{"id":10966,"date":"2015-12-24T00:42:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T00:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/black-women-are-already-superheroes\/"},"modified":"2015-12-24T00:42:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T00:42:51","slug":"black-women-are-already-superheroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/black-women-are-already-superheroes\/","title":{"rendered":"Black women are already superheroes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com\/post\/135792627477\">mostlysignssomeportents<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><figure class=\"tmblr-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/66.media.tumblr.com\/8b67269d2e6fc23bc4970e151deb0b4f\/tumblr_inline_nzti4qXsjw1rkw4x1_540.jpg\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>What can game developers do to better represent black women in games?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey need to get some fucking empathy,\u201d says Tanya dePass, a campaigner for better representation inside game worlds and among those who create them. She curates websites, hosts <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/outoftokenscast\">podcasts<\/a>, maintains the<a href=\"http:\/\/ineeddivgms.info\/\">#INeedDiverseGames<\/a> tag on Twitter, works as a <a href=\"http:\/\/gaymerx.com\/author\/cypheroftyr\/\">diversity consultant<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/12\/23\/it%25E2%2580%2599s_more_common_to_see_a_blue_hedgehog_than_a_person_of_color_as_a_protagonist_inside_the_whitewashed_world_of_video_games\/\">speaks<\/a> at conventions and panels.<\/p>\n<p>Work is steady, but change is slow. For critics and activists, the pushback on inclusion is constant, from other gamers and the industry itself. DePass finds it baffling: \u201cwhy don\u2019t you all like money?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n<p>One of many black women disrupting an insular culture, DePass critiques games and offers an alternatives to often-toxic online communities. Hashtag activism this is not. As DePass notes, \u201cchange needs to happen from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lauren Warren is a contributor to <a href=\"http:\/\/blackgirlnerds.com\/\">Black Girl Nerds<\/a>, an online community \u201cdevoted to promoting nerdiness and Black women and people of color.\u201d In addition to panel appearances, cosplay showcases, TV spots and endorsement by Shonda Rhimes and others, BlackGirlNerds launched two new series profiling women and people of color.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope that the <a href=\"http:\/\/blackgirlnerds.com\/bgns-women-in-gaming-series-jessica-tolliver\/\">Women in Gaming<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/blackgirlnerds.com\/diversity-gaming-joe-flores\/\">Diversity in Gaming<\/a> series reach people who are interested in pursuing careers in the games industry, but may be hesitant because they don\u2019t \u201csee\u201d themselves fitting into the existing corporate culture,\u201c Warren writes. &ldquo;It\u2019s no secret that our presence is lacking behind the scenes on the game development side, on streaming sites and at major industry events and publications. The larger the community, the more visibility we have and the bigger our impact will be in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2015\/12\/23\/black-women-are-already-superh.html\">http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2015\/12\/23\/black-women-are-already-superh.html<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>mostlysignssomeportents: What can game developers do to better represent black women in games? \u201cThey need to get some fucking empathy,\u201d says Tanya dePass, a campaigner for better representation inside game worlds and among those who create them. She curates websites, hosts podcasts, maintains the#INeedDiverseGames tag on Twitter, works as a diversity consultant andspeaks at conventions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2QS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}