How do you engage diverse and inclusive audiences with your games?

1 Understand your audience

The first step to engaging diverse and inclusive audiences with your games is to understand who they are, what they want, and what they face. You can do this by conducting research, surveys, interviews, focus groups, or user testing with your target audience or potential players. You can also use data, analytics, feedback, reviews, or social media to learn more about your audience's behavior, preferences, and opinions. By understanding your audience, you can design your games to meet their needs, expectations, and interests.

3 Represent diversity

Diversity is the presence and recognition of different identities, backgrounds, cultures, perspectives, or experiences in your games. Representing diversity means creating characters, stories, settings, or themes that reflect the diversity of your audience and the world. Some examples of diversity representation are gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, age, or disability. By representing diversity, you can make your games more relatable, immersive, and meaningful for people with diverse identities and experiences.

4 Avoid stereotypes and biases

Stereotypes and biases are oversimplified or inaccurate assumptions, judgments, or expectations about a group of people based on their identity, background, culture, perspective, or experience. Avoiding stereotypes and biases means creating characters, stories, settings, or themes that avoid or challenge negative, harmful, or offensive portrayals of a group of people. Some examples of stereotypes and biases are sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or ageism. By avoiding stereotypes and biases, you can make your games more respectful, authentic, and empowering for people with diverse perspectives and experiences.

5 Encourage participation and feedback

Participation and feedback are the ways that your audience can interact with your games, your team, or your community. Encouraging participation and feedback means creating opportunities and channels for your audience to express their opinions, suggestions, questions, or concerns about your games. Some examples of participation and feedback are forums, social media, reviews, ratings, surveys, polls, or user-generated content. By encouraging participation and feedback, you can make your games more engaging, responsive, and adaptable for people with diverse preferences and opinions.

6 Learn and improve

The final step to engaging diverse and inclusive audiences with your games is to learn from your successes and failures, and to improve your games accordingly. You can do this by analyzing, evaluating, and measuring the impact and performance of your games, your team, or your community. You can also do this by seeking, listening, and acting on the feedback and suggestions of your audience, your peers, or your experts. By learning and improving, you can make your games more innovative, relevant, and satisfying for people with diverse needs and interests.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?