When you picture your typical modern video game developer, what do you see? The odds are good you think of a pasty-faced white male, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, with a Code Red Mountain Dew in one hand and a well-worn Xbox controller in the other. In truth, video game development is a more diverse industry than one might expect, but not nearly diverse enough. That’s why the wonderful people over at Humble Bundle have put together their Black Game Developer Fund, an annual $1 million fund meant to empower and unite communities through gaming.
From the Humble Bundle website: “The Black Game Developer Fund is a $1 million annual program focused on supporting Black game developers, helping publish games with funding, production, and marketing support via Humble’s publishing label, Humble Games.”
Humble Bundle’s origins and accomplishments are well-known in the industry. Founded in 2010, the respected digital media gaming storefront has a community of over 12 million members who have contributed a combined $177,000,00 to charity via its unique relationship with game publishers. More recently, Humble has expanded into games publishing via their Humble Games brand, and the Black Game Developer Fund feels like an excellent fit for Black developers looking for exposure that they aren’t getting elsewhere in the industry.
More information on Humble Bundle’s Black Game Developer Fund is available here.
Did You Know?
Many gamers don’t realize that the video game consoles we know today have roots in the work of an African-American engineer by the name of Jerry Lawson. Lawson was a pioneer in the earliest days of home video games and is the inventor of the cartridge, the earliest form of distributing different games to a single console system. Nintendo’s popular Switch console still uses a form of Lawson’s invention to this day.