How Electronic Arts Tries to Make Diverse Video Games

Tülay McNally, director of inclusive design at Electronic Arts, chooses her words carefully as we chat about creating diverse characters for video games. Raised in Germany, McNally is no stranger to the international video game industry. She worked at Square Enix, Sega, and Bioware before joining EA. McNally's team at EA assists with the development of characters from underrepresented groups and with public communication. Her caution is warranted--Activision Blizzard was ripped to shreds a month before our interview for its reductive approach to video game diversity, one which assigned numerical scores to marginalization, turning identity into a kind of scorecard that developers could use to determine who they should include (or exclude) from character rosters.