Game Studio Founder Sam Ramlu Explains Why Diversity in Games Matters Even More Than In Movies

Welcome to Press Play, POPSUGAR Australia’s first-ever gaming initiative focused on accessibility. Our aim is to shed light on the experiences of people with disability who play games, while helping to identify the features needed within games to make them truly accessible to all players.

The initiative includes interviews with key figures in the gaming space as well as first person pieces produced by writers with disability who can speak from experience about these features. Press Play is supported by our newly launched text-to-voice feature. You can find all the pieces here.

Most of the people reading this will be women. This is POPSUGAR Gaming after all, a site doing its best to help female gamers feel seen, heard and like they belong. And depending on which part of the fandom you’re in, gaming can feel like a hobby that’s actively trying to keep women, people with disability, queer folk and marginalised communities out. Look at the backlash Battlefield 2042 got when it announced one of its specialists was non-binary, or how hard people with disability have to work just to be able to play games. Even The Sims, one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world that’s been around for 20 years, still doesn’t have enough character customisation options to make Black gamers feel seen. For all the joy it can bring, and all the developers doing amazing things, gaming can be a hostile place.

This series is all about accessibility in games — what it is, why it matters and why everyone benefits from it. It’s just a small step to get from accessibility to diversity in games. They’re topics that both acknowledge that games have typically been made by and for able-bodied, straight, white men, and they’re both advocating to make games more accessible and representative of the wide range of people who play them. The aim isn’t to drive men or able-bodied people out of games. The aim is to include everyone in games.

To find out more about the people who are driving this change in the industry, we spoke to Sam Ramlu, the managing director of M Theory, a New Zealand studio that specialises in augmented and virtual reality games, and Mad Carnival, an inclusive and diverse studio creating joyful games for everyone to enjoy. Sam told us about M Theory’s latest game Wanderer — a story-driven time travel VR adventure that thrusts you into an unexpected journey to change the course of history. In Wanderer, you play as Asher Neumann and relive significant historical moments to reshape humanity’s fortune. It was important to M Theory to include lesser-known historical moments, especially ones that represented a diverse range of cultures. These weren’t always easy to find, according to Ramlu, but the team is proud of what they achieved — and, if the glowing reviews are an indication, they succeeded.

We spoke to Ramlu about how the team made Wanderer as diverse and inclusive as possible, and why diversity is so important — especially compared to movies, TV or books.

POPSUGAR Australia: What are some of the diverse historical moments you included in Wanderer — the ones your team had to work hard to find?

Sam Ramlu: We ended up asking, “What are the more popular moments?” Because we wanted to make sure we had the audience along for the ride and then later on we can introduce less known but still really interesting moments. A big part of Wanderer is the space race and moon landing. From there we thought about some of the characters we could play with in this space, and Amelia Earhart came up — probably a little bit obvious, but at the same time, she’s someone we knew people would know.

There are other things that didn’t end up making the cut but we’re looking at going forward. We found a really amazing pirate in China who led a revolution. Another one was a chariot racer who had to pretend to be a man to get into the races.

The other thing was from a visual point of view. When I’m in VR and I look down, most of the time I see white male hands. What would that feel like for a person being truly immersed in time travelling? One of the things the team looked at was this idea that you embody someone when you’re time travelling, rather than just being a stranger, and we’ve made sure we’ve covered a range of ethnicities and genders. At one point you’re a female drummer and then a female scientist, and I think these things have come through really organically in the game.

We know, though, that our target audience is probably male skewed, but we’re keen to start looking at how we can widen that. If the content isn’t there, how do you even begin to widen it? If this is our target audience and you’re appealing to that target audience, nothing ever changes. A lot of times we hear, “But that’s not our target audience,” and it’s like, “Yeah, because we’ve never tried to appeal to them.” I think if we created more diverse games, we’d find a more diverse target audience.

PS: There’s a stereotype of gamers as young white men, and then there’s the idea that they only want to play games about other young white men — but we know that’s not true.

SR: The thing is, as women, we’ve grown up with lead characters that don’t represent us and we’re so used to it. And so whenever I hear, “Why would I want to play a female character? I’m not a woman,” it’s like, “Umm, what do you think we’ve been doing for so long?” And as a person of colour, even more so! A lot of the books and media I consume is white male dominated, and yet I can get over that.

You kind of have to be uncomfortable first. If you’re used to something, it’s pretty hard to change that. As much as I don’t want to credit white males, a lot of people are coming to the party themselves and wanting to be across diverse content.

PS: You talked about what it’s like to read books or watch movies when the main character is a white man. I’m curious to know what role you think games can play in diversifying media content?

SR: The thing is, if women can play a game with a male lead character, then why can’t others play from a different point of view?

One of the things I’m really conscious of is the “selfie view” we have of the world. Everything has been designed mainly from the point of view of a white, middle aged man, so starting to change that and widen these experiences is something that we all should be conscious of and responsible for. And maybe that comes a lot more naturally to me because I am diverse — which isn’t something you think about when you’re just being yourself — but I feel like the stereotypical people who create games are probably going to have to try a lot harder to go, “How can we create more content that’s diverse? What does it mean to be diverse and accessible?”

PS: Do you think games have more opportunity to represent their diverse audiences compared to movies or books?

SR: I think they have more opportunity, and probably more responsibility to do that, because they’re interactive. You’re actually playing that character. That’s why when we’re doing VR — when you’re putting a headset on and you’re being that character — we need to make sure the character you’re playing as is representative. Compared to movies or books, where you can almost separate yourself a bit, games are very much participatory. And if you feel like you can relate to that character, then maybe you’re more in the game.

PS: How did you make sure Wanderer was accessible?

SR: It was just so interesting how many people asked for it. We thought we’d be able to launch it and [add additional accessibility features] a couple of weeks later. We got emails from people saying, “I can’t play with my hands, how do I operate it?” A mum with an autistic child wrote to us and said “There’s this one bug that’s causing my child to lose his shit, can you do something about it?” It’s just so interesting seeing some of those comments come back — yes, it’s just one person, but they’re the ones who are missing out. How can you make this as accessible as possible?

We’re looking at the Chinese market, and one of the things they’ve mentioned is an issue with bones being shown — we have skeletons in the game and we’ve never even thought about that. So how can we make sure it doesn’t offend anyone without taking it out completely?

PS: How did you solve that?

SR: We’re still working on it, but they’ve said that it’s particular scenes when it’s blood on bones. We’ve basically got them looking at the contents instead of us. And I think that’s often the way to do it, if you can — hand it over to a person who’s representing their group, rather than trying to assume. I think a lot of the problem is people going, “Oh, I think this is what they want, so I’ll do that,” instead of just asking.

PS: Some people downplay accessibility or diversity in games as the devs just “ticking a box”.

SR: Unfortunately, that’s the only way we can do it right now. It’s not on a lot of people’s radar naturally, so you have to make it a tick box. Which I personally hate, but if you don’t have that to begin with, how do you know what to cover? Having more people in your team who are representative of a wider group can make it feel like you’re not just ticking boxes.

PS: And when a game does include diverse characters or character creation options, some people say things like, “Why does it matter?” What’s a good response when someone says diversity in games doesn’t matter?

SR: The thing is, they’re looking at it from a point of view that’s always been represented. It’s easy to say something doesn’t matter when you’ve always been represented in it.

I’ve always wondered if it matters that I talk about this stuff, and I guess the thing is, I grew up never seeing anyone like me in games. If there’s one person out there who sees me talking or sees [M Theory] and goes, “Actually this is a career I could go into,” then how amazing is that?

It’s all about representation and being able to see yourself. All these mediums and stories that we consume, you put yourself in that person’s shoes. And if you’re going through that story and you can relate to it, then how amazing is that?