Why we must learn more about today's gamers

I never expected myself to work in the gaming industry and handle community management. 

Even though I am a journalist at the end of it all, I was never one to stand in front of the camera or be in the centre.  I focused on myself as a digital editor, researcher, producer, and social media specialist.

Those roles all included a lot of interactions on social media with media consumers. From the angry ones and the spammers to the ones that always were nice and the ones that just wanted to share their stories.

These were adults and one thing I learned there is that being an adult on the internet is not an automatic success for behaving nicely.

When I started working in the gaming community, the community were mostly young adults who were passionate about games. They were the happy ones, the angry ones, the sad ones and the lonely ones. Just like the adults but the main difference was that this crowd also felt a bit like the underdogs. Gaming was, and is, after all, a hobby that is often looked down upon. 

Overall, this crowd was a bunch of happy nerds with lots of passion, opinions and more importantly, happy to chat and hang out with other gamers. 

Then, I started to work with the Roblox community.

Holy damn, that has been a ride! I was a complete novice in Roblox games and had no idea about the crowd. 

Nor was I fully aware of how big Roblox is among kids and that everyone plays.

The Roblox community are WAY younger than any community I´ve managed before.

And they are absolute chaos on Discord where the focus is less on hanging out with other gamers but on getting the most items to min-max their gaming.

For me that comes from a world of console gaming and PC, I´ve never felt so old and behind my time. I got a very healthy wake-up call in realizing that this is most likely how my parents felt when I started with video games....)

NGL, this is 100% me some days at work.

The road of learning about Roblox and its community has been a wild ride and in this time, I am so happy to have taken this journey. The Roblox community are a chaotic one but they are also so damn passionate, happy, wonderful and creative. They love to talk, to be informed and to give input on the games we make.

And I never felt so down with the kids when I talked to the kids in the park on the daily dog walk and answered their questions on what I do for work: "Well, I work with Roblox games."

Because everybody plays and their enthusiasm to discuss and talk about their favourite games makes my day.

This is the new generation of gamers but I feel that we, the adults, are making the same mistake with the Roblox generation that our own parents once did with us Pc-, and console gamers.

We do not take their Roblox gaming seriously (perhaps because it is not real games, what do I know?) and we do not listen to them. 

I feel that I have repeated the same advice for parents for 20 years now:

"Talk to your kids and teenagers about their gaming, show an interest."

That is still true and parents should take a bigger interest in their kid's gaming.

But in addition, all of us ( the older gaming generation) perhaps need to take a step down from our high horse and look at what the kids are playing these days, exchange top games to play and learn from that.

The gaming community is wonderful and vast and there is room for all kinds of games, from PC to mobile.

So let´s listen to the new generation of gamers and not only get them to play our games but ask what they and their friends are playing in school. 

And then, we join and learn from them

To all my male colleagues in the gaming industry - I need you to see

Dear male colleagues in the gaming industry. I’m very tired but I will try to be as nice as possible.

Or rather, I will now be as blunt as it is needed.

I need you to be better when it comes to work for diversity and equality in the industry. I need you to step up and I need you to do active  work all year around.

I need you to see.

Our exhaustion.
Our rage.

Our need to be able to take a break.

Perhaps it is a bit too abstract but let me break it down for you from my point of view.

I am a women, an openly queer person and a Person of Color (PoC). I have been on the barricades for more inclusion and equality in the gaming community most of my life.
Not because I want to but because it is needed and I know that if I want things to change, then I have to do it myself.

But after years of doing this and having great support of my fellow women, queers and PoC, I’m tired.

We are all pretty tired here. We would be less so if we got a lot better support from our male colleagues in the industry.

Read me right, there are some great male allies and feminists out there and I feel proud to call them my friends. They do a huge change everyday alongside us.

But it is not enough. And I feel a never ending rage everytime male colleagues of mine act like the sky has fallen down on them everytime sexism, racism and hate against minorities are brought up.
Like it is a brand new discovery every time. And then, they have the same reaction the next time. And the next.

It is heartbreaking but perhaps even more, their words about “Keep bringing these things up, keep pointing it out to us me”

I just want to scream at you all: “For the love of God, I am not getting paid well enough to be your teacher! EDUCATE yourself!”

But I continue to bring things up.

The result?

I get a reputation as being difficult for always raising these things, for being the angry black women (I’m not black, I’m brown) that never can be content and happy.

“Anna, it is great that you are fighting for these things… Oh, not like that, be nice.”

I do not want your congratulations on this day.
Or any other day. I want you beside me on the barricade.
Photo by Iduna Pertoft Sundarp

I have to shoulder the full responsibility of making my male co-workers see how difficult it can be wor women, PoC and queer persons but with zero thanks and only making it harder for myself in my career.

Yay fucking yay.

It should not be my job as a woman to point these things out time after time after time.

I should not have to be the voice of reason all the time and the one who spots sexism, racism and so on.

It should not be my job to educate my male colleagues how much hate a woman gets for being a public person, the hate comments female streamers can get and that it is not normal that we have stalkers, online or IRL.

I’m tired of being the difficult one in all aspects and repeating myself for ears that do

not hear.

I will still continue to be difficult and point these things out  because I want to gaming industry and the gaming community to be a better place where everyone can feel represented,where we all treat eachother with respect and where I am not the only female, PoC or queer person in the room.

But I will demand so much more from now on.

So, dear male colleagues in the gaming industry, here is a list of things I want you to be better at to support me and many other females, PoC and queers in the gaming indrustry.

• Be the one that points out sexism in early drafts, in video games, in structures at work.
• Be the difficult one. Tell your male co-workers to stop with demeaning jokes. It is not funny.
• If there are sexual harassment on the workplace, talk to the men responsible, back up the ones harassed and don’t be silent. 
• Don’t brush aside your female colleagues,your PoC colleagues, your disabled collegues, your queer collegues when they are telling about hate speach against them. Don ' t tell us that it is fine, don’t tell us to walk it off. Make sure that we are covered, that we get support from HR, from the company. Be a friend here.
• Make sure to lift your female colleagues, your PoC colleagues, your disabled collegues, your queer collegues, with words and action. These include:
   - Giving praise for work done. ALL work done cause we do a lot of invisible work that you are all just assuming.
  - Make sure that it is not only the men in the theme that get a raise or a promotion. If only the men in a team or a group climbs on the career ladder, it is some fundamental wrong. Challenge it and ask why. To your boss.
  - Men often get way more in payment than other groups, no matter experience or time worked at a company. Make sure to be transparent with salary and to check if your female colleague is at the same level as you are getting the same payment. If not, it is a problem. Your problem.
  - Make sure to ensure that your co-workers with a womb feel that they can take parental leave. This is a HUGE issue since the choice today is usually career or children for many childbearers. Make it change by raising these questions. 

Last but not least:

Educate yourself by listening to lectures and to the voices of your female colleagues around you. And make sure to value their time. Don’t ask them to repeat themself over and over again. Show them, show us the respect of remembering our words

Dear male colleagues in the gaming industry,this is what I want from you.

No more silence, no more surprise face when sexism is brought up, no more relying on  your female colleagues, your PoC colleagues, your disabled collegues, your queer collegues to point things out all the time.

And no more shaming uf us for being difficult infringing these questions up. I want you to be difficult with us, with me and that we can have a change here.

Be part of that change. Some more blogpost on this theme( in Swedish)

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