.
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Shlomo Sher: feeling server.
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Already.
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Shlomo Sher: we’re very excited to have you Celia i’m and God I you know I want to, I want to just talk a little bit about why we wanted to have this episode with you and um.
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Shlomo Sher: You know, we keep meaning to have an episode about sexism and games and there’s so much that can be said about sexism games and we’re going to have these episodes.
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Shlomo Sher: But whenever you know let’s say my classes talk about sexism and video games, the solution is always well Okay, well, we just need to get more women in the game industry.
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Shlomo Sher: right that will solve, you know that will stop, and this is the solution, not just for sexism, the game industry, but for sexism in any industry right it’s always, the solution is let’s bring in more women so what’s the problem.
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Shlomo Sher: So we thought we’d bring you in and talk about what the problem is and what the solutions might be.
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Celia Hodent: Sure Okay, so there are a lot of problems with that, but it’s Indeed, the best solution for inclusion, if you want to be inclusive, you need to let people in so then your products are going to be more inclusive, because you have.
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Celia Hodent: More diversity on your teams and so that’s going to counter your blind spots, because we all have blind spots, so why is it so difficult.
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Celia Hodent: So there are different problems so first of all, depending on the job position you might not have an equal amount of women.
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Celia Hodent: And men who are have the degree that works for this position is a computer science, we know that we have less women than men, that great and computer science, which is not the case in other sciences.
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Celia Hodent: Like and doctors medical doctors, I think it’s pretty much even today, I can biology’s pretty much even but for computer science, for whatever reason.
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Celia Hodent: We have less women who graduate so, of course, if you have a lesser pool of women than men who were graduating into the topic or into the the signs that you need.
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Celia Hodent: that’s going to be a bit harder, but on top of that, we have biases that makes us hire the people who look like us.
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Celia Hodent: have lots of advice, this is one of the main problems and if you’re the hiring manager for a position and you’re a white man.
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Celia Hodent: you’re going to be more likely to favor another whiteman and not even because you want to it’s because you have a call the anger bias, which is a tendency to favor the people appear to be in the same group as we perceive we are.
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A Ashcraft: So that’s that’s called the anchor by us to say.
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Celia Hodent: In a group.
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A Ashcraft: And the group sorry.
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Celia Hodent: Yes, yeah there’s there’s an anchor vice.
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Shlomo Sher: bias is that the first thing you hear essentially becomes more important to you than other things here right you heard it first.
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Celia Hodent: So the first thing you hear it’s an anchor from which to compare this stuff.
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Celia Hodent: So that’s the reason why, for example, companies when they do sales they put an anchor for say oh this item was.
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Celia Hodent: $95 and now it’s.
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Celia Hodent: 75 and so.
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Celia Hodent: Your anchor so that makes you perceive the new price as being very interesting.
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Celia Hodent: Right, the anchor.
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A Ashcraft: sort of a relative gives you a relative point, yes, yes, I see.
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Shlomo Sher: Though it is interesting right when I think about a gamer right, so you know my original conception of a gamer right back, and you know if you want to go back to the 90s, or the early aughts right they you know the the the teenager.
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Celia Hodent: Right, the stereotype right right but.
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Shlomo Sher: Right that’s the stereotype right that is also that can also be because that’s where I first heard of let’s get that that was my original perception gave that also.
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Shlomo Sher: might remain around for very, very long time, because it came first, so the anchoring bias might have a lot to do with how we think about games, even though those demographics have changed.
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Celia Hodent: I don’t know because first it was the the the picture of the family playing together, if you remember the first.
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Celia Hodent: advertisement for a.
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Celia Hodent: Time is always like a little boy or little girl and their parents, all together, so that was.
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Celia Hodent: The original.
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Celia Hodent: it’s in the early 90s, you know with 3D games and no wolf and sign and L more shooter games that became or the stereotype of the young men playing beauty so that’s that changed it was not the case, initially.
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A Ashcraft: Right, and I do believe that early on in the in the business of video games, there were more women, I mean it was a very small, it was a very, very small industry, for a long time right.
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Celia Hodent: Like in computer science, like the first program is where women.
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Celia Hodent: yeah making money like way.
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A Ashcraft: yeah and some.
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A Ashcraft: Something changed and something changed and it ended up like like ballooning out in terms.
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A Ashcraft: of men, but not in the same way for women i’m not sure exactly what happened.
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Celia Hodent: So yeah.
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Celia Hodent: yeah I have a graph I don’t exactly remember what I think it’s around the 70s, or the 80s, we see the computer science, where women like you know it’s it’s.
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Celia Hodent: During, like the other sciences like women are graduating but around the 70s, or the adc this falling back down and that’s really weird because it’s not like women cannot do science, obviously we can get right in other sciences about the same.
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Celia Hodent: percentage that that men today well depends on exactly what but, overall, is pretty equal.
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Celia Hodent: In the West, but for computer sciences really weird like you see this big fall down, I think it was in 70s, or or the early 80s.
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Celia Hodent: hmm so we’re not sure why there’s a lot of different theories, but it’s it could be, because women don’t feel welcome or you know there they know is included in in the recruitment from universities.
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Celia Hodent: It could be like you were saying that the stereotypes of whether it is video games or computers, at some point, it would just start portraying men.
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Celia Hodent: it’s really hard to tell but in we don’t know how much impact of ISIS have a spiritual meaning, especially stereotype and and how you know representation is in in media in the media and how this is really impacting people’s behavior.
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Celia Hodent: But it’s fair to say that if you don’t see anyone that looks like you, in an area it’s you know when you’re young it’s it might be hard for you to really picture yourself becoming that person.
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Celia Hodent: So that’s that’s a lot of theories that we, we might have and and once you have a group of people that predominantly are in an area.
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Celia Hodent: Then you have the Ingrid bias that were saying earlier, and so you have a tendency to hire the people that you perceive that.
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Celia Hodent: As long as your own group, so if you’re white it feel men you.
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Celia Hodent: You don’t even realize this is going on, but you going to have more scrutiny, with people that you perceive being outside of your group, so it with a woman or personal color.
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Celia Hodent: And so that it has a tendency to make us hire the people who look like us, and so, once you have a group that’s predominant in an area, then it gets worse and worse, just because of that, the inca bias.
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A Ashcraft: Right, do you think that that there’s some sort of subconscious idea that it’ll be easier to communicate with the person who probably thinks like me.
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Celia Hodent: So it is completely implicit that’s oftentimes express as the.
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Celia Hodent: You know, having the cultural fit.
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Celia Hodent: And, or when you hiring so I have a comic strip that illustrates pretty well what’s happening so let’s say yo white men and you do want to have diversity, so you interview, a lot of different people like a woman people of color.
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Celia Hodent: And you’ve you tried to make it fair, you ask them the same questions and you feel that’s fair but then you have a whiteman so someone with more like a same background, as you and you see on their on this resume oh you’ve been to the same school, as I did I say I don’t know.
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Celia Hodent: And then you say Oh, did you have that Professor do, and then you start to have a conversation with that person that is going to be more loose or.
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Celia Hodent: Maybe more more emotional and then get a feel a connection with that person that has nothing to do with that person’s skills, but just because.
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Celia Hodent: you’ve you found the connection that comes from the fact that the person is from the same school and so they’re likely from the background and so they’re likely magennis.
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Celia Hodent: right as compared to you and, at the end of the day, you might say something like yeah I thought I had a good feeling with that person.
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Celia Hodent: And again, we we post rationalize that we’re going to say no, I did a very strong hiring process, I had some standardized tests or questions, whatever, but the problem is that, because this is implicit we don’t even realize this, this is going on, and this is how we.
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Celia Hodent: end up with a team that is very legitimate.
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Celia Hodent: But we post rationalize because also cognitive dissonance we don’t want to be that person who is not inclusive and I didn’t know what I mean it’s not my fault, we just hired the best people it’s not our fault it, they all happen to be white men.
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Celia Hodent: And so, this is the sort of discourse that you hear and it’s really hard to unravel because I mean, I would say I don’t know have no i’m going to say 90% I have no clue.
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Celia Hodent: The real percentage will be, but, most people don’t really realize and that’s what’s going on and there they do really want to try to be inclusive, but they don’t really see where the problem is.
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A Ashcraft: And this is how we.
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Celia Hodent: perpetuate discrimination without realizing it.
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Celia Hodent: that’s the reason why we need to understand what’s going on, so that we can always you know say well it’s not my fault I didn’t know about this bias, at some point we do need to realize what’s going on there, so we can fix it.
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A Ashcraft: Right and and and.
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A Ashcraft: I think we we sort of understand that if we, the more we understand about the way we think the more that we can inoculate ourselves against against the subconscious biases.
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Celia Hodent: Right yes and no.
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Celia Hodent: Yes, in a sense that once you understand what’s going on, you can label things.
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Celia Hodent: And i’m the anchor bias anchoring or in group bias and there’s a lot of other biases that we have it makes it easier to understand what’s going on and why did you did what you did or two it’s actually easier to spot these biases and others in other people rather than ourselves.
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A Ashcraft: Because there and.
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I said.
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Celia Hodent: Listen.
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Celia Hodent: we’re still going to fall for it.
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Celia Hodent: So maybe if you learn about them, you are going to be able to spot them, maybe afterwards, so when once you try to think about what you did during the day and how you reacted to things.
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Celia Hodent: But at the other day we don’t have a good bar brain is pretty bias and the more tired, we are the hardest, that is, for us to spot this issues.
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Celia Hodent: And right typically So yes, if it’s during the weekend, you well rested and you have a compositional someone’s relax you might be able to spot whenever your biases as they’re.
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Celia Hodent: coming in, but most of the time we’re super stressed out when the middle of endemic everybody is scared of the future of the planet.
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Celia Hodent: Your boss, you know can can be stressing you out or you can have problems with their US pals at home or whatever it’s going on, you can have like a someone you love this as sick.
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Celia Hodent: As all of that is just going to be caught more load.
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Celia Hodent: load, and this is when we can’t take any more effort to just like don’t you think stop and think before everything we do and it’s so ingrained in ourselves, this is what Daniel can him and his his mentioned is like a system.
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Celia Hodent: one.
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Celia Hodent: Which is fast automatic, this is the system like it’s like a mode of thinking that we use most of the day, just because it’s efficient because it’s fast, but this is where the biases.
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Celia Hodent: lie, and so, even though you know about them it’s still going to fall for them and that’s the reason why I do a lot of them when I do my presentations I tried to do a lot of little games mind games, hoping that, at least, everyone is going to fall for at least one.
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Celia Hodent: Right, because the problem is that when you feel when you feel like you’re better than others to spot these biases, then you, you have or confidence.
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Celia Hodent: And this is when it’s it’s still bad because then you believe that your you better than the others and you’re not going to fulfill these biases.
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Shlomo Sher: it’s the bias bias.
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yeah.
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A Ashcraft: So I went I went through your slides.
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Celia Hodent: there’s never ending.
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A Ashcraft: yeah I went through your slides again as prep for this conversation and fell for them, even though I had seen.
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A Ashcraft: The one with the cart with.
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A Ashcraft: The.
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A Ashcraft: cards with what they they like if it’s an A on one side and a three, on the other.
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A Ashcraft: yeah and.
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Celia Hodent: These are, these are to explain this this game to.
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A Ashcraft: Please, and if you don’t mind i’ll take that i’ll take that slide out and in the Facebook, when we when we post this this on Facebook we’ll put will put the when we post a link to the podcast on the Facebook i’ll put this in the comments to.
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Celia Hodent: OK so imagine you have a deck of cards and this This role is always true there’s always a letter on one side of the car and there’s always a number on its flip side.
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Celia Hodent: And we show for cards two cars with a letter side up and two cards, with a number sign up So you see, for cars on screen you see a.
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Celia Hodent: c three and seven so two cards, with a lower setup and to confirm the number sign up and then I asked you for a little games like what are the card.
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Celia Hodent: or cards so you then you need to turn over to verify if the following the rule is true if there’s an A on one side of the card then there’s a three, on the other side.
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Celia Hodent: So the four cars, I AC three seven, and I ask people which card, we need to flip to verify if there’s an A on one side, the card then there’s a three, on the other side, so what did you answer.
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hey.
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A Ashcraft: yeah I mean.
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A Ashcraft: Presumably hey right.
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yeah.
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A Ashcraft: Or the three.
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Shlomo Sher: No, not.
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Celia Hodent: So most answers are a only well and three, but both of differences are are wrong.
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Celia Hodent: yeah.
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A Ashcraft: I know.
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Celia Hodent: So you do need to flip a because i’m sorry it’s deductive reasoning and do down papers and he has a premise, if something and then a conclusion, then something else so let’s say if it rains, then the pavement is going to be wet.
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Celia Hodent: So, to verify this really have to wait until it right, because otherwise you can’t verify this rule so here if a then three, we need to have a somewhere.
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Celia Hodent: to verify this role, so we have a card with we know where there’s an A on one side, so we absolutely need to flip it to verify, indeed, we have a three on the side.
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Celia Hodent: We do not need to flip three because I didn’t say if a then three and vice versa, whatever is behind the three we don’t care.
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Celia Hodent: Because this is not going to invalidate the really a than three the pavement could be wet because it’s been washed it’s not going to change the fact that if it rains, it is also wet.
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Celia Hodent: So we don’t care what’s behind three that’s also why we don’t care what’s behind see, but we do want to flip over seven because if you find an aim behind the seven, then it would invalidate that.
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Celia Hodent: And so that’s a bias, that we have it’s not like we’re not capable of logical reasoning deductive reasoning is just that.
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Celia Hodent: Again we try to find solution fast and we get prompted by Ayn three and the instruction.
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Celia Hodent: So we have a tendency to just focus on that it’s just hard, especially when it’s abstract to think, logically, and that way, but if I tell you, if you’re in a bunch of your the bar bartender and you’re you’re starting to shift at the bar and you have four people there.
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Celia Hodent: For two people you know what they’re drinking one is drinking alcohol and one is drinking coke and then the two others, you know them, so you know the age, one is 17 and the other one is 30.
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Celia Hodent: And the rule is you know who do you need what ids and glasses, you need to check to verify if there’s alcohol in the glass, then the drinker is 21 or older in the US.
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Celia Hodent: Then it’s clearly to verify the person who drinks alcohol, the a those is that person of age and you need to verify the person who’s under age.
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Celia Hodent: To check if that person is not drinking alcohol and the others, you don’t care it’s the exact same game, but now I put in a context that it makes it easier for you to just like go with the flow and good.
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Celia Hodent: system one, and so this, this is really what we do when we work on new wax we try to understand what are the limitations of the brain and you know that you have we have very.
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Celia Hodent: Solid limitations in terms of perception attention and memory, but we also have more subtle limitations in terms of reasoning, and so we need to understand all that, so that we can offer the best experience possible but in games, we can also put the challenge, where we want it to be.
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Shlomo Sher: So that’s yeah so before I want to get back to I want to ask you about meritocracy in the state of women in industry and all that stuff but before we do I realized, I can you explain to our listeners what exactly ux is.
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Celia Hodent: Sure, so it means user experience and it’s about considering the experience that the end user is going to have with the product as we develop the product so it’s a mindset it’s a philosophy more than.
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Celia Hodent: Anything that has a lot of different roles and disciplines.
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Celia Hodent: For example, you have the ux designer who is going to start by empathize with the user and try to figure out, you know why would a user use that product what are they needs how they would use it in their everyday lives.
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Celia Hodent: so that they can think about how to design it the, the best way possible, for the users and these people prototype and then test is prototypes with users at every step of the process.
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Celia Hodent: The human is going to use the product is at the Center what we do so, always would be called human centered design.
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Celia Hodent: And then you have other people like ux researchers, I really help doing the research to make sure.
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Celia Hodent: Like people you know what is their experience and is it the thing that we hoped for them, so we cannot build an experience and experience, by definition, is what happened in people’s minds.
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Celia Hodent: As they interact for the product, and so the ux researchers here to verify what is the experience that they’re having is it frustrating or not, or can they use the product intuitively and is it satisfying their needs.
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Celia Hodent: and
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Celia Hodent: Is this matching the intentions so that’s a bunch of people working.
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Celia Hodent: With this this in mind, and ultimately it’s more philosophy that the whole company needs to have in order to always think about the human first so that we can satisfy them and the idea is that if they’re happy, then they gonna.
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Celia Hodent: You know, stay and be truthful to the brand or talk about man etc so it’s a win, win situation.
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Shlomo Sher: All right, we want happy humans definitely.
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Right.
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A Ashcraft: My students have always heard me talk about how I feel like the game designer is the point person for that for within the team of the of but you’re right that everybody in the company needs to be thinking about this right.
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Celia Hodent: yeah cuz otherwise it doesn’t work if not everybody thinks about that.
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Celia Hodent: But you do need you have some expertise that is need to really.
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Celia Hodent: Have the proper methodologies and tools and and and science behind it, because it comes.
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Celia Hodent: that’s the reason why we need kind of science to understand this, because we need to understand the limitation of the brains, because the experience that people don’t have where the product happens in their minds.
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Celia Hodent: So we need to understand where the limitations and because you are the one making the product.
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Celia Hodent: You know your stuff to wealth it’s always hard to anticipate how someone you interacting with the product, how they going to perceive it and.
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Celia Hodent: perception is subjective we don’t all perceive the world as it is, we all have a construction a different contraction of it, so we need to take a step back and verify all these things.
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A Ashcraft: Right right okay.
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Shlomo Sher: So let’s uh let me go back to the meritocracy.
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Shlomo Sher: yeah okay so.
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Shlomo Sher: I know we took a little detour there but OK so here I am right i’m working for a game company and I need to hire the best person possible, and you know i’m you know I want the best I mean I want the best for my company right now.
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Shlomo Sher: What is the best, though, is it’s kind of.
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Shlomo Sher: You know, it can be sometimes a difficult question right it depends on context depends what we’re talking about and we can go a bunch of different ways here right so i’m thinking.
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Shlomo Sher: You talked about computer science and computer science might be the simplest may be part right do I know how to program right, and you can give someone a test and.
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Shlomo Sher: You know it’s possible, maybe even do that.
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Shlomo Sher: In a in a blind process right, so the classic one here is the classical classical musicians that you.
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Shlomo Sher: write.
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Shlomo Sher: Or, this is a famous case where essentially when they used to do in person additions, where you can see, who the WHO, the person auditioning was women get to use to get hired very.
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Shlomo Sher: Very rarely now then classical music orchestras have a blind process where all you do is listen when they get hired a lot more about about half, I believe, but when you’re looking there you’re looking for just skill, though it’s also not just killed is also subjective element to it right.
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Celia Hodent: yeah so.
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Celia Hodent: So that’s the blind.
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Celia Hodent: audition is to run back in group bias.
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Celia Hodent: But that’s, the only thing in combat it’s not doing anything with.
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Celia Hodent: The right that discrimination happens very early and you have some population that you know marginalized populations that don’t have the same access.
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Celia Hodent: To musical schools, for example.
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Celia Hodent: To begin with, so that’s not going to change that so there’s only only helping a little bit, but it’s not helping that much for.
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Celia Hodent: Diversity, because we had the problem of X is equal opportunities at the beginning.
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Celia Hodent: So there’s that and, on top of that people have a tendency to hire just one person, instead of hiring for team.
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Celia Hodent: it’s rare then on person is good just going to work in a silo and even if it’s the best person to do that job, most of the time to have to communicate with other people.
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Celia Hodent: They have to understand where the people are trying to accomplish so that they can.
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Celia Hodent: program into the, the best way they think there’s a lot of communication needed and people have a tendency to just say, well, if the.
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Celia Hodent: person is the fastest, to do something, and we do a test it will also need to make sure what the test is testing because problems also with that.
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Celia Hodent: test can be bias bias, but also we want to make sure we hire for team and, if your team is not diverse at the end your pride is not going to be as good because you’re going to have all the same blind spots.
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Celia Hodent: it’s going to be hard to innovate, because everybody’s going to have the same mindset inside the end of the day.
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Celia Hodent: Your company’s not going to be as innovative or efficient or you know groundbreaking just because it’s very homogeneous, so we have to stop thinking about individuals but also think about how to hire for a team and diversity is a great strength within a team.
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Shlomo Sher: Right so so notice right because the first part, could be which, where I was going with it originally right because you can say.
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Shlomo Sher: Well we’re not just the reason we can’t just look for your skills is because we need to see that you fit in but, once you talk about fitting in and communicating well.
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Shlomo Sher: That can really lead to a homogeneous team, unless you have this value of ahead of time right we’re thinking, we need to have that diversity.
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Shlomo Sher: built in ahead of time and that we need to learn how to work with that diversity, as opposed to look for someone that could already work well with the team, because the diversity supposed to give us this.
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Celia Hodent: Oh yeah I see what you mean yeah I was more referring to you have a lot of people that that stay in a company, even though they’re quite toxic in their colleagues but they stay because they’re supposedly like super good.
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Celia Hodent: And this is not taking into account the fact that this person is actually not helping anyone else and make that person makes other people less.
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Celia Hodent: Efficient and their jobs, just because that person is toxic, so I was more referring to that, but it’s true that what you saying.
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Celia Hodent: that’s the reason why you have to define what are the values and your company and what is, what do you mean by cultural fits because oftentimes we just end up hiring the people look like us and we just.
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Celia Hodent: You know, push rationalize because yeah cultural fit whatever that means, so we need to define what that means, so a cultural fit could be well, that person needs to respect their colleagues, and you know not it’s.
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Celia Hodent: Being.
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Celia Hodent: Was the term that talking down to others and to be disrespectful that could be a value that you have and then.
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Celia Hodent: If you can spot a behavior that goes against this value, then you can absolutely absolutely say, well, that person goes against our cultural values, and therefore we cannot keep that person or hire this person, but you’ve listed what you mean by cultural value.
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Celia Hodent: If you just say cultural fit or cultural value without explicitly tell what that is then this is when you can absolutely hire him and his team, just because you feel it’s going to be easier for people to communicate.
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Celia Hodent: But that’s not what I meant.
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Shlomo Sher: Right right right yeah.
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Shlomo Sher: I figured can we can we bring in the right situations, an example of this, because, as I understand that’s what they were trying to do right.
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Shlomo Sher: Right so right had this policy, where the ideas they’re looking for the best and the best meant for them, you know hardcore gamers that really understand what the gaming community is like.
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Shlomo Sher: And right, which seems to kind of make sense right you’ve got essentially a team that’s creating a game for players, you want them to understand the players, but can you talk a little bit bit.
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Shlomo Sher: about how this conception of.
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Shlomo Sher: How this is the value you want everyone to share might impact, an issue like diversity.
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Celia Hodent: yeah so there’s different things it’s it’s either you want to make a game that is for niche people, and then you believe you understand who the players are going to play that game is and you just hire other people like look the same.
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Celia Hodent: up the I find this a bit weird because then you’re supposing that you understand the whole planet.
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Celia Hodent: I mean it’s we’re making games for for everybody today.
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Celia Hodent: And that’s assuming that.
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Celia Hodent: You understand who is going to be the profile of people going to play that game, and these people just look like you and therefore you just gonna hire the people look like you.
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Celia Hodent: Because this is how you think that’s going to work out to me, is just cutting off.
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Celia Hodent: a bunch of potential players that would have made probably you love your game, but because now it’s so homogeneous.
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Celia Hodent: That they don’t really feel included and and then you might have some harassment, that is pretty present in some games, because then the players who feel that they’re part of that nish and that elites.
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Celia Hodent: gang every time they see some way in or feel that someone does not from the ending, then they gonna harass them and so now it’s you’re building a product that’s going to be exclusive.
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Celia Hodent: Why would you do such a thing I really don’t understand the premise of why would you, we know that any design is going to exclude some people by definition.
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Celia Hodent: If you like, if you make a design with it a lot of colors like a show a game where I asked people to recognize pennant of colors and gamers immediately recognize street fighter, so the gamers who played street fighter, but I know that I was glued and excluding.
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Celia Hodent: color blind people when I play do that game, and so I explained afterwards and I apologize, so we know that, by definition, a design is going to exclude some people, but here is it’s and we try to understand who are excluding and make sure that we remove all unnecessary barriers.
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Celia Hodent: But here it’s all about just adding barriers, just because we think this is what we want to do, I I don’t understand that reasoning, to be honest with you just want to restrict the game for some people, but then it goes.
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Celia Hodent: International and then all of a sudden, well, we have diversity problems well yeah.
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Celia Hodent: you expect so yeah, we need to understand what is it we’re doing, and that when we do that we are excluding people, so why would you exclude people when you make a product.
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A Ashcraft: And this is true for whether they look.
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A Ashcraft: You say you know when they look like you, but also when they think like you right we don’t we we don’t we want to, we want to have a diverse population of people who think differently yeah.
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Celia Hodent: yeah but then this is how you end up with a lot of characters and and they all seem super diverse, but then, if you look more closely.
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Celia Hodent: The male characters are super diverse and you have a lot of different party dies, but then the women character, they all look like our glasses and they will have naked and you’re like this is weird did you not realize that this was going on, and then I mean.
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Celia Hodent: This is what people want and turns out that this can turn out.
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Celia Hodent: Other people don’t necessarily always I mean i’ve nothing against sexy characters and then or are or women identified.
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Celia Hodent: is just that it’s a problem when when it’s about women and there’s only one type of character in that these are only ones that are objectified or they’re the only ones that are extremely sexy.
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Celia Hodent: Because, then when for first of all it’s just weird and then as a woman, you like I don’t feel that this game is, for me, and a lot of men also react that way because it’s not because you’re a man that you actually want to have see 60 women have naked all the time.
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Celia Hodent: So that’s making a lot of assumptions.
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Celia Hodent: there’s also feeding what we call the self fulfilling prophecy which is that’s something that happens, a lot.
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Celia Hodent: In companies is like saying people saying well we’re making a game is going to be me, and so we expect as going to be hardcore gamers, and so we expect this people to be young men and like okay so or you’re already making you leave based on stereotypes.
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A Ashcraft: Okay.
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Celia Hodent: or whatever, and so, and say, well, because this is our audience we’re going to give them what they want, which is like half naked women.
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Celia Hodent: So there’s a lot of leaks that may there within the game is shift and then they might do a survey, to try to figure out, you know who’s playing and say well look there’s 95% men playing that game, we were right like.
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Celia Hodent: No, you make decisions along the way to actually select you know, like exclude some people just because you have your direction or your decisions, and so this is what we call self fulfilling prophecy.
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Celia Hodent: You make something true that at the beginning was just a stereotype but because you fed into the stereotype, this is what you get so we see that a lot.
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A Ashcraft: And you leave any leave money on the table when you do that because.
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A Ashcraft: You know if there’s if you’ve made it so that only 5% of the women will actually play your game, but there’s probably another you know there’s probably another 45% boat boost to your sales, if you didn’t do that.
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A Ashcraft: Yes, the new map a more or more equitable more equal player base.
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Celia Hodent: yeah but this as a problem we never see what could have been.
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Celia Hodent: Right it’s just like people saying well we’re gonna save money by.
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Celia Hodent: putting down the wolves in.
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Celia Hodent: The office you know before the pandemic and we’ll you know we end up with a lot of open space, but then productivity.
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Celia Hodent: Productivity really falls down and there’s been some study that trying to figure that out, because you get much more interrupted when you’re in an open space.
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Celia Hodent: But then the company just saw the savings that they made on the building itself and on on renting space and they don’t see what they’re losing in terms of productivity, because it’s not something that we measure easily and.
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Celia Hodent: it’s something that might have been we can’t really grasp anything about is just like.
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Celia Hodent: If you make some if you invest some money to do I played us before you ship a game.
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Celia Hodent: that’s going to cost money, but you don’t know what you might have lost if you did not do the plate as and did not identify big problems that would have resulted in you know less conversion or are or people you know being.
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Celia Hodent: frustrated and leave your game so that’s The problem we don’t ab test everything.
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Celia Hodent: And so we just don’t know what you missed out, and this is how we end up with doing the same things over and over again, because people don’t understand what they’re missing out.
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A Ashcraft: Can you can you describe a B testing.
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Celia Hodent: Sure, is the A, B testing is it’s a methodology that is used, mostly in a.
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Celia Hodent: Data science and analytics is when you so it’s oftentimes more than just two examples with to simplify let’s say that you have a so it could be anything as simple as a color on the button so let’s say you have a button like.
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Celia Hodent: get to the shop or start or whatever.
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Celia Hodent: They want to make sure that this is visible because there’s always a lot of stuff on screen, so it could be well let’s see if it’s better if it’s green or if it’s right if it’s yellow whatever So you see, you know.
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Celia Hodent: Are people, seeing it better than clicking like better if if it’s changing the color body could be also something like Is it better for applies to start the game immediately playing with other people.
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Celia Hodent: Or is it better if the first game is going to be against bots so that they had the time to again an APP for the game, without being destroyed immediately.
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Celia Hodent: took it’d be stuff like that we test to see what is the best experience for for players and what make them, you know not not sure and immediately.
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Celia Hodent: So it could be for that or it could be also to see you, what is the best way to.
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Celia Hodent: make money out of it, and what is the best way to influence people to to click environment that’s.
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Celia Hodent: This is when we can use the same technique either to improve the experience or to make patterns, which we can talk about it later if you want, but this is the the methodology is about just comparing two conditions and see which one is better.
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A Ashcraft: So you, basically, you said you make it both ways and you send it to two different groups yeah and you see which one works best yep got it um.
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Shlomo Sher: I want to go back to kind of the earlier point right because before you do any of this right, you have a team that’s coming up with the product and.
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Shlomo Sher: right the way asleep talked about earlier right is a lot of times people begin with the assumption of who the product is going to be for and that one of the values of diversity is supposed to be.
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Shlomo Sher: That, if you get a diverse team ahead of time right they might give you a very different idea of who the product is for so as you’re going through the design you’re going to get different design elements that you’re going to end up testing now.
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Celia Hodent: yeah well, I mean it’s if you have someone who’s calling on your team that that person immediately is gonna.
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Celia Hodent: make you realize that hey the color palette that you choose that you’ve chosen is not good art right now, are you conveying information just through color hello, you know, like these 8% of the male population that’s called blind, this is not going to be.
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You.
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Celia Hodent: Yes, it’s 8% for men and point think it’s Point five for women because it’s on the.
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A Ashcraft: Smaller I know it’s much, much smaller for women.
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Celia Hodent: yeah because for women, you have to have it on both both of your X chromosomes too.
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Celia Hodent: Because it’s recessive so my dad is gold mine, so I have it on one on my X chromosomes but because the other one.
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Celia Hodent: Is not it’s taking over this one, but if I had a child that child was.
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Celia Hodent: Male he has 50% chances of getting my extremism without cold line.
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Celia Hodent: A gene here so that’s the reason why it’s much rarer in women than in men.
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Celia Hodent: But it’s still a lot of people and so again why it’s just because you’re not killing yourself, you don’t think about that and even with a cold line Daddy and I oftentimes I don’t remember that sometimes we we tell me that hey can you throw that in the green bean.
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A Ashcraft: We.
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Celia Hodent: Why are you telling me call us.
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Celia Hodent: And we forget all the time, like and and i’m.
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Celia Hodent: very sensitive to that because my dad is called them and still, then I forget.
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Celia Hodent: And that’s very natural and human thing to do to forget about these things, and so it’s unless you have a diverse team, or you have experts.
337
00:42:47.610 –> 00:42:53.610
Celia Hodent: and accessibility experts, and you can have that diversity experts and people like working in cultural ization.
338
00:42:54.120 –> 00:42:57.660
Celia Hodent: Live is not a lot of people don’t realize the key words in the game industry was doing that.
339
00:42:58.650 –> 00:43:13.140
Celia Hodent: But these people are experts and they they are going to you know we have lists and and and guidelines so that we cover all our grounds, but if you don’t have experts and you don’t have diversity you just gonna fall for that.
340
00:43:13.170 –> 00:43:22.470
Celia Hodent: Because we cannot account for everything and it’s hard for us to understand that that people are difference in perception is subjective.
341
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A Ashcraft: Right.
342
00:43:26.460 –> 00:43:36.630
Shlomo Sher: I let’s say I am thinking, God there’s so many parts, for we pass where I wanted to kind of interject a question and and now you’ve answered a lot of them.
343
00:43:37.470 –> 00:43:42.300
Shlomo Sher: But I wanna I want to go back to the right thing right and again thinking about like.
344
00:43:43.260 –> 00:43:51.810
Shlomo Sher: What is best because it’s interesting because all of this stuff because here I am you know I I make a game league of legends hundreds of millions of people play it.
345
00:43:52.380 –> 00:44:05.370
Shlomo Sher: This is already out there right and i’m looking for the best people you know for my team right and my team may not have you know started up diverse, but now i’m open to anybody i’m open to anything right.
346
00:44:05.940 –> 00:44:20.490
Shlomo Sher: And one thing that was really interesting about them right was choosing the the hardcore player and defining the hardcore player, as you know, as someone that plays either a mobile or a first person shooter.
347
00:44:20.880 –> 00:44:28.200
A Ashcraft: Well, and specifically they they had a requirement for a long time that you had to have a league of legends character at a high.
348
00:44:28.200 –> 00:44:29.730
Shlomo Sher: level yes.
349
00:44:30.180 –> 00:44:33.660
A Ashcraft: to play their game, you had to be an expert in their game to join their team.
350
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Shlomo Sher: Which again makes sense right, but their game their game was particularly known, and you know these kinds of games are particularly know, for having a toxic culture, to begin with.
351
00:44:45.180 –> 00:44:45.600
yeah.
352
00:44:46.860 –> 00:44:47.430
Celia Hodent: That happened.
353
00:44:48.180 –> 00:44:53.010
Shlomo Sher: right which is instant right so it’s kind of like this, reinforcing circle right you.
354
00:44:53.220 –> 00:45:05.970
Shlomo Sher: You kind of made the game for a certain demographic that certain demographic and the big exclusionary it’s hard for anyone else to step into that that gaming demographic because they already get so much.
355
00:45:06.270 –> 00:45:06.840
Shlomo Sher: Well, I know.
356
00:45:07.500 –> 00:45:16.230
Celia Hodent: much about the demographics it’s more about the the message that you’re sending you’re sending the message of this game is for certain people and not others.
357
00:45:16.590 –> 00:45:24.930
Celia Hodent: And this company’s for certain people like this game and not others so you’re exclusionary in your message itself.
358
00:45:25.410 –> 00:45:40.500
Celia Hodent: it’s not really the demographics now because you’re a woman that you’re going to be exclusionary it’s not that it’s just that the messages you’re this game before these people and that’s it, and so, of course, when other people are getting interested in the game.
359
00:45:41.790 –> 00:45:57.900
Celia Hodent: They going to feel rejected or they gonna like be rejected by by others because that’s the message, whether it is subconscious or not, and in the case of rice it’s pretty in your face, you know, like as you were saying I sometimes the to me sounds like a culture, you have to.
360
00:45:58.260 –> 00:45:58.740
Really.
361
00:46:00.000 –> 00:46:08.670
Celia Hodent: be a certain level in the game to be hired and the company back in the day that can make sense, maybe for game designers.
362
00:46:10.470 –> 00:46:10.770
Celia Hodent: I.
363
00:46:14.460 –> 00:46:17.760
Celia Hodent: I don’t even know why is this a thing because.
364
00:46:17.820 –> 00:46:21.930
A Ashcraft: All it really does is it it cuts down the amount of time that they have to train you.
365
00:46:23.580 –> 00:46:24.900
Celia Hodent: Sure, but and.
366
00:46:24.900 –> 00:46:30.840
Celia Hodent: Maybe this is yeah and, of course, you need to understand the game you’re you’re working on, but.
367
00:46:31.050 –> 00:46:33.450
Celia Hodent: You also need a fresh perspective.
368
00:46:33.510 –> 00:46:40.140
Celia Hodent: And this is very useful, especially for ux if you want to have a better ux fresh perspective is always a good one.
369
00:46:41.190 –> 00:46:50.790
Celia Hodent: So this is actually a good thing to have people don’t want to say exactly how it works, because this is going to help you understand what is not.
370
00:46:51.210 –> 00:47:00.510
Celia Hodent: Good in your game is this is making me think of a is just an anecdote when people getting on boarded and because they’re their new.
371
00:47:01.320 –> 00:47:09.900
Celia Hodent: Employee and they play the game that is made internally, so they have never seen it before and they playing the first time and.
372
00:47:10.620 –> 00:47:19.140
Celia Hodent: They were very confused about things down the how, how does the math works better on so they were making me sex because it’s the first Sunday the play, but then.
373
00:47:19.860 –> 00:47:36.000
Celia Hodent: Three months in they know everything about the game, and then they don’t understand people did not we don’t understand the things that they themselves to notice in three months ago, because today for them so clear in the neck How can someone don’t see that.
374
00:47:36.540 –> 00:47:38.610
Celia Hodent: And this is so amusing to me.
375
00:47:38.640 –> 00:47:49.830
Celia Hodent: Because once we know something very well, we have that very strong mental model of their mental representation of what this is about, and we fail to recognize that, even as ourselves.
376
00:47:50.910 –> 00:48:02.190
Celia Hodent: we’re confused back in the day and so that’s the reason why it’s to me it’s it’s a problem to just only have people understand the game it from the inside out.
377
00:48:04.260 –> 00:48:07.620
Celia Hodent: To work on the game, because then this is very generous.
378
00:48:08.010 –> 00:48:16.290
Shlomo Sher: yeah you know, I just want to say as as a player, I still want to support that I feel like there’s so many games, where I play where.
379
00:48:17.880 –> 00:48:24.930
Shlomo Sher: You know I start the game and i’m like, how can anyone understand this, unless they are already experts at these kinds of games yeah.
380
00:48:25.290 –> 00:48:26.520
Celia Hodent: And it really didn’t even.
381
00:48:26.850 –> 00:48:27.150
Shlomo Sher: You know.
382
00:48:27.240 –> 00:48:28.290
Celia Hodent: Even even didn’t yeah.
383
00:48:28.410 –> 00:48:30.000
Shlomo Sher: I I felt that.
384
00:48:31.020 –> 00:48:34.800
Shlomo Sher: I tried to do maternal a few days ago, for the first.
385
00:48:34.800 –> 00:48:35.040
A Ashcraft: Time.
386
00:48:35.340 –> 00:48:47.310
Shlomo Sher: You know, and I was like this is, I was like the the curve for beginners is really, really hard and it’s assuming you already understand you know so much, even though they give you kind of controls to kind of get you going.
387
00:48:47.730 –> 00:49:01.380
Shlomo Sher: This is something that I feel I feel off and i’ve always kind of struggled I always kind of assumed the problem was me but, of course, you know if I assume the problem as me that’s going to discourage me from playing the game because.
388
00:49:01.710 –> 00:49:04.320
Shlomo Sher: Right, you know this game must be for somebody else.
389
00:49:04.470 –> 00:49:15.600
A Ashcraft: Right it’s a it’s a problem with mature genres where there’s so much expert expectation amongst the fans of the genre of having all of these features.
390
00:49:16.560 –> 00:49:25.440
A Ashcraft: That there’s and and and all these features need to need to be need to be available to them from the get go because they’re fans of the genre they know this stuff.
391
00:49:25.830 –> 00:49:35.850
A Ashcraft: But it what it means is that, as the genre matures the number of players that can jump into it, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller so new players can’t can’t join.
392
00:49:36.900 –> 00:49:37.830
A Ashcraft: So it was a problem.
393
00:49:38.880 –> 00:49:43.680
Celia Hodent: yeah and again there’s a lot of assumptions say if you’re making a new game and your franchise.
394
00:49:45.360 –> 00:49:48.360
Celia Hodent: Like new people going to come in, even if they’re hardcore gamers.
395
00:49:48.390 –> 00:49:56.850
Celia Hodent: They got miss them home some information that I see, I saw that all the time when I was doing play testing, even with like hardcore gamers that quote Unquote.
396
00:49:57.960 –> 00:50:12.060
Celia Hodent: On the job on genre genre they missed off because it’s not because it’s the same if you make a move, and people are playing mobile as they if they don’t they’re not game Center so they don’t necessarily know what rules.
397
00:50:12.510 –> 00:50:21.120
Celia Hodent: carry over from one game to the other, and what is something you know does different in your game they don’t necessarily know, for your game, what is most important.
398
00:50:21.720 –> 00:50:28.320
Celia Hodent: And said they are going to make mistakes and they’re all going to be frustrated and I worked on games that are supposedly for hardcore gamers and.
399
00:50:28.830 –> 00:50:34.110
Celia Hodent: I saw them fail, just because there was that assumption that yeah how cool games, they just going to get it.
400
00:50:34.530 –> 00:50:46.890
Celia Hodent: But turns out well they not super excited about your game, and not all their friends are playing, they are not going to go through the pain of trying to understand your game, especially since they have thousands of other games that it can play.
401
00:50:47.400 –> 00:50:57.990
Celia Hodent: So this is not even a real good assumption it’s only gonna work sorry i’m just going to end up is only going to maybe work if your game is a big success, and then you have like if you.
402
00:50:58.830 –> 00:51:13.020
Celia Hodent: Look at him like for today, it is such a big phenomenon that if people if they want to get in there are going to go through the pain of the onboarding and trying to understand building works, they are going to go through the pain of watching others.
403
00:51:14.730 –> 00:51:26.520
Celia Hodent: on YouTube to try to figure out how to play on twitch because their friends are playing, and they want to be part of it, but that’s one game in and out of a million that you know can get away with that.
404
00:51:27.000 –> 00:51:35.700
A Ashcraft: Right and and I should say that this was a game that you worked on you, that was part of that’s part of your bio is that you, you add epic games you worked on, so you must have done something right because.
405
00:51:36.900 –> 00:51:47.970
A Ashcraft: it’s been a huge game, particularly for getting new players into shooters right and shooters is one of these, one of these older genres which is hard for new people to get into yeah.
406
00:51:48.360 –> 00:51:59.220
Celia Hodent: So for now it’s a amazing team, and I really loved working with them, they really had that ux philosophy at every level, so they.
407
00:51:59.220 –> 00:51:59.610
A Ashcraft: Always.
408
00:51:59.640 –> 00:52:06.240
Celia Hodent: You know thought about new player how they’re going to understand it and mostly worked on the save the world okay just.
409
00:52:06.930 –> 00:52:20.340
Celia Hodent: To be clear, but it’s the scene that called a the mechanics and all the systems are the same and so there’s a lot of work on making sure that that’s going to be understandable, the first time you see an icon can you understand it.
410
00:52:21.150 –> 00:52:27.030
Celia Hodent: If you die, can you understand why and just jump back in so there’s two different things there’s the onboarding.
411
00:52:27.690 –> 00:52:30.090
Celia Hodent: They can do to help people learn about these things.
412
00:52:30.450 –> 00:52:44.790
Celia Hodent: And there’s a lot of work on we will form follows function and forden so that just by looking at something hearing something manipulating something can understand it naturally or intuitively which is like a weird word because there’s a lot of work.
413
00:52:45.870 –> 00:52:47.910
Celia Hodent: Things quote unquote intuitive.
414
00:52:48.030 –> 00:52:55.590
Celia Hodent: Right um there’s not a there was not a lot of work on onboarding for battle royale and that was my fear.
415
00:52:56.010 –> 00:53:09.120
Celia Hodent: That oh pyres yeah because when you play by the royals the free mode, so you did not go necessarily through the onboarding the longer i’m learning that we had them say the world and so.
416
00:53:09.660 –> 00:53:25.770
Celia Hodent: You can just yes, there were a lot of things that were made intuitive you understand what’s going on, but the building part is hard, this is not and it’s not because it’s not a good work that was done on farming for smashing the wise is just a complex system.
417
00:53:26.070 –> 00:53:41.220
Celia Hodent: Right, and so I was really worried that players would be frustrated by not understanding the building component and then the end of the day, now, I have a lot of people asking me hey how do I build better.
418
00:53:42.210 –> 00:53:51.060
Celia Hodent: And this is this is something that is lacking currently and then battle, while so bit better now that you have the the.
419
00:53:52.260 –> 00:54:04.500
Celia Hodent: Creative mode, so you can try try stuff and you know try new stuff and building but, at the beginning there you just if you wanted to train yourself a building better it’s either you pay for us either we’ll just.
420
00:54:05.040 –> 00:54:16.560
Celia Hodent: Start another battle royale gaming with all the people around you to try to figure that out so it’s not it’s not ideal for people to learn, but there’s there was a lot of work.
421
00:54:17.160 –> 00:54:18.990
Celia Hodent: on making things as intuitive as possible.
422
00:54:19.500 –> 00:54:32.160
A Ashcraft: Do you know whether I mean I don’t have a good view into this, but do you know whether that game has done well and attracting people a diverse population of players.
423
00:54:32.820 –> 00:54:36.960
Celia Hodent: I have no idea, because you know I don’t I don’t work there on your side I don’t know.
424
00:54:37.710 –> 00:54:45.480
Celia Hodent: I would say that it’s as became very popular, this is something that I really enjoyed from the beginning, when I.
425
00:54:46.170 –> 00:55:02.790
Celia Hodent: joined epic, especially with 49 because, from the beginning, there were a lot of different characters and 49 different skin tones different styles different body types, even for women, and that was exciting is that is so where.
426
00:55:02.910 –> 00:55:10.920
Celia Hodent: So that’s one of the things that I enjoy and for night I, I want to believe that this is also part of the success of for tonight, I have no idea but.
427
00:55:11.250 –> 00:55:12.360
Celia Hodent: Well, you know we.
428
00:55:12.450 –> 00:55:14.130
A Ashcraft: that’s all part of it right.
429
00:55:14.520 –> 00:55:18.300
Celia Hodent: So part of it, and I would love for people to talk more about it.
430
00:55:19.080 –> 00:55:20.820
Celia Hodent: That it is much more.
431
00:55:20.850 –> 00:55:28.710
Celia Hodent: Diverse you have a lot of different characters and so it’s it’s more inviting for for everyone.
432
00:55:29.160 –> 00:55:31.650
A Ashcraft: And it’s become a huge mass market success so.
433
00:55:32.190 –> 00:55:38.280
Celia Hodent: yeah I mean that is accumulation of a lot of things and so there’s a lot of luck in there.
434
00:55:39.150 –> 00:55:50.010
Celia Hodent: So it’s really always hard to you know tell wise become such a phenomenon but it’s probably a lot of little things just like adding up and made it next so.
435
00:55:50.400 –> 00:55:59.760
Celia Hodent: Popular, but I really hope I have no idea would be great to know if this game is actually more inclusive than other games left you know that.
436
00:56:00.270 –> 00:56:03.780
Shlomo Sher: um I want to bring the I want to bring you guys back a little bit.
437
00:56:04.110 –> 00:56:05.850
Shlomo Sher: Okay, so uh.
438
00:56:06.720 –> 00:56:07.950
Shlomo Sher: God, I always have an agenda.
439
00:56:10.020 –> 00:56:29.700
Shlomo Sher: So you know we’ve talked a lot about kind of the value of diversity right kind of kind of bring it in there and of the biases that can that can lead you to kind of fail to see a the value of diversity and be the value of your candidates right but let’s go back to the.
440
00:56:31.200 –> 00:56:37.800
Shlomo Sher: What is the current situation in terms of diversity in the gaming industry because I noticed also so you talk first about.
441
00:56:38.910 –> 00:56:40.830
Shlomo Sher: Someone going to get a computer science degree.
442
00:56:41.250 –> 00:56:43.530
Shlomo Sher: But of course that’s only one small part.
443
00:56:43.740 –> 00:56:50.220
Shlomo Sher: Of the people that work in the video game industry right what’s the composition like today, in terms of diversity let’s say.
444
00:56:51.600 –> 00:56:59.400
Shlomo Sher: it’s not i’m not surprised it’s not good, but kind of where are we, as far as things go and why do you think that is.
445
00:57:01.050 –> 00:57:03.930
Shlomo Sher: let’s let’s start with the first of all, where are we at this point.
446
00:57:04.350 –> 00:57:12.300
Celia Hodent: So, in terms of men, women, I think it’s about 20% women in the game industry, I don’t have in mind the.
447
00:57:13.110 –> 00:57:27.810
Celia Hodent: The GDA numbers I GDA is sending a survey every every year, so it’s giving us a an idea of who’s in the workforce in the game industry but i’ve been in companies when I was looking around and I felt I was like among 5% of women.
448
00:57:27.900 –> 00:57:28.560
A Ashcraft: In the company.
449
00:57:28.830 –> 00:57:37.320
Celia Hodent: So it depends the 20% something number was like overall, but it really drastically depends on the company.
450
00:57:38.400 –> 00:57:45.450
Celia Hodent: So it is a big problem, the origin of that is multiple things is the fact that.
451
00:57:46.260 –> 00:58:03.720
Celia Hodent: yeah women were not probably feeling welcome or, this is not when you think about the wii game developer you think about new can third that is a guy in his basement I don’t know and so, and you don’t have a lot of women.
452
00:58:05.070 –> 00:58:06.270
Celia Hodent: In computer science.
453
00:58:09.390 –> 00:58:16.260
Celia Hodent: We had women at the beginning in the game industry, they did not stay and there’s actually a lot of.
454
00:58:17.760 –> 00:58:28.470
Celia Hodent: churn from women in the game industry, even if they are excited to start in the game industry, they are not included so there’s a big difference between diversity and inclusion.
455
00:58:28.890 –> 00:58:38.340
Celia Hodent: You can have a diverse workforce, but then the marginalized people and women are not included, they don’t have a seat at the table, or they can reach any of the glass ceiling.
456
00:58:38.730 –> 00:58:46.350
Celia Hodent: or they experiment harassment and like we’ve seen a lot of cases of that like even like very big companies like ubisoft.
457
00:58:47.310 –> 00:58:58.710
Celia Hodent: And you see that even if you get women to get in they leave because they’re tired of that crap so there’s a lot of problems here and as women, people of color.
458
00:58:59.430 –> 00:59:09.780
Celia Hodent: People with Disabilities they’re there they don’t they’re either not hired or when they hired they’re not set for success and they don’t have a seat at the table.
459
00:59:10.320 –> 00:59:20.280
A Ashcraft: Right, and let me add to that i’ve been blessed, and this is for the other game designers and game people out there i’ve been blessed to work with a lot of really strong women in my career.
460
00:59:20.520 –> 00:59:23.610
A Ashcraft: And it’s I think i’ve had a sort of a rare experience because of it.
461
00:59:24.990 –> 00:59:33.240
A Ashcraft: But i’ve had strong wonderful women bosses pretty much all the way through my career and it’s been great.
462
00:59:34.950 –> 00:59:35.610
A Ashcraft: So.
463
00:59:35.670 –> 00:59:38.820
Celia Hodent: Meeting, if anything, I had to leave anybody out there is worried about like.
464
00:59:38.850 –> 00:59:41.640
A Ashcraft: Promoting women into positions of power, please don’t.
465
00:59:42.870 –> 00:59:45.180
Celia Hodent: yeah I don’t know Why would anyone be worried about.
466
00:59:48.300 –> 00:59:53.130
Celia Hodent: yeah I I don’t know, but I do know there’s a lot of implicit biases happening.
467
00:59:54.510 –> 01:00:16.650
Celia Hodent: So we know that, for example, for recruitment, if your job description is adding a lot of stuff in there, women have a tendency to reply to a position if they fit 100% of the skill sets whereas men is more about it, they fit 60%, why is that so this is not even an interesting debate.
468
01:00:17.760 –> 01:00:30.660
Celia Hodent: Women shoot hot, and you know reply to a thing if they only fit 60% but The thing is, this is what we see answer, because we know that the more you add in your you know you know nice to have list.
469
01:00:31.590 –> 01:00:41.790
Celia Hodent: Well, the less women are going to answer, or if you have women and in your company and you do you know every year you do.
470
01:00:42.360 –> 01:00:57.210
Celia Hodent: 360 reviews are all the people and interacting with that employees is reviewing that employee and that person is also suffer viewing, we know that women have a tendency to be harsher on themselves than men.
471
01:00:57.540 –> 01:01:10.050
Celia Hodent: So if you use that as a a data point to see who you’re going to promote well that’s going to sway you in one direction.
472
01:01:10.980 –> 01:01:24.720
Celia Hodent: And, and so that’s all the little things that that we see there’s also i’ve experienced them availability heuristic so the availability your availability heuristic is no difficult to say.
473
01:01:25.920 –> 01:01:26.460
Celia Hodent: that’s that’s.
474
01:01:26.970 –> 01:01:28.440
Celia Hodent: it’s the fact that we.
475
01:01:29.550 –> 01:01:45.270
Celia Hodent: going to bring up to mind elements that are more available and memory so, for example, if you asked you know what is the a dangerous animal like a lot of people would think about sharks, even though sharks only kill about five people per year.
476
01:01:45.840 –> 01:01:54.690
Celia Hodent: They not going to bring up mosquitoes when they’re you know killing 700,000 people us a million other mosquito borne diseases.
477
01:01:55.710 –> 01:02:05.460
Celia Hodent: But the thing is at the workplace, that also happens so i’ve i’ve had a weird conversation, one day, where someone was saying well you know we don’t know how we can make sure that to make women.
478
01:02:06.990 –> 01:02:16.170
Celia Hodent: more successful in the company, I could we feel we’ve hear stories of a lot of women crying during their reviews are like.
479
01:02:17.190 –> 01:02:26.100
Celia Hodent: What cuz I also see men crying these reviews bad thing is, we gonna just focus on.
480
01:02:26.550 –> 01:02:43.260
Celia Hodent: The thing that matches our expectation and what is available in mind, so that women are emotional and a cry and and so now we forget about all the times were men were emotional and we just like we hang out to that one goal, so the confirmation bias and the.
481
01:02:43.470 –> 01:02:56.250
Celia Hodent: smell together because that’s confirming a bias, which is going to remember that piece of information, much better than others, and this is when you end up like having weird conversation with people just remembering.
482
01:02:57.180 –> 01:03:06.600
Celia Hodent: Some parts of a story, and not the other part, and just because of all these biases are memories not great, we have a very selective memory.
483
01:03:07.950 –> 01:03:20.970
Celia Hodent: And because of that we end up in the end misjudging a situation or people, and this is how we prefer to a discriminations, so there are many problems that are accumulating.
484
01:03:22.470 –> 01:03:23.130
Celia Hodent: And so.
485
01:03:24.300 –> 01:03:27.960
Celia Hodent: it’s not that complicated so it’s just when there’s a will there’s a way.
486
01:03:28.530 –> 01:03:35.700
Shlomo Sher: Right it’s it’s hard to say you know not that complicated to solve, even though the.
487
01:03:36.270 –> 01:03:48.180
Shlomo Sher: Even though clearly lots of companies are having a hard time solving it in mind you, of course, this is not a video game industry exclusive problem right and it’s especially a problem in and creative industry.
488
01:03:48.570 –> 01:03:54.510
Shlomo Sher: yeah right, so I mean you know we work at a film school the film industry’s problem with this are at least as big.
489
01:03:55.950 –> 01:03:56.490
Shlomo Sher: and
490
01:03:57.900 –> 01:04:04.440
Shlomo Sher: You know it’s interesting also because, at the same time you, you know you talked about.
491
01:04:05.490 –> 01:04:16.080
Shlomo Sher: Availability availability risk the right confirmation biases all these things, in other words our brains are literally working against solving this problem.
492
01:04:16.860 –> 01:04:26.580
Shlomo Sher: That does make it seem like it’s a challenge, so what what can we do right to whether, with our brain or with anything else right to let’s say hold on to more women in the industry.
493
01:04:27.810 –> 01:04:35.130
Celia Hodent: yeah so it’s a challenge today because our society has been exclusive for so long.
494
01:04:36.540 –> 01:04:41.640
Celia Hodent: It didn’t have to be exclusive to begin with, but because of that we we perpetuate that but.
495
01:04:42.240 –> 01:04:58.980
Celia Hodent: it’s not that complicated to solve in the sense that they are solutions, I mean if you really want to have a diverse workplace, it is possible, absolutely to hire women and marginalized populations, they are there, and if you want to find them, you will find them.
496
01:05:00.060 –> 01:05:13.020
Celia Hodent: So that’s what I mean by it’s not that hard to solve for of course if there’s only 30% women versus 70% men graduating in computer science.
497
01:05:13.620 –> 01:05:25.500
Celia Hodent: You got to have less women at the end to hire, but we can also sell for that just going to take a bit more years to to make it more even but it’s not unsolvable is just.
498
01:05:27.420 –> 01:05:29.040
Shlomo Sher: pure science, though, was a big.
499
01:05:29.040 –> 01:05:36.900
A Ashcraft: push right now to get get more girls into stem classes at an early age, so i’m hoping that that will help us.
500
01:05:37.260 –> 01:05:43.170
Celia Hodent: yeah no absolutely, but the problem is that you know at some at some point, so you have the majority of people.
501
01:05:43.470 –> 01:05:50.400
Celia Hodent: who just want to do good and they’re lost don’t really know and they don’t know what they don’t know and then do just perpetuate things.
502
01:05:51.030 –> 01:06:05.760
Celia Hodent: That is a bit complicated, I agree, but it’s just by understanding what works, you can make it better, if you can just say understand the biases you can change your company you change your hiring process you change your.
503
01:06:07.320 –> 01:06:16.080
Celia Hodent: Promotion process process so that you can get away from those biases only that it’s going to make things a bit better.
504
01:06:17.220 –> 01:06:30.540
Celia Hodent: The problem that I see most cases is actually you have a small percentage of people who don’t want to the workplace to be more diverse, because it means less room for them so.
505
01:06:31.830 –> 01:06:34.920
Celia Hodent: that’s that happens as well and.
506
01:06:34.980 –> 01:06:47.820
Celia Hodent: If this person is a position of power, why would that person, just like share the power of other people, so this is how you end up with a small percentage of people, just like.
507
01:06:48.180 –> 01:07:00.180
Celia Hodent: same problem we’ve seen society, like all the inequalities yeah there are things, of course, their biases but there’s also just small percentage is just going to do whatever they can to just keep their.
508
01:07:00.720 –> 01:07:08.100
Celia Hodent: power and their wealth, and this is how inequality trickles down just because of a small percentage.
509
01:07:08.580 –> 01:07:17.940
Shlomo Sher: Alright guys could ask an ignorant question because I am not in the game, industry and I always wonder, you know.
510
01:07:19.200 –> 01:07:22.020
Shlomo Sher: You know I mean Andy I know your background and.
511
01:07:22.050 –> 01:07:30.780
Shlomo Sher: You know, and you know, and I, you know I did some programming earlier on, when I when I was a web designer.
512
01:07:32.400 –> 01:07:46.560
Shlomo Sher: But you know, so you keep saying computer science, what is the background for people working in the game industry i’m assuming it’s much, much, much wider than that right, and I know that our game design students right got about half of them come from art backgrounds.
513
01:07:47.100 –> 01:07:54.870
Celia Hodent: yeah so you had design, of course, you have designed computer science aren’t you have also not a lot of women who are game designer.
514
01:07:56.190 –> 01:08:05.460
Celia Hodent: And this is this is weird too, but typically in companies, you will see where the women are are in arts in ux ui ux.
515
01:08:06.720 –> 01:08:16.140
Celia Hodent: I hope you know that that ux is as much more inclusive than other areas, because we are literally talking about all these things.
516
01:08:17.400 –> 01:08:17.850
A Ashcraft: But.
517
01:08:17.940 –> 01:08:23.220
Celia Hodent: Typically, you don’t see a lot of women programmers or you don’t see a lot of women game designer.
518
01:08:24.450 –> 01:08:25.980
Shlomo Sher: right though it’s.
519
01:08:27.360 –> 01:08:30.150
Celia Hodent: Yet until it’s not just a computer science problem, I agree with you.
520
01:08:30.300 –> 01:08:39.240
Shlomo Sher: Right right, and these are big companies right where management can also come of course i’m assuming from business rather than from design right right yeah.
521
01:08:40.320 –> 01:08:47.700
Shlomo Sher: i’m okay I got okay So yes, i’m gonna put you on the spot here and ask you i’m curious what you feel about this question.
522
01:08:49.290 –> 01:08:58.530
Shlomo Sher: So when we talk about sexual equality in the film industry right, I asked my students, what do you guys think about gender quarters right.
523
01:08:59.520 –> 01:09:10.620
Shlomo Sher: So jenna quarters, is the idea that there should be some sort of quotas, some sort of space, the film industry for those of you who don’t know is I think it’s worse than the game industry in terms of sexual.
524
01:09:10.710 –> 01:09:11.580
Celia Hodent: Oh, really.
525
01:09:11.700 –> 01:09:24.090
Shlomo Sher: Oh yeah I mean it’s it’s I don’t think it’s as bad as the game industry in terms of toxic culture and the game industry is more complicated than the film industry because it has such a cultural component.
526
01:09:25.620 –> 01:09:41.790
Shlomo Sher: But in terms of I mean God that the number of female directors, like some like 9% I mean it’s you know it’s really, really so when we talk about something like Frances mcdormand when she wonder asked her a few years ago she like you know said, I have two words for you.
527
01:09:44.370 –> 01:09:53.610
Shlomo Sher: God inclusion writer I think what was was what she said, and people are like you know what the hell is that and the idea was right that companies would take essentially.
528
01:09:54.600 –> 01:10:08.010
Shlomo Sher: Some sort of voluntary gender quarters, where they would say we are committed on this project to hire let’s say 40% women across the board right, that would be one kind of gender quarters and there’s lots of different kinds of gender quotas, whether their voluntary so company.
529
01:10:08.010 –> 01:10:15.180
Shlomo Sher: decides to do this, like the BBC has a policy now where 50% of the experts that they’re going to interview are going to be women.
530
01:10:16.140 –> 01:10:30.870
Shlomo Sher: Right that’s like a voluntary quota then there’s like incentivize quotas, where governments could let’s say give companies tax breaks, if they meet certain gender quotas and then there’s like mandatory quotas like we have here in California, where if you’re going to have a board.
531
01:10:31.950 –> 01:10:49.020
Shlomo Sher: For every I think five Members on your board you got to have at least one woman right, so you know, a 20% kind of minimum yeah right i’m just gonna say what do you think about that as a potential solution for the current state of gender inequality in the game industry.
532
01:10:50.160 –> 01:10:55.410
Celia Hodent: yeah so it’s a complex question but let’s say it’s a good enforcement function.
533
01:10:56.910 –> 01:11:12.630
Celia Hodent: That hopefully should only be a transition until we we have better gender equality, and so, then we don’t perpetuate this discriminations just through our our biases that we have.
534
01:11:14.190 –> 01:11:32.790
Celia Hodent: it’s if you make people realize what’s going on and say why do you only have when women are no women at all are no personal color on your team what is that all about think you need to make room for more people, and if we understand that is it’s only going to enrich.
535
01:11:34.140 –> 01:11:41.040
Celia Hodent: US is going to enrich your company to have more women and people of color is going to enrich our society if.
536
01:11:41.610 –> 01:11:47.550
Celia Hodent: it’s better everybody’s better represented, to me it doesn’t make any sense to have a.
537
01:11:48.450 –> 01:12:05.520
Celia Hodent: government representatives that do not represent the diversity of their constituents that doesn’t to me it’s just weird how we can believe that we can represent everybody if not everybody is represented, to begin with, so for some.
538
01:12:07.650 –> 01:12:12.120
Celia Hodent: elements, it is really important to make sure that everyone is represented.
539
01:12:13.530 –> 01:12:23.310
Celia Hodent: Quote as is just a way to say hey, you will find a way and if you’re forced to find a way guess what people find a way and the world is not collapsing.
540
01:12:23.670 –> 01:12:32.910
Celia Hodent: So it’s just a way to show that it is doable and it’s it is actually going to make things better, and then, once people understand that.
541
01:12:33.630 –> 01:12:37.770
Celia Hodent: It can work better, the only problem with that is that people resist, because then they say well.
542
01:12:38.100 –> 01:12:47.460
Celia Hodent: This is unfair, why don’t we hire the best people for the job that’s because they don’t understand that the people are best for the job aren’t aren’t the ones hired to begin with.
543
01:12:48.030 –> 01:12:54.270
Celia Hodent: Because of these biases when you believe that’s the best person for the job, but you fell for the in the.
544
01:12:54.750 –> 01:13:07.950
Celia Hodent: In goodbyes, for example, so that’s the problem that it is not a meritocracy To begin with, so it’s not that it’s shaking meritocracy as just making the non meritocracy at least the cool.
545
01:13:08.820 –> 01:13:19.710
Celia Hodent: Everyone said, this is more the way I see it, is it that people can understand a little bit what’s going on and the thing that I would recommend is not to say well at least higher 30% women.
546
01:13:20.220 –> 01:13:43.020
Celia Hodent: What I would say is that make sure that your company or your association, whatever it is, is not more than than 70% homogeneous as sounds different when you say your company is 70% homogeneous 24 70% of the people there it’s white men and they all look the same that is weird.
547
01:13:43.740 –> 01:13:48.300
Celia Hodent: So, in terms of if we speak more in terms of homogeneous who would you name it.
548
01:13:49.470 –> 01:14:02.850
Celia Hodent: and put the big number first, like you, are at 80% of virginity we’re trying to go back down to maximum 70% of January, it sounds different than you say, well, we need to hire for at least 30% women.
549
01:14:04.170 –> 01:14:04.740
A Ashcraft: yeah that’s.
550
01:14:05.010 –> 01:14:05.610
Celia Hodent: What I mean.
551
01:14:05.910 –> 01:14:10.800
Celia Hodent: it’s just why is it weird to have 30% women ginge find that weird to have 70%.
552
01:14:11.010 –> 01:14:11.490
A Ashcraft: It will.
553
01:14:12.120 –> 01:14:20.940
A Ashcraft: also feel it even feels weird to even use that as a target number like, why is that even a target why why shouldn’t the target number be 50 yeah.
554
01:14:21.810 –> 01:14:31.590
Shlomo Sher: Well, I mean you know there’s lots of reasons for that right, for you know people have different interests right people have essentially different things they want to do with their lives.
555
01:14:31.740 –> 01:14:41.820
Shlomo Sher: Right sure there’s no need for an expectation that men woman might want to do everything exactly the same way, though, that still lives this huge space in between.
556
01:14:42.360 –> 01:14:51.240
Shlomo Sher: right to take whatever gender gaps, you have, in whatever interest is you have and see that there’s room for them to shrink and maybe shrink a whole lot or maybe go to the middle.
557
01:14:51.690 –> 01:15:04.350
Shlomo Sher: But there’s no need to assume that will ever reach perfect middle except maybe silly it was mentioning you know, like, I think you know governments, maybe that’s maybe one where you.
558
01:15:04.890 –> 01:15:14.910
Shlomo Sher: You know if we’re being gender binary right where you might have you know some sort of equal and I think this France have gender quarters for for Parliament.
559
01:15:15.330 –> 01:15:27.810
Celia Hodent: And I know I think it’s more that they’re trying to make it better and don’t look like they’re sexist so they tried to make an effort there, but I don’t think there’s a real quota that they have to.
560
01:15:27.840 –> 01:15:28.950
Shlomo Sher: That I know.
561
01:15:29.010 –> 01:15:37.860
Celia Hodent: I have to check because I don’t really remember, but just to go back to your point and the problems that when we say well it’s never going to be 5050 because women have different.
562
01:15:38.400 –> 01:15:53.850
Celia Hodent: wants and needs then again you open the door through biases because then we we say well it’s okay that it’s not equal, because well, women are different right and so when we say that we open the door for for biases.
563
01:15:55.110 –> 01:16:07.380
Celia Hodent: We should not assume that women don’t want different things we can assume that women have more difficulty, you know if they have a big family and they’re the ones doing the unpaid work.
564
01:16:07.770 –> 01:16:13.410
Celia Hodent: That is we’re taking care of the kids, of course, going to be harder for them to.
565
01:16:14.340 –> 01:16:25.530
Celia Hodent: Work late or good, why do we have this tendency of saying that people need to be passionate and work their asses off, day and night and during the weekend to be performing at that job.
566
01:16:26.220 –> 01:16:33.480
Celia Hodent: Again, was just we’re I think the problem is that we have the we don’t have the correct criteria.
567
01:16:33.900 –> 01:16:42.210
Celia Hodent: For what it is to be successful in life, and what it means to participate into the success of a company or society.
568
01:16:42.600 –> 01:16:51.630
Celia Hodent: And that’s the reason why I was telling you at the beginning, you know, we also need to understand what are the tests, what are there emergent measuring Is it the right thing that we need to measure.
569
01:16:52.620 –> 01:17:01.500
Celia Hodent: And so that’s that’s a bigger problem because that’s understanding all the different layers of complexity here and.
570
01:17:01.770 –> 01:17:11.130
Celia Hodent: very hard to unravel, but it is also a problem to believe that maybe women are don’t want to persuade into government.
571
01:17:12.510 –> 01:17:26.940
Celia Hodent: positions or or is it because it seems so aggressive and it seems like to be all about you know measuring how far you going to pee that women didn’t feel that they can compete this area.
572
01:17:27.120 –> 01:17:35.310
Shlomo Sher: Right and this isn’t and I wasn’t talking about government, I was talking about industry but notice I I totally agree with your larger point here, which is.
573
01:17:35.610 –> 01:17:40.740
Shlomo Sher: Just like we you started this by talking about computer science, you know graduates right.
574
01:17:41.580 –> 01:17:49.830
Shlomo Sher: Right of course you’re going back here and going further right, what are the reasons for there being different levels of graduate yeah some his personal.
575
01:17:50.400 –> 01:17:57.090
Shlomo Sher: taste, but obviously there is so much in our society that makes it harder for women to work in the first place.
576
01:17:57.810 –> 01:18:13.350
Shlomo Sher: In terms of social expectations, and you know companies exist within this larger cultural ecosystem right then feed that feed into them, and there is some sense, where we never going to solve this problem unless we kind of pay attention to the larger yeah.
577
01:18:13.500 –> 01:18:14.790
Shlomo Sher: To the larger issues now.
578
01:18:15.000 –> 01:18:20.040
Celia Hodent: You have a lot of kids that are just afraid of math um but that’s also because.
579
01:18:20.610 –> 01:18:29.820
Celia Hodent: We, the way we teach math it’s very abstract and and it’s not you know purposeful and so a lot of kids don’t don’t get it, and so now you self select.
580
01:18:30.330 –> 01:18:42.030
Celia Hodent: When kids who can you know, are not afraid to just try to understand it, and why, why should we do that we we we saw many cases where you know.
581
01:18:43.230 –> 01:18:57.150
Celia Hodent: kids have offered a different way of learning and when we tell them that it’s a growth mindset, so that it’s not because you’re a math person or not a math person so everything can be learned it’s just.
582
01:18:57.480 –> 01:19:06.120
Celia Hodent: If you persevere and if you work hard enough you’ll get there, and so, if you keep doing things that saying well you’re either a.
583
01:19:06.900 –> 01:19:21.720
Celia Hodent: math person or not a math person and then you add on top of it well, women are typically not good at math this is when you know you can make kids very young age, believe that this is not for them, and so why should they even investigate and.
584
01:19:21.900 –> 01:19:32.190
Celia Hodent: So the taste that you’re talking about Nina How much is it influenced from the toys that you playing with a from society it’s hard to tell I mean there’s no we don’t have.
585
01:19:32.820 –> 01:19:44.280
Celia Hodent: A good research to to really measure the impact of that, but there is some sort of impact, and so, even if it’s light wishes we should address that.
586
01:19:47.340 –> 01:19:49.290
A Ashcraft: Well, honestly, so this has been great.
587
01:19:50.640 –> 01:20:03.720
A Ashcraft: we’ve we’ve taken more of your time than we intended and and we’ve been very grateful for you for this, so if you don’t mind, I think this is probably a good spot to end the this this particular episode we’d love to have you back sometime yes.
588
01:20:06.150 –> 01:20:15.600
A Ashcraft: So Celia Thank you so much for being on the show listeners by her books join her webinars you can find her at Celia whoa dent.com.
589
01:20:18.300 –> 01:20:21.360
Celia Hodent: i’m on Twitter else on the very, very active Twitter.
590
01:20:21.360 –> 01:20:23.580
A Ashcraft: person okay and and on Twitter.
591
01:20:23.880 –> 01:20:27.360
Shlomo Sher: Yes, you are yes i’ve been enjoying your tweets.
592
01:20:27.510 –> 01:20:29.490
Celia Hodent: I really love Twitter.
593
01:20:30.750 –> 01:20:32.280
Shlomo Sher: All right, good podcast.
594
01:20:33.870 –> 01:20:42.000
Shlomo Sher: By the way, sorry sorry this is our medical we we ended up having this little thing at the end of our podcast but we say good podcast like good game.
595
01:20:42.780 –> 01:20:48.060
Shlomo Sher: yeah yeah if you wanna if you want to participate in it and do otherwise don’t.
596
01:20:48.390 –> 01:20:50.610
Celia Hodent: So what do you have to say good game is that right.
597
01:20:50.610 –> 01:20:52.230
Shlomo Sher: Oh good good good podcast.
598
01:20:52.440 –> 01:20:52.920
is good.
599
01:20:55.290 –> 01:20:56.730
Celia Hodent: Good podcast.
600
01:20:58.350 –> 01:20:59.340
A Ashcraft: Good podcast.
601
01:20:59.940 –> 01:21:00.960
Shlomo Sher: play nice everybody.
