Meet the Committee: Estevan Aviles
Estevan Aviles, a native Austinite and life-long gamer, serves as a Festival Programming Specialist for the SXSW Gaming Festival. Responsible for all the “fun” things that take place during SXSW Gaming, such as organized play, cosplay, panels, and parties, Estevan leverages his extensive experience in gaming alongside the explosive creativity of SXSW to create one of the most unique gaming festivals in the country. He also contributes extensively to the broader gaming community through several local and international initiatives which help to spread awareness and engagement for the gaming industry as a whole. Whenever he’s not working in a professional capacity, Estevan can be found happily enjoying the latest game releases at home with friends and family.
What got you interested in helping with the planning of Game Chica?
Women in STEM, and especially in gaming, deserve to have more resources available for them to succeed and be encouraged to participate in these respective fields. When I learned that Game Chica was an initiative to do just this in my own local community, I just had to get involved!
Tell us about a challenge you’ve faced in your career and what you learned from it.
The largest challenge I face is establishing a shared sense of purpose. Whether that’s among the team I work with, or the audiences we serve, the most important part of any project is to have emotional buy in (purpose) from everyone. We don’t just create a fun festival each year at SXSW, we create a platform for creative people to achieve their goals. We see issues that matter most in the global social arena and then tackle them head on during each event. And so in this vein, I’ve had to learn how to work past my deepest personal interests and instead focus on a much broader communal perspective for the work that I do, which has led to much more success overall. Because again, once you share the same purpose between yourself, your team, and your audiences, it makes what you’re working for much more rewarding and easy to do.
What do you like the most about your job?
The creative fluidity and freedom that festival management allows for (especially at SXSW) is invaluable. I am forever grateful that I can come into work each day and think of some crazy new idea to try out, and whether or not it succeeds, I’ll still be able to go through with the full process of bringing it to life. And then when things actually do work out and succeed, there’s nothing that can beat it!
What would you tell your 18-year-old self?
Always be compassionate. It’s easy when you’re younger to think of your own goals and your own priorities first, but in the end, no one gets ahead with only themselves. Always be sure to spend your time fostering relationships with others and to be compassionate, caring, and helpful in allowing them to advance further in their lives alongside yourself.
Tell us about someone who motivated you to pursue this career path.
My mentor at SXSW when I was first an intern was Matthew Crump, someone who truly inspired everyone to be the best person they could be. As a veteran member of the gaming industry for nearly 20 years, he taught me the importance of maintaining meaningful relationships throughout your career and just how important of an impact you can make on others lives with the work you do. He inspires me to this day to make the most of my position at SXSW and to make sure I’m always doing great things for as many people as possible. I don’t think I could have found as rewarding of a career path as the one I’m on now thanks to Matt.
When did you discover gaming was your passion?
We all start somewhere with games, and mine was joining neighborhood friends who had just gotten the Nintendo 64 when we were kids here in Austin. Ever since then, I grew up playing each new console, all the new games, and partaking in dozens of gaming culture events with both friends and family. At the end of the day, the community aspect of gaming (contrary to the common belief that we’re all isolated individuals) really got me hooked on it. While I was never able to be a designer or developer, I never stopped pursuing games as a career path where I could someday make an impact on the community in my own unique way.
Why is it important to have diversity in the gaming workforce?
Diversity is the key to innovation. Without it, you would only be capable of doing as much as is limited to yourself. When working with a diverse group of individuals that come from various backgrounds of religious beliefs, ethnicity, and gender, you open yourself up to the possibility of creating completely unique and different experiences. Not only that, you begin to create an understanding and connection with an even more diverse audience that then makes your game commercially successful. In the end, when you’re dealing with a global medium like games, you can’t all be white tech bros from San Francisco or Los Angeles if you want to make a truly huge impact on the billions of gamers that currently exist.
What problems could be solved in the gaming scene by increasing the number of females in the workforce?
Simply put, the diversity of games you’d see would be completely different and much broader. While it’s true that not all games are shooters or sports games centered around male sports, as clearly indicated by the golden age of independent game development we’re currently experiencing, it still remains that the mainstream commercial games continue to fall into the tried and true formulas that work well for your stereotypical gamer. With more female input throughout both corporate and independent game development, we will begin to see a rich diversity of subject matters, gameplay, and overall designs the likes of which have never been experienced before in this very young medium of entertainment.
What is your favorite videogame?
World of Warcraft has definitely had the largest impact on my life as well as one of the largest impacts on the gaming industry as a whole. Any Blizzard Entertainment game will win my heart over, and I’ve been especially enjoying their newest release which is called Overwatch.
Do you think video games can be used for good/to make life better for people?
Clearly! Games offer the most emotionally connective medium of entertainment that there is. And, as the generations that grew up with gaming as a central part of their lives continue to become adults, you’ll begin to hear the stories and ways games have really shaped people’s lives more often than movies, music, art, etc. Soon, hopefully, we’ll begin seeing more corporate game developers tackle on social causes on a much larger scale than in years past due to this dramatic increase in audience size for games as well. Curious about games out there now that show just how much of a cultural impact the medium can make? Check out Life is Strange, Undertale, This War of Mine, Papers, Please, and That Dragon, Cancer!
Latinitas’ Game Chica Conference is Saturday, April 28th, 2018, at HomeAway. Throughout the day, girls ages 9–18 girls will spend the day exploring the gaming industry as it exists today as well as their perspective and representation in video games and learn how to develop elements of game art using the Scratch platform. For more information, visit gamechica.com
