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Game Developer Demographics Report

Game Developer Demographics Report

The first of its kind, "Game Developer Demographics: An Exploration of Workforce Diversity" answers the question, “who makes games?” by examining the demographic makeup of the development community. Nearly 6500 people participated in the survey, answering a series of questions pertaining to age, race, sexual orientation and education among other variables.

Key results of the demographic survey include:

  • Male = 88.5%, Female = 11.5%
  • White = 83.3%, Black = 2.0%, Hispanic/Latino = 2.5%, Asian = 7.5%, Other = 4.7%
  • Heterosexual = 92%, Lesbian/Gay = 2.7%, Bisexual = 2.7%
  • Average age = 31 years
  • Average years in the industry = 5.4 years
  • Percentage of people with disabilities = 13% (e.g., cognitive, mobility, sight, etc)
  • More than 80% have a university level education or greater
  • More than 60% of studios claim that obtaining diverse applicants is challenging

 

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Supporting Materials

Comments Report

A compilation report of the 1,000+ write-in comments add extra insight to the mostly quantitative data provided in main report:

Survey Data

A large Excel spreadsheet of the 6,437 responses to the “Game Industry Demographics Survey” is available for researchers to explore. Note that the column for state/province has been removed (to reduce recognition of any given responder). The write-in comments column has also been removed to further reduce recognition and to minimize file size. Given the low number of responses for the HR-oriented “Game Studio Workforce Demographics Survey,” the data is not being made available.

Survey Questionnaires

Archived, non-functional, copies of the two surveys are available online:

Prize Winners

To maximize participation in the survey process and to help eliminate self-selection bias, prizes were offered. The Sony PSP prize went to Carole Wong from Sega. The Amazon certificates for the HR survey went to PopCap, Harmonix and Cyberlore.