Let's take a moment to talk about why funding prototypes is important.

A thread --- spoilers it's because of systemic oppression and racism. https://twitter.com/EvvaKarr/status/1273352541816881155

According to the IGDA’s diversity report in 2016, 21% of all people who work in video games are women, 6% are people of color, and there are less than 3% of both of those groups combined who are founders or c-suite executives.

There's not a ton of other data on this but it's clear that black, brown, and queer voices are not represented at the leadership level in our current ecosystem, even though @pewresearch suggests that 50% of people who play games are BIPOC & 49% are women in North America alone!

Who will fund the hard work for that first playable & who has the privilege to make a prototype without financing? Oftentimes women, BIPOC, & queer developers don’t have the privilege of having friends and family members that can finance their work or free time for unpaid labor

This inequity starts before the very first pitch - its systemic, pervasive, and limits who gets a shot at financing for their game. The result? We all miss out on novel designs and experimental game loops from fresh perspectives because they don’t currently have a “proven” market