Tanya DePass

DePass was a fan of tabletop and video games from her early childhood.[1] She has written articles on topics of diversity, feminism, and race, for publications including Polygon and Vice,[1] and provides diversity consultation services to game development studios and organizations.[1] She is the programming & diversity coordinator for OrcaCon and GaymerX.[2] DePass is the editor of Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins (2018), an anthology of essays from games industry professionals and players who felt marginalized by the industry.[1][3] Additionally, she is a 2020 Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow at USC.[4]

DePass is the co-developer for the Fifth Season RPG, based on N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2020).[5] Her work has been featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Design/Play/Disrupt exhibit.[1]

Online, DePass goes by the username Cypheroftyr.[6] She is a streamer on Twitch, where she has faced harassment.[7] In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, DePass ran a charity stream to raise funds for The Bail Project—the stream raised over $140,000 USD in a single day.[8]

She also plays Dungeons & Dragons in the Rivals of Waterdeep actual play livestream, which features a cast of people of color.[9][10] The show began in 2018 in Chicago as an official Wizards of the Coast production, broadcast on the official Dungeons & Dragons Twitch channel.[11] She is also the creative director of the Cortex actual play series Into the Mother Lands.[12]

Fireside Magazine, for which DePass was the special features editor, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2019.[13] In 2020, the Diana Jones Award was devoted to "Black Excellence in Gaming", with the committee awarding two dozen black people in the industry specifically, including DePass.[14] Kotaku named DePass one of their 4 "Gamers of the Year" for 2020.[15]

In 2014, DePass used the hashtag #INeedDiverseGames while responding to a statement from Ubisoft claiming that it would not be feasible to animate female characters for the upcoming Assassin's Creed game.[1][16] DePass has said she is "sick of games where I don't get to be the hero".[17] Despite pre-dating the controversy, the hashtag became particularly popular during the Gamergate harassment campaign, when it was one of several used in anti-Gamergate tweets. Tweets using the hashtag were primarily those sharing positive messages about a desire for increased diversity and broader representation in video games.[18]

DePass founded a non-profit using the name I Need Diverse Games in August 2016.[1][16][19] The organization, based in Chicago,[16] aims to support visibility and access for underrepresented people within the video games industry, and is funded through Patreon and fundraising campaigns.[16] One of the organization's initiatives is to provide financial support and passes to video game conferences such as the Game Developers Conference.[16] As of 2020, I Need Diverse Games was sending about two dozen people to the Game Developers Conference each year.[20] The organization also runs seminars on diversity at other games industry events, and highlights the work of underrepresented people.[1][20]

• Official website