15 thoughts on “Assessing Gender and Racial Representation in the Board Game Industry”

  1. This is a fantastic deep dive and I’m thrilled to see content like this, particularly when it’s this thorough.

    (Though speaking as one of the designers of color mentioned, my name is actually Jonathan Ying not Jonathan Ling.)

    Again thank you for all your hard work!

    1. Mr. Ying, The author here. I can’t apologize enough for this. I’m a big fan (just a bad typist). There are no excuses here, only my profound apologies. Thanks for the kind follow up and the correction.

      P.S. As a person whose name is (always) misspelled I am quadruply (octuplely?) sorry. You do great work.

  2. Is your pre-aggregate data available anywhere? I’m curious about some things, such as how you determined Jesús Torres Castro as being a person of color.

    1. Mr. Huang,

      Please forgive my delayed reply, I am in the midst of academia silly season with piles of marking and final assignments to complete. There’s no excuse though for keeping you waiting, however. I fully agree with your objection and you are *absolutely* right to question this placement.

      I ultimately selected the U.S. Census standard for race in this case. The working definition established in article for coding white is from the U.S. Census Bureau as those “having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”* This glitch in my database that you rightly questioned can be chalked up to an earlier, holdover working definition I had been using. The US Census *previously* has listed Hispanic as an ethnicity on its form but that changed in post 2010, when it was eliminated as a category. Hispanic is defined “Hispanic or Latino as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin.”

      And in that case, Jesús Torres Castro absolutely does not belong on the non-white male list. Also by this standard, U.S. Latino designer Isaac Vega was a co-designer for Dead Winter also needs to be eliminated from the non-white category. That results in an amended picture of the Top 200 BGG-ranked list of 3.4 percent non-white males, 2.4 percent female, 94.2 percent white males. This reduces the previous number of 12 non-white males to 10.

      The definition I established in the article and the current state of the U.S. Census post 2010. As such, you are 100 percent correct.

      Another commenter questions the use of any U.S. context, specifically the Census as as lens. As I’ll share, the answer is we have to start somewhere. The idea of whiteness to some will seem either too confining or expansive a frame. No matter how we slice up the data, the picture being painted of imbalance is inarguably stark.

      No matter what, however, I must be consistent. You are right to call me on it.

      I really like the idea of opening up the dataset for scrutiny and further community feedback. Pending research ethics board approval with my university, it is my hope to do exactly that. I also really hoped that this might spur in the near-term people to challenge my assessment and do their own looking at this question. I was hopeful for moments exactly like this, where I would be questioned, challenged and corrected. I spend a lot of time in comic and games stores, and I welcome the dialogue. Our hobby is one that favours exactitude.

      I clearly erred here and I’ve updated the data chart. Please forgive my delayed reply.

      P.S. If I can say, I am a big fan (proud owners of Roll for the Galaxy …and all five expansions) and it was an honour to be corrected by you. (I mean that :-)

      *Elizabeth M. Grieco, Rachel C. Cassidy. “Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: Census 2000 Brief” (PDF). US Census Bureau. (March 2001).

  3. Very interesting article! Thanks for publishing it! When it comes to gender, I think your analysis is spot on. However, when it comes to race, it becomes more complicated. I have lived 22 years in Singapore, 8 years in the US, and 28 years in Norway, so I have seen how race relations work in different parts of the world. You say that 40.5% of the designers are from the US. Then why do you use US demographics as the standard that the hobby is measured by? Should European designers reflect the demographics of their countries, or of the US?

    Since gender ratios are the same everywhere, your discussion of gender is global, which is why I liked that part, but I hope you don’t mind me saying that I felt that your discussion of race was US-centric.

    A typical example is what Wei-Hwa points out. I think that Jesús Torres Castro would have been very surprised to be classified as non-white! As far as I know, he is from Spain, but you classify him as non-white just because of his name. As I said, I lived 8 years in the US, but I never really understood what the US definition of Hispanic or non-white really was. In particular, the definition of non-white is different in Europe and America. You classify people from the Middle East and North Africa as white, but in the European context, that may not the common. And in Singapore, the race equation is again different. In particular, a game with lots of Middle Eastern and North African characters would in Europe be considered a model of diversity, while you might dismiss it as all white. A Singaporean game with only Chinese characters, would be very non-diverse, while you might think of it as perfect diversity.

    As somebody who has lived on three continents, these are important issues, and I feel that many people from the US fail to see the global perspective.

    I am of course not against diversity, but I hope you understand that I sometimes find it strange that a hobby with strong European ties is measured by a US standard.

  4. Mr. Aslaksen,

    You are raising a good point here. Why the U.S. context, specifically the U.S. Census as as lens?

    I predicted in my piece that some would object to this framework as either too expansive or too limiting. You are raising some interesting contextual questions.

    The headline here with this study is the imbalance apparent in the Top-200 BGG designers (in this selected sample) is unbelievably stark. The gap is enormous …no matter where in the world you live.

    And you’ll see in my reply to Mr. Huang, that he (and you) are undeniably correct. This, I note, can be attributed to an earlier, holdover working definition I had been using. The US Census *previously* has listed Hispanic as an ethnicity on its form but that changed in post 2010, when it was eliminated as a category. “Hispanic or Latino is defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin.”

    So Jesús Torres Castro absolutely does not belong on the non-white male list nor does U.S. Latino designer Isaac Vega. The amended Top 200 BGG-ranked list of 3.4 percent non-white males, 2.4 percent female, 94.2 percent white males. This reduces the previous number of 12 non-white males to 10.

    No matter where you live on the planet (and I want your life by the way, it sounds amazing) I think we can agree there’s a clear and present *stark*, unequivocal, undeniable imbalance in the list, no matter which country’s demography we select as a measure.

    In this, I selected the North American market as a framework, given its growing market size and my own research context.

    I can share with the box art that there weren’t many close calls to select from in terms of this more nuanced definition of whiteness that you are questioning.

    I welcome your questions and I am hopeful that this will spark a wider dialogue in the community. I count myself among the gamers who desperately wants to see more diversity in my games, and in the hobby.

    My hopes for this study is that it will be a catalyst for further deeper quantitative and qualitative discussions about equity, diversity and inclusion in a hobby I hold dear.

    It is great to have the opportunity to talk about this, and I really appreciate your comment and engagement on the issue.

  5. Thanks for your reply. If we use the US definition of white, and include Middle Eastern and North African as white, then I believe that many European countries will be fairly close to 94.2% white, so I simply do not agree with your statement that “No matter where you live on the planet (and I want your life by the way, it sounds amazing) I think we can agree there’s a clear and present *stark*, unequivocal, undeniable imbalance in the list, no matter which country’s demography we select as a measure.”

    As I said before, I totally agree with you when it comes to women, and I myself complained when I was beta testing a board game app some time ago and all the female AIs were at “easy” level.

    But if you want to talk about race, there is no global yard stick. You can choose to compare to the US, but why should German designers try to match the US market?

  6. I am for expanding the hobby and certainly do not want to see anyone who wants to take part not do so because they feel excluded in any way; even more so if it is being done overtly by people trying to exclude others.

    As for the cover art on game boxes, if the appeal to the hobby is as tied to that as you are suggesting, and not saying you are wrong, but wouldn’t arbitrarily changing the gender or appearance cause some exclusion as well? It appears it did in the one example of the game you referenced.

    How much is the depiction of box art a reflection based on who is deemed most likely interested in the hobby as oppose to the causing exclusion? a Kind of a chicken and the egg question.

    There is also studies that show men are more likely to identify with having hobbies than women. How much might this be attributed to that and what the causes or reasons are?

    What is limiting the number of women or people who do not identify as white from creating games? Among those that have been able to enjoy the hobby and were not turned away from its exclusive nature.

  7. Is there a positive correlation, or other suitable statistical measure, that indicates that more diverse designers or artists lead to more diverse cover art? A chi-squared test might be appropriate and could be easily done if you have recorded the diversity of designers and art for single games.

      1. It would be interesting to see, as both diverse creators and diverse art are often seen as goals, and one would intuitively believe they support each other.

        If you need help with the statistics (not to assume you do, I do not know your skills), feel free to contact me. I am a mathematician, not a statistician, but the simple tests and their interpretation should go well enough. My academic email can be found at university website https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/tommi.brander .

    1. Just chiming in to say that Fisher’s Exact Test would be more appropriate than a Chi-Squared test. They both do the same thing, in principle, but Chi-Square is best reserved for large populations. (Its assumptions become more tenuous as the numbers get close to one, such as 12/10 non-white-males.)

  8. Thank you for this article. I very much believe that the hobby is hobbled by its lack of diversity, this article is one step of the many on the long road ahead.

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