Fans and industry watchers have taken online to criticize Summer Game Fest for lack of representation following the opening live stream of the show's 2023 iteration. The latest edition of SGF started on June 8 with a two-hour broadcast which featured dozens of high-profile announcements, including the long-awaited confirmation of the Spider-Man 2 release date.While E3 may never recover from its 2023 cancellation, Summer Game Fest has already been doing a good job at filling the role of an action-packed mid-year gaming event ever since it started in 2020. And though the fourth edition of the show seems likely to reach even greater heights in terms of popularity, many believe that this increase in profile should also bear a larger social responsibility, especially as it pertains to promoting inclusiveness.Some prominent industry watchers hence opted to criticize Summer Game Fest over its lack of representation in the show's opening showcase held on June 8. One such perspective came from Cecilia D'Anastasio, a Bloomberg reporter and recipient of multiple awards honoring her coverage of sexual harassment at Riot Games and other influential investigative journalism efforts centered on the gaming industry. D'Anastasio today took to Twitter to express her surprise at the fact that Summer Game Fest 2023 featured "not a single woman on stage" across its two-hour runtime.
Ash Parrish, a veteran gaming reporter specializing in marginalized communities, expressed a similar sentiment on Twitter, having sarcastically asked SGF organizer Geoff Keighley to feature a woman at the event "for one dollar." Her subsequent opinion piece published on The Verge minced no words, labeling one of the biggest industry events of the year a "failure" for not being inclusive of "the women, trans, and non-binary people" who are very much part of the video game industry and thus make showcases like Summer Game Fest possible.
While many fans joined in this online criticism of the Summer Game Fest organizers, others chose to direct their frustrations over the event's lack of representation at the publishers, i.e., the ones who picked the all-male cast that presented at the opening showcase. Others still posited that the blame is on all the industry to bear. One such sentiment was shared by gaming-focused PR specialist Natalie Flores, who pointed to the opening showcase of Summer Game Fest 2023 as yet another example of how "disappointing" it is "to love an industry that will never love you back."
While many of the actual games that have so far made an appearance at SGF 2023 featured more diverse character casts compared to the event's presenters, the medium, on the whole, still has ways to go in terms of inclusivity.
Source: The Verge