Profile photo of Al(ex) Rosenberg (Originally posted at Autostraddle) Posted by on November 10, 2015 at 7:00am UTC

It can be dangerous to meet the people you internet-admire. There’s the possibility that they’re simply not as cool in real life as they are online. It’s easier to seem successful and put-together when you have time to carefully craft responses on a screen. It’s safer to be a fan when there’s considerable distance involved.

Then there’s another danger: that they are even cooler in real life than their Twitter persona suggests. Such is the case when it comes to Tanya DePass, gaming badass. Tanya, a queer woman gamer of color, is a force within the online gaming community and meeting her made me incredibly nervous.

On October 7th, 2014 Tanya tweeted “#INeedDiverseGames because I am tired of the same variant of scruffy white dude protagonists in every game I buy.”

Soon the internet would rally around this hashtag, each non-white, non-dude gamer aching for the same thing. Tanya had tapped into something the gaming community has been struggling with since its inception.

Read the rest at Autostraddle

Published by cypheroftyr

Tanya DePass is the founder and Director of I Need Diverse Games, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, which is dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. I Need Diverse Games serves the community by supporting marginalized developers attend the Game Developer Conference by participating in the GDC Scholarship program, helps assist attendance at other industry events, and is seeking partnership with organizations and initiatives. Tanya is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves everything about gaming, #INeedDiverseGames spawn point, and wants to make it better and more inclusive for everyone. She founded and was the EIC of Fresh Out of Tokens podcast where games culture was discussed and viewed through a lense of feminism, intersectionality and diversity. Now she’s a co-host on Spawn on Me Podcast. Along with all of that, she’s the Programming Coordinator for OrcaCon, she often speaks on issues of diversity, feminism, race, intersectionality & other topics at multiple conventions throughout the year. Her writing about games and games critique appears in Uncanny Magazine, Polygon, Wiscon Chronicles, Vice Gaming, Paste Games, Mic, and other publications.