On the heels of the formation of the #GamerGate tag, proponents immediately noticed a trend. This trend was the association with the tag with white, heterosexual, cisgender men who are just plain hateful. The press that decries the tag as misogynistic and rooted in a whole host of -isms conclude that this makes the movement and tag radical and not worth a listen.

In response to this, and accusations of nepotism between a close group of people, I believe it is prudent to look at the diversity in the games media industry to see if they pass muster in presenting diverse, varied viewpoints that theoretically come from diverse, varied populations.

To compile this list, I opted to use the following list: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/video-game-websites and then used google to identify each company’s stated monthly visitors.

From this non-google numbers, the top 10 websites and their estimated followings are:

IGN — 20.5 million GameFAQs — 17.5 million GameSpot - 15 million Kotaku - 10 million N4G — 5 million EscapistMagazine — 4.4 million PC Gamer — 4 million NeoSeeker — 3.7 million Giant Bomb — 3.5 million GameFront — 3.25 million

To this I would like to add websites that champion social justice issues and diversity in media and press while having sizable page views. These numbers come from a google search comprised of name and monthly visitors:

Ars Technica — 6.9 million unique visitors

Polygon — 6.6 million unique visitors

Rock, Paper, Shotgun — 2.5 million unique visitors

Gamasutra — 1.2 million unique visitors a month

Combining the two groups, I believe we have a solid picture of the video game news industry in terms of the most popular websites. To do this examination, I want to gather data that is correct. The best way to gather any data on diversity is through diversity reports where the persons are able to self-disclose. As such, let’s look for any diversity information published by the sites:

IGN — None found. GameFAQs — None found. GameSpot — None found. Kotaku — None found. N4G — None found. EscapistMagazine — None found. PC Gamer — None found. NeoSeeker — None found. Giant Bomb — None found. GameFront — None found. Ars Technica — None found. Polygon — None found. Rock, Paper, Shotgun — None found. Gamasutra — None found.

No website openly published an accounting for diversity in their website. A few of them criticized Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and other companies of lacking diversity or diversity reports. Due to this, we have no reliable sexuality, gender identity, religious identity, or racial identity information to declare diversity on these fronts. All we can really claim is apparent racial identity (based completely on skin color or self-disclosure) and sex of the author.

To in the interest of not boring everyone with numbers on sites, let’s prune those sites that have shown no or little interest in social issues: IGN, GameFAQs, N4G, PC Gamer, NeoSeeker, GameFront do not show a particular interest in this area that I can discern.

Kotaku, Escapist, Ars Technica, Polygon, RPS, and Gamasutra do. So let us look at these websites which on one level or another have shown that they are interested in social justice and diversity. None of these sites have a diversity report.

Due to the lack of a diversity report that gives information from informants as to identity, we can only go by pictures showing skin color and gender representation. This is a crude method of identifying diversity, but it’s all we have as these companies do not have diversity reports. For identification purposes, I only looked for pictures, self-identified genders, sexual dimorphic markers in lieu of gender identification, or self-disclosed sexual identity readily apparent through images, relationships, or disclosure.

In short, I attempted all good faith to categorize persons on these websites. I apologize if there are mistakes and I misidentified any individuals. If the site did not have pictures, I searched individual names for each staff member. I did not delve into personal lives or information. I looked only for readily identifiable disclosures.

Kotaku — 20 males. 2 females, 1 Hispanic/Latina(o), 2 Asians, 2 persons of unknown ethnicity/race, 18 White/Caucasian persons. 0 Black/African-American persons. 0 self-identified lesbian or gay persons. 1 out bisexual/pansexual person. The profile of the typical Kotaku staff member must thus be concluded as White heterosexual male. (http://kotaku.com/whats-a-kotaku-who-works-here-458637663) Escapist — 17 males, 2 females, 1 Hispanic/Latino(a), 0 Asians, 0 Black/African-Americans, 2 persons of unknown ethnicity/race, 18 Whites/Caucasians, 1 self-identified LGBT person. The profile of the typical Escapist staff member must thus be concluded to be White heterosexual male. (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/content/about) Ars Technica — 26 males, 4 females. 0 Hispanic/Latino(a)s, 2 Asians, 0 Black/African-Americans. 28 White/Caucasians. 0 LGBT persons. The profile of the typical Ars Technica staff member thus must be concluded to be White heterosexual male. (http://arstechnica.com/staff-directory/) RPS — 5 males, 1 female. 0 Hispanic/Latino(a)s, 0 Asians, 0 Black/African-Americans. 6 Caucasians/Whites. 0 identified LGBT persons. The profile of the typical RPS staff member must thus be concluded to be White heterosexual male. (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/about/) Gamasutra — 5 males, 3 females. 1 Hispanic/Latino(a). 0 Asians. 0 Black/African-Americans. 5 Whites/Caucasians. 1 multiracial/multiethnic person. 1 person of unknown ethnicity. 0 self-identified LGBT persons. The profile of the typical staff member for Gamasutra must thus be concluded to be White heterosexual male. (http://www.gamasutra.com/contactus) Polygon — 17 males, 5 females. 0 Hispanic/Latino(a), 0 Black/African American, 1 Asian, 1 Indian, 3 persons of unknown ethnicity. 15 White/Caucasians. 1 self-identified queer, 0 LGBT persons. The profile of the typical Polygon staff member thus must be concluded as White heterosexual male. (http://www.polygon.com/pages/about)

So within these 6 sites we have 90 males, 16 females, 3 Hispanic/Latino(a), 5 Asians, 5 persons of unknown ethnicity, 1 Indian, 90 Whites/Caucasians, 0 Black/African-Americans, 1 multiracial/multiethnic person, 1 queer person, and 2 LGBT persons for a total of 106 combined identified staff (combining male and female as none identified or presented outside of these labels) at these sites.

15% of identified staff are females. 2.8% of staff are Hispanic/Latino(a), 4.7% are Asian, 4.7% are of unknown ethnicity, 0% were Black/African-American. 0% are Native American. 1% are multiethnic or multiracial. 1% are Indian. 1% are queer. 1.8% are LGBT.

85% are White. 85% of staff at these sites are males. While ages are not listed, most appeared to be between the ages of 20 to 30.

Compare this to the 2014 Essential Facts released by the Entertainment Software Association (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2014.pdf). Of note is the fact that this is not a measure of those who identify as gamer. They are statistics of what the industry identifies as gamer:

48% of gamers are female. 52% of gamers are male.

29% of gamers are under the age of 18. 32% are between 18–35. 39% are above the age of 36. The average gamer age is 35.

There is no current information of the racial identity or sexual identities of gamers. However, the statistical concept of the central limit theorum dictates that we can assume, due to the fact 51% of Americans play games, that it should reflect the US population. For this portion, I used the US 2010 CENSUS (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html):

(Edit: Some are saying this isn’t how the CLT works. The CLT dictates that as a sample size increases, the shape of the distribution normalizes. Additionally, examination into the population versus gamers shows that the demographics roughly match. There’s a 50/50 split of gamers, gamers are around 31–34 years of age while the US population is 34–36 years of age. It’s reasonable to expect that the sample of gamers matches the U.S. population.)

77% of Americans identified as White alone.

13.2% of Americans identified as Black/African-American alone.

2% identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native alone.

5.3% identified as Asian alone and 2.4% identified as multiracial/multiethnic.

17% identified as Hispanic/Latino(a) alone.

62% identified as White alone without Hispanic/Latino(a) ethnicity.

50.8% are female and 49.2% are male.

So what can we conclude about the representation of demographics in a small sample of websites that identify diversity as a key component of their mission?

They are disproportionately Whiter and more male than the population while completely omitting the Black/African American and Native American populations in their mission. LGBT voices are also under-represented in these websites statistically as the gay and lesbian population alone is said to be approximately 1.8% of the population and bisexuals comprise just slightly less at 1.7% (http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gates-How-Many-People-LGBT-Apr-2011.pdf) to as large as an estimate of 10% of the population in the famous Kinsey studies. More modern studies put the population around 3–4%.

Through the application of the central limit theorum and the expectation of the gamer sample to fall roughly in the same distribution as the population, games staff at these selected sites are more male, more white, and more heterosexual than the population at large.

Let’s compare this further to journalism as a whole as these sites are run in a journalistic fashion. According to http://journalism.indiana.edu/general-news/notices/lastest-american-journalist-data-points-to-changes-in-attitude-demographics/, in 2014, 62% of journalists are male and 37% are female. Compare that to the sites above where 85% of staff are male and 15% are female.

Finally, let’s examine the population versus the developer population that is often decried in the press as racist and sexist as to cut off prospects for minorities. According to the igda’s 2005 report (http://archives.igda.org/diversity/IGDA_DeveloperDemographics_Oct05.pdf), 83% of developers are White, 2% are Black, 2.5% are Hispanic/Latino(a), 7.5% are Asian, and 4.7% are other.

88% of developers are male, and 11.5% of developers are female.

92% of developers are heterosexual, 2.7% are lesbian/gay, and 2.7% are bisexual.

Let’s compare once more:

Selected press: 85% white. Developers: 83% white.

Selected press: 85% male. Developers: 88% male.

Selected press: 15% female. Developers: 12% female.

Selected press: 2.8% are Hispanic/Latino(a). Developers: 2.5% Hispanic/Latino(a)

Selected press: 0% Black. Developers: 2% Black.

Selected press: 5.7% other/unknown. Developers: 4.7% other/unknown.

Selected press: 2.8% LGBTQ, Developers: 2.7% are LGBT.

Selected press: 0% identified disabilities. Developers: 13% identified disabilities.

Not only do these 6 sites have far fewer women staff than the population as a whole and gamers as a subset, they have far fewer women than journalism as a field and a starkly identical demographic makeup to development teams that are often cited as misogynistic, racist, and homophobic due to under-representation.

Maybe the problem actually exists in what readers sense about these websites: They’re giving us one message for clicks, but they’re living an entirely different one in practice.