VGA Fireside Ep. 8 feat. Tanya DePass: Interview Highlights
For our September Fireside episode, VGA Gallery interviewed Tanya DePass. Tanya founded I Need Diverse Games, a not-for-profit foundation based in Chicago dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. She is also a writer, Twitch partner, and diversity consultant on games such as Far Cry: New Dawn and Wandersong.
Below are some highlights of Tanya’s and Chaz’s discussion, edited for brevity and clarity. The full interview can be found on VGA Gallery’s YouTube and Twitch channels, where you can also see highlights from an Into the Motherlands RPG session.
On How Tanya got started in working with video games
Tanya DePass: Um an accident? Because I was angry tweeting about seven years ago… And I was mad about video games, and I used the hashtag #INeedDiverseGames and a lot of people started using it, to start tagging all of their tweets.
It was the right time, right place. A lot of industry people saw it, a lot of people wanted to have that diversity conversation. And, you know, it, it has led to me causing all kinds of trouble in the industry, I guess, in a good way. You know, I got interviewed, did some podcasts, did my own podcast for a couple years... I spoke to a few outlets, because it trended and it didn't just go away like most hashtags do. GirlCon did some content about it, and the conversation just kept going. Became its own hashtag, it got its own site, its own community. And people wanted to keep talking about diversity in gaming, and it just kind of grew from there…
So it was angry tweets, a lot of media attention, the tweet staying viral, its own hashtag, its own sub, its own site, being asked to talk about "I Need Diverse Games and Inclusion," and being asked to try to do some inclusion review. Eventually, that became diversity consulting.
On the basis for Into the Motherlands lore and the inspiration from how the idea came about
TD: Well, in terms of perspective that's more on the narrative side, not so much the mechanics side. So the, the conceit of Into the Motherlands is Mansa Munsa, who was a real Emperor in the 14th century in Mali, he actually did send an expedition out to the Americas that never made it. Our conceit is that the expedition actually wound up on our planet of Vutoa in the motherlands, and the stream that you're watching, the book that we're putting out, is two to 3,000 years after that's happened. So those humans have not fully integrated into society.
So you've got the Musalians, which are those people and their descendants for the last 3,000 years. You have the Mansegene. You have Hyeanole, which are hyena-like creatures, which is what I play on the show. And Aabria, as well. And you know the Mansegene are sentient androids, but you know, it's kind of like data where it is. They’re as close to a living sentient person as they can be. It's not like the, you know, the not quite uncanny valley looking androids of the old sci fi some of us grew up with and so basically, these humans shuffled off Earth 14th century and wound up on this planet. And now they have integrated and the conceit is those people—those black humans that have not integrated into Magellan society—they don't know what colonialism or slavery is because that never happened where they are. They were the aliens that landed on this society, that landed on this planet.
Chaz Evans: So it's about imagining this alternative future where colonialism is just deleted from the historical records?
TD: Not alternative, it's just…you know, it's sci fi, it's all made up. Because when B. Dave and I were talking, we realized—because at first, I kind of had the idea of like modern-day black people are tired of the world and Corona and everything else—we just leave. He's like, That's cool, but we as American black people, in this day and age, we too have this history of colonialism and racism. So we can't just ignore that, then we really would have to go, "this still is infecting—not infecting, but affecting us." Even if, even if we said okay, a bunch of black Americans or black people around the world got in a ship was like, "deuces we're out," we're taking that baggage with us to now a new civilization. So, instead it's just all new, all made up based on one little aspect of history.
On what “Danger Zones” are when doing consulting for video games and how she makes suggestions for improvement.
TD: A Danger Zone would be like, Oh, this is very stereotypical. And if you don't change it, people are going to look at this and go, you didn't talk to any actual black people, or brown people or queer people, you know? Like, if you read some dialogue, and the character sounds like they came out of a 70s blaxploitation film, unless that's the vibe of the game. But if it's not the vibe of the game, and this character, you know, sounds like, Wow, what's the famous blaxploitation character? Like they sound like Shaft, but that's not the vibe of the game, that's going to be a problem. Or visually, even if a dialogue is perfectly fine, and you put a young black man on screen, he's got sagging pants, he's got gold teeth, he's got the cocked hat, you're giving us a stereotype of a black man as a thug. Or you know, stereotypical writing in accents is a big thing that I've noticed with some games, where I get it: someone will actually read out these lines. But reading it looks really weird. You know, as a writer when you try to write out an accent, it just looks strange. And it often, it's hard for me if I'm gonna read that dialogue as a player. You're just gonna have people stumbling over things that they probably shouldn't be trying to pronounce anyway as an American, or outside of that culture…
One game that I consulted on they were very concerned about the black women that were characters in the game, and they were characters you come across a lot and eventually fight. And they were concerned [about] Are we making these black women too villainous? But also look at their hair and look at how they dress, you know, Are we hypersexualizing them?
So I realize many of you don't have to think about this, but black hair—no one is getting a perm in the apocalypse. You need to consider that if you give this black chick straight hair, I'm going to sit and wonder, who's doing her hair? Or if she has braids and you claim that they're extensions… Even my hair, that is all my hair. Getting it done takes several hours. If you're running a gang in a post-apocalyptic world, you don't have twelve hours to sit for someone to do your hair. Also who's doing it? Where are you getting the hair dye? Where are you getting the implements? Because you have to put something in your hair for the lock. So you know just the very simple things they never think about this because they're not black people with natural hair.
Even though it's the post-apocalyptic setting, you're seeing these characters from a place that exists in the real world right now. Are you creating a stereotype of someone from let's say New York or Philadelphia or something? Because those stereotypes are still there because we as current day people are playing this game, even if the setting is in the future.
On the idea of diversity and inclusion factors that have to be considered when designing NPCs vs PCs
TD: I don't approach it differently. Whether you're interacting with that NPC (non-playing character), or whether you are running around the world, the world should still engage with your character respectfully.
Because let's say I'm the NPC, and you're the PC (player character), and we interact in the game somehow. I would still have the same design notes for an NPC that is stereotypical as I would for a PC. And the only difference I think, for me—and again, this is all based on how I do things—if the PC is, like, Geralt of Rivia, the game is going to have a very set path about how the game interacts with me. Versus if I'm playing Dragon Age, and I can make this character look how I want, but the game does not interrogate my skin color choices, my race choices, then I'm going to go, You know, you let me make this character, why doesn't the game world interact with me in that way? Why don't NPCs notice, oh, there's a person of color or they're female? Or, you know, where did you come from, because again, this is all going to tie back to the games world.
What I realized a lot of times is that the game is built, and then the writing comes in. So until that changes in writing, and world building and game building is kind of hand in hand, we're only going to have the option of the game can only interact so much with you as an NPC or a PC. Now in something like The Witcher where you just have your character, you don't get to change at all, you don't get to do anything except maybe cosmetically. The game world does kind of interrogate you because… like, I keep thinking of The Witcher because people react to Geralt walking down the street. They react to him when he goes into a bar, but I don't get that in games where I create my character and make them look a certain way. So we don't have the same interactions. This is a narrative reason and it's really, really odd that most games don't do that to me. But again, it's that the writing comes later in the process, right? I mean for me, I would still communicate the representation issues that I see the same way for NPC or PC.
On what Tanya would like to see built in the future in order to make the field of video games and tabletop games more inclusive and diverse.
TD: We just have to get more people in the industry and keep them there, because right now the biggest hurdle is access. I mean, you know, I'm sure a lot of people know, going to something like GDC, the game developer conference, is super expensive. Even when you got your past coverage, you got to pay for a week in San Francisco.
It's also making environments less hostile to people of color, queer folks, etc. and making sure we have a place to be in the industry and to exist. Also just changing the pipeline, because so many people veer away from the skills they need to go in the industry like, you know, the math pipeline, other things. And they are veered away from the hard sciences and programming early on, because how many women do we see in engineering and coding roles? How many people do we see that think if you can't program in C++, then you have no space in the industry.
So, it's broadening the idea of who gets to be a game developer, getting people in the door and getting them to stay there and helping them do that and getting more mentorship. So ideally, more people in industry, more people getting to go to GDC, Pax Dev, other events, and also making sure people know there's a space for them in the industry, and not feeling like "I made it!" just to leave the industry in two to five years because it's so hostile.
