Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has shared a damning verdict of the games industry’s lack of progress in diversity.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz as part of his book tour, Fils-Aimé argues that the games industry is “woefully behind” in embracing diversity.
“You don’t see it in the executive ranks, you don’t see it in the leadership ranks of key developers. It’s incredibly difficult to find it in various games,” he points out.
“For me as a Black man with my particular skin tone, hair, curls and everything else, it’s difficult to make a character look like me, and it shouldn’t be.”
Fils-Aimé went on to confess he was occasionally conscious of being the only Black man at senior industry gatherings and the first Black American to lead Nintendo of America.
He used an annecdote of his first E3 debut for Nintendo, where he was mistaken for security because he was a tall Black man in a suit.
“That’s disappointing, and it certainly stuck with me and continues to stick with me.”
Fils-Aimé took the incident as a teachable moment: “You need to see [diversity] in the levels below president or chief executive in order to see the pipeline of people who could step into that top leadership role at some point in time. So I do fear it’s going to take us quite some time because I don’t see that level of diversity one, two or three levels down. It isn’t there yet, and that’s a disappointing statement to make.”