 That's a, you know, a good response, I think. So my name is Imran Khan. I was educated by the block at private university. I was there for what year I was in the grade. And when I was there, my professors were all going, this guy is great. He's my favorite student. He's way ahead of the curve. And I took that skill and knowledge, and I've heard it in video games. So if you've been spared that particular conversation with your brother, considering yourself lucky, it isn't something. So it's very difficult for me to, I wrote this title, and I thought it would really be good if I started writing this speech, like, why diversity in video games matters. And that's, for me, it makes sense, because for me, I spend a lot of my life playing video games. I spend a lot of my income on video games, on video games, and writing about video games. So to me, it makes sense because it matters, really doesn't matter. But the people who don't play them, I don't know that it's an easy argument to make. So I was hoping to maybe start with something a little more relevant. When I was in elementary school, when I was a tiny kid in a small Tennessee town, and 60,000 people, there was a very difficult part of me that did not understand what race was, and more importantly, what race I was. The most important racial identification tool I had was a Crayola box, because I knew I wasn't white, I knew I wasn't black, so I told people I was mixed. And my parents explained to me the word, they told me that our family didn't come here, I was born in Jackson, so I didn't really understand the idea of being from somewhere else. So I didn't really understand the whole thing, and it turns out when you have a kid who consumes a whole lot of media, I was raised by video games, I think my parents did a good job of it. I was raised by video games and TV, and my racial identification heroes, I guess, were up who would not have to pay a penalty on, and Del C from Street Fighter. So it turns out that when our generation, or my generation, the first to let me grow up with video games with identifiable avatars and protagonists, it turns out if you have enough of those as a volume, you can even mess it up racially, because you kind of don't really understand. So I thought, you know, this doesn't really matter to me, because it really matters about race I am, kind of a sexual construct, I'm not really anything. And I thought this was a progressive idea. I thought that this is what really the future is like, that no one would really care about the race. But the thing that's showing me out of this was this character that, I don't know that anyone is going to recognize immediately, Jason Brody from Far Cry 3. Now if you've never played Far Cry 3, you're kind of lucky, because Jason Brody sucks. Jason's story is that he and his friends got kidnapped and were held hostage on a man. And the story in Far Cry 3 is that Jason came off the island culture. He's the great white pope for this noble savage nation. And I had a very significant problem, because before I was thinking, it doesn't really matter what protagonists race are, what the protagonists is like, but then I could have played Far Cry 3, and I was like, wow, this is really super better, because I cannot get past this character. I cannot understand how I'm supposed to be him, and it's actually harming my enjoyment of the game. So I took this revelation of, holy crap, race matters to the internet, expecting chorus of agreement, and I could not find it. I got people saying, there's nothing weird about this, there's nothing inappropriate or fitting or anything wrong about slapping yourself if there's nothing. And I could not figure out what they thought this character was supposed to be, except that I eventually realized he makes sense for the target audience. He doesn't make sense for me, because I have no white power fantasy of going to an island and becoming their ideal, but I say, unfortunately, the target audience does. And this quickly became a problem for me. And this came to my eventual realization that video games where I can identify with a character are more engaging than video games where I cannot. And this might seem like it should be obvious, but if it's not obvious to you, don't worry, because it took me 27 years. And people tell me that it doesn't matter if the game is good, if it's fun, if it's, I think it's a word that has a mad association these days, but objectively fun. Then it doesn't matter what the target audience is or what they look like. And there's this deep argument, actually, really hard to argue against that. But the problem is that when it comes to positions that are already entrenched, even if you're white and you don't like Jason Brownie, you have thousands of examples of other people you can relate to. You have every label and degree that you need to find something you can identify with. For me, it was, nope, again, thousands. And it's actually kind of ironic, it's part by four, it turned out to be something that I ended up looking through a lot, because they had a, not at least they hadn't been identified at all. And that's one of the reasons I realized it wasn't just that Jason Brownie was really bad, it's that there was no other examples for me. So it turns out that I've talked to Asian people, women, gay people, it's, they don't have the representation that they need that they may not have their Jason Brownie moment yet, where they're realizing that something is wrong. They just think, well, this is just the industry. And I reject that thinking. I think that's a problem. So let's get a little statistics real quick, because I think it makes sense to get a measure of the problem here. In 2003, 50% of player control characters are white and 40% are black. And that might seem like a, you know, it's a fairly okay number, considering, you know, what the AAA industry actually looks like. And it uses kind of AAA, but AAA basically means higher budget and stuff, like above 20 million, 25 million. But the number of 50% includes, or it does not include characters that have no identifiable ways, so like, for example, thanks from Lush Lozella, he's an elf, so he has a kind of white, which I think is strange. And the 40% black characters are, you guessed it, from sports games. Which I was talking to Dr. Kishana Gray from the Eastman-Pikupi Artisansky University Justice Department. And she said, and this is my favorite thing because that's my first time to be ever, fuck out of here, that doesn't count. And she's right, it doesn't count. Why would you, that doesn't, Kupi probably doesn't try to as a black character. He's the actual person. You don't try to do that. In 2005, 72% of characters playable otherwise are white. Just 74% while leading characters are white, with 4% being black, again, all in basketball games. So if you're not white and you're having problems with representation, the numbers aren't good for you and they're not getting anything better. So we're going to do a little bit of minutiae here about how video games are made, so bear with me for a second. Video games are getting more expensive to make. And the reason that video games are expensive to make is the visual fidelity you can create, the standards for how much people love to play art. So you want, for $60, they need to keep getting better and better looking. And that costs more and more money. It's kind of a moving problem, we think it keeps rising and it never exists. So because it's getting more expensive to make, the video game publishers are holding in on target audiences that they already think are more receptive to the audience coming out. And this target audience that they keep thinking comes out are white males age 15 to 30. Basically, you can see some real pieces of the world. And I, again, I just agree with that because I'm not a white male age 15 to 30. I'm 15 to 30 yet, that applies. So while the audience itself is extending the diversity within the video game industry of shipping because everything that needs to pay, everything that needs to be paid. And they think that you and I are going to end up just buying whatever because we have no choice in the matter. If we want a game, it has to be the Jason Brody game. But they're missing the financial argument that, okay, so I buy a game, so I'm not bad at anything. But you might not buy anything. You might buy more if stuff's so dear. And the financial issue there is that they're missing the extended audience. So I made up this little example here that I'm hoping is not too stupid. So let's imagine there's a party and the party is set for, let's say, five o'clock and the host is bringing people in because he wants to mingle with them. And so the very first people to this party are Mario and Link. And Mario and Link are not bad guys. They care about their brother. They involve, like, they enjoy life and they enjoy the other people. But they just happen to get this party faster than anyone else. They're there and the host is giving them 100% of the attention. They're giving them 100% of the drinks and the food and the general party atmosphere surrounding them. But that's just for right now. This is not moving the way I thought it was. But there we go. That's way about it. Okay, so Doc Lewis from CrunchF comes in. Now the 30s are going to feel a little bit better. More people are starting to come in. Everyone's having fun. More people, Princess Zelda comes in. The stand-in there, Dr. Kawashima. This is a diverse and interesting party. Like, the general area is becoming more colorful from different backgrounds to different life contexts. But the problem is that the party host is still focusing on Mario and Link. They're still giving them all the attention. If the goal was to mingle with everyone why are they only focusing on these two people that were given first? Why would they be the only ones to get drinks or food? And if you're at this party as well wouldn't you even think it was kind of weird that the two people who were there first are the only ones to get any attention? This is the main reason I think that we should actually diversify in games. Like, there's the financial argument there's the other thing about gameplay mattering, but really it just we should. I've been fortunate in my life that even though I face Mitchell discrimination I had somebody who attacked me in high school with a pipe after 9-11 for reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand still. But it's not been as inhibitory to me as it could be. This it doesn't mean that it's still okay. It doesn't mean that social progress should stop. Social progress should always keep going. If the worst case scenario happens that it just slows down as much as possible through the dirt to keep going. Then main issue I think in life is that we're all fading confusion about why things aren't moving forward. And it's not like there's no roadmap. We have a roadmap we're just all choosing not to go through it because we're not scared of the possibility of getting it wrong. We're going to get it wrong occasionally. But we have to try. Is there anyone out there whose life would be better if we didn't have diversity? Is there anyone who thinks the roadmap of social change is money, doesn't understand how diversity better helps every industry? I'm going to guess no. I'm going to guess there's going to be people that pretend not to but no one whose life would be better. So what do we do? I don't know if you've realized this in recent months but gamers are very reluctant to change. So maybe don't take the argument to that. If you think I know this kind of thing to go on Twitter what the hell is up with Jason Brody? I've done it before. I've done it for years. It never worked that well. But if you, wow, let's skip way forward. You want to take this directly to developers and studios. Support independent developers who are doing what you want. So Fulbright Studios Gotham is a really good example. There's good examples of video games that take on depression or transphobia or other issues or really communicate to them that you matter. We are in a weird age of the internet that's transformative. We are no longer an anonymous blob. We are a collective of individual people with names and identities and use that. Use that to talk to students. Use that to tell them why you matter. I was going to take longer to talk about our very good question but really quickly I just want to go up there and paste an exit article that I just put up a couple of weeks ago. Covering this issue but more about race has some comments from Dr. Avery and Shawn McGrady when I went to before about why this happens. So if we want to really get at a certain question and anyone who has a great question be back there. I think this is a very interesting topic that you touched on because we're seeing that happening especially with movies like how Marvel Universe is opening up with diversity. And what I would like to understand for you is what do you think would force the party to speed up that change in video games? What would speed up that change in video games is if the audience made themselves know if there were people who didn't... let's just say one year nobody was black about Call of Duty. How much sales would think? At least 7 million. And that would kill that. We have to figure out why this is. The only thing to do is support who you care and then let them know why. Thank you so much for letting me speak here today. I know this is a strange topic but I really appreciate it. Thank you.