ERG in Focus: ASPIRE

As part of our “ERG in Focus” series we have now come to our third Employee Resource Group (ERG) - ASian & Pacific Islanders REpresent, ASPIRE for short. ASPIREs mission is to build a unified community for API (Asian & Pacific Islanders) employees and allies to thrive within EA, while supporting the growth of our Asian business, expanding representation of APIs in our games, and in leadership levels.

During the production of Battlefield V, our development team had the opportunity to collaborate with ASPIRE to build out an inclusion framework for our Pacific expansion. Together this partnership helped represent an authentic diversity, and drove for a more inclusive game.

We have met with Annie Lim, Jennifer Sunahara, Tülay Tetiker-McNally, Lars Gustavsson, and Claes Dietmann, who all had key roles in the collaboration around the Battlefield V expansion to the Pacific.

Both Annie and Jennifer sit on the ASPIRE ERG and are part of the group of volunteers that helped pioneer the collaboration between the ERG and the game team that later helped shape standards for the entire business.

“I feel EA is doing really cool things with ERGs and representation panels to try to tap into cultural knowledge and share that across the company.” says Jennifer. 

Annie agrees “It's very validating to know that EA trusts its employees in terms of the cultural knowledge that we bring and want to leverage that.”

Jennifer adds “Within games some populations are more represented than others, so having ERGs to help hear and amplify the voices of people that might be less represented is quite useful. For the business it means that EA is less likely to make mistakes that can upset - having a consultancy group is quite useful to get that second opinion before going out to the general public. From my point of view, as someone who is Asian, it helps show me that my opinion and my experience is valued, can make a difference, and can make a better product.”

“Within games some populations are more present than others, so having ERGs to help hear and amplify the voices of people that might be less represented is quite useful.”

The group all agree that representing cultures in a positive and authentic way, and in some cases even different from what we are taught in school or see in everyday media, is a step in the right direction of creating inclusive games that can be enjoyed by many.

“It's quite often we start our thought process from where we are born, how we look upon the world, and what we have been through. No one knows everything, that's a fact. When we start with the creative thought process it's very easy that we skip a lot of steps in thinking what we want to achieve - and just jump on core bits and by that missing out a big part of the thought process. What I have loved with this collaboration is to broaden the lens of the world and acquire knowledge that would have been super hard to get access to before.” says Lars Gustavsson, Senior Producer for the Battlefield V - Pacific expansion.

Claes Dietmann, who was working closely with ASPIRE for The Pacific trailer, nods “I can echo what I have heard. And also reiterate the importance of different lenses, different views, and different cultural experiences. Especially when dealing with different historical events the way that we did. Getting the facts right that's nothing, that's easy and we can find that in history books - but getting the tonality and the voice or the flavour of it so it feels accurate and appropriate I think that's where it was really a comfort to get a weigh in from people with other backgrounds.”

“What I have loved with this collaboration is to broaden the lens of the world and acquire knowledge that would have been super hard to get access to before.”

The collaboration has not only led to a more positive Battlefield experience, it has also helped shape the foundation and operating model for a wider Inclusivity plan that is rolling out to many games and studios across EA. Tülay Tetiker-McNally who leads EA’s Inclusive and Diverse Product Development efforts says that “The engagement on Battlefield V is over a year old and a lot has happened with our initial process, EA’s Inclusion Framework, since then, from how we get feedback within the ERGs, to how we assemble the panels. Through this engagement we realized on the game team side that we need more dedicated Development Director and Producer partnerships that can really manage the feedback on the developers side. Those are all lessons from this experience. There are so many lessons learned with this collaboration that have carried over to other projects so we benefited a lot from this exchange.”

She adds “Some of the ERG members went further than we expected and reached out to members in their own studios and development team to learn more on how they could ask the game team better questions. That dedication impressed me - you are not just there to volunteer your own time but you want to learn a bit more about the workflows of the teams and how you can add more value by asking better questions. That also led us to realize that as a company we should offer some type of training for the people that participate in these panels so they are equipped with the tools to provide better feedback or ask questions.

...

This engagement with this ERG and Battlefield V was really the kick-off of our operational model that we are pursuing across all of EA and even if it is almost 18 months ago I keep going back to that example and talk about how the dev team handled it, the thoughtful conversations we had, how quickly they reacted, how the ERG members were really engaged 100%. For me that was really what good looked like. It has influenced our global direction a lot.”

“Some of the ERG members went further and reached out to members in their own studios and development team to learn more on how they could ask the game team better questions. That dedication impressed me - you are not just there to volunteer your own time but you want to learn a bit more about the workflows of the teams and how you can add more value by asking better questions.”

Jennifer reflects back to that original communication that went out to the ASPIRE team calling for volunteers “...I feel that whatever the original message was it didn't scare me away from thinking that I was not qualified to speak about it. That could have very easily happened. But somehow I ended up being part of this effort, and I really appreciate having this opportunity.”

Annie adds “Since EA is so global, ERGs gives us an opportunity to be exposed to different cultures, societies, and work environments that would be normally not available for us to experience. … It's great that we have ASPIRE ERG that gives us this sort of spotlight and networking opportunity to grow our EA community as well. It's a really nice thing that EA is allowing us to do for our community.”

The collaboration between ERGs and game teams allows us to build better, more inclusive games, as well as help us represent different cultures and backgrounds.

We are happy we could be part of establishing that foundation together with ASPIRE.

This ASPIRE ERG article is the third one in a series where we explore the different employee resource groups we have at DICE - and how we work together to build better games and create more opportunities for inclusion within our studio.