What can you do?
We have created and broken down action points which give tangible, practical steps and suggestions for improvement and change. Below you will find the categories relevant to you and find out what you and/or your institutions could do to facilitate ethical game production!
What you can do as...
Action points
What you can do
Physical & mental wellbeing
Environmental
Cultural
Recreational
Financial
Structural / Managerial
Physical & mental wellbeing
- Ensure and facilitate mental and physical health of employees and students
- Provide mental health resources and support
- Support people in menopause
- Nurture ‘soft’ skills of empathy and communication, and especially self-care and stress management
Environmental
- Create stress-free zones in the office
- Provide accessibility for those who are disabled
- Ensure the company has adequate facilities for new parents
- Support off-site work more and other actions that address our urgent shared responsibility for the climate crisis
Cultural
- Promote diversity (gender, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, and multiple other modes) and inclusion within the company
- Create real consequences for people that facilitate a negative company culture through acts such as sexism, inappropriate flirting on the work floor, racism, bullying, etc.
- Facilitate positive culture change (dismantle negative company culture, listen to employee complaints, take ethical action wherever needed, etc.)
- Create opportunities for families (parental leave, possible flexibility in working hours, company crèche, etc.)
- Provide support for family-related duties of caring
- Insist on minimal-to-no crunch, allow perpetual opt-out of crunch periods without reprisal/repercussion
- Ensure regular and sensible working hours
Recreational
- Support community-building for developers beyond only the company. We collectively are working in a rapidly evolving medium, and sharing our excitement is part of what fulfils us
- Organize recreational activities, particularly ones that do not involve alcohol
Financial
- Eliminate gender wage gaps, provide sensible and fair pay, this includes paid overtime
- Make sure the salary is enough to start a life particularly within the geographical location of the workplace
Structural / Managerial
- Make serious effort to dismantle systemic biases within the company
- Provide open-door management (management that is approachable, open to improvement, and employees do not have to fear for their jobs when they speak up)
- Consider strategic cultural, structural, and staff changes with the explicit goal of long-term company and staff health
- Change the culture of NDAs so that solutions to fundamental problems are shared.
Action points
What you can do
Physical & mental wellbeing
Cultural
Financial
Physical & mental wellbeing
- Create a self care toolkit and get comfortable using it
- Remember that asking for help is nothing to be ashamed of
- Determine a support network for yourself
Cultural
- Become aware of your privilege and blind spots and get comfortable using that to advocate for others in a responsible way
- If you witness injustice and mistreatment, don’t be a passive bystander.
- Be inquisitive, aware of the status quo, and do not always accept things because ‘they have always been this way’
- Become aware of your core values and ask about the points raised on lifetimeingames.com when doing a job interview or talking to a (future) coworker
- Be bold enough to stand for what you believe is right, even if that means turning down a job if the company does not uphold these values and be clear about your reason to reject a possible job offer
- Embody the culture you wish to see around you with your choices, words, and actions
- Be willing to help the industry change by being open and prepared to work to make those changes
Financial
- Learn about how to negotiate your salary and what you should be expecting in your relevant field
Action points
What you can do
Physical & mental wellbeing
Cultural
Financial
Physical & mental wellbeing
- Empower students to have the courage to make positive change.
- Maintain a positive working environment so students learn what they should expect from the industry and also create positive change upon entering the industry as a result of good habits created in school
- Monitor not just the output from students but also the hours they apply and the routines and processes they keep
- Keep students from instilling bad teamworking or self-care habits in their early years, and promote lifelong practices as they prepare for graduation
Cultural
- Educate students about the industry in a realistic way, while also showing them how it could be different
- Monitor the culture instilled through your course by paying close attention to the behaviour of your students and staff
- Talk openly but positively with students about current affairs in the games industry, and help them see that they can be the agents of change
- Ensure that rewards do not inadvertently support destructive or self-destructive behaviour by acknowledging the processes and pipelines behind the work, rather than just the output
Financial
- Teach students how to navigate conversations about income, benefits, what they should expect, etc.
- Challenge the notion of the games industry as inherently unstable, and teach students how to make stable and sensible business decisions
- Forge relationships with startup grants and programs
- Help graduating students forge links with the broader industry as a whole
Action points
What you can do
Cultural
Financial
Cultural
- Do research about the company that made the game you want to buy
- What is known about the company culture?
- Do they force their employees to crunch?
- Is there a pending lawsuit?
- Have people spoken out against this company and why?
- Follow MEG-P/Lifetime in Games and other resources on social media
- Keep the conversation about ethical game production going by posting about and engaging with content about these topics!
Financial
- Do not purchase and/or promote a game made by a problematic company and voice your reasons why in a public environment
- Reviews
- Tweets
- Et cetera…
- What if you purchased a game but find out later the company is problematic?
- Write a review or tweet about why you were disappointed to learn about the company culture
- Indicate that you will not be recommending the game and cite your reason.
Game companies need to know that their actions have consequences. Companies hear a message in money above all else!
Action points
What you can do
Cultural
Cultural
Not a gamer or a developer but still want to help?
- Talk to friends who are gamers and/or developers
- Are they aware of the issues in the industry?
- Do they know how big the role is they can play in improvement of the industry?
- Are they aware of initiatives like MEG-P?
- Be vocal! Let other people know about the good and the bad in our industry
- Follow MEG-P/Lifetime in Games and other resources on social media
- Keep the conversation about ethical game production going by posting about and engaging with content about these topics!
What you can do as...
- Ensure and facilitate mental and physical health of employees and students
- Provide mental health resources and support
- Support people in menopause
- Nurture ‘soft’ skills of empathy and communication, and especially self-care and stress management.
- Create stress-free zones in the office
- Provide accessibility for those who are disabled
- Ensure the company has adequate facilities for new parents
- Support off-site work more and other actions that address our urgent shared responsibility for the climate crisis
- Promote diversity (gender, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, and multiple other modes) and inclusion within the company
- Create real consequences for people that facilitate a negative company culture through acts such as sexism, inappropriate flirting on the work floor, racism, bullying, etc.
- Facilitate positive culture change (dismantle negative company culture, listen to employee complaints, take ethical action wherever needed, etc.)
- Create opportunities for families (parental leave, possible flexibility in working hours, company crèche, etc.)
- Provide support for family-related duties of caring
- Insist on minimal-to-no crunch, allow perpetual opt-out of crunch periods without reprisal/repercussion
- Ensure regular and sensible working hours
- Support community-building for developers beyond only the company. We collectively are working in a rapidly evolving medium, and sharing our excitement is part of what fulfils us
- Organize recreational activities, particularly ones that do not involve alcohol
- Eliminate gender wage gaps, provide sensible, equal, and fair pay, this includes paid overtime
- Make sure the salary is enough to start a life and live within the geographical location of the workplace
- Make serious effort to dismantle systemic biases within the company
- Provide open-door management (management that is approachable, open to improvement, and employees do not have to fear for their jobs when they speak up)
- Consider strategic cultural, structural, and staff changes with the explicit goal of long-term company and staff health
- Change the culture of NDAs so that solutions to fundamental problems are shared.
- Create a self care toolkit and get comfortable using it
- Remember that asking for help is nothing to be ashamed of
- Determine a support network for yourself
- Become aware of your privelege and blind spots and get comfortable using that to advocate for others in a responsible way
- If you witness injustice and mistreatment, don’t be a passive bystander.
- Be inquisitive, aware of the status quo, and do not always accept things because ‘they have always been this way’
- Be aware of your core values and ask about the points raised in this manifesto when doing a job interview or talking to a (future) coworker
- Be bold enough to stand for what you believe is right, even if that means turning down a job if the company does not uphold these values and be clear about your reason to reject a possible job offer
- Embody the culture you wish to see around you with your choices, words, and actions
- Be willing to help the industry change by being open and willing to work to put them in place.
- Learn about how to negotiate your salary and what you should be expecting in your relevant field
- Empower students to have the courage to make positive change
- Maintain a positive working environment so students learn what they should expect from the industry and also create positive change upon entering the industry as a result of good habits created in school
- Nurture ‘soft’ skills of empathy and communication, and especially self-care and stress management.
- Educate students about the industry in a realistic way, while also showing them how it could be different
- Teach students how to navigate conversations about income, benefits, what they should expect, etc.
- Do research about the company that made the game you want to buy
- What is known about the company culture?
- Do they force their employees to crunch?
- Is there a pending lawsuit?
- Have people spoken out against this company and why?
- Follow MEG-P/Lifetime in Games and other resources on social media
- Keep the conversation about ethical game production going by posting about and engaging with content about these topics!
- Do not purchase and/or promote a game made by a problematic company and voice your reasons why in a public environment
- Reviews
- Tweets
- Et cetera…
- What if you purchased a game but find out later the company is problematic?
- Write a review or tweet about why you were disappointed to learn about the company culture
- Indicate that you will not be recommending the game and cite your reason.
Game companies need to know that their actions have consequences. Companies hear a message in money above all else!
Not a gamer or a developer but still want to help?
- Talk to friends who are gamers and/or developers
- Are they aware of the issues in the industry?
- Do they know how big the role is they can play in improvement of the industry?
- Are they aware of initiatives like MEG-P?
- Be vocal! Let other people know about the good and the bad in our industry
- Follow MEG-P/Lifetime in Games and other resources on social media
- Keep the conversation about ethical game production going by posting about and engaging with content about these topics!
The first step to change is support, and it starts with you! Stand with us and help spread the news. You can start by following us and our partners on social media and seeing what you can do by checking out our resource library.
