I adore our larps.

I adore our larps.

Reading this makes me retrospectively consider the diversity in the games I play. Sure, most games I played at cons have at least one person who isn't white -- but, that is often the same person, repeated. And she's glorious and wonderful and in so many of the gaming communities I adore. And most of the games I play on Thursday nights have only white people. 

That open to the public Thursday night group is predominately white, male, and younger than me. There's a bunch of non-damning reasons for this: small groups tend to be more homogeneous across all domains, we don't advertise, and younger, whiter men have freer schedules.  There are also things we do that make this more likely: we meet in a (dirty, run down) comic book store, we meet at a time convenient for office workers, and we almost never kick out bad actors.

After Dreamation, I had concerns related to my abilities: scheduling, solving mazes, etc. I almost ditched a few games, and considered simply not going due to how problematic this was, but persevered. By virtue of showing up, my own problems are less relevant than issues that stop people from showing up. And, obviously, there's a lot of work at Dreamation to help diversity.

From Amhest's article:
Baby Boomers (age 50 to 69, as of 2014) is 3.6% of the cohort population, with a gender break-down of 66.1% male to 33.9% female. 94.9% identify as white, 5.1% as people of color. Less than 2% identify as Hispanic or Latino.
Generation X (age 30 to 49, as of 2014) is 48.6% of the cohort population, with a gender break-down of 64.1% male to 35.9% female. 92.3% identify as white, 7.7% as people of color. 3.2% identify as Hispanic or Latino.
Millennials (age 10 to 29, as of 2014) is 47.8% of the cohort population, with a gender break-down of 57.3% male to 43.7% female. 91.6% identify as white, 8.4% as people of color. 4.9% identify as Hispanic or Latino.

That is (excuse the rounding, two significant digits)
Boomers: 3.6% of the population, 66% male, 95% white.
Gen X: 49% of the population, 64% male, 92% white
Millennials: 48% of the population, 57% male, 92% white.

That is, the most diverse generational age group is over 90% white and 57% male. Within the USA, 63% of the population is white, and less than 50% male.

Here's what I don't know: are women and people of color opting out as time goes on? That is, if we could look at the Boomers 40 years ago, would that population have more women and people of color? Does it even exist 40 years ago? 

Or, is this truly a generational shift? Or, some combination of factors that is even harder to tease out.

Do the responsibilities of age affect women and people of color more than white men (yes), to a sufficient degree such that they stop participating in games? 

Either way, 90% white is not a victory. The changing demographics by age cohort may not even be due to anything we do; it may be related to responsibilities. Much as compstat may not have had anything to do with decreasing crime rates -- the apparent change based upon age cohort may be an effect of increased responsibilities as women and people of color age, which does not affect white men as much. Or some other affect, such as only being able to take so much shit before leaving.

The question becomes: How do we improve this? How do we make our games more diverse?

I don't have good answers to that; at this point, I'm only able to point out that the data show that our games aren't nearly as diverse as I had thought.

I've only brought up the work related to diversity in Amherst's work; there's a later section on socioeconomic behavior that I may discuss later. The results are at least as problematic, but harder to grasp. Harder for me to understand, at least.

Chris Ahmerst is a scholar, thinking deeply about our games.  In comments on this thread, feel absolutely free to discussion problems in methodology, reasoning, or the sample. But, do not speak ill of him personally in public: such comments will be deleted with extreme prejudice. 

Feel absolutely free and welcome to discuss issues with my understanding of his work. I'm clever enough to know I'm not very clever.

http://nordiclarp.org/2016/04/07/representation-social-capital/
http://nordiclarp.org/2016/04/07/representation-social-capital