Few industries are as disconnected from their customers as the video game industry. Gamers are disproportionately African-American or Hispanic, according to a survey by the Kaiser Foundation. Yet these are precisely the demographics that are underrepresented within the industry itself: both among the developers of games, only 2% of whom are black, and among the characters presented in the games they make. Most game protagonists are white males, and a USC survey revealed that a measly tenth of characters were black, and most of these were either athletes or gangsters.

Joseph Saulter wants to change all this. The entrepreneur behind Entertainment Arts Research, Inc., which Ebony Magazine recently singled out as one of the first black-owned publicly traded gaming companies, has made it his quest to make the gaming industry more reflective of its audience.

Now is a big moment for Saulter, whose company is set to release a major game in July (a parkour game for iOS, discussed below). Several other ambitious projects are in the works, including a game that takes place in Chicago’s South Side in the mid-20th century. “It’s a history of the black community, it’s a history of jazz, it’s a history of the arts and of the revolutions that went on in that period of time,” Saulter says of the game, Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs, a project of artist Philip Mallory Jones, who based much of the material off of oral histories with his mother.

Fast Company caught up with Saulter to learn more about his vision of the future of video games, and what it will take to launch a “Spike Lee of video games”–a black game designer who’s also a household name.

FAST COMPANY: Only 2% of video game designers are African-American?



JOSEPH SAULTER: There are not enough African-Americans and Latin Americans designing and developing games. However, what I call the urbanization of the game industry is slowly emerging.

So you think the problem of video game characters being disproportionately white will be fixed when the developers themselves are more reflective of society?



If there were more African-American designers and developers, there would be a better representation of African-Americans in the games.

You say you’ve met many talented black students, particularly through your educational initiative, the Urban Video Game Academy. Is there just a problem ushering that talent into the industry?



I think there’s a lack of information. I think there’s a lack of understanding. I know with the Urban Video Game Academy, a lot of these kids are very familiar will audio tools: They know Pro Tools, Q Base, Logic Pro. The same zeroes and ones that give the ability to create sounds are the same zeroes and ones that could make 3-D animation. I’ve got kids I’m working with now who are fully fledged game developers; they’ve taken the last five years to learn programming.