Dr. Dave Eng Video & Transcript

Dr. Dave Eng:

So I'll start us off with this panel. My name is Dr. Dave Eng. I am the managing partner and also game designer at University XP, where I talk about and write about games and game design and I also teach at New York University School of Professional Studies. So our topic for this panel is representation in games and one of the first areas I want to talk about is where I see representation in games.

Dr. Dave Eng:

One of the first areas is kind of like a historical overview, which is that when people think about representation they often think about just gender diversity with men and women. Who plays games? Who designs games and who is involved in the community? While gender diversity is important, it's not one of the only things to think about and the rest of our panelists tonight are going to be able to talk more in-depth about that. But the thing I want to touch upon and the reason why this panel came together is the more diverse representation of gamers, overall, in the market.

Dr. Dave Eng:

Games have always been a very diverse field, however for a lot of people, we haven't always seen that and that's one of the things that I'd like to call upon in this particular panel, which is the fact that gamers are very diverse and so are the people that make games. One of the things that I think is particularly representative right now in games is in tabletop games. Because I play tabletop games, I also design tabletop games.

Dr. Dave Eng:

One of them that I think has been a really great example has been the tabletop game, Fog of Love. If you've never played Fog of Love before, it's a two player cooperative game in which each player represents one person in a relationship and their goal is to help this relationship grow and flourish based on the needs of their partner. And while one of the box covers for Fog of Love is a traditional heterosexual couple, there are alternative art covers for it in which there are two men or two women on the cover. And I think that just goes on to show that relationships between two people are more diverse than just traditional heterosexual couples and the game Fog of Love goes that extra step in identifying that, particularly in its box art.

Dr. Dave Eng:

Another good representation is in One Deck Dungeon, the tabletop game. And what I think is particularly representative here is the fact that while One Deck Dungeon has a lot of traditional role playing game characters, like a barbarian or a rogue or a wizard or anything else, all of those characters are female in this game in which case the designer and the illustrator have taken that specific direction in choosing female characters to represent in this environment, which I thought was a great step forward in making sure that these traditional characters, which may have just been represented as male are not in this game. Instead, they are all female characters that still fit the role of One Deck Dungeon.

Dr. Dave Eng:

Another area that I think representation deserves further examination is in rule books. If you look at a lot of tabletop game rule books, the pronouns that are usually used sometimes are very masculine and sometimes, some of those pronouns that are used are feminine. But I think that in order to be most inclusive as possible, one of the best things that we can do is use gender neutral pronouns, specifically they and them. While it may not seem like a big, critical decision at the very beginning, particularly as you're writing your rule book, it goes much further in acknowledging that all gamers can be included particularly when you're explaining the rules for your tabletop game.

Dr. Dave Eng:

And one of the last things I want to talk about for my particular content is the fact that this, all of these decisions that we make as gamers, as community members, as designers is important because all of this affects the player experience for us as designers, for you as gamers and for basically everyone in the community. Our player experience is very much influenced by who we play with and the games that we play with each other.

Complete and Continue