Pledge Partner Case Study - Facebook Gaming

RaiseTheGame is all about collaboration and learning from each other - our pledge partner case studies show how other games businesses are improving diversity and inclusion in their businesses.

Here's how one of our Founding Pledge Partners, Facebook Gaming, are approaching the three pledge pillars:

Diversity and inclusion fuels Facebook's mission of giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

We believe the games industry is changing and so are the people playing games. We are committed to partnering with others to support initiatives that foster a more diverse and inclusive gaming community where everyone can thrive.

Pledge Pillar 1: Creating a diverse workforce

Activity: Women in Gaming

Of the 2.5 billion gamers today, nearly half identify as women. Yet according to IGDA 2019 developer survey, women make up just 24% of the industry. ‘Women in Gaming’ is a global initiative from Facebook aimed at championing diversity and inclusion in the industry by encouraging more women to consider a career in gaming.

How we delivered it

Stories: We created a #SheTalksGames campaign to capture the real stories of women working in the gaming industry today.

As of 2020, we have partnered with over 40 companies and published over 100 interviews with women from companies like King, Rovio, EA, Microsoft and Zynga, along with many other independent developers and companies all over the world. By showing the diversity of career options and opportunities open to women, we are hoping to inspire more young women to consider a career in gaming.

Community: We’ve held ‘Women in Gaming’ events in cities across the world, giving women a safe space to come together, support one another and share their experiences.

We have also brought the ‘Women in Gaming’ program to industry events such E3, GDC, ChinaJoy, & Gamescom. In 2019, we partnered with Xbox, Ubisoft, Google and many other companies to participate in the largest ever Women in Gaming Rally at GDC, bringing over 700 women together to discuss how to use gaming to make a better world.

Learning: We believe education and knowledge sharing are key to reducing bias and creating inclusive environments.

In 2019 we started incorporating ‘managing bias’, ‘lean in circles’’ and ‘vision writing’ workshops into our Facebook Gaming and Women in Gaming events. We also shared our learnings on setting up internal employee resources groups and ‘lean in’ programs to help other companies try similar initiatives in their own organizations.

Pledge Pillar 2: Shaping inclusive and welcoming places to work

Activity: Internal resource groups and career development.

Each year we publish our annual Facebook Diversity Report, which details our internal initiatives and helps track our progress as we work towards creating a more diverse workforce to serve the needs of our community.

How we delivered it

• Community and belonging: We want everyone who works at Facebook to feel welcome and have established multiple Facebook Resource Groups for people to come together and support one another. Examples include: Asian & Pacific Islanders@, Black@, Differently Abled@, Interfaith@, Latin@, Native@, Pride@, Vets@ and Women@. These groups are a safe place where everyone at Facebook can come together to tackle bias and build a more inclusive workplace.

• Professional development programmes: We believe personal and professional development can go hand in hand. Which is why we have established a number of training sessions and programmes aimed at building a more open and inclusive workplace. Programmes like Managing Bias, Managing Inclusion and Be the Ally, are helping our teams understand the importance of diverse perspectives and create inclusive environments where everyone can do the best work of their careers.

Pledge Pillar 3: Reflecting greater diversity in our work

Activity: Toolkit for gaming creators to create inclusive communities

Gaming creators come to Facebook to build positive and supportive communities around the games they love. While our community standards policy aims to protect the community against serious harm like hate speech and terrorism, we know that sometimes all it takes is for one person or one disruptive comment to ruin the conversation for everyone.

To do more, we partnered with the Fair Play Alliance, a coalition of game companies encouraging healthy communities in online gaming, to establish rules creators and moderators can use to set guidelines and help avoid disruptive comments.

How we delivered it

We created eight pre-set rules such as “Be Accepting”, ‘Don’t Criticize” and “Respect Boundaries” to help maintain a positive environment for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability. These tools will allow creators to craft the type of space they want and mitigate disruptive comments.

Once a creator sets up their rules, fans will be asked to accept them before they’re allowed to leave a comment. Moderators can also select which rules were violated so the commenter can receive feedback.

Our work is not ending here. We are excited to continue partnering with the Fair Play Alliance to develop additional features and ensure creators and fans alike can find safe and inclusive gaming communities on Facebook.