Representation Update at Pixelberry

Our Commitment

Last June, after realizing that we were not doing enough to represent Black, Latinx, and other cultures fairly in our stories, we pledged to do better. We did not design our plan for just short-term solutions, but instead to make sustainable changes to how we work and think as a studio. At the one year anniversary of our pledge, I’d like to review how Pixelberry has been trying to achieve these commitments.

Below, we’ve listed out each pledge we made last year, followed by an update on its progress.

Our Progress

Changes in Choices

“Commitment to diversity of Love Interests :

We’ve already been moving towards having Love Interests have customizable skin tones. We will continue to do this with some stories, while also having some characters with clear ethnic identities. 

At the same time when we have multiple love interests of different ethnicities, we are aiming for those Love Interests to have equal game time.”

While we tried to scramble to make fixes, a few books that were outlined prior to June 2020 still had the legacy of unequal representation. Newer books have worked to improve this and future 2021 releases will continue to build upon these improvements. 

Love interests that would have once been white males are now customizable by race, and often gender. Going forward, we'll continue to push on this, offering both more customizable love interests in some books, and a variety of love interests who are people of color (and equally represented in terms of screen time and number of premium scenes) in others.

“More authentic and diverse hairstyles for people of color:

Our team will focus on providing more authentic and representative hairstyles.

We are prioritizing these hairstyles outside of our normal book processes and will introduce them in new books as they are ready.”

Our art, writing, and production teams made this a priority. Our first set of more authentic and representative hairstyles have been received well. We have 10 more styles in progress for various genders, and will continue creating more over time.

“Stronger representative writing:

We will be engaging in professional training on historical and current racism for our writers to ensure more of them have a better understanding and more context for views of diverse characters in Choices.

We will also create a program that gives more authority to people of color in the studio to advise writers and artists on more authentic portrayals in both writing and art of black, brown, and minority characters.”

Two of our writing leaders have taken a workshop by the Racial Equity Institute. We are planning a studio-wide workshop together. The intent of this workshop is to help everyone in the studio better understand the historical context that has led to systemic racism. Our writing leadership team is also looking at specific events and training sessions for our writers, with a focus on exposing our writers to new ideas and cultural experiences that they might not have ever personally experienced in order to better understand our characters' perspectives.

Additionally, our writing team has created a Sensitivity Team comprised of members with different backgrounds to provide advice and to help with more authentic portrayals of characters from underrepresented groups. The Sensitivity Team has also assigned members to help with projects that deal with sensitive subject matters and given them the authority to help course correct and educate when an element of story might include something potentially problematic or insensitive. This team has also helped to introduce scenes that give a more realistic portrayal of the hardships minorities may face. Taking on additional responsibilities, like this, is recognized during annual reviews.

The Sensitivity Team is one of the very positive outcomes from our Representation Plan.

“More diverse book covers:

This is an initiative we started in January of this year. As a result, the number of Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, mixed, and other characters on new book covers increased from 35% of characters in 2019 to 60% characters in the first half of 2020.

However, the number of Black characters is still not high enough this year. More are already scheduled for books later this year. We will make sure that Black characters are well represented on our covers in the future.”

Since June 2020, people of color now represent 74% of main characters on covers with 18.5% being Black. For upcoming books in 2021, the percentage of Black characters on covers will increase to 27%.

“People of color-led stories:

A story with a Black-led cast is something I have asked for in the past, but failed to follow-up on. We will very likely start this with a Black-led cast story led by Chelsa, one of Pixelberry's Black writers.”

We have a Black cast led story in production. The team working on this book is taking the time necessary to make sure our first Black-led cast story is done well. This book is currently on track for a 2022 launch.

“Emphasis on hiring more diverse writers:

We will increase the number of diverse writers we source for new stories, starting with hiring more Black and Latinx writers to lead the charge.” 

We changed our hiring process for new writers to not require a professional writing credit to ensure we were not enforcing the systemic biases of the literary world in our hiring for writers. This resulted in us hiring new writers, including Black writers, who would not have passed the initial screen in its previous iteration. 

Changes at Pixelberry

“Source more Black, Latinx, and female candidates for positions at Pixelberry:

For all teams at Pixelberry we will actively work to bring in more Black and Latinx candidates with the goal to increase the number of Black and Latinx employees at Pixelberry.

Although Pixelberry is over 50% female, on teams where females are not at 50% we will actively work to source more female candidates.”

We have hired more Black and Latinx employees at Pixelberry this past year. We will continue trying to source more candidates of color to continue increasing the number of Black and Latinx employees in our studio. We are also continuing to try and expand the number of female candidates on teams where they are underrepresented.

In the past year, we have promoted both more women and women of color into leadership positions, including to our Management team.

Donations

“Pixelberry will also be making $100,000 in donations to Black Girls Code, the Black Writers Collective, and the Latinx Writers Collective at Techqueria. Rather than as a lump sum, we will be making these donations over the course of a year to remind us that we are not making short term changes, but are committed to long term sustainable actions. 

We’ll also be donating up to an additional $100k from profits for this week, 6/15-6/21.”

This past year, I’ve gotten to know the founders of both the Black Writers Collective and #TeenWritersProject better and wanted to share more about what they do.

The Black Writers Collective is a small, but established, nonprofit focused on linking Black writers together and supporting their talents. In addition to supporting them through donations, we are also helping them get the word out to more Black writers. Our Marketing team is volunteering their time and expertise to help the Black Writers Collective with digital marketing. This is a true collaboration between our teams, which has already resulted in new writers joining their collective. Our writing team is also working with the Black Writers Collective to hire writers for our stories which works well in supporting the goals of both our organizations.

#TeenWritersProject is a very small non-profit we were introduced to through the Black Writers Collective. Led by a Black woman who also started #BrownTeensRead as a teacher, the #TeenWritersProject has a responsibility to cultural equity rooted in their commitment to encourage all teens to write. Our hope is that our donation may help this non-profit establish its roots and grow. If you are a teen who is interested in writing, we encourage you to check them out on Instagram!

This past year, we made $50,000 in donations to Black Girls Code, the Black Writers Collective, #TeenWritersProject, Black Girls Code, and Techqueria. We love that our donations to the Black Writers Collective and #TeenWritersProject have a big impact on small nonprofits. But because we are now major supporters of these nonprofits, we realized it is better to donate smaller amounts over a much longer time period to help grow these worthwhile organizations over the long term. As a result, we will be making an additional $150,000 in donations over the course of several years to these and other nonprofits.

In Summary

I believe Pixelberry has made progress in meeting our commitments to make sure our stories better represent the world we live in. We have made changes to how we tell our stories and to the characters we present. More importantly, we have changed how we do things. We have partnered with and made donations to smaller nonprofits to grow important communities of Black writers and communities of underrepresented young writers. We aren’t done yet, and we know there is more hard work ahead of us. We are committed to continuing to improve representation in our stories and in our studio. 

Humbled and optimistic,

Oliver 

On behalf of our Pixelberry team