Tanya Colleen DePass | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1973 (age 50–51) |
| Years active | 2014–present |
Tanya DePass (born 1973), also known by her username Cypheroftyr, is an American journalist, activist and streamer. She is the founder of the non-profit organization I Need Diverse Games, which she established in 2016.
DePass grew up in a poor family in Chicago.[1] She has been a fan of tabletop and video games from her early childhood.[2] She has recalled that "games were another way to flex my imagination. I loved reading, and I treated it as an extension of being able to read and go to these different places – in games you can literally visit another world... It was an escape, it was relaxing, it was formative"; she stated that she learned Black and queer characters were only given "incidental" roles and that "people who look like me" were not "full character[s]...who get to save the world".[1]
DePass has written articles on topics of diversity, feminism, and race, for publications including Polygon and Vice,[2] and provides diversity consultation services to game development studios and organizations.[2] She is the programming & diversity coordinator for OrcaCon and GaymerX.[3] DePass is the editor of Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins (2018), an anthology of essays from games industry professionals and players who felt marginalized by the industry.[2][4] Additionally, she is a 2020 Annenberg Innovation Lab Civic Media Fellow at USC.[5]
DePass is the co-developer for the Fifth Season RPG, based on N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2020).[6][7] Her work has been featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Design/Play/Disrupt exhibit.[2]
Online, DePass goes by the username Cypheroftyr.[8] She is a streamer on Twitch, where she has faced harassment.[9] In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, DePass ran a charity stream to raise funds for The Bail Project—the stream raised over $140,000 USD in a single day.[10][1]
Fireside Magazine, for which DePass was the special features editor, was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2019.[11] In 2020, the Diana Jones Award was devoted to "Black Excellence in Gaming", with the committee awarding two dozen black people in the industry specifically, including DePass.[12] Kotaku named DePass one of their 4 "Gamers of the Year" for 2020.[13] She was also named one of the inaugural Future Class at The Game Awards 2020.[14]
Her work to make the industry more inclusive has been highlighted in the film Game Changer, directed by basketball player Tina Charles.[15][16][17] The short documentary premiered at Tribeca 2021.[citation needed]
In 2014, DePass used the hashtag #INeedDiverseGames while responding to a statement from Ubisoft claiming that it would not be feasible to animate female characters for the upcoming Assassin's Creed game.[2][18][1] DePass has said she is "sick of games where I don't get to be the hero".[19] Despite pre-dating the controversy, the hashtag became particularly popular during the Gamergate harassment campaign, when it was one of several used in anti-Gamergate tweets. Tweets using the hashtag were primarily those sharing positive messages about a desire for increased diversity and broader representation in video games.[20]
DePass founded a non-profit using the name I Need Diverse Games in August 2016.[2][18][21] The organization, based in Chicago,[18] aims to support visibility and access for underrepresented people within the video games industry, and is funded through Patreon and fundraising campaigns.[18] One of the organization's initiatives is to provide financial support and passes to video game conferences such as the Game Developers Conference.[18] As of 2020, I Need Diverse Games was sending about two dozen people to the Game Developers Conference each year.[22] The organization also runs seminars on diversity at other games industry events, and highlights the work of underrepresented people.[2][22]
DePass plays Dungeons & Dragons in the Rivals of Waterdeep actual play livestream, which features a cast of people of color.[23][24] The show began in 2018 in Chicago as an official Wizards of the Coast production, broadcast on the official Dungeons & Dragons Twitch channel.[25] She is also the creative director of the Cortex actual play series Into the Mother Lands.[26][27] In 2021, DePass became a player in The Black Dice Society, a Ravenloft themed Dungeons & Dragons actual play show on the official Wizards of the Coast channels.[28][29]