Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin is a professor in Game Studies at the School of Media of Université du Québec à Montréal and the Co-Director of the research group Homo Ludens. Her PhD thesis explores the possibility of using parodies as playful means to denaturalize gender stereotypes. During her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, she pursued her work on gender parody in the field of game studies. She is currently conducting research on players’ immersion, on equality, diversity and inclusion in the video game industry, as well as on the potential of video and board games to raise awareness about social and environmental issues.
Hierarchy, Discrimination and Inequality in the Video Game Industry
FROG 2022 – Keynote
Despite the culture of informality that prevails in the video game industry, its structures remain highly hierarchical. Not all employees can evenly express their opinions, are equally heard, are granted the same creative freedom or are given the same opportunities. This talk will present the results of a survey on equality, diversity and inclusion, conducted among 1700 employees from the Quebec gaming industry, and of 20 semi-structured interviews made with women and racialized minorities who encountered problems in development teams. These results show that even though women, non-cisgender people, sexual and ethnic minorities, as well as people with mental or physical disabilities are generally satisfied by their working conditions in the video game industry, they face more obstacles and experience more problems than white heterosexual men. These obstacles and problems are even more pronounced for women and non-cisgender people. These results will be interpreted in light of concepts such as the glass ceiling, the glass slipper, the impostor syndrome, the stereotype threat, the signaling threat, as well as the ordinary/hostile/benevolent sexism to highlight the power relations at work in the video game industry.
1
