How a Racially Diverse Team Was the Key to My Best Work
Currently based in Vancouver, Canada, Deborah Chantson is the Writer/Narrative Designer on Rooster and the newest unannounced title at Sticky Brain Studios. Her career in games and television spans over 17 years, specializing in preschool and educational projects. She was also a Community Manager for 9 years. Deb has written for several games in development, blogs for Sony PlayStation, and several featured blogs on GameDeveloper.com. She is a Writers Guild of Canada member and a Certified Accessible Player Experiences® Practitioner. She identifies as Canadian-South African-Chinese-American.
In this chronicle, she shares her personal experience and insights on the importance of a racially diverse team to the quality of her work and overall working environment.
LITERALLY A DREAM COME TRUE
When Sasha Boersma, co-executive producer of Toronto-based Sticky Brain Studios, asked me if I wanted to work on Rooster, she said that it was the fastest positive response she’d ever received. Rooster is a beautiful point-and-click narrative adventure video game based on the animals of the Chinese zodiac.
It's literally a dream come true for concept creator and art director Connie Choi, who dreamt of the zodiac animals in a racing game and woke up to sketch out images. She expresses herself through pictures; I express myself through words. As the first two creative leads on this project, it has been an amazing collaboration. I often feel like we give wings to each other’s ideas.
PROVIDING A RUNWAY FOR THE BEST WORK
While the team was originally the four of us – Sticky Brain co-founders Sasha (Boersma) and Ted Brunt, Connie, and me, our successful funding from the CMF and Ontario Creates for prototyping allowed us to grow our team to six, with E. Joan Lee coming on board as animation director, and Gabriela Kim Passos as technical director. I was thrilled to be getting my first real break as a writer and narrative designer on a game I could be so thoroughly involved in from start to finish. It was also an incredible life and career change to be able to leverage my Chinese culture and heritage in a marketable, viable product.
While we worked on the Rooster prototype part-time in addition to our regular jobs, our team of six included four women and non-binary people, and two white disabled persons. I already felt comfortable with Sasha and Ted, having worked well with them at the start of my career – and so well that the team won a then-Gemini award for our project. But for this project, and under their own company direction and management, it was a refreshing experience to be a racialized person in the majority.
I spent so much of my career in the minority or being the sole person of colour on a team, whether in television or games. But on Rooster, the combination of being a creative lead, on a majority racialized diverse team, and with a culturally-based project, was the trifecta I had never thought of. Finally getting the psychologically and emotionally safe environment I didn’t know I needed as badly until now allowed me to do my best work.
Being able to convey my personal vulnerabilities and emotional experiences in an interactive art form requires a very supportive environment. I believe it is impossible to express oneself fully while expecting pushback and second-guessing creative decisions or input in general. With racialized individuals, there’s a certain level of instant ease with one another – something I feel more strongly as I age and become more confident in who I am. It was validating to read about the on-set experience for the team behind Afro Canada, where the shorthand of lived experience made a huge difference.
With Rooster, I feel as though I’ve been able to be myself. In media interviews, I’ve said that with this team, 95% of my jokes land the way they’re supposed to, and that is primarily because I don’t have to explain the context before landing the punchline. And I love that this is a group of people who will collectively share in both my joys and sorrows – from signing my book deal and cheering elatedly, to hugging me tightly for the deaths in my family.
BUILDING THE TEAM
When given the opportunity for growth, racially diverse teams will effectively expand themselves. Racialized people who are happy in their work environments can confidently refer friends and former colleagues, which is how we got our UI artist, junior developer, and contract illustrator.
As a professor at Centennial College in Toronto, Sasha strongly believes in mentorship and training through job placements. As such, Sticky Brain has hired and retained employees through Centennial job placements, as well as the Black Youth Action Plan, and Sheridan College co-op programs.
When looking for artists and co-op students, a description of Rooster was a part of the job posting, drawing applicants who loved what we were making, and enjoyed creating art in an East Asian style. While an art test was the final part of the interview, Sticky Brain has made it a policy to pay an honorarium for such tests, and not to include any assets that would be used in the game without official employment. I really love this policy, because too often, I’ve spent ages on writing tests which go nowhere, or stopped the process altogether when realizing it was a ploy for free labour.
When our team was at its peak, including co-op students and contractors, Sticky Brain Studios was 70% racialized, 76% female/gender-marginalized, 30% disabled, and 30% queer. Most of our team is also intersectionally marginalized, meaning that they belong to two or more marginalized groups.
ONCE PAST THE DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSIVITY & ACCESSIBILITY INITIATIVES
Having experienced the gratification of knowing that I brought my absolute best work to the collaborative table, my hope is that all racialized and Indigenous creatives get a chance to feel that exhilaration. Finding the joy and support that frees and fuels the most creative and innovative ideas becomes possible when we listen more to the fresh and unheard stories that racialized and Indigenous people have to offer. Rooster is a proudly Canadian-made product that is gaining traction in the game development space, catching the attention of multiple Chinese publishers, and players of all backgrounds in the global market.
DIVERSE TEAMS MAKE MORE MONEY
Reaching Global Audiences
According to Forbes, companies with greater diversity are 70% more likely to capture more markets. Having several diasporic East Asian team members also provided insight into reaching out to their communities in such countries as Brazil, Korea, and the United States, and greater incentive to localize in languages outside of the “standard” EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish). Being a team of predominantly native English speakers, we also knew how to bridge the knowledge gap, shaping our game with the perspective of cultural enlightenment in fun ways.
And while we didn’t quite know how Rooster would resonate with people in China, the cultural core of the game is meeting its mark in the loveliest way.
We’ve seen positive feedback from multiple Chinese publishers, who complimented Rooster’s Chinese brush painting-inspired art style and were dazzled by its cultural authenticity. Moreover, they were delightfully surprised that it was largely created by Canadians of East Asian heritage.
Video games are a forward-facing experience that requires an investment of interactivity, as opposed to the passive experience of reading a book or watching a movie. When made available through a platform like Steam, the marketplace is open 24/7 around the world.
Inclusive Accessibility Also Makes Money
Making accessible games is a part of the Sticky Brain philosophy of being as inclusive as possible, but it’s important to note that individuals with disabilities comprise approximately 20% of the nearly 3 billion gamers worldwide, according to AbleGamers, a US-based charity that advocates for gamers with disabilities.
Some of the things we’ve implemented have a “curb cut effect,” meaning that they’re beneficial to players with and without disabilities, improving the general game experience.
For example, a feature to enlarge font sizes helps players of all ages who may be struggling with reading smaller print while also helping grandparents read to children. Text-to-speech options allow screen readers to be used by players who are blind or have low vision but will also be helpful to people who prefer to have text read to them. Visual cues are there not only for those who are deaf but also for additional player feedback so that there’s an added layer of understanding success or failure.
Overall, having a racially diverse team that includes people with disabilities, who identify as LGBTQ2S+ and as gender marginalized, and of all different ages, allows an internal vetting where people get to advocate for themselves as players. This ensures that we serve a variety of demographics and their needs.
Diverse Teams Build Better Products
Bringing a variety of people together means that the culmination of lived experiences is widely varied as opposed to groups with many similarities. On our Rooster team, we have such a wide spectrum of interests in books, hobbies, and video games, that we can draw references from many different titles for gameplay mechanic examples, or confidently decide that something is new and innovative.
Having internal representation also leads to better character building if based on real people, or at the very least, people of those cultures being able to vet the authenticity of traits, behaviours, and language. In the case of screen media and video games, the end-user experience is improved because the storylines can be more nuanced and meaningful. Authenticity improves relatability and provides deeper resonance for a longer-lasting impression.
SUPPORTING A DIVERSE TEAM
Build a racially diverse team
Having been the sole racialized person on many otherwise all-Caucasian teams, there’s often a default pressure to represent and defend all racialized people everywhere from the beginning of time, attuned to all cultural sensitivities. Yet sole racialized people frequently face an internal debate over whether to risk one’s social standing as “The Complainer” when having to police outdated or offensive language and/or content. I’ve also had experiences where the few East Asians in a majority Caucasian group are confused for one another despite markedly different features (e.g. glasses, varying accents, lengths of hair). It’s frustrating and frankly, dehumanizing.
When the team is racially diverse, this takes away the pressure to represent everyone else when people can represent themselves; it reduces or even eliminates (micro)aggressions; and creates a safe space recognizing individuals for who they are.
When hiring, it’s important to take internal referrals seriously, because they reflect established professional relationships and an existing level of trust. There’s also faster team cohesion when colleagues can trust each other more quickly.
Ensure everyone is being heard
During our first marketing meeting for Rooster, co-executive producer Sasha Boersma pointedly asked me, “Is there anything you wanted to add? Anything you’ve previously suggested where a former company ignored you?” This gave me the floor and patience to think about what I had to say, while also recognizing my expertise on the subject – nine years as a former community manager in the video game space who also dealt heavily with marketing and launch campaigns.
When leading teams, individuals should be conscious of the importance of acknowledging and validating team members, making sure that everyone gets a chance to speak when they want to. Many racialized people have been inadvertently trained to expect being shut down or purposely ignored, that they are now too afraid, or too tired, to volunteer any ideas.
Everyone keeps learning
This heading is two-pronged – one, in that diverse teams keep people learning with inclusive language becoming second nature (e.g. they/them pronouns) and continuously evolving, but also that team members learn about each other in terms of cultures. Over the course of this project, our team has learnt more about disability accommodations and better usage of terms, thanks to Sasha, who is on the Board of the Disability Screen Office.
Secondly, marginalized people benefit from company-sponsored training. Training is an investment in people as well as the end product. For example, six of us are Certified Accessible Player Experiences® Practitioners, and four of us are media trained, which has helped us market our game in media interviews, at convention booths, and in speaking engagements. Mentorship is a big part of the company ethos, whether mentoring internally or finding external help, it’s an ecosystem that keeps paying forward.
Make accommodations beneficial to everyone
A number of our Rooster team members are intersectionally-marginalized, meaning that they belong to two or more marginalized groups. Our remote-first workplace, as well as flexible hours, helps both disabled team members (e.g. managing chronic pain) and myself as a mother of two children, working in a different time zone. I’m still able to fulfill my responsibilities as the Writer/Narrative Designer without needing to uproot my family from British Columbia. But I do appreciate that we try for larger gatherings when I am in Toronto.
At the end of the day, all people just need to feel respected both for who they are as individuals, and the skills and talents they bring to a job. I’ve had the pleasure of being part of a team that allows me to be my most authentic self. There’s a freedom in safely bringing my best ideas that I know were never meant for some other teams. The Rooster team has developed an incredibly supportive, collaborative environment where I’ve been able to focus and flourish. That is a feeling I want other racialized and Indigenous creatives to experience too.
