Manveer Heir

Heir grew up in Rockville, Maryland and attended college at Virginia Tech, graduating in 2004 with a degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics.[1][2] He interned at Big Huge Games around 2005[1] before moving to Raven Software, at the time a subsidiary of Activision. At Raven, he worked for about four and a half years on the 2009 Wolfenstein game, initially as a gameplay programmer before moving to be a game designer for the title.[2] He had been named as lead designer on another unannounced product, prior to a period of financial difficulty at Raven that resulted in Activision ordering multiple layoffs and cancellation of the unannounced project for the studio to focus on support for the Call of Duty series.[2] Heir, while still employed there, was disappointed in Activision's decision to take away any work on new intellectual property and offload it to Bungie, and decided to quit the company.[3] Heir subsequently moved to BioWare Montreal around 2010, where he worked as a gameplay designer on Mass Effect 3 (2012) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017).[4]

Heir stated that, during development of Andromeda, he and other colleagues from the development team attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to convince the project leads to remove a perceived colonialist slant to the player's forcible colonization of alien planets.[5] Heir became the subject of harassment by the Gamergate movement shortly before the release of Andromeda in 2017, after they claimed that parts of the game, such as the appearances of female characters, forced a "liberal agenda" on players.[6] An online petition was started to try to have Heir fired from BioWare, though BioWare backed Heir.[6] However, after the development was completed but before Andromeda shipped, Heir made the willing choice to leave BioWare, citing that he had become weary over the last twelve years and experiencing crunch time, and grown tired of being told to keep quiet over his concerns about games, as well as being put off by the attitudes from the Gamergate movement.[7][5]

Heir has been outspoken on the need for video games to present better diversity of characters when it comes to race, gender, and other cultural alignments. Heir has said his views are not about achieving affirmative action within the video game industry, but believes better stories and gameplay can be had by considering underrepresented minorities as main characters, moving away from the typical "male power fantasy" that many video games present.[10][11]

One of his more recognized statements on diversity was given at the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in his talk "Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand?" where he challenged game developers to include more minority representation in video games, including women and LGBTQ, despite the fears the industry has had to focus games on these types of characters.[12] He started the talk that showed the top 25 games of 2013 all had male, Caucasians as the protagonist, and identified games, such as Grand Theft Auto V where while there may be underrepresented minorities, they frequently were treated as objects of ridicule. Heir struck down past claims that games featuring underrepresented minorities sold fewer than those featuring male and Caucasian characters. He argued that failure to include such characters could perpetuate misogyny and racism to youth, and because video games are built on fantasy rather than realism, developers are free to further inclusion of underrepresented minorities without pressure. In his talk, Heir pointed to Assassin's Creed III: Liberation and Papers, Please as games that effectively dealt with race and culture.[13][14] Heir's speech was well-received and considered one of the most important talks given at that year's GDC,[15] and Polygon named Heir one of the top 50 people in the video game industry in 2014 for his talk.[16]