{"id":909,"date":"2022-06-09T19:49:50","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T19:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/?p=909"},"modified":"2022-10-21T16:05:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T16:05:53","slug":"episode-46-what-if-game-companies-did-good-as-b-corps-with-justin-michaels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/?p=909","title":{"rendered":"Episode 46 &#8211; What if Game Companies did good as B-Corps (with Justin Michaels)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>[Release Date: July 5, 2022]&nbsp;&nbsp;We\u2019re used to the idea of organizations that try to do good as non-profits, but what about for-profit companies \u2013 like the great majority of game companies?&nbsp; Some for-profit companies are choosing to play a positive role in the world and to do so as a certified B-Corporation.&nbsp; One of these is ustwo games\u2019, best known for their fantastic Monument Valley games.&nbsp; We chat with ustwo\u2019s Justin Michaels about what it\u2019s like to be a game company dedicated to doing good as a B-corp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/0ezVdN67MFG4xkQ8D8Pb5K?utm_source=generator&amp;theme=0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"232\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>SHOW TRANSCRIPT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>hello everybody we&#8217;re here today with justin michaels uh ceo of us two games um us two games in case you don&#8217;t know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is an independent mobile game development studio based in the uk um i&#8217;m a big fan of the monument valley<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>games uh that they make if you&#8217;ve never played them you should really try them out um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and uh justin leads uh the operations finance and commercials teams that helped shape the strategy and planning<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>for the years ahead for us two games uh prior to working in the game industry justin has held similar operational<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>roles uh in a mobile ticketing company called dice led the startup investment arm of us too uh done a stint as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>management consultant and earnest mba from uh instead uh justin justin welcome to the show<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>thank you yeah appreciate it all right so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we&#8217;re here to talk about something that i think virtually uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>god i was i want to say virtually no fans of games know about and this is our opportunity to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>not just know fans of games but virtually no one working in the gaming industry i&#8217;m assuming is aware of b corp<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so um you guys i think took the really uh or are taking uh what is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>really kind of an extraordinary uh positive step here uh and we want to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>essentially um explore what this means uh what it means to be a b corp for a game company um and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh what other companies might uh think about if they&#8217;re uh thinking about uh being um uh b corps so all right uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we&#8217;re here to chat about what it&#8217;s like uh for to be a game company that&#8217;s also a b corp uh obviously that doesn&#8217;t make<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>any sense unless we understand what a b corp is so justin what is a big corp sure um so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a b corp can be lots of different things but at its simplest it is a company<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that has achieved a certification that certification is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a set of standards set by a non-profit organization that&#8217;s based out of the united states called<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>b lab and b lab started gosh i think over a decade ago building this you know what&#8217;s this what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>good looks like in terms of how you balance purpose and people and planet in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>terms of your for profit business model i think that&#8217;s the important thing about a b corp is it&#8217;s it is a for-profit<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh company yeah it&#8217;s not a charity to be a b corp you&#8217;re finding a way to to find<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that balance between purpose and profit um but any company in theory can become<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a b corp if they can pass the certification and that certification focuses on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>social and environmental performance transparency around how you operate and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>things like data and then you you eventually do need to make a legal commitment which is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in certain companies and their articles of association or whatever the relevant legal document is in your in various<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>countries that says you as directors and shareholders will<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>put employees the environment and other social causes on the same level as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>financial considerations so it is a real legal commitment as well as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certification right um so let me uh dig into that a little bit<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>before we we get into the practical stuff i don&#8217;t know maybe maybe it&#8217;s all practical maybe more maybe it&#8217;s all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>aspirational but um what you&#8217;re talking about essentially sounds like uh what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>people sometimes call the triple bottom line right of uh people uh planet uh profits right um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>does to be a b corp so right the idea is right you&#8217;re a for-profit company and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>again i think justin made it very clear that right this is the idea this is not a non-profit kind of thing this is a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>for-profit company that&#8217;s committing to doing good beyond uh beyond the profit um so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is it more than just let&#8217;s say committing to doing good beyond the beyond uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh profit do you really need to get those three things your environmental uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>commitments your commitments to your employee your customers your communities uh on the same level as profits<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so this is i think i&#8217;m going to explain it how i was told about this when we were going through<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the certification process so i&#8217;m not trying to represent uh b lab&#8217;s current characterization of this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what matters is that those other factors so profit and then finances and then those other things are at least<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>discussed and considered at the same time and that they aren&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>automatically less important so b b lab and what&#8217;s wrapped up in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certification is not insisting that companies make an even<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>set of decisions between profit and purpose for just to sum up all those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>other things um but that they are considered so b corps absolutely still have the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>freedom to make financially driven decisions if that&#8217;s what&#8217;s right for the company at that point in time what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is important and what the legal contract does through the articles of association or again whatever the relevant document<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is in your specific country is it says that the directors at least have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to think about these other factors and bring that into their decision-making process um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in a transparent way in a transparent way you know through things like having<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>board meetings and um and having independent directors right<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>there&#8217;s a whole sort of set of governance best policies and frameworks that b corps um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are always trying to improve upon so this is a b corp isn&#8217;t a replacement<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>for an escort or a c corp or any any of these other legal entities it&#8217;s it&#8217;s a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>separate thing sort of layered on top right in most countries that is still the case there are a few countries that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have legislated a benefit corporation in which case you can evolve into that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>structure uh that&#8217;s not the case in the uk where i&#8217;m where else two games is based so i don&#8217;t know much about how<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that works but in general the assumption is that it&#8217;s a layer on top of whatever your existing structure is are we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>familiar with uh any uh b corps there are some b corps that we might know outside of the video<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>game sphere yeah of course um they&#8217;re i mean the biggest ones that always get named first i&#8217;m going to carry on with<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that tradition uh pat patagonia um ben and jerry&#8217;s more recently i suppose all birds um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and there are loads more right i mean there are over i think three or four<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>thousand b corps in the in the world now um all of those ones i just mentioned<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are of course consumer product facing right and and i think that has a lot to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>do with where b corp and b lab started and it was looking at how they can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>impact the planet in a better way these are companies with supply chains and inevitably you know when they&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>delivering their products they have waste and it&#8217;s trying to think from end to end about how<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>not just we treat each other as employees but also what the impact is we&#8217;re having on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>earth in delivering our products and services what&#8217;s been really interesting and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certainly a benefit to us two games is i think a lot of the demand for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>companies that aren&#8217;t in that traditional consumer product space are saying well<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we want to do good too we&#8217;ve got purpose and we want to have a triple bottom line how do we qualify ourselves as a as a b corp and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so every year b lab goes in through their very comprehensive<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certification questionnaire which is about 200 questions and they&#8217;re evolving it and they&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>making it more accessible to companies that are you know from different industries um you see a lot of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>consultancies able to now qualify so companies that are more service oriented<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um you even have venture funds that are qualifying as b corps you&#8217;ve got um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>oh yeah it&#8217;s it&#8217;s gotten a much wider range from what traditionally um was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>focused on which i think so so so can you give us an example of what this might let&#8217;s say specifically mean for a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>company like patagonia or uh ben jerry&#8217;s yeah so so for all b corps not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>regardless of where you&#8217;re um coming from industry was the the five categories that the the questionnaire<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>focuses on are governance workers community<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>environment and customers so what that means for a company like patagonia which has a huge<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>supply chain element and is that they&#8217;re going to be very interested in making sure their<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>environmental policies and practices are really good and if i contrast that to us two games<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we don&#8217;t really have a big environmental footprint we&#8217;ve got a lot more work to do around<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know what our scope 3 carbon emissions look like because we we use things like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>i don&#8217;t know amazon servers and all of our players have devices and those have carbon footprints associated with them<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so it&#8217;s not it&#8217;s not that we can&#8217;t do anything there but it&#8217;s obviously not the same as having an end-to-end<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>manufacturing global supply chain right right um what what um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the other sort of distinction is is if if you have a really impactful business<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>model meaning you&#8217;re explicitly targeting things like education<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>health outcomes financial inclusion that&#8217;s what all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>falls into the customer category of the b corp certification and if you&#8217;re a company that&#8217;s purposefully focused on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>some of those topics then you&#8217;ll get more points basically within the certification and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you can go further now again us two games we we aren&#8217;t right yeah we we think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we&#8217;re creating art and and it&#8217;s really important and it has a huge emotional impact on our um on our players and we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>love that about the games we make but that&#8217;s not going to earn us credit in the b corp context of consumer impact<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>which means we&#8217;ve got to be really strong in all the other four categories um and and i think this is what b corp&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>done really well in terms of evolving the certification so that if your business isn&#8217;t focused on impact<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it can still just be operationally really strong and progressive and still become a b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>corp one way to kind of look at these things are the kind of uh i don&#8217;t know organic outcomes of the way<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you do business right um the way uh your business uh impacts the employees<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh you know uh the way it impacts the community in which you&#8217;re in uh just kind of organically by by the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>way you normally operate but then it&#8217;s also possible to do what some companies do which is let&#8217;s say to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know donate a part of their profits to some sort which i think is what uh part of what ben and jerry&#8217;s does<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um right uh the only one for the planet is sort of a common pledge that is this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>another way of kind of measuring community output so you&#8217;re that you&#8217;re still helping the community in a much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>more kind of explicit way that&#8217;s right that you&#8217;ve got the right of those five categories that&#8217;s where that one that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>sort of um policy would would fit um what&#8217;s what&#8217;s sort of really hard to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>get your head around about b corp as i mentioned it&#8217;s it&#8217;s roughly 200 questions in this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in this questionnaire in this certification they&#8217;re kind of roughly divided by<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>40 points per section okay um the customers one&#8217;s a little complicated so i&#8217;m gonna leave that one<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to the side you know if you do if you contributed one percent of your profits to charity<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and that was a policy that you had there is a question in the certification to get points for that it&#8217;s probably only<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>one or two like one point because there&#8217;s so many different topics to cover in the certification<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and um and what&#8217;s really nice about the framework is that okay let&#8217;s say<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you&#8217;re getting one point right now for one percent it tells you if you took that to two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>percent or five percent what sort of improvement you could make in your overall score<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and to qualify as or to certify as a b corp you have to have 80 points total that&#8217;s the floor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and every three years you&#8217;re reassessed and you have to you have to go through the full certification process again<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>thankfully you know a lot more about it so it&#8217;s not as daunting but you have to answer all those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>questions again and if you don&#8217;t improve on your last score beelab wants to have a chat with<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you about why not you might you might lose your your baby that&#8217;s right you might lose your status<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so um 80 is just they&#8217;ve made a game yeah you&#8217;re right they&#8217;ve made a game of fighting for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>companies to play in order to get this achievement that&#8217;s it and keep it that&#8217;s the hard<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>part so it gets yeah so it gets harder to keep it and once you get buy-in um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>cool can i ask you could i ask you what what parts of it were the hardest for you or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what what things come up regularly and go oh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the hardest one for us has been getting making headway on on carbon emissions<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and really understanding accurately as possible because it is a lot of estimation work<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what our carbon footprint is and b corpse again the framework is always sort of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>pushing you up the ladder of of um progressiveness right in terms of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>being very forward thinking but the starting place for carbon emissions is do you track it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and we haven&#8217;t been able to say yes to that one yet the next one is have you set a target to improve upon and then<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have you beat that target and then have you offset whatever your emission levels<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are and and have you offset them fully have you offset them partially or and increasingly are you carbon negative<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>because you&#8217;ve done sort of you know more than just offsetting um yeah and so those are all laid out in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the the framework and we&#8217;ve we&#8217;ve just struggled to find um a reliable cost-effective way<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to to capture what we you know what we would estimate our carbon footprint to be but we have right has coveted made<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that harder i can imagine like having people spread out and working on other homes makes it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>really oh my god much harder to figure out even how much electricity is your company using i gather it&#8217;s kicked off a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>bit of an industry around carbon estimation right and and really that&#8217;s ultimately what you have to rely upon is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>other service providers who are expert in crafting assumptions based on your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>your corporate setup whether that&#8217;s office based or remote working or multi-jurisdictions whatever<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um and i think b lab is looking for you to work with partners that are certified themselves in that special<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>specialization whatever i don&#8217;t know the names of all those um standards and certifications but they&#8217;re looking for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you to validate your offsetting for example with<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>verified partners right and that&#8217;s sort of interesting too because that also suggests that that bee<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>labs the companies that are b corpse uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>also there is a network of b corps who can work together there are yeah the big big<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>part of the kind of getting on the other side of that first certification is there&#8217;s a community<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um tends to be localized more local chapters so country level or in the context of the united states it&#8217;ll<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>probably be more city focused um and they do a pretty good job of trying to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>bring b corp leaders together share best practices and things like that that&#8217;s super interesting are you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>guys the first uh video game company that&#8217;s trying to be a big corp do you know of other video game companies that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh that are b corps i&#8217;m not prepared to say we&#8217;re the first i when we did this a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>while ago as part of the us two group um there were a few<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>educational games companies and i unfortunately just can&#8217;t remember their names i apologize if you&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>listening um but you uh blazed this trail i think before we did and i think this gets back to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that bit i mentioned about customers where if your if your focus is on certain themes and education is one of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>those things and you&#8217;re trying to drive educational outcomes through your business model<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>then um that helps you a long way right in terms of delivering on the purpose<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>along with your profit and um and so i do think there have been a couple of companies that that are in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>education game space that have done it since we just talked about uh games and environmentalism and uh your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>game alba uh came up uh would that count so right can you tell us a little bit about the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>game alba and i&#8217;m just kind of curious if if that would count as something like that something that has a benefit yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the technical answer is no it&#8217;s not contributing to our how we would qualify<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>or or earn points in the certification i&#8217;ll explain that in a second um but i think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the more intrinsic answer is is yes because we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>aren&#8217;t thinking about how we activate what it means to to play alba and for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>instance the program that we&#8217;ve had where for every download of alba we&#8217;re planting a tree um and working with a partner that&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>helping us do that you we aren&#8217;t thinking about how we activate tree planting if we aren&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>if we haven&#8217;t fully processed what it means to be a b corp in our company culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and i think when we are looking at the next game that we&#8217;re about to announce um completely different area of focus in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>terms of the the themes but still one that we believe is about impacting people in the right way and we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have some ideas around how we are going to try and activate that in the real world as we have done with alba and the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>trees and so um i think what b corp really really helps you do is the more you&#8217;re exposed to it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and the more you&#8217;re around it the more ingrained it just becomes in your thought process and you look for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>opportunities to do good things as opposed to um you know just make the game<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh awesome so trying to figure out your carbon footprint is is one thing but what what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what are some of these things like what are opportunities that you have you know you&#8217;re you&#8217;re in a meeting you&#8217;re talking about i don&#8217;t know some element<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of the game design or maybe it&#8217;s an operations uh uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>meeting and you&#8217;re talking about oh we need to buy another set of computers can you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>give us an example of how this is sort of how this is sort of manifested itself and in like this sort of like weekly<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>day-to-day kind of this is this is now how we do things right because because this is a change of mindset<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it is it is you know and and so speaking on our behalf but also trying to open this up to how<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um leaders income game companies that might be listening can think about it and their context is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it really the team right is where there&#8217;s so much that can be done here<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and that starts with hiring and thinking about hiring from diverse backgrounds um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so this fits in the community section of the b court framework even though it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>about employees but they&#8217;re looking at things like what&#8217;s the socioeconomic background and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>diversity within the team what are the age age ranges you know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is there ageism do you are you hiring young people in are you also retaining people that are further along in their<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>careers that aren&#8217;t just you know the boss um and there are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>other opportunities where it&#8217;s talking about internships and work experience and things like this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that are are giving people opportunities that they might not otherwise have so for example for us a couple things one we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>are a member of the london living wage association so that&#8217;s helping us ensure<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that we always are paying above what the london living wage is in our in our more junior roles and we clear that hurdle<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>comfortably but it&#8217;s still a really important step to make that commitment in a in a public way<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um but also working with our local what we would call in the uk our local council<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so it could be your local town or city and working with programs there that will help bring in youth that might not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have opportunities to access industries in the creative arts and things like this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so we do that on a on a recurring basis and these are all parts of how we think about hiring once you have the team in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>there are lots and lots of things you can do around just being progressive with your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>workplace policies so this can range from flexible working which i think nowadays has lots of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>different meanings it&#8217;s not just you know remote working or not it&#8217;s also when do you do you have flexibility<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>around when you start and stop work um do you have really strong parental leave<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>policies that go above and beyond what whatever the government mandates might be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in your given country there there&#8217;s just so much you can do to think about um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>about that bonuses do you pay bonuses what percent of your profits are you paying out in bonuses<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what are the differences between the lowest paid person and the highest paid person in the organization obviously the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>smaller that range is the the more equitable it&#8217;s feeling um do employees<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have opportunity to earn shares or options in the business and this is all pushing towards a more<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know equitable balance between ownership and employees<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and and i think there&#8217;s just lots and lots that companies can do here that bcorp helps you spell the way forward<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>all of these things sound like things that cost money i&#8217;m going to be the i&#8217;m going to be the ceo investor guy down<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and go doesn&#8217;t it isn&#8217;t this costing you a lot of money to do this yes it it does um two two ways that i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>think to think about that one is what blab is doing to accommodate that so when you start the certification you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>have to select what industry you&#8217;re in what size company you are and then in this magic black box the um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the the questions change a little bit and the weightings the weightings that you get for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in terms of the points for each answer change a little bit and what that&#8217;s trying to reflect is if you&#8217;re a small<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>company let&#8217;s say 20 people and you have a parental leave policy that says you&#8217;re paid six months leave<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in the united states you&#8217;re going to get more points for that than if you&#8217;re a giant company of 2000 people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>with the same policy so they are trying to sort of help smaller companies where<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it&#8217;s more expensive to put some of those plans in place to certify more easily by focusing on being<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>strong in a smaller set of policies as opposed to good and lots of different policies and then i suppose yeah the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>more generic counter to your question is how much you&#8217;re prepared to invest in retaining your team yeah and we&#8217;re just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>talking about team policies right now but um yeah yeah i think in the video game industry everyone&#8217;s pretty clear<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that talent is of the utmost importance and retaining them um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is expensive to do it well and so you&#8217;re probably going to be making that cost any investment anyway into your team<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>b corp just does a really nice job of giving you ways to think about it and giving you some answers to how could we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>do better here um and that&#8217;s great right and also pointing at something outside<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>where you can say you know hey we&#8217;re trying to achieve we&#8217;re trying to achieve and or maintain<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>this status that&#8217;s right and we&#8217;re all we&#8217;ve all decided on on this this is all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh this is sort of a a group a group achievement a group unlock<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh i like that you keep getting fighting game fighting the sandy uh well it&#8217;s totally gamified i mean this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh though it is really interesting this idea that uh one of the things that cause it&#8217;s interesting i i didn&#8217;t expect<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>your example to be so focused on employees but it was great i mean you gave us it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>such a very different way of thinking about employees that uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know so than the way so many companies uh go about it and that was just the employees and then to add to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that the employees get to share in pride uh that their company is uh essentially<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>working a cares about them and cares about their well-being and is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>working to make the world a better place in in some way um yeah and that&#8217;s i think that&#8217;s again when we look because<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the cost of this and we don&#8217;t know what the costs exactly are and all that let&#8217;s talk benefits and in fact before we talk<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>benefits i i just want to say so you guys um the original decision to become a b corp<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>as as you told us was um done by us to us to group before you guys were us two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>games right so us to the us to group became certified as b corp in 2019 and then us two games<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>begin its own company did you guys decide to uh file for a b corp because<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by that point your culture just uh changed and you liked uh the idea of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>being a b corp what what did you guys you guys had your own you guys had the b corp experience and then you had your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>choice about whether to keep that and go through what seems like a pretty<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>complex process right or just do what everybody else is doing um it is complex and uh you know it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>not for the faint of heart and you really do need a commitment to getting to the certification and and sort of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>resilience as well if you don&#8217;t get through it the first time right a commitment to say well okay well now we<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>know where we stand and we&#8217;re going to keep improving till we get it um us to as a company and just for listeners that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um us two is a you know historic first and foremost us two was founded as a digital<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>product agency so providing clients services uh creating digital products for them<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and us two games um really originated as a as a project as an internal project<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>within us two&#8217;s studio um and and from that uh there were some games<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>before monument valley but of course monument valley was sort of the breakout hit that put us two games on the map and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>let it stand up as its own entity within us too and it&#8217;s only been very recently that us<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>two games has been made made separate from us to agency and i&#8217;ll spare everyone reasons<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>around that but um you know i led the group certification in 2019 and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>one of the ways that if you&#8217;re registering as a as a multinational or as a group of subsidiaries<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um b lab basically says well you can only click the policy<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that applies to 80 or more of your head count regardless of where they are or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what com what subsidiary they are part of um which is just a way of enforcing high<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>standards everywhere so you can&#8217;t load up 20 of people in a progressive country and then put everyone everyone<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>else in a in a jurisdiction they might have lower legal requirements etcetera<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and so us two games was actually already usually well above the average in the us<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>two&#8217;s set of policies so recertifying as our as our own entity<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>has not meant we needed to do a lot of new stuff which is great um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>my own familiarity with the certification also helps right so i led a much bigger certification and now i&#8217;ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>led a smaller one and um and so that that made it accessible but to answer your question shalom i mean it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>really was we did not hesitate about re-certifying it was okay if the group<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>structure&#8217;s changing and we would technically lose our status as far as b-lab is concerned we will<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>recertify because we want to carry on being a b chord so clearly it mattered to you guys uh what he sees the benefits<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>now yeah um you know i mentioned earlier this is sort of eventually it seeps into the thought processes across<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>lots of different decisions to get made and and so then once you start thinking about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it&#8217;s okay to not only think about our profit<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>some really important and powerful things can happen and it&#8217;s hard to pinpoint them i&#8217;ve used<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the alba tree planting example is certainly one of the ones we&#8217;re really proud of in the last<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>year and a half there is certainly a talent benefit around just having that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>logo on your website and being able to talk about what being a b court means to prospective<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>hires um it&#8217;s right it&#8217;s not something that a lot of people still know about so there&#8217;s a some educating to do there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>but the people who learn about it or already know about it it&#8217;s sort of like an instant seal of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>approval right this is this must be a company that at least is aware of the world we live in and cares about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the people that work for it and and i think that&#8217;s really important and we&#8217;ve we&#8217;ve seen it&#8217;s given some of our team<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>members the motivation to go and do things outside of their day-to-day jobs so thinking of my colleague jennifer<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>esteris who is really involved in playing for the planet and does a lot of work outside of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>her specific role which is a game director of of the next installment of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the monument valley franchise um and that&#8217;s great and we&#8217;re super thrilled that she&#8217;s out there and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>committed and passionate about these different topics that are affecting the industry but also the world<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and and i think b corps give being certified as a b corp gives you permission to embrace that and encourage<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it and employees to feel like they&#8217;re supported for those sorts of actions i think there&#8217;s also value in that network<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>too right the network of other other b corps and you&#8217;re now you&#8217;re now in this sort of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>rather exclusive club yeah hopefully at least decreasingly exclusive and um it is fun<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>when you see little packages you know with the b corp logo there&#8217;s a sense of camaraderie there and and again and i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>think that&#8217;s one of the benefits if you&#8217;re in a consumer product company you see that package with the b corp logo and you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>know okay this company&#8217;s thought through its packaging decisions for example and hopefully in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>as and when more gaming companies think about this as an option for themselves and they can start<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>branding some of their games as from a b court maybe that&#8217;ll start to mean something as well for for players uh you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know it&#8217;s really interesting this idea of uh what you mentioned earlier uh in terms of attracting talent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh given that so many companies uh especially big game companies<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>uh in recent years have had scandals the kind that would make you you know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>i mean you know never mind dealing with things like you know like crunch and how much you would be demanding of your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>developers uh it would be the kind of thing that could really counteract that wait here&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a game company that seems to really have uh ethical priorities in the way uh it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>engages both with its players but uh also here especially with it&#8217;s with its<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>employees with its uh talent with the people that make it what it is i&#8217;d love to know how this affects your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>your scheduling you&#8217;re actually yeah you know production scheduling and that doesn&#8217;t factor in so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>long before being a b corp you know we had a no or very very limited crunch policy established in us two games and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um you know for instance our upcoming title which um announces very shortly and will be um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>available from sort of september october time frame and we we&#8217;re almost two years into that and haven&#8217;t had any crunch on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it and we&#8217;re looking good that we won&#8217;t heading into the final quarter um so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that is just our normal way of operating and i think that&#8217;s just part of the contract<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we have with our team and we are prepared to accept employee satisfaction and quality<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of life over demanding timetables um we also make games that i appreciate are are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>different than a lot you know what you might see in the industry and we we often aren&#8217;t on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>really rigorous post launch or um release updates right so that probably<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is in our favor but as you guys were posing this question i did make me think i don&#8217;t recall any part of the b corp<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certification that&#8217;s about overtime and i and i guess maybe b corp sort of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>picking this sort of thing up in employee retention and engagement surveys right so they do ask about your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>head count growth from year to year and obviously if that&#8217;s going backwards um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that probably or or is sort of still right because you have a lot of churn that probably says something about your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>culture and then they ask about your engagement surveys so do you do an engagement<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>survey and then if you do what kind of scores are you getting and you need to clear i think something like 70 percent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>engaged in order to start what what&#8217;s an engagement survey so yeah good question that is a bit of a vague term and it can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>be different for different companies i suppose at its most fundamental level a recurring survey of your whole team<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that&#8217;s asking questions around their general satisfaction and b corp<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>stipulates certain questions that need to be asked we use a tool called culture app to facilitate our engagement survey<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and it is asking questions not just do you like working here and are you proud to work here but also<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>things like do you see yourself working here in two years time or i feel the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>leadership of my company can describe a compelling vision for our<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>future things that are taking a much wider assessment of of what the employee experience is let&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>imagine now uh the entire game development world every game studio<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is now a b corp right um what would be different speculate here yeah i&#8217;ll speculate in my crystal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ball i you know i think you mentioned some scandals that have come through the industry and i would like to think first and foremost people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that are you know in the gaming industry find themselves working for better employers you know if if only people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>focused on more progressive and inclusive hiring policies and and worker<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>policies i think that would be a huge step forward for the industry and make it an even more<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>compelling and place to to build a career if you go a little bit wider<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know i think you could start to see more attention to things like the carbon<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>footprint of the gaming industry and i&#8217;ve admitted that we struggled to to to think end-to-end about this but if there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>was more um onus on the on companies to think about you know what it means to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>store huge amounts of data in the cloud unnecessarily or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know things like hardware release cycles thinking of some of our hardware producers in the industry<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>these sorts of things would all hopefully be done with a bit more thought and consideration<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and then data privacy and and safeguarding i think would would start to fall in that customer section right<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so even though it&#8217;s not part of the business model necessarily there are questions around the customers<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of are you protecting your data are you um safeguarding if you&#8217;re working with uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you know if your customers are under 18 there are safeguarding questions and i think you&#8217;d find hopefully more<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>thoughtful approaches to that and then maybe lastly if people started making games that were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a little more like alba and you know some of those green nudges to to have<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>people think about what they can do in their own lives outside of their the time they spend gaming<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>um you might find behaviors you know approve when you&#8217;re not at work um and for all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the people that we make games for um that&#8217;s the that&#8217;s the big big dream i suppose the long-term<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>impact that could happen all right yeah that&#8217;s great so um so just a while back and andy uh if you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>remember this remember when we had uh we did an episode just being you uh where we looked at uh four different ideas of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>corporate social responsibility and how they would apply to game companies so these were four competing models and the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>most uh they feel very looking back on it it feels very naive now uh i don&#8217;t know i haven&#8217;t talked about this without<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>all this information about all the stuff that we&#8217;ve we&#8217;ve learned since then i don&#8217;t think so at all uh yeah yeah i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>think you you still need kind of basic ideas about what the responsibilities of of of companies especially of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>corporations are um before you build on top of that the complexities uh of you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>know of the practical complexities but uh yeah so we did this a while back and this is like episode 16 or something<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>yeah early on yeah we&#8217;re like at 46. right um but one of those uh so some<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>people believe that uh an essential part of corporate social responsibility is really the to be doing something good<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>for the world right as an essential aim of every company and to me the one<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>marker of this that you&#8217;re doing good for the world uh is the b corp marker<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>even though they&#8217;re not really exactly the same thing right uh this is called the the integrated model this idea that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the only way that a company can really be a moral company is to include um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>some sort of moral mission some sort of idea of doing good as a part of the uh very aim of the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>company itself would you agree that this is uh that this is what the actual<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>responsibilities of companies should be to have within their fundamental mission<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>apart dedicated to doing good i suppose if asked pointedly i would disagree i<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>think that is reflected in my experience of b corp which is as i said we we don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>get many points for our customer stuff right because i think someone could look sit<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>back and say well video games aren&#8217;t inherently good for the world they&#8217;re not they may take a view that they&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>not evil um but you might say well what&#8217;s the good being done there um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>i don&#8217;t feel that way by the way i&#8217;m just being i&#8217;m just p putting us we could all list the good right i mean<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>we i&#8217;m assuming we all believe video games actually do lots of good for the world i absolutely do but i&#8217;m just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>asserting someone could say that&#8217;s not good in the sense that charities are good or um you know healing sick people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is good um and what be the way b corp accounts for this is said look if you score a zero in the customer section<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>there&#8217;s four more sections where you can go and get enough to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certify right if you&#8217;re well-governed uh which means operating with transparency having appropriate board<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>structures and um releasing your financial accounts and things like this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>if you take care of your employees if you engage with your community locally whether that&#8217;s through<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>diverse practicing hires excuse me diverse hiring practices or making charitable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>contributions or having volunteer days and then finally are you looking after your your impact on the planet and so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you could you know you can go and be a insurance company or something like that and do all of those other things and be<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a b corp um one of the things kind of go back to the heritage of us too a little bit is is the the agency works with some<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>really big famous companies that you might say aren&#8217;t doing their best to save the planet<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and i&#8217;ve heard of one of our our owners talk about that and our founders and he says look if we can help i&#8217;ll just say<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>car company x improve its products and services by<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0.5 that is such a big company that we&#8217;re going to have an impact on a positive impact right and so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>yeah i think that&#8217;s the other way to think about that which is even big companies that are in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>industries that aren&#8217;t obviously helpful to these things can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>make improvements that in the long run are all making contributions to how we look after ourselves and the planet okay<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>final question justin uh what do you want to live our listeners with uh what do you want him to take away from this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that it is possible for any company to begin their b corp journey even if<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it&#8217;s not uh immediately is in terms of being certified i really really rate the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>certification framework as thought-provoking and a road map to how<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you can get better from where you currently are and certification does not have to be the immediate goal so if<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you&#8217;re sitting there listening and thinking you know what can we do in our company<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to improve how we operate in any of those five spaces create an account at b corp and log into the assessment and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>look at what those questions are and look at those prompts and you&#8217;ll have literally hundreds of ideas of things<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>that you can do to to make a difference all right justin michaels uh ceo of us two games thank you so much for coming<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in the show [Music] all right uh gp great podcast guys<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>play nice everybody you can subscribe and listen to all of our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Release Date: July 5, 2022]&nbsp;&nbsp;We\u2019re used to the idea of organizations that try to do good as non-profits, but what about for-profit companies \u2013 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