How can you ensure your creative ideas are inclusive and diverse?

1 Know your audience

The first step to creating inclusive and diverse games is to understand who your target audience is, and what their needs, preferences, and expectations are. You can do this by conducting market research, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and playtesting with a representative sample of your potential players. You can also use tools like personas, user stories, and empathy maps to create realistic and nuanced profiles of your audience segments. By knowing your audience, you can tailor your game design, mechanics, narrative, art, and sound to suit their interests and motivations, and to avoid offending or alienating them.

2 Expand your sources

Another way to enrich your creative ideas is to draw inspiration from a wide range of sources, both within and outside your own culture, background, and experience. You can explore different genres, themes, styles, and formats of games, as well as other media, such as books, movies, music, comics, and podcasts. You can also learn from history, mythology, folklore, art, science, and current events. By expanding your sources, you can discover new possibilities, perspectives, and influences for your game, and create original and diverse content that appeals to a broader audience.

3 Collaborate with others

A third tip to ensure your creative ideas are inclusive and diverse is to collaborate with others who have different skills, opinions, and backgrounds than you. You can work with other game developers, artists, writers, programmers, testers, and consultants who can bring their own expertise, insights, and feedback to your project. You can also involve your community, stakeholders, and fans in the development process, by soliciting their suggestions, opinions, and critiques through social media, forums, blogs, and newsletters. By collaborating with others, you can benefit from their knowledge, experience, and creativity, and improve your game's quality and accessibility.

4 Challenge your assumptions

A fourth strategy to achieve inclusivity and diversity in your games is to challenge your own assumptions, biases, and stereotypes that may affect your creative ideas. You can do this by asking yourself critical questions about your game's design, mechanics, narrative, art, and sound, such as: Who are the main characters and what are their roles, personalities, and motivations? How do they relate to each other and to the player? What are the main conflicts and challenges in the game? How are they resolved? What are the values, messages, and themes of the game? How do they reflect or contrast with the real world? By challenging your assumptions, you can identify and avoid potential issues, such as cultural appropriation, tokenism, marginalization, or misrepresentation of certain groups or identities.

6 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?