The biggest takeaway from the horrors 2025 has produced so far is the importance of community and support. Especially with marginalized and minority groups within gaming, where cuts of DEI programs and the “war against woke” have led to a significant spike in developer harassment online, having that group who can help support you and succeed in this space is the best way to cut through the vitriol and hate.
One key organization in the fight to raise marginalized developers is Latinx in Gaming, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit in the US and throughout every Latin American country. We sat down with Elaine Gómez, one of the six co-founders of Latinx in Gaming, to talk about what issues they’re facing politically and in the games industry in 2025 and how their efforts to support their community are only getting stronger.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
For those unaware of Latinx in Gaming and where they started, they were initially a special interest group. As Gómez put it, “We started off as a group, a special interest group under the International Game Developers Association in 2017. Then, in 2020, we decided to go for 501 (c) (3) nonprofit status so that we could be more of a charitable organization that gave back to the community.”
Why that shift? Primarily, transparency. Gómez continued, “It was hard to do events and any initiative to ask folks for money, because they wouldn’t know where their money was going towards, since we were just like a group of folks that wanted to make a difference. [Switching to a 501 (c) (3) status was] what we decided to do, and then we’ve been doing that ever since.” Since then, the organization has grown into a multi-disciplinary organization full of game industry professionals.
“The majority of our community are game developers, so we support anything that helps them succeed.”
A major game industry issue is the tight job market. Regular layoffs and studio shuttering have made finding a job in this industry more challenging than ever. Elaine Gómez talked about one of the key offerings Latinx in Gaming makes to help during these times: professional development.
“The job market in games is really tough, so we’re trying and doing our best to figure out ways to support that. Whether that is to share job postings so that people have visibility, resume reviews, cover letter reviews, and just helping connect people to the right people so that they can find job opportunities.”
Latinx in Gaming also has opportunities to fund developers. “Whether that is through an investor fund so that we can get a few $1,000 out to them, or through game jams that they win, so that they can win anywhere between a few $100 and a few $1000, all of that goes to them, and that’s how we are trying to support financially.”
“We also have some grant programs that we have been running every year for the past three years. Those are pretty much for anything developers or anybody in the community needs. That tends to be hardware or software. So we’re talking about peripherals. We’re talking about computer upgrades, licenses to things like Adobe Creative suites, and conferences.”
Latinx in Gaming wants to help Latin Americans attend conferences in the US.
Conference attendance, like GDC, PAX East, and Gamescom, is a fantastic way for game developers to network and showcase their games to those who can provide additional funding. But that cost is very high, especially for smaller developers on a tighter budget and even more so for those whose local currencies must be converted to the US dollar, meaning attendance can be prohibitive.
Gómez went into those costs and how exclusionary they can be for Latin Americans outside the US. “When Latinx in Gaming community members live in Latin America, the exchange rate between the US dollar and their local currency is high. So when you’re asking folks to come showcase their games at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in their currency, we’re talking about the equivalent of, like, $5, $6, $7,000, and that’s not an easy amount of money to come up with. If we could take some of that burden off their shoulders, we feel that they could focus on the things that they need to do, which is create.”
In addition to monetary support, a growing issue, particularly in the US, is safety and safe entry into the country. When the US is seen as the hub of game conferences, with PAX East, PAX West, GDC, Summer Games Fest, and more, 2025 has made one challenge even harder: visiting the US. A major challenge with this has come from being a nonprofit.
Gómez went into this growing political issue they’re facing. “We have to stay neutral, but the reality is that our community is in need, and we’re trying to figure out ways to help them, regardless of what challenge they’re going through. We have seen some folks who are scared.” Elaine continued, “They’re having conversations about the political climate at their jobs, or folks that do not know whether or not they should come back to school in the US, or if they should continue looking for work in the US, or if they should stay in their countries, or even go to Europe or another continent to look for work.”
Elaine Gómez talks about Gamescom LATAM.
Growing efforts globally have also helped the Latin American region in recent years. Even though I knew about many game events, Elaine Gómez talked about a newer one I had never heard of. Gamescom LATAM. “So I don’t know if you’ve heard of Gamescom LATAM, which started this year, I believe, because it used to be called BIG, if I’m not mistaken. [BIG] was the biggest indie game festival in Brazil.”
And this new event came out swinging. Gómez continued, “But it turned to games from LATAM. They shared their metrics a few days ago, and they had about 130,000 people show. So much more, actually, than GDC. 130,000 people is a lot. Yeah, so our region is growing, and there’s a lot of interest.”
A showing of this size is a prime way to show the interest in growing the games industry in LATAM to the rest of the world, with larger markets, and that they may not have to leave home to find opportunities to create what they love. “People now are seeing that there’s so much traffic. There’s so much interest that they will invest in games and developers already in Latin America, that they don’t have to leave to find opportunities.”
Additional efforts are being made within Latin America to address the visibility of the games industry in these countries and communities. Elaine gave an example of one developer in Panama, “His name is David Lucio, and he has put together the Latin America Game Showcase. He’s been working with the Game Awards, Summer Game Fest, and other folks to literally put together a showcase of Latin American-made games. He has done so, I believe, over the past two to three years, and it’s garnered a lot of attention.” Latinx in Gaming has been in talks with David about growing the Latin America Game Showcase.
Elaine continued, “As Latinx in Gaming, we have already been in talks with David to be like, ‘Okay, how can we boost you? How can we support the work that you’re doing? And then on our end, what can we do as a community to assemble something, create something that will also give those folks visibility?”
“We have also seen a lot of like resistance and resilience from within, which is really nice to hear.”
Here in the US, company cuts have also targeted DEI initiatives, and companies are going back to more by-the-books development for larger companies. Sell what is safe and almost guaranteed to make money. Gómez talked about the chats they’re having with developers at some of the companies to make sure marginalized voices are heard throughout the game development process.
“We’re having chats with them, and then we’re seeing what their new focus is. Because there are some companies that, although at the executive level, have been told that DEI is deprioritized, the more mid-level where the work is happening, they’re still like, ‘No, we’re doubling down, we’re doing what we can, we’re retargeting, or we’re renaming things. We still believe in this.”
Elaine continued discussing how Latinx in Gaming and marginalized developers adapt to this top-down deprioritization. “Sometimes you feel like you’re fighting on your own, but there are people who are fighting with us and for us. We’re just looking for alternatives or trying to circumvent certain things, restructure, replan, and re-strategize, and that’s okay. I think you evolve. So that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”
The resistance to executives backing away or bending the knee is not new for Latinx in Gaming. Gómez added, “We have been around for eight years. This is not our first rodeo, and it won’t be our last. This will not be the first or last time we’re going to see a big challenge pop up that will affect us and other orgs as well, because we’re not the only org with a community fighting for people within the industry….When we are talking together, encouraging each other, and trying to support each other as much as possible, that doesn’t feel as daunting and scary, because you’re not doing it by yourself.”
Gómez explained the resources Latinx in Gaming has available and what they want to make.
For those who are in Latin America and don’t know where to go or even get started in game development, Latinx in Gaming should be the place to look. “We do have a learning resource on our website called ‘La Escuelita’ where we do have a few little things in all disciplines that are in Spanish, so that people can learn anything from like, what is a shader to what is gameplay programming, or what is production, what is project management, things like that, all in Spanish.”
Other issues that many consumers may not think about are primarily about development tools, and how they are primarily in English. Gómez added, “What we are seeing is that materials to learn game development or game design are always in English. So that’s something that we’re also trying to mitigate. Because if we can find those resources and get permissions to translate them into Spanish or Portuguese, that could be life-changing for a developer.”
The same is true for the aforementioned growing LATAM conferences; finding resources about who is developing where is tough. Gómez told me that it is a project she would love to work on. “There is no such thing as a Latin America games directory where you can go and see, ‘oh, what are the games being made in Mexico or Peru or Colombia?’ That doesn’t exist yet.”
Gómez continued, “So that’s something that’s like in my heart that I want to do, and I know it’s gonna take time and effort, but I would love for our website to have a directory like that, where people can have a one stop shop and it goes directly to the games or the developers website or their Steam page. We’re not gaining anything else and giving them visibility with our audience, with our community across the globe.”
Elaine talks about Latinx in Gaming’s plans and goals for the upcoming year.
Finally, we discussed what efforts are planned for 2025, what Elaine and the Latinx in Gaming community are excited for this year, and beyond. “On November 22, 2024, we created three goals: strengthen our relationships with our partners who are doubling down on DEI and are really about what we do, empower and support the professional development of game developers in our community, and then the third was to highlight the work being done in the community. So all our initiatives this year are circled around those three things.”
Going into more detail, Gómez added, “With professional development, we’re trying to figure out our career fair. We have been having one for the past couple of years. But this year, with the state of the industry, it’s got so incredibly tough that we’re shifting our focus to job readiness. So hosting a week during the summer where we can do cover letter reviews, portfolio reviews, resume reviews, do mock interviews, so that people feel more confident and ready to have those interviews, as well as providing just resources in general, informational type of things that people can take with them in their hunt.”
Gómez continued with events that highlight LATAM development: “We’re also going to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, like we do every year, and we’re really excited to get efforts around showcasing games this year for the first time. So we’re in talks with several sponsors to do that, both a digital showcase and perhaps an in-person showcase as well as PAX West. We’re gonna do our annual Game Jam as well for Hispanic Heritage Month.”
Elaine finished by talking about the grants program Latinx in Gaming has, “[The Grant Program] focuses on how we can help people alleviate their financial strains. Last year, our sponsors were Amazon Games and Logitech, so we’re hoping that perhaps you can get them again or more people, so that we can get folks some more licenses and things that they may need, some upgrades to peripherals, maybe upgrades to computers. We are in talks to figure out how to build a GDC scholarship for 2026, for the funds to travel and to have a place to stay.
The best way to end this is not just highlighting the good Latinx in Gaming has done, but with a quote Elaine Gómez gave during our chat that really highlights her and the rest of her colleagues’ work, one about the importance of community. “I’m just happy to be able to help people and to have a community still, because I think more now than ever, that’s what we need. We need to unite, and we need to find common ground.”
Please check out Latinx in Gaming to learn more about their efforts to support game development communities in Latin America.
