Studio Lead at Playtra Games
Currently Devloping Grid Force
Part of Devcoms advisory board
Develop: Star 2021 Nominated
One of 2020s game changers by Gamesindustry.biz
This blog post reflects the talk delivered by Dan Bernardo, founder of playtra games. This talk covered his upbringing and entry into the game design, the benefits of working for Indie and triple A studios, why representation matters in the gaming industry and issues around hidden biases and discrimination in employment and the work place.
Starting of the talk Dan goes into his childhood and what it was like growing up as a black queer teenager in Brazil, with him exclaiming that it was tough to be open about his gender at the time and this lead to him using games as an escape. One of these games was Streets of Rage, which Dan goes onto point out had the first African American character in a game that wasn’t played off as a joke or just used for comedy and was instead a fully fleshed out character.
He goes on to talk about his studio Playtra games and their push for diversity, currently the studio is work on a game called Grid Force which stars a full diverse female cast. Through out the talk it was clear how passionate diversity is to Dan and the beliefs held at Playtra Games. Dan goes onto comparing it to if every time you went to go cloth shopping they just didn’t have your size at all available.
From this he begins to explain some of the main reasons there has been such a lack of diversity in games published and the publishers behind them.
One of the main factors being due to the lack of diversity in past years of the people who make games.
This is due to in past years and still currently for some studios the difficulty minorities and women find when trying to get a job in the industry.
Even though there is wide range of diverse main leads seen now in triple AAA games the creative leads behind these games aren’t as diverse, Dan goes on to show some examples in his presentation including Mathis de Jonge a white male Dutch game director for Guerrilla Games who worked on the game Horizon Zero Dawn which saw a female main protagonist, Haden Blackman a white male American game director for 2K Games who worked on Mafia 3 which saw a lead protagonist of African American main protagonist and Ricardo Bare a white male American game director at Arkane studios who is working on a game called Red fall that features a black female protagonist. Though one thing he notes is that this isn’t an attack at these game directors and the games they’ve worked on and instead just examples of who is leading triple A games in the industry currently.
Moving on from the Dan covers different skillsets and where theyre needed in the industry –
The T skillset is when you have a wide range of skills yet overall they aren’t as fleshed out as they could be
The I skillset is when you have a hyper specialised skill set, where you only really have one skill but its extremely fleshed out
The V skillset is when you have knowledge in several skill sets but you can bring them together to make something fresh and unique
Genre specific is another area to consider if your art is hyper focused in an artstyle or if its generally realistic
When looking for jobs in industry if the first 3 points/ skills they list under the job description are part of your skillset then you should apply
COMPETITION
They are high expectations with game developers right now with most looking for at least 5 years exspirenece for most jobs
Compensation is alright for game studios though can be very bad for indies as they just cant pay
They’re are also many hidden biases that could not work in your favour
The last area he gives some notes on is the work culture of the gaming industry -
The game industry is notorious for taking over your personal life
If you want to work in a AAA studio it is important to know that you will always be following someone else’s vision
Open biases can also be present in studios such as women being harassed or expecting more of someone due to their, race culture or gender
Its important to remember that at the end of the day you still pick the studio in the end so if they don’t treat you right, know your worth