A video produced during for the 13th annual Blacks in Gaming Green Room at the 2018 Game Developers Conference celebrated the accomplishments of gaming pioneer Jerry Lawson. Microsoft hosted the event.

Austin described a crisis of confidence when he’d appear on those Xbox news videos, watching the more established (and white) hosts going through the news, while he’d be off to the side giving reactions. He fretted that he was just “shucking and jiving,” just “sitting at the kids’ table” and not belonging. He talked to his manager about it and found her to be sympathetic.

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He also realized that moments that may have frustrated him could still be inspirational to others. He recalled a moment when he went to E3 and ran into multiple groups of Black fans who recognized him from those news shows and even commented on how he’d wear different, stylish shoes from episode to episode. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, y’all appreciate that.’” That moment of appreciation at E3 was an epiphany.


Black In Gaming’s Carl Varnado says that the Xbox group, Microsoft at large, or any other gaming groups that are serious about recruiting and empowering more Black talent are facing a major but essential challenge.

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“Hiring Black talent and placing Black talent into your company takes a level of commitment at various levels,” Varnado said. “You can’t just shoot a dart at the wall and say, ‘Okay, I want 100 Black developers in my company right now.’”

Spencer had pointed to some actions Microsoft is taking, such as increasing recruitment at historically Black colleges and universities and striving for a diverse internship program. Varnado said that as poor as the industry-wide stats are, he does see Xbox as doing better than some other gaming companies.

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Varnado notes that for the industry to make meaningful improvements in terms of diversity, there needs to be major commitment and investment. He identifies three things that oppressed people need to succeed: access to get into the room, agency to be in that space and treated with respect, and autonomy, which means providing resources to people of color and advocacy groups with no strings attached.

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He floated the idea of a company like Microsoft reaching out to a group like Black In Gaming, LatinXInGaming, or the Independent Game Developers Association’s charitable foundation and offering full support to empower those groups to increase diversity in gaming. “They could write a $10 million check and say, ‘We believe in your thing and go do it.’ The thing that happens is everybody attaches things, because they want to achieve their own goals. And then the response usually has to do with individual company goals. Sometimes those are great, but I don’t know if they always address what was originally thought about.”

And while Varnado supports the idea of adding more Black people—and more people of color overall—as leaders in the games industry, he believes any such effort that only tries to promote people from within gaming will fail. “We have to recruit more leadership from other sectors,” he said. “The idea of climbing a ladder is one of the flaws in the model. That’s going to weed out a lot of people.”

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He noted that the game industry’s recruitment problem co-exists with a retention problem. People get burned out or demoralized. They don’t stick around. Good leaders in other industries could probably transfer a lot of their skills to gaming, Varnado said, and help diversify leadership in the games industry.


In early October, Microsoft revealed that the Trump administration had questioned the company’s pledge to double its Black leadership by 2025. In a company blog post, Microsoft general counsel Dev Stahlkopf said that the Department of Labor had sent the firm a letter questioning whether the company’s pledge would result in illegal race-based hiring decisions that violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

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Stahlkopf denied this was the case and said Microsoft’s plans were lawful.

“We are clear that the law prohibits us from discriminating on the basis of race,” he wrote, “We have decades of experience and know full well how to appropriately create opportunities for people without taking away opportunities from others. Furthermore, we know that we need to focus on creating more opportunity, including through specific programs designed to cast a wide net for talent for whom we can provide careers with Microsoft.”

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Spencer said he was glad Microsoft had made its statements in June and appreciated the company’s response to the Labor Department. He said the company and the Xbox group had an obligation to proceed with making gaming a more inclusive place.

“When you talk also about the representation in our games and in the industry and the role that we have as Microsoft, I think about the fact that we’re at a $1.5 trillion market cap company in the games industry,” he said. “We should be a platform for all creators—from creators, different storytellers, from different perspectives, who can help each of us that are playing these games learn through the lived experience of the creators, which we all do every time we play somebody’s games. But I’m definitely starting with our team.”

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Former Xbox host Rukari Austin would love to see some progress, too, but his own experiences as a Black man in America have made him resigned not to expect much. “The apathetic Black American in me understands this is bigger than all of us,” he said of Microsoft’s goals. “And I know why they are working toward change, but what change is possible, we’ll see.”