hey guys, let's talk about the way we engage (or don't engage with) the creators of media. cuz affecting change in creative industries has to, in part, come from us as audience members.

in theater, it's very common to know the names of members of the creative team (costume designer, set designer, light designer, etc). we know the name of the playwright and who directed what we're watching. this is good and an important thing to recognize.

in doing so, we recognize that what we see before us is the collaborative effort of MANY people, and we see how each part matters individually to the whole piece.

this also helps us see if a creative team is overwhelmingly male and white.

but this kind of logic is almost never carried over to other industries, with the exception of movies (sometimes, usually only by people Really into movies). why is that?

are you able to name, off the top of your head, who wrote your favorite episodes of a tv show you like? who developed your favorite video game (not just the company)?

and if you are, how do those demographics break down? why do you know who you know of?

whether consciously or not, continuing to consume ALL media as a whole, rather than several distinct parts that form a whole, leads to the mistreatment of writers, developers, designers, etc. across the board. especially if they happen to be women or a POC.

when we fail to recognize the individuals who contribute to the works we love, their labor becomes nameless and disposable. this is especially obvious in the video game industry.

we attribute the success of a game to the studio and ignore the fact that literally HUNDREDS of people contributed to it. but we don't know who any of them are, because we're trained not to pay attention to it.

and if we're not paying attention to it, then how would we know that their labor is being exploited? that they're underpaid and overworked? we won't. how will we know how many women worked on a game? how many POC worked on a game? we won't.

if we're not paying attention to who writes the episodes of the TV shows we watch, then we won't notice that the one woman on the writing staff is credited with writing only one episode in a season. or that the writing team is entirely white.

holding industries accountable for fair labor practices involves making this kind of knowledge something you actively seek out. it helps highlight the work that many POC do in industries that downplay their achievements (or underpay them, or don't hire them, etc).

know who makes the things you love. appreciate the amount of labor they have to do, often without acknowledgement that they are the ones who made the choices that are receiving praise.

because once we do, and we show that it actually does matter to us to know by name who helped make what we love, it will hopefully become harder for industries to exploit their workers because we /actually/ know who they are now.

and their treatment matters to us. their fair pay matters to us. their work matters to us. and it matters to us to see companies who have diverse employees rather than the token minority here and there.

because at the end of the day, our engagement with content is what keeps higher management paid. and they will DEFINITELY notice a hit to their pocketbooks if nothing else.

it's not a perfect solution. but it does matter a lot.

after telltale fell apart, shit changed for me. it opened my eyes to how i was unintentionally contributing to the mistreatment of devs by not knowing who they were (i.e. they were all interchangeable). so now i make a conscious effort to know who works on what i like.

and you know what? it actually makes me enjoy and appreciate what i'm engaging with MORE. i love knowing who wrote a scene i love. i love knowing who was responsible for the beautiful coloring or animation in a scene.

because as someone who is a writer and will probably be a writer for the rest of my life, knowing that someone out there would feel the same way about my own work is deeply important to me, too.