“This widespread embrace of gaming and its global communities have turned video games into the world’s leading cultural industry […] but it also comes at a time when digital life includes a growing toxic stew of hate speech, bigotry, and misogyny.”
– Xbox head Phil Spencer discusses the responsibility the game industry has to create inclusive and safe communities.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer says that there are two fundamental truths to video games: “gaming is for everyone” and “gaming must promote and protect the safety of all.”
Those two statements set the stage for Spencer’s recent post on the Microsoft blog where he discusses the evolving place video games have in society. In that post, he walks through how the teams at Microsoft and Xbox are endeavoring to “thoughtfully and deliberately continue building a safe and inclusive gaming environment for everyone.”
Spencer breaks Xbox’s guiding principles down into three key commitments: to be vigilant, proactive, and swift, to empower players to safeguard their experience the way they want, and to work across the game industry on safety measures.
Part of those efforts is the creation of the new For Everyone portal on the Xbox website that offers information on the tools Xbox has to support inclusivity, accessibility, and safety, or the ongoing development of tools to help players “reduce, filter, and develop a shared understanding of toxic experiences.”
Spencer details other actions the Xbox team and Microsoft are taking to further those goals in his full post, and implores other members of the game community to take those same principles to heart and help foster an accessible and safe community.