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Katherine Isbister

Katherine Isbister is a Human Computer Interaction and Games researcher who studies and designs digital games and other playful computer-supported experiences. Her focus is emotion and social connection–understanding the impact of design choices on these qualities, and getting better at making and evaluating digital experiences that support and enhance social and emotional experience. Her lab group’s work has been cited in Wired, Scientific American, and NPR, among other venues.

Isbister is currently a full professor in the Department of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is a core faculty member in the Center for Games and Playable Media. Until June 2015, she was an associate professor jointly appointed between the Computer Science department at New York University’s School of Engineering in Brooklyn, and the NYU Game Center, and was the founding Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU’s School of Engineering.
After completing a Ph.D. at Stanford University, where she studied Communication as well as Human-Computer Interaction, Isbister worked in research labs in Japan, Sweden, Denmark, and the U.S., and in software start-ups and design consultancies (past clients include Microsoft, Paramount, BMW, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and others), in addition to being a research professor. Along the way, she has written several books: Better Game Characters by Design,Game Usability, and most recently, How Games Move Us. Better Game Characters was nominated for a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Award. In 1999, she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review’s TR100 Young Innovators most likely to shape the future of technology.

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LINDSAY GRACE — Vice President

Lindsay is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is Vice President for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award. Lindsay’s book, Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design, is a well-received guide to game design. In 2020, he edited and authored Love and Electronic Affection: a Design Primer on designing love and affection in games

His work has received awards and recognition from the Games for Change Festival, the Digital Diversity Network, the Association of Computing Machinery’s digital arts community , Black Enterprise and others. He authored or co-authored more than 50 papers, articles and book chapters on games since 2009. His creative work has been selected for showcase internationally including New York, Paris, Sao Paolo, Singapore, Chicago, Vancouver, Istanbul, and others. Lindsay curated or co-curated Blank Arcade, Smithsonian American Art Museum’s SAAM Arcade, the Games for Change Civic and Social Impact and others.

He has given talks at the Game Developers Conference, SXSW, Games for Change Festival, the Online News Association, the Society for News Design, and many other industry events.

Between 2013 and 2018 he was the founding director of the American University Game Lab and Studio. He served as Vice President and on the board of directors for the Global Game Jam™ non-profit between 2014-2019. From 2009 to 2013 he was the Armstrong Professor at Miami University’s School of Art. Lindsay also served on the board for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) between 2013-2015.

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ANDREW PHELPS — President

Andrew Phelps serves as a Professor in the Film & Media Arts division of the School of Communication at American University, and as Director of the AU Game Center, a multidisciplinary effort that engages faculty, staff, and students from several divisions and departments across AU. He also holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the Computer Science Department in the AU College of Arts & Sciences. AU offers several degrees and certificates relative to games and media, including an MA in Game Design and an MFA in Games and Interactivity, and Phelps advises students in these programs as well as other areas of media arts and computing.

In addition to these permanent roles, Phelps also holds a visiting lectureship at Uppsala University in Sweden through the transformative play initiative within the Department of Game Design. This work is centered largely on collaborations involving his interests in existential, transformative play, and theorizing a design framework for games of this type through collaborations with Dr. Doris Rusch and other faculty at the Gotland campus.

Prior to July of 2019, Phelps served as a Professor of Art & Design in the College of Art & Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and before that as a Professor in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences at RIT, for nearly 20 years. He is the founder of the RIT School of Interactive Games & Media, the founder of the RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity (MAGIC) and the founder of MAGIC Spell Studios at RIT, the last of which is a $25M public-private partnership between RIT and the State of New York to help expand the games, film, and media industries in New York.

His work in games programming education has been featured in The New York Times, CNN.com, USA Today, National Public Radio, IEEE Computer, and several other articles and periodicals. He regularly publishes work exploring collaborative game engines and game engine technology and maintains a website featuring his work as an educator, artist, programmer, and game addict. Primary research and teaching interests include online gaming, electronic entertainment, 3 dimensional graphics and real time rendering, virtual reality, and interactive worlds.

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Finding Work in the Video Games Industry

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

For those based in the United States, the average salary of all employed survey participants was $61,000. For full-time workers, the average salary was $68,000. This is significantly higher than the median salary of all American workers, which is reported to be $36,300. This average includes all workers, regardless of education level.

Compared with workers with similar education outcomes, game program alumni seemed to earn slightly more, though exact comparisons proved challenging. For example, respondents between 22 and 30 years of age earned an average of $57,500 per year. In comparison, starting salaries for all post- secondary graduates in the US in 2018 were reported as $50,390.

Across the survey sample, women on average earned $61,750. Men, on average, earned $59,730.

Salaries steadily increased, except for the oldest cohort. For example, the youngest cohort of respondents (17-21 years) earned an average salary of $40,000, while those between the ages of 31- 40 earned approximately $76,200.

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Employment in the Video Games Industry

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

84% of respondents stated that they were currently employed. This included full-time, part-time, and contract work, as well as self-employment. The rate of employment increased with the age of respondents. For example, 70% of the youngest cohort of respondents reported being employed compared with 100% of the oldest cohort.

Of those in the 2019 survey who reported being employed, approximately 77% had full-time work, 16% had part-time work, and 5% were self-employed. 12% indicated that they had secured contract work.

From the data, it is reasonable to conclude that respondents engaged in multiple forms of work. For example, of the 251 respondents who described their work as full-time, 34 also indicated that they did contract work on top of their employment (9% of the entire sample). With respect to employment type, the percentages did not change significantly from the 2015 survey, although the previous survey did not explicitly ask about contract work.

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Ethnicity in the Video Games Industry

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

With respect to the respondents from the United States, most were White (54%). Those who identified as being of Asian descent were 17% of respondents, while those of Latinx descent were 16% of respondents. Black or African-American individuals made up 7%. Less than one percent of respondents identified as either Middle Eastern or Native American. When reporting their ethnicity, respondents could choose more than one option. Approximately 6% of people identified as being of “Mixed” ethnicity. Most frequently, individuals of mixed ethnicity identified as being White and one other ethnicity.

“Not a lot of African Americans in the industry. It’s so far not been negative, but there’s always just a sense of perspective that I rarely can share with someone else without having to fully articulate it.” – Game Designer

Compared with the overall US population, the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates had a significantly lower number of Whites (54% versus 76.6%), a higher percentage of Asians (17% versus 5.8%), a similar number of Latinx (17% versus 18.1%), and a lower number of Black or African Americans (7% versus 13.4%). There were notable differences with respect to the ethnicity of respondents between the 2015 HEVGA Survey and the results of the 2019 survey. The 2019 survey had approximately 20% fewer White respondents. This is a remarkable difference, which could reflect changes in admissions to games programs across the US. Alternatively, it could be a sampling discrepancy, especially considering that the 2019 survey had approximately twice as many participants. There was an increase of 11% for respondents identifying as Latinx and an increase of 8% for those of Asian descent. There was a slightly more than 1% increase in respondents who identified as Black or African-American.

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Sexuality in the Video Games Industry

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

Approximately 20% of respondents identified as LGBTQ+. When compared with data gathered in large nationwide surveys, this is significantly higher than the national average of approximately 4% to 5% for LGBTQ+ individuals in the United States.

“Being gay in the industry has shifted my career towards smaller studios and indie developers. Any time I’ve applied to larger companies, the ‘bro’ nature of them has defined, for me, ‘bad culture fit.’” – Game Designer

The high percentage of LGBTQ+ respondents in comparison with the general US population should not be dismissed as a statistical anomaly. Other studies that examine the sexual orientation and gender identity of individuals in the games industry have found similar distributions. The IGDA Developer Satisfaction Survey for 2017 Summary Report indicated that 25% of those who responded to their survey identified as LGBTQ+. Previous years of IGDA reports describe similar percentages. It is possible that there are factors at play that attract LGBTQ+ individuals to the video games industry.

Methodological circumstances may also explain the difference. For example, the percentage of those who identify as LGBTQ+ is consistently higher among young people, which would align with the younger nature of our sample. Furthermore, our survey guaranteed the anonymity of the respondents. Surveys where such assurances are put in place tend to have higher rates of people identifying as LGBTQ+. As part of the same question, we gave respondents who did not identify as LGBTQ+ the opportunity to indicate that they were an LGBTQ+ ally. Approximately 20% of respondents chose this option. Another 6% of respondents preferred not to answer.

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Job Satisfaction in the Video Games Industry

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

The number of respondents who stated that working in the video games industry would be their first choice for a job dropped significantly the more years they spent in the industry. For example, at five years since graduation, the percentage of men who said that the video games industry would be their first choice for employment was 64%, compared with 95% of men who just graduated.

Women saw a much more precipitous decline, going from 85% to 40%. The rate drops particularly quickly for women after in the industry, falling from 90% one year after graduation to 64% after two. There could be many reasons for this. One might be the well-documented toxicity of some aspects of the industry to women—a factor already covered in-depth by both academics and games journalists.

It is also worth considering other factors that may be at play. Further research on this topic could shed valuable light on how people’s desire to work in a particular industry changes over time, and whether the trend stabilizes or potentially reverses over a longer period of time.

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Gender in 2019 Survey of Program Graduates

A total of 387 participants completed the 2019 Survey of Program Graduates. These individuals identified themselves as having completed or being in the process of completing a video-game-based program at a post-secondary institution. The participants included both undergraduate and graduate students.

Most of the respondents identified as men (70%), which is slightly lower than the rate reported in the 2015 HEVGA Survey (73%). There was a higher rate of respondents who identified as women in this survey (26%) compared with the 2015 survey (22%). Approximately 2% of respondents identified as non-binary, genderqueer, and/or third gender. Another 2% did not answer.

In a separate anonymous question not tied to the other demographic questions, we asked respondents “Do you identify as a transgender person?” Most people (76%) stated that they did not identify as a transgender person. 72% identified as cisgender, a term used when an individual’s gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. 4% indicated they did not identify as either cisgender or transgender. A little over 10% of respondents identified as transgender—including as a transgender man, a transgender woman, or as “non-binary, genderqueer, and/or third gender.”

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