Morgan Romine (Director, Anykey) on diversity and inclusion in esports

This week I’m sharing a really interesting, and hopefully useful, conversation with Morgan Romine that delves into some of the trickier areas of the state of online gaming, competitive gaming, esports, and the diversity problems that float around this industry like a really bad smell.

Morgan is a long time gamer and one of the founders of the Fragdolls all-women esports team run by Ubisoft back in the day, and is now a cultural anthropology researcher and is the director of the Anykey organisation which advocates for greater diversity and inclusiveness in gaming.

It works closely with Intel and ESL to run elite women’s CS:GO tournaments as well as other initiatives across both tournaments and research efforts to improve the gaming landscape to make it more positive and inclusive across the board. It’s a great project and one that’s desperately needed and something we can all do more to support.

So in this conversation I try to get Morgan to talk about how we overcome frustration when things don’t change fast enough, how we can all do better when those standard questions crop up that push back against diversity initiatives, and what straight white guys like me can do to be better allies and supporters of change for those who deal with bad online gaming experiences every day.