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Reggie Fils-Aime has left Nintendo of America, but he’s still offering opinions and insights as an elder statesman in the games industry. During a recent panel at the New York Game Awards, the former NoA president talked about the benefits of diversity.
Asked about how the industry can show greater representation, Fils-Aime said diversity has to start with hiring practices.
“It starts with the people,” Fils-AIme said. “It starts with having the broad representation within the companies themselves. In the last few years I was at Nintendo of America, we did a big push on diversity and inclusion within the company. And it’s interesting, Once you do that, now there’s a diversity of voices, it drives a diversity of representation in content, it drives a breadth and a view that you don’t get when you have a more homogenous type of organization and culture. For me, for this industry to truly break through and to have a broad representation in all of the content that shows up on screen, it starts with companies having a broad representation of employees making the content. It’s racial, it’s sexual orientation, veteran, handicap, everyone that it represents. It’s the people.”
The panel also included former Sony executive Jack Tretton and former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach. You can view the full panel below. The segment on diversity begins at the roughly 1:07 mark.
Since leaving Nintendo, Fils-Aime has joined the GameStop board of directors, started a podcast for charity, and then joined another non-industry related company board.
