A survey carried out by the International Game Developers Association has discovered that 88.5% of development staff are male, and that 83.5% are white. Apparently the survey was completed by almost 6,500 people, and although the questionnaire was made available to the worldwide development community, the IGDA admits that the results are heavily biased toward North American opinions. In other words, it seems that very few developers in, say, Japan took part.
Even as a study of Western development these figures are significant. I just wonder if the content of games, and maybe even the audience, would be different if just one of those percentages were lower?
There's more to come: here's a quick rundown of all the key findings:
Male = 88.5%, Female = 11.5%
White = 83.3%, Black = 2.0%, Hispanic/Latino = 2.5%, Asian = 7.5%, Other = 4.7%
Heterosexual = 92%, Lesbian/Gay = 2.7%, Bisexual = 2.7%
Average age = 31 years
Average years in the industry = 5.4 years
Percentage of people with disabilities = 13% (e.g., cognitive, mobility, sight, etc)
More than 80% have a university level education or greater
More than 60% of studios claim that obtaining diverse applicants is challenging
The latter is perhaps the most important finding. Can the white male majority really be blamed on the fact that no one else actually wants to work in the industry?
Via Ludology
