Skin in the Game: Tech leaders roundtable

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The video game industry is bigger than movies and music combined. Our ongoing project is called “Skin in the Game,” and it’s a look at what games — and the vast industry that surrounds them — tell us about economics, business, money, careers and equity. And equity, in particular, is at the center of the discussion about what companies are doing and not doing to attract and retain talent who better reflect the diversity of game players and society.

For more on that, we spoke with three leaders in the industry: Trinidad Hermida, CEO at The Hermida Company and executive director of the Black in Gaming Foundation. She’s also former head of diversity and inclusion at Niantic. We also spoke with Kevin Johnson, director of development at Double Fine Productions, which is part of the Xbox Game Studios family. And, Jessica Lindl, vice president and global head of education at Unity Technologies.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Marketplace Morning Report, Round Table.
0:10.0	Video games are bigger than movies and music combined.
0:14.0	Our ongoing project is called Skin in the Game.
0:17.0	What can the games in the vast industry that surrounds them tell us about economics, business, money, careers, and equity?
0:25.0	I landed on that last word equity hard because it's at the center of the discussion you're about to hear.
0:30.0	What companies are doing to attract and retain talent who better reflect the diversity of game players and society?
0:37.0	To kick off our discussion, let's hear a select from our video series on the subject.
0:42.0	It's framed by a key concept from economics, scarcity.
0:46.0	This scarcity of opportunity, but also the scarcity of talent to fill the pipeline as a big industry grows larger still.
0:53.0	We look at how a non-profit based in Oakland, California called Game Heads created a way to teach skills needed to meet what the tech industry needs.
1:03.0	Longcome people of color over indexing games, they play more, they play for longer periods of time, people did not consider careers to tech.
1:10.0	There's a very big push for programming in tech, which is fantastic. There's also a lot of other things that people just don't really think of.
1:16.0	You only need to be a programmer to be in tech.
1:18.0	We really don't know what skills to actually teach them in five years, ten years, they might be obsolete.
1:23.0	Don't ever tell them that.
1:24.0	Yeah, because they're not going to sign up for the deeper learning period.
1:27.0	Exactly.
1:28.0	Exactly.
1:29.0	You, a military veteran, are a noob at Game Heads and she's a veteran.
1:33.0	She could teach me, just has so much I could teach her a lot of stuff.
1:37.0	We don't perform well in STEM.
1:39.0	Based off of tutorial, how to make the video game snake.
	...

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