Gen Z and the democracy of design

Developing games today is a lot different than developing them 20 years ago. The sheer amount of access to your gaming audience, and the speed of information, is staggering in comparison. To this end, the digital age has solved many issues while creating some new ones. Katherine de León, senior director of product management for YouTube Gaming, has a few thoughts on this exact subject. She shares her views on deliberative debate during her fireside chat with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi at GamesBeat Summit Next.

“I do think democratic discourse and transparency are ingrained in this generation,” said de León. “I’ll give you an example. Deliberative debate is an expectation for that generation. They want to have deliberative debate with game makers about the game development process. That is, frankly, almost impossible today because the games industry hasn’t prioritized transparency, and you can’t have informed debate without context. This lack of transparency, I can only imagine, must be anathema to Gen Z because it’s so fundamental to the way they engage online. Back in the oughts, when I was working on Second Life, we were like ‘Okay, 10% of your community is gonna create content, 90% are gonna consume content.’ That is not true anymore.”