Cristina Amaya has a very simple goal for Latinx in Gaming, the nonprofit she cofounded that aims to connect video game-loving Latines and help them thrive in the industry. “I don’t want us to exist five years from now because we won’t need to,” she said during Thursday’s Refinery29 Twitch stream. “The end goal is that we have everything we need … There are just so many resources within companies, within schools, networks that exist [that] it should be easy for Latines to enter the workforce and come into gaming the same way it might be with other folks.”
Speaking with R29 Entertainment Director and Twitch host Melissah Yang, Amaya — who has about a decade of experience in the gaming industry, having worked at companies like Twitch, Unity Technologies, and the now-shuttered Google Stadia — admits it’s a lofty goal. But it’s what has driven Amaya since she got her own start. Before launching her career in gaming, she didn’t have any related educational background or professional experience apart from running a World of Warcraft guild. Like you would in any other industry, she’d attend networking events and conferences, but never felt like any of them spoke directly to her. After noticing panels for specific groups — think women in gaming and Black people in gaming — she had a thought: Why were there never any events for the vast Latine community?
So, she and a friend decided to try and generate interest and held a small panel. “We had, like, 60 people attend the panel and it was really emotional,” she said. “It was full of conversations that all of us had wanted to have for so long, but couldn’t have.” That experience solidified the need for a group like Latinx in Gaming, and they became an official nonprofit in 2020.
Today, the organization has about 10,000 members and is constantly working on outreach. Its primary focus? Getting Latines jobs in the game industry. They provide resources to different communities and post job listings on their social accounts, helping make much-needed connections. They held a career-fair earlier this year, and Amaya says they saw about 10 people actually get hired as a result. They also help companies form Latine-specific employee resource groups, which provide safe, inclusive spaces for people in a community to come together and talk about the issues they are facing.
“Maybe this sounds like we’re doing too much, but [we want] all of it. I would love to see characters that are Latino and diverse. I would love to see big content creators that are Latino. I want to see it top to bottom,” Amaya says, explaining she hopes to see the video game equivalent of something like the Pixar movie Coco, which celebrated Mexican culture on screen and behind the scenes. “[There’s] representation, in terms of who we have at the studios. We’re still such a small percentage — at some companies, below 1 percent, and at some companies, at most, 5 to 10 percent of staff is Latinx — and that’s a shame, right? We should be at the table telling our story.”
She continues: “Being Latino, being Latinx, being Latine is pretty diverse. We are not a one-size-fits-all community. There’s no way to be able to tell one story in a way that relates to all of us … There’s a beauty in the diversity of being Latine that I think is really cool. And I really wish we could bring that forward not just in the games that we make and the content that we create, but also within the workplace.”
Next up on Amaya’s quest to ensure the world doesn’t need her nonprofit anymore? Creating space for the next generation to come in, voice their opinions, and help shape what the future of gaming will look like — both for them and any other Latine person who will follow. “What am I missing now that the younger generation has? I’m hopeful, too, that we can get those insights into the community and grow multi-generationally,” she says. “One of the most important things is that what I do has an impact for the future generations. It’s so fulfilling and rewarding to see younger Latines get those opportunities and advance and succeed.”
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