Black developers explain how free game engines, incentives will bring more black people into games

In a 2005 study, the International Game Developers Association found that black people only make up 2 percent of the industry’s workforce. A decade later, that representation isn’t much better.

But game development does have some notable black creators — like Revelation Interactive Studios founder Dennis Mathews. He has worked in the industry for more than 10 years, and he is now actively working to increase the representation of minorities in the game-creation process. At the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Mathews led a roundtable discussion with fellow developer and game design professor Derek Manns that dealt with issues faced by black people who make games as well as fans of the medium as a whole. The two highlighted a number of concerns that the assembled crowd of developers elaborated on, and the consensus was that it now is the best time for young black people looking to learn how to develop games. The reason: Important creation tools like Unity, Unreal, and Source 2 all available to everybody for free.