Keep Redlining OUT of the Metaverse

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In this 2022 Future Realities Summit session, Niantic, Inc’s John King and Kellee Santiago discuss the Black Developers Initiative (BDI) to identify and support Black-led developers and game teams to increase representation — and what more game devs can and should do to ensure the people building the real-world metaverse are more representative of the people who live in the real-world metaverse.

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15 thoughts on “Keep Redlining OUT of the Metaverse”

  3. Here in Norway they spent millions and millions on trying to get more females into engineering. We are the most egalitarian country in the world, so we let people choose what they want to do based on their individual interests, not group identity or things like that. After millions and millions were spent and woman pushed to choose this career, we still end up with woman mostly choosing different career paths than engineering. I think you might have yourselves the same situation here. Trying to fit people into a career they might not be interested in, based in group identity, not interest. I might be wrong, but it seems like it.

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  6. First part was the worst "presentation" I have seen in a GDC talk. What is his point? Why all the 0-information slides? What's he talking about? Would be intersting to ask him, what he thinks is the point of his presentation. Probably gonna need another 200+ slides for that 🤣
    The others were ok, though.

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  7. Now that there have been big corrections in the crypto market, NFT has been growing in all aspects, I strongly believe that the digital crypto asset NFTs will take over the market in no time

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  11. So, I feel conflicted after watching this talk.

    The speakers don't actually discuss crypto or the metaverse really at all. The thesis of their talk was: "We are working on an initiative to lift up developers from underrepresented communities, and we think that you should consider doing the same in your workplaces". I can only imagine that the "metaverse" spin came as an attempt to address their audience at the Future Realities Summit, where I assume the metaverse was being peddled left and right.

    I do think that the talk itself was pretty poor. The speakers spent the first 15 minutes establishing the idea of a "pipeline of privelege" only for it to culminate in a slide titled "Metaverse = Diversity" (13:06), a dubious claim that they fail to justify.

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  13. The utter selfishness expressed here in the comments is code speak and passive aggressive talk, is the very reason why Black people, People of colour and the entire diverse community is not represented well in game dev. The plain average white guy who is allowed to fail upwards is always protected by the smart tech savvy white person who don't want to share the wealth, opportunities and chances to fail and not be left out of the most creative industry on the planet. I say keep trying to hold on to your privilege, The tighter you squeeze the more of us will find ways of getting in and taking over. It no secret that every industry people of colour enter we dominate. Music, Sports are just the beginning, We will NEVER stop until we can have a equal share based on skill and hard work and not BS like skin colour.

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