Bandai Namco Online shares views on DEI and its implementation in Western releases of Japanese games 

At Japan’s CEDEC 2024 (Computer Entertainment Developers Conference), Bandai Namco Online held a seminar on the topic of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in games, particularly Japanese titles aiming for overseas expansion (as reported by 4Gamer). 

Bandai Namco Online is Bandai Namco HD’s subsidiary that develops and distributes online games. Up until 2023, the company mostly produced Japan or Asia-exclusive titles, but has recently moved towards targeting Western audiences as well. Specifically, they developed MMORPG Blue Protocol and Gundam Evolution (now discontinued) with overseas expansion in mind. 

Against this background, the company has, according to their quality assurance engineer, come to place importance on DEI. It seems Bandai Namco Online first became aware of DEI through feedback received from overseas partner companies. 

Based on the contents of the seminar, Bandai Namco Online currently sees DEI, when used correctly, as a potential method to broaden the scope of their content and make it attractive to a wider range of players. On the topic of the actual relevance of DEI in the West, they cite a survey conducted by Newzoo, in which 55% of respondents (from the US and UK) agreed either strongly or somewhat to the question “Is DEI important to you?” They also cite a survey result that showed that American and British gamers tend to project themselves onto game characters. 

In this sense, the DEI Bandai Namco Online are exploring seems to revolve around things like including more diverse hairstyles, facial features and body types to character creation as well as making NPCs more diverse in appearance and age. They seem to also consider accessibility options to be a part of DEI, as part of the seminar lauds the efforts of recent Japanese fighting games (likely Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8) in making their controls more accessible. 

Interestingly, Bandai’s presenter admits to initially questioning whether DEI is really necessary in game content, and they stress that being excessive in pursuing diversity can harm a game’s setting and come off as performative (they give the example of a game set in a rural Japanese school where half of the students are foreigners). 

The company seems to be proactively raising the staff’s understanding on DEI topics like gender and cultural differences through in-house training, but also stress that they are not introducing any kind of binding policy on their developers. They also mention doing research on Japanese games that have performed well in the West without making special efforts towards implementing DEI, which suggest the developer may still be in the process of forming an answer.