天美影视传媒

Behind the mission

For Pace, who came out as gay at age 16, the DFL is a chance to combine the activism of their youth with a deep background in tech and gaming.

Much of Pace鈥檚 two decades of software development experience was spent at Microsoft, helping direct and produce everything from casual games to the Xbox flagship title Halo. And while Pace loved the creative challenge, the work environment was far from ideal.

鈥淰ideo game studios are still very much a cisgender, white, straight male world,鈥� Pace says. And it鈥檚 not often a very tolerant world, either. One need go no further than video game forums, chatrooms or comment boards to see offensive slurs tossed around casually 鈥� or, worse, to see targeted hate campaigns.

More broadly, the tech industry is often criticized for its dearth of diversity. in favor of whites and men, and against other groups.

So when Pace joined UW Bothell in 2012, they wanted to change that. The first step was hiring Braxton, a UW Bothell graduate who was committed to equity and social justice. Together, the two have focused their efforts on countering bias and toxic work culture. They have baked into the identity of the DFL what they call 鈥渞adical diversity鈥�: the intentional focus on maximizing and foregrounding difference on a team of people with different backgrounds, abilities and academic focuses.

In planned topic discussions or spontaneous conversations, some students might speak about the racism or sexism they鈥檝e experienced. Some might speak about neurological differences, or neurodiversity. For example, Pace, who has ADHD, likes to talk about how they have drastically different communication needs than people with Asperger鈥檚.

And some students, like Scout, who came out in the lab, talk about gender identity:

鈥淎fter four years of working in a space where my identity as a queer person, as a trans person, was not a negative, I feel way more comfortable with who I am,鈥� he says.

鈥淗ere, we鈥檙e not just accommodating different folks. We鈥檙e valuing their differences and looking for how they can be beneficial to everyone.鈥�

Ghostlight Manor goes commercial

In September, a handful of students and staff from the DFL had the opportunity to showcase their first commercial release, Ghostlight Manor 鈥� a game that is inspired by classic monster movies and聽arcade strategy games 鈥� at an open house hosted at Microsoft. Scores of game enthusiasts wandered among rows of computers, chatting with representatives from over 50 developers from around the world that were publishing their games on Xbox and Windows 10 devices.

Braxton watched as a woman gave Ghostlight Manor a try. A phalanx of unknown monsters, masked in white, advanced down the screen in serpentine fashion. The only defense was Lightbot, whose beams of light first revealed the monsters 鈥� ghosts, demons, vampires 鈥斅燼nd then scared them away.

鈥淥h my gosh!鈥� said the woman. She had just unmasked a pair of zombies, and they were mad.

Braxton smiled. 鈥淛ust to see how shiny and glitzy our product has become, and to see it standing up next to all these other titles, makes me really proud,鈥� she said.

The full PC/Mac version, just released, is available for full download on .