GAME ON - nDreams' Commitment to Events Safety
At nDreams, our teams love participating in industry events. They're a great way to connect with our peers in gaming, meet new people, get players hands-on with our games, and much more. But heartbreaking stories of harassment, unprofessionalism, and even assault that have emerged from recent events have not gone unnoticed.
We began by raising this as a subject for discussion with Athena – our employee resource group for marginalised genders – and quicky realised just how many of our nDreamers feel that discrimination and harassment are very real threats while attending events. These issues are so often unreported.
With GAME ON, we are committing to doing more to ensure that everyone can attend events with the awareness and security that there are people looking out for them, and to provide clear and signposted avenues for support if they feel unsafe.
We developed GAME ON and its areas of focus through consultations with numerous charities, professionals and events organisers – a special shout out to our partners Into Games, Limit Break, Out Making Games and UN Women UK – culminating in the creation of a framework that can help equip events organisers with the key requirements for fostering safe spaces.
Our events safety guide has already aided us and our nDreams teammates with our presence at industry events like Develop:Brighton and our very own nDreams Festival. The guidance was also adopted in an official capacity by the organisers of Guildford Games Festival.
GAME ON is in its early days, but we are proud of the work that's been done already and the collaborators we have worked with so far.
We hope that by sharing guidance and education around events safety, both internally to our teams and to the wider industry, we can play a part in creating environments where everyone feels comfortable and welcome. Ultimately, we want to support anyone running an event, whatever the scale, to make their own codes of conduct and events safety policies more robust with trusted guidance.
The first step towards achieving this is the publiction of our events safety documents for use as a guide for your own events safety work. While it should be viewed as a starting point rather than the whole piece, and will require case-by-case adaptation depending on what you are hoping to achieve, we believe it is a solid foundation from which to build.
Its contents include:
- A format for you to adapt and supply to your event's attendees.
- Space for key event-specific info and points of contact.
- Identification of some problematic behaviours to be mindful of.
- Advice on how to call out a co-worker or friend, and how to escalate concerns and complaints.
But we want to ensure that we are bringing many into the conversation, to gather a large variety of thoughts and opinions. This is ongoing work – we are always looking to improve both our internal guidance and practices, and the resources we make available to the wider industry. If you would like to get involved, contact us at game.on@ndreams.com.
Below you can find two template documents to use as a guide for your own events safety work, with best practises that can be applied to any event. The first is for those organising events, which is where GAME ON is especially motivated to make an impact. The second is a variant for companies or individuals who are attending or exhibiting at external events, based on the guidance we give our own team members at nDreams.
