Wyrmworks Publishing How many board games can you think of that feature respectful presentation of adult women on the boxes? How about women of color? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We're using tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. Just a reminder, if you haven't already, we have an upcoming Kickstarter that's called Ready to Roll: Feyweather Friends, and it's only going to be $1 for the whole adventure. This is the Ready to Roll series, this is the first of the series. And the idea is that these are going to be games adventures that, when everybody cancels, and you've got you go, "Well, all I've got is one player and one DM, and what are we going to do, because this is not what I prepped or anything?" that you can pick this up and use it as is, all ready to go. It has extra help with it so that you don't have to spend a lot of time on prep or anything. You just pick it up and use it as is, and it's set up to be used for any level character, one or two players with one DM, and so this is also the first tabletop roleplaying game product ever released that includes digital braille format at launch. Alright, it's also the first to include braille at all. But we are hoping to help the rest of the roleplaying game industry to follow that example. So I encourage you check the link in the show notes. Follow the Kickstarter to get notified when it launches. Wyrmworks Publishing So now on with our interview! Wyrmworks Publishing In today's episode, we are honored to have Dr. Tanya Pobuda, an expert in the field of board games and gender representation. Dr. Pobuda's groundbreaking research sheds light on the often overlooked aspects of gender and racial representation within the contemporary board gaming community and industry, including game designers, representation in artwork and gaming culture, and how to make the gaming space more welcoming for everyone. Welcome, Dr. Pobuda. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Thank you so much for having me. I was so so happy to get this invitation. Wyrmworks Publishing We're thrilled to have you here. So tell us what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the tabletop gaming crowd? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah, 100% So I have been board gaming since like the 70s. I'm totally old. And I had my first love, or one of my first loves in board gaming was and I grew up in the middle of nowhere, literally, in the very far north of Canada. So all we had were books and board games and it was really just my sister and I, in a really like isolated farm. My first really deep love was with the board game, Masterpiece, and I was convinced I was going to be like an art historian. As a result of that playing that game and trading artworks and I was one of the obnoxious people who decided that I was going to read every book and memorize every Trivial Pursuit card so that I could win every game, and I really liked board games and still do because I you know, I…socialization, socializing is really hard. And I really liked the stylized way you can kind of get to know someone with rules and you know, there's a there's a there's a type of communication that happens in board gaming and it feels really good. I really always feel so good when I play a board game. And I've been just in love with them for all the years of my life and decades and decades now. So I decided to, in a very convoluted roundabout way, become a board game scholar. I can get into that in a bit, but I wrote an entire PhD dissertation about board games and gender and racial and sexual orientation and you know, ability dynamics and how that can kind of play on a community and give invitations of welcome or exclusion. So that was that's the big idea with my dissertation. Wyrmworks Publishing This fascinating. All right, so tell us more about how does all this work with inclusive gaming, how, how you got there and and where you arrived at? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah, totally. I decided to go back to school, because I I had this weird craving to go back to school. It was it was a really, really interesting thing. I was I was I did a lot of work in high tech and life sciences, and I had this like extensive career — I was a tech reporter. Years and years ago, I met Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and I was a very early personal computing tech reporter. And I just had this craving to go back to school. My daughter was going back to school, so just to completely embarrass her, I followed not not to the same university but decided I wanted to go back to school. I went to Toronto Metropolitan University, and there was a joint program with York University, decided to do my PhD, was going all the way down the road to building weird virtual reality chatbots to basically have conversations, difficult conversations in the workplace. So I created chatbots that would bully you, and you know, 3d, and then I realized the research was kind of derivative. Virtual reality was so elitist. It was so expensive, and at the same time, I was hanging out in boardgame shops all around the Toronto area. And my partner and I were, we were almost always there, like maybe five days a week, we were hanging out and board game shops. And I started to realize like, I'm the only woman here. Sometimes…most of the time there was an interesting like feeling in the stores. It was very white. We went everywhere like all kinds of different board game places. So yeah, we were hanging out in boardgame shops. I noticed they were very white. They were very male. There was a certain feeling in some of the shops, and I started to think like, "Why? Why is that? Why is it so very, you know, white and male in so many different places that I go to?" You know, why it doesn't feel as welcoming as it might, you know, and how does that how does that play out in terms of the hobby, like how does the hobby get bigger? How does it expand when there are you know, certain limitations to different identities, maybe accessing those those spaces and maybe accessing the games themselves? And I started to wonder, and that there was actually a social media debate that was happening. And I started to look for research to answer the question, you know, what, what kind of representation is there because I used to work in marketing. You know, what's kind of, is there an invitation on the box, you know, box boxes, and I used to write box copy for products. There's an invitation often in the way that the boxes are, you know, executed, the layout, you know, I used to think a lot about like, what kind of photos would we use? What kind of artwork would we use on different products to welcome people in? How would we use copy? How would we talk about things and like rule books and or manuals, and how do we invite people in both in terms of like artwork and, and who gets to design board games was the other big question that I had and I couldn't find that research anywhere. And I started to dig into it and realized, you know, in with a dissertation, a PhD dissertation, your research has to be novel, it has to be something that nobody else has really discussed before. And so I thought, "There's something here," so I pitched a small scale study to Analog Game Studies, shout out to them. Analog Game Studies Journal online, they're, they're terrific. And they were able to publish my first piece, and it kind of blew up a little bit in the sense that there was a ton of interest. Lots of people very angry at the fact that, "Why would you even bother studying this? Who cares?" You know, "It's just a game," with all all the tropes we've heard before Wyrmworks Publishing Yup. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda and lots of mean mean comments, by the way. And, you know, I felt really strongly that there was something here you know, so I decided to abandon my VR research and all my coding and move on to this, this discussion. And what I was able to find was, you know, from an artwork perspective, the invitation wasn't really there, right? There wasn't a lot of women. I think I had a stat that I used, which was, You're more likely to see an alien creature that doesn't exist than a human woman in the research that I conducted, a fairly large scale as part of my dissertation, and you're more likely to see a picture of a bird than a woman of color. And it was really, really upsetting to see that there was that sort of clear decision, and it's not necessarily… I understand how systems work and marketing, how, you know, products come together and having worked in that space for years and years, it's not always an intentional decision, right? You have this image in your head of an imagined audience and you you think you're making a product for a certain kind of audience. And sometimes that just implicitly gets in the way. You're sort of on autopilot, and you think, "Oh, maybe it's just white guys, you know, maybe it's just white middle-aged guys. Maybe it's just white middle-aged guys that are in the suburbs, right?" And if you start to build all of your products that way, then all of the ways in which those products are constructed kind of privileges certain identities and excludes others, right? And I also wanted to surround that representation study the, you know, how many women, you know, who's designing these games, you know, like, who writes the, you know, who writes the books, and what do the covers look like? Similar kinds of research, but with board games. And what I discovered was overwhelmingly, you know, the games that were the most popular in a hobby context, were designed by white males, like at, like 96.5% or 96.2%. And then, you know, that whole said something to me, but that's not enough to know that then you have to ask people like, "How does that make you feel?" So I went out and tried to find diverse board gamers to say, "Okay, how does that make you feel? What do you what do you think about that?" And a lot of people came back and said, that it does matter to them. They they're sort of making do. They're not, you know, they're saying, "Well, that's what we got." It's very similar to you know, television and film studies. You make do with, you know, a lack of representation, and you can find you can find yourself reflected in like, narrow ways. And, you know, I was talking about this the other day with my partner, you know, in the 90s, or the 80s. Like, there was just mostly rom coms and women were, you know, always falling over their pumps. And it was so depressing to me as a woman because it was like, I wish I could see a woman not being incompetent on the screen, you know, and, and then, you know, suddenly there was, there was now a lot of a lot to choose from, where it's like women are capable and they're helping themselves and they're not just screaming falling over on their pumps and becoming an impediment to being rescued by being chased by the dinosaur. So, yeah, so I wanted to get a real picture of like, what does this do to the hobby and does it does it stellify and stunt it? And the answer was kind of, yes, that people were, you know, sort of tolerating it and you know, love it despite itself, which is not a great thing for any sector to, to have happen. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, you know, I, I first became aware of this, myself, being a white guy, straight white guy. And now that you know, it's like, oh, well, this stuff is all made for me. So, thanks to my privilege. I don't notice it. Right? And, and my wife and I were watching the show Blackish and and they mentioned cereal box. mascots, and he's like, we have Count Chocula. And I was like, really? And, you know, so I started researching and went, "Wow, there are no people of color as cereal box mascots," and then I went, "Wait a minute. Also, there's no women." Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Exactly. Wyrmworks Publishing And, in fact, there was just within the past like year there was finally one which was actually a derivative of another one. But that was like, "Wow, you know, I'd never noticed this before. But this is ridiculous. And then thought, I saw some of your work, and I thought, "Wait, boardgame mascots," you know, and, and I just went, "Oh, wow, I never noticed this, that if you see women on a on a board game box, you know, unless it's, you know, something like Clue where you've got this sort of dinner parties setting you know, or something like that. We have this wide range of people, or else it's kids. And that's the only other time that you'll see. You know, you see a little girl but just seeing like a woman or, or something like that, that it's not specifically like a couples thing or something like that, like you won't see a woman alone on a box." Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Exactly, exactly. Yeah, in order you'll see you know, the blonde, the brunette and the redhead, you know, and they're sort of there and they're kind of there to you know, be be like, male gaze kind of objects, right? Wyrmworks Publishing Charlie's Angels. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's a that's a trope you see a lot once you once you notice that, you can't stop noticing it. So yeah, it was a really, really interesting, fascinating study. And I find that again, from my my background in corporations. Sometimes numbers tell a story better for for a certain type of audience than than anecdotes, right. And one of the things I always found when I was working with like senior leaders who are very overwhelmingly white and male, is you if you can tell a story with numbers then people start to realize, "Oh, that's a pattern." And the pattern was pretty undeniable here. You know, just a couple of examples just quickly. The fascinating thing is, it is so extremely, extremely systemic. So for example, there were 647 masculine images, so presenting as male, as a man or boy, and 195 of feminine feminine images in like rulebooks. So I did a structured analysis of rule books as well. And the other really interesting thing is, with the cover art was quite a bit worse. With cover art from a racial perspective, 82.5% of all artwork on the on the 200 Boardgame Geek ranked games that I looked at, and these were sort of the top, the top tier games you've we've all heard of and played 82.5% were white presenting, and only 17.5% were were black, indigenous, person of color. And again, that sort of overarching kind of… I had to sit there and catalogue almost 2000 images, had a really structured process I had to use. I had to get all that checked, working with other coders. And that 17.5% is so dramatically low. When you think about the audiences of North America, and let's let's focus on Canada and the US which is where my research is mostly seated. Most, most cities, major centers and large purchasers, major consumer hubs in North America are 50/50 Alright? 50% Black, indigenous, persons of color, and 50% white. So as a marker, I'm thinking what are you doing? Why would you do that? Because, again, that the box is an invitation just like you said, the cereal boxes, you make sort of split second purchasing decisions when you can see yourself reflected in a product, and for board games. I don't think I've seen numbers like these since like the 80s, the 90s, like early 90s. And it was almost like going back in time a little bit to to a much more sort of archaic era, and seeing that kind of lack of representation and you know, the numbers were a little bit better but still horrible with with regard to men versus women 76.8%, so a little less than 77% of the images on the board games were men and 23.2% were women and that's really interesting to me as well because, you know, a lot of studies and I go into great depth in my dissertation, women make a lot of purchase decisions, particularly around things like entertainment. And that seemed a maladaptive approach again, from a marketing perspective, for board game publishers to make these kinds of decisions. And I didn't even get into the the negative and positive representation because a lot of the the BIPOC (black, indigenous, person of color) representation was not positive nor was the representation of women. Women were very sexualized on a lot of our board game artwork, you know, you've got, you know, battle mages who are wearing low cut slinky night gowns, you know, so it doesn't make a ton of sense. And again, it's a very male gazey kind of thing. And I also did a lot of structured interviews with people about, "How does the artwork make you feel? How do you feel about it?" And I got a lot of really rich perspectives from very diehard board gamers who are women. And they said, you know, "It does make me feel a bit weird, you know? If I'm playing with people, I don't know. And I'm playing something like Mage Knight. It doesn't make me feel like you know, this this character is clad all in leather, and she's very sexualized, and is everyone okay?" The whole group, like is someone going to make a snide joke, right? And it does make them feel a little unease, and it's that making do again, where you feel like, "Okay, well, I'm doing it. I love this game, but it just gives me a little bit of pause." Maybe when you're in a, you know, board game basement with a bunch of people and you're the only woman there and suddenly you're, you know, playing artwork that makes makes you feel a bit funny. So yeah, and so, you know, and it was really, really interesting to get the feedback from the board game community. And I actually heard from a number of publishers who were like, "We're gonna do better," and it made me feel really, really good. That there was there was some traction with this. It made me feel like this research, you know, is important to continue doing. I want to just, I know this is just audio, but I wanted to do a little quick shout out, because this made me actually burst into tears. I love sharing this. This is my favorite thing. So, Clarence Simpson, I have four copies of this on my shelf because it made me cry. He wrote, "Because of Tanya's work and my own personal experiences, I was determined to prominently feature a black woman on the cover of my upcoming game. Thankfully, my publisher obliged," so to your really good point, Dale, like, it's odd to see like a woman alone on a game. Here is a terrific example of the exception by far but just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And look how beautiful this artwork is. It's Merchants of Magick. It's a game by Clarence Simpson. And actually, when I got the suite, I just cried happy tears for quite some time. So it really it really made me feel good. Wyrmworks Publishing That's fantastic. And yeah, this is stuff where you go, "Yeah, it was it was it was worth it. It was, you know, my my work is making a difference and stuff like that." Yeah. Stuff you live for. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah. Oh, my God. And I got a great just a shout out. Everyone should follow Our Family Plays Games. I get to contribute to every every so often, a bunch of times a year to Starla, Mik, and Grant Fitchs' great channel, our family plays games. And I get to provide some of my research is literally the only place you can find my research right now because I've been chopping around a manuscript of my dissertation. Nobody wants it, which is unfortunate. I'm actually thinking I'm just gonna give it away. Online because Forget it. Because there's some really interesting research in the people who share their stories with me in my work. People should see it like it's I'm, I'm so lucky that I got so many responses back from the community and Board Game Geek. Shout out to them. Mostly BoardGameGeek users have gone back to me and told me these amazing stories about their experiences and many of them made me cry too. Happy tears and also, you know, a hard stories about inclusion. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So have you seen, I mean, you mentioned this one example. Have you seen other changes in the industry? I mean, you know, I think back and I think of, you know, like your sort of old classic games. You have the Monopoly man, of course, is kind of the quintessential, you know, white privilege, you know, everything, but and people don't get that when Monopoly was designed, like he was actually supposed to be like a caricature. He was he was supposed to be the like the villain. And, but, you know, games like Clue that have just, it's a, "Hey, you've got gender representation, but it's…oh…they're all white. And so, have you seen improvements in that? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda You know, it's, it's really kind of heartbreaking, just a small tale of woe. So I have, you know, initial real pickup of of some of the research, lots of like events, and I got invited to a bunch of things. And I just can't find the funding to continue this work, and it's really heartbreaking. So I had to get the day job because, you know, unless you're completely independently wealthy, you cannot do academic research. May I just tell you so I'm teaching like science and healthcare courses at a couple of local colleges. It's amazing. I love it so much. And I am an instructional designer. So I make pretty games for people to learn from, and it's, you know, my life is full circle, and Masterpiece taught me in the 70s or early 80s. And now I get to make little games for people to learn. And it's really, really fun. But there isn't a lot of money. There isn't a lot of so I've actually, Our Family Plays Games and I have applied for some grant funding to try and get something going on this topic, because I'd like to relaunch my research and refresh my data set because I, the research that I did was in 2021, and I would like to see what's going on now. Right? And so we've pitched and pitched and pitched and nobody is that interested? Because I think there's my supposition that the diversity, equity and inclusion in the discourse in popular culture had, people have kind of wandered off from it, and people have, in fact, it's even worse than that. I think they've they've said, "Well, thank God, that crisis is over. It's all over. We're good. Everything back to normal." And in fact, things have backslid even more, so it's worse worse than ever. And so I think the money and the interest in supporting this kind of work, I was actually completely shocked that you asked me to do this because nobody's that interested anymore. And I again, like I had some quiet conversations with publishers, and they were very happy to you know, make sympathetic noises, but then they kind of wandered off. So, yeah, I think we're not seeing a lot of progress. And I know people told me that when I started doing the research, like Yeah, people have tried this like, and I look at stuff even from the 70s. There was one piece that I included in my dissertation. I was like, this could have been written right now. It was written in 1971. And we're not making a ton of progress. And in fact, we're losing some ground, even if I may say so. It's, it is a little sad making and I think that I you know, there was a little dust up on X, formarly Twitter, the other day, and it made me think like, yeah, we're not making progress here, like, and I was kind of waiting out to say, "No, games…games are political." Like everything that we make is, right? Everything is shaped by what we know. And so if you have, you know, you don't have a disability, you're going to design something, and you don't know anyone with a disability, you're going to design something that is kind of oblivious to that lived experience. And I watched that all the time when I was working in software, and even when I was working in instructional design, where people were like, "Yeah, too bad if it's hard," like literally, and I remember thinking like, well, how does that help you sell things? And I was forever always telling my clients like you want to open up a bit. You want to like bring more people, like bigger tents, more money. Like, don't you like making money? And that was always heartbreaking to me. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's, it's so it's so weird and frustrating. Yeah, the fact that like, okay, so you are, you're excluding, you know, this huge group of people that have money and make purchasing decisions, you know, and stuff. It's like, don't you wanna invite them to give you their money? I mean, and you talk about the sort of, you know, bounce back. I've was recently listening to an interview, just with some in Hollywood, that when it comes to choosing TV shows and things like that, that, you know, the sort of prevailing attitude among people making decisions about what shows ended up getting the green light and ending up on TV are sort of going, "Well, yeah, you know, we did the inclusion and diversity thing, and so check, done," and, you know, now we go, it's like, "No, no, no, that's that That's not the point!" And so, yeah, there's sort of this attitude that like, oh, yeah, we took care of racism and sexism, and, you know, like, they're all done." Like, no! Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda It's, it's actually incredibly, and there are studies to prove it. And I actually got a little frustrated the other day, I started a tictoc account, you know, just because it was more to embarrass my daughter, I think because I'm again, totally old and she's, you know, 26, and one of the reasons I did was I got I got so tired of hearing this, you know, "Diversity doesn't sell," that horrible expression, "Go woke, go broke," and the numbers don't bear that out. So, you know, for example, if you put a a woman of color in the lead of family films, and actually Gina Davis, she has a foundation a research think tank that that Gina Davis, the Mensa and, you know, I think she's what is it? That's what's it called she shooting in cross country skiing. I forget. She's an Olympic champion. Beautiful, famous actress. She decided to do some structured research, some very high level market research about whether or not women in film and they have some amazing studies like that you're going to make about 17 to 19% more revenue if you put a woman, a woman of color, in the lead of a family film, for example. You're going to lose, and this is a different study, one that I was really struck by, something in the order of $380 million. And you're gonna lose 80% of your box office opening if your film does not include authentically diverse representation. So if you've got, you know, a black character in your film who's completely stereotypical, and he dies in the first or she dies or they die in the first few scenes, no one's going to go and see that movie. They're going to walk out, are going to ask for their money back and you're going to lose 80% of your total film budget in opening weekend. And this this great research team did this structured analysis and found that the opposite is true. Diversity does sell, and I'm actually gonna pop open a couple of these numbers because I want to remember. Yeah, 19% more revenue is earned by an organization that has a diverse management team, because they make better decisions. And the reason you want diversity on your teams, as an example, and this is something I saw working corporately for clients in a bunch of different sectors, is you're going to know, "Hey, you're designing a product that excludes disabled people and people with disabilities. Hey, this is not gonna appeal to women. So maybe maybe fix this, fix that fix, you know, fix the other thing. You're gonna lose, you're gonna make $21 million more if you put a person of color in the lead. You're going to make, yeah, you're gonna make gross 20 million more than you would have if you had a white lead character who was not a woman." So it's an, again, this was 300 or sorry, $32.2 million dollars in losses in a film without that authentically diverse representation. So the opposite is true. And I think that, you know, we're, again, we're backsliding, you know, there's a lot of sort of retrograde thinking happening right now. The reality is the the numbers are there. The structured analysis has been done, that verdict is in and the more you include, the more money you make, and what I find really fascinating, just as a sort of hobby horse of mine, is what I noticed in corporate boardrooms. When I used to advise CEOs and senior executives, I used to work in a number of large multinationals, is sometimes ideology is way stronger. Certain misunderstandings about cultures, certain misunderstanding about women, or you know, cultural groups or identities. That is always almost often stronger in those those kinds of discussions, than the profit motive. So I was at a conference once, and we both kind of came, there was a co-presenter and I were like, you know, ideology is way more powerful than capitalism, in the sense that you will make decisions. If you have this kind of power and you're not really curious about the world, that costs you money over and over and over again. You know, I'm a project manager, I'm a registered project manager as well. And there's a stat that we always talk about in project management, which is like 95% of projects fail. They do. Companies go under and it's often because they have these really miss, like huge misunderstandings about the world. They're not curious about other people. They make things for themselves. They don't solicit advice. They don't get diversity of perspective. They just lose money and they go under, right, and I really think that the board game, publisher, you know, the sector is making some really, really poor decisions, which I feel are rooted in some of these misunderstandings about inclusion. So that's my that's my rant. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, I, I I can't agree with you more. And, you know, I think it's really important to to say that, you know, that because that, you know, the flip side of this, of what you're saying is that, ideology aside, you want to make money, you know, don't exclude potential, you know, customers. And, you know, and yeah, there's that whole thing about being able to identify, you know, with characters in, you know, in whatever form of media you're consuming. That if you can identify with a character on some level that, like, the more you can, the more you're going to be a fan of that, the more you're going to put money toward that, and you know, and stuff. And, you know, and that's purely from a just a selfish, greedy standpoint, all right. But like if you actually care about making the world a better place, and improving people's lives, and, you know, the other part of that is, is, hey, you know, like, the world works better if we care about each other, and, and we pay attention to each other, and like, you're better off by being kind, than you would be by being completely greedy and selfish. So it's like you can, you can, you can do the greedy and selfish angle. To make money or you can be kind, either way, inclusion and representation and authentic representation is to your advantage. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah, you know, I have I have the great privilege of collaborating with a number of indigenous educators. And one of the things that they've taught me is communities, how we survive. Like and we were just rewatching, my partner and I, Lost the other day and it was like, "Live together die alone." Right? You you if you if you band together, you'll live, right? But if you decide to wander off on your own route, you know, radical individualism, you'll die alone, right? And that's the idea, and learning about like indigenous communities and learning about how these massive mega cities that existed in Ontario where I live, how they they had these incredibly sophisticated trading systems and trash collection and, and they were multicultural and they were huge, huge mega cities. At the Huron Wendat community as an example, I was privileged to work on a project, and the idea that the only way you survive as a species as a as a as a community is, is banding together, and that every single person was it was a strength based culture. So it's like what you're good at. And you bring everybody in because it keeps you alive and it it helps you flourish, and these communities flourished right? And with sophistication and science and crafting, the you would not believe like it very very similar to with just with a complete little aside, very similar to like kimono making, or samurai sword making. The Iroquoian culture has had this real protocol around pottery, and how you basically had to become a master. You had to, you know, work for, you know, at least eight years before you were able to touch a certain type of pottery, and you had to really demonstrate this incredible skill. And the idea there is when you're building you're building a product, you're making a game, you have to think about community. You have to bring people in, and I watched some publishers, and I think, "ou're just making stuff for yourself and your friends." You know, and I and I also I don't have time because I'm teaching so many courses, but I have a couple of like half started research pieces, one on the cull. There's this wonderful trend I'm observing on YouTube and other social media platforms, where white couples mostly are getting rid of their board game collections, because they're literally running out of room, and I keep thinking, "You got a saturated market, and you've got people who are literally saying, 'No more. I can't I can't take another big box game, and I don't need more miniatures. My my you know my partner is going to leave me if I bring on a more boxes into that house.'" And you know, people are renting a room and donating their collections, and it actually breaks my heart, because we're I'm worried that we'll have to do that at some point too. But we're a saturated market: white, you know, middle-aged, people who live in the suburbs, like my partner and I kind of are kind of that epicenter, and I can see it, and how can a board game publisher survive if we're your only target audience? Your market saturated, and I wrote a big rant, which I can definitely send out a link to about that. The same kind of dynamic I saw on personal computing is happening now in board games where it's like this misapprobation, that it's only this type of identity that cares about board games, but we're saturated. So where do you go now? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, all right. So you just rescued a genie from the hands of an efreeti. it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda You know, I thought a lot about this awesome question. And one of the things I've been thinking lately is I wish, and I know there's all kinds of reasons why this isn't the case. What I wish is that people were more open minded to learning new things. And I thought about the answer a lot. I actually was watching this I was listening to this podcast about it was Dr. Steve Hassan, who is an expert on cults. And he was making this really interesting neurological argument that we're often on automatic. His his argument was this: we're on automatic for most of our days. You know, there's a certain routine that you said, you kind of don't think about it. And you just gotta go about your day, and you're on, we're mostly on automatic. He said we're biological organisms. And we kind of create algorithms for ourselves, and we just sort of go through the day, and there's all sorts of really good reasons why that is. What I've noticed is people are not super willing for lots of good good reasons to take in new data and be okay with change. And I think a lot about change management in my other jobs. And so what I've noticed lately is, there might be new facts on the ground, and people were like, "Nope, doesn't fit the sort of autopilot algorithm that I've set up for myself during my day. I'm not taking any might you know, my brain is full. I know what I'm doing." And people are not agile and open minded enough, and I see this in a lot of you know, I saw this in the business world. I see it playing out in communities all around me where people are not able to take in that new information like the world is changing. We have to be adaptable to it. And, you know, progress is is how we also stay alive. And I wish people could take in new data in a way that allows them to shift and progress a little bit more. And what I've noticed is there's a real reaction to the new bit of information. Forget about it, that can't possibly be true, right. And so yeah, I wish people were a little bit more open and I there's all sorts of systemic reasons why that isn't the case. So I'm not blaming anyone necessarily, but I wish people could shift out of that automatic mode and take in more it take in new data. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Okay. Any other wishes besides that? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda So that will unleash I believe a whole bunch of things. I wish that not a single person in the world would go hungry. I wish for world peace. I think all of these things would flow from that. I wish that and I also really believe that nobody, I think we get the philosophy that anyone thinks they're better than somebody else has gotta go. I have no snobbery. And let me tell you, I used to be like, very, very scared of PhDs. And now I realize, oh, wait, nobody who has a PhD is any better than anybody else. Nobody that has any kind of expertise is any better than anybody else. If we could get rid of hierarchies, in communities of any kind. I think that would be such a wonderful thing, because nobody's any better than anybody else. It just means that I've gotten the chance to spend more time with a topic and you know, I get to do that research. I had the privilege to be able to do that research. But I yeah, I really wish that, you know, people didn't have the hierarchies and the snobbery and the gatekeeping because it happens in academia, just like it happens in game stores. So yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing No, absolutely right. That yeah, that's the one thing leads to another and to another. And so, yeah, the willingness to, to learn and to change and adapt, you know, kind of important from a growth and development standpoint. But yeah, it's hard. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yep. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. So what one message would you like to give women and other underrepresented people who are interested in gaming? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda There was a quote I love so much and for this reason alone, actually, it's I popped it into my dissertation because I love it so much. And I it was actually at my defense, I think I told the individual who told me this quote, or shared this with me. This woman approached me anonymously, through BoardGameGeek and she let me know who it was, but I can't attribute, and you know, she's a racialized woman. And she said, "Sometimes I don't leave the room." So her thing was, it's hard, but I don't leave the room. And sometimes that's all we have. And the idea here, and I actually, it really resonated with me because I knew when I was working in tech environments with like senior engineers and computer scientists, and when I was working in life sciences with like PhDs and, you know, senior physicists, it was really uncomfortable to be in those spaces. It was really, really uncomfortable. But I had something I had to convey to them because I had an expertise that they needed. And no matter how uncomfortable that space was, because I decided not to leave those rooms, I think I shifted perception. And, you know, that idea of like you know, it shouldn't have to be but stay strong. And try to affect change where you can and I know it's really really uncomfortable. I mean, I had a situation not too long ago where I was part of that academic group and it was so uncomfortable, and so unwelcoming. But I just wanted to stick with it, to show that, you know, I could handle it that I was, I was and I, I shifted the perception because I just sort of dug in because I'm…obstinacy is my superpower. And I was able to sort of shape and change that group. So that's it. But yeah, don't, you know, sometimes it can be really, really hard, and I think it's unfortunate that we have this burden, but you have to, you have to speak up. You have to try and you know, don't don't leave the room. Stick with it. And and try to remake your hobby in a way that you hope it might someday be. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, what what, what one message would you like to give to gamers who want to make their gaming spaces more welcoming to everyone? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah, you know, I actually just finished a lecture for a course that I'm teaching on on healthcare, and I invoke Captain Jean Luc Picard a ton, because it's sort of a management philosophy I love love love. And it's the idea that you know, "Options please." I super love consultative low power distance, which means no no one's above anybody else. I liked being a manager. That way when I was a corporate director, I was always like, "Tell me what you think, like, if you think what I'm saying is idiotic, please let me know." I want options. I want everyone to have the psychological safety to speak up and tell me what you'd like to see change. And you know, it created some uncomfortable conversations, no doubt. But if you're, you know, hosting a game event or you're, you know, trying to create a community like checking in with people and saying, you know, options, like what do you think what, what, what does everybody think around the table? I adore that. And I think you know, with Star Trek The Next Generation, it was one of the first times I saw like a management style like that, and I adored it, and I thought, That's it, right? Bring as many voices as you can into something, and you're gonna have, like, you're gonna have an amazing community. And you know, sometimes it's a lot of work, but my god the results you get, you know, that it pays dividends tenfold, twentyfold. And so bringing everybody in, trying to to, even when it's uncomfortable, like reshaping things, being agile, bringing in new information, don't be a gatekeeper. Listen to folks, because sometimes you'll be surprised you know, people…the "not real" "that's not a real game" conversation is probably the worst thing humanity's ever invented. Whenever I hear someone say, "That's not a real X," whatever it is, I think, "Oh, you've just you've just demonstrated that you're in a little, you're in a, you're blinkered, and you're not, you're not you're not, you're not being that that sort of openness and agility that we need to progress. So be like Captain Jean Luc Picard: "Options, please." Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so the projects that you're working on right now that you can talk about, you've kind of hinted about some…, Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Yeah, I you know, Our Family Plays Games Voices is — please follow them. They deserve three times the number of followers and subscribers they have on YouTube. They're amazing. They have been kind enough to let me sort of repost some of my gaming research on my channel, and I'm trying to get some energy and activity around, you know, maybe doing a next phase of my research, refreshing my dataset, because there's so much goodness there and I want to see, I want to give the community back the stuff they gave me through my research. I'm still debating what I'm going to do with my dissertation because it's… now I can do whatever I want with it. It's not in my library anymore, my university library, and I'm thinking maybe I give it away for free or I make video, a video series on the entire dissertation. Because some of the stories are spectacular. So. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so we'll have all your contact information in our show notes. Where's the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda That's great question. Well, they can probably find me on X which is @POBUDATANYA. And from there, there's a jumping off point to my…I share my YouTube videos on there, and I do have a YouTube channel as well, which is just TPOBUDA. Wyrmworks Publishing Hey, thanks so much for coming on the show. Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Dr. Tanya A. Pobuda Thank you so much. Wyrmworks Publishing Tanya, thanks so much for coming on our show. Just a really great time. I really appreciate the work and the research that's done, and I hope really to see more of that in the future. There's just so many things that many of us are unaware of and need to be pointed out. And you know, I mentioned at the beginning of the show about braille, and I thought, "Wow, it's 2024. And there are no braille tabletop roleplaying games." There's been some people have done some conversions for local organizations and things, but none of them have ever actually been published that way. And so we're trying to do something about that starting with digital braille. And, and so I hope that you'll support that. And just support in general more inclusivity and accessibility and tabletop roleplaying games so everybody can play. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, but there are a lot of people that are supporting that and a huge shout out to all of our patrons that help us on a monthly basis to continue our work to make the space more inclusive and more inviting and more accessible. And we have a new patron, Brian Gustafson. Thank you so much, Brian, for your support. We so appreciate our patrons and we have also added Foundry VTT support, and we're converting all of our products to Foundry. And if you follow our Patreon at at least the $5/month level, you get access to all of our Foundry products as they're released and whatever we already have there. And also speaking of accessibility, our products also have audio, narrative audio for those who benefit from that. And that's also something that nobody else does that we'd really like to see more of. So, really love it if anyone if you'd support us so that we can continue to do that and encourage the rest of the industry to follow that example. Wyrmworks Publishing Thanks to our patrons, we've also added Community Copies to our store every month for those who can't afford our products. And so if that's you, you can sign up for our weekly emails to get notified when they come available. And in fact, we already have a number of them available, because this month alone, we added $515 worth of free copies. So there's plenty there if you would like one or more of the different titles that are there. Patrons get access to all of our content in a modular format that we call the Lair which just recently updated to improve the navigation and to improve just the overall experience. And there's all kinds of exclusive extras, including these adventures and new monsters and magic items. We added the Foundry VTT access too that I mentioned. Higher tiers have all kinds of added benefits including having me run games for you and physical gifts mailed to you that we make in-house, custom gifts for you like a surprise box each month. And you can check out the link in the show notes for all those details. Wyrmworks Publishing Now if you see the show being helpful, please if you're watching this on YouTube, hit the like button. If you'd like to see more, wherever you're catching this, please subscribe. If you know people that need to hear this, please pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think everyone needs to hear this, then pass it on to your social media friends. And don't forget those podcast ratings. That is the number one way to spread the word. So thank you so much for joining us to make lives better with tabletop games!