Written by Richard Atlas (CEO) in October 2023, published January 2024.
In Spring 2020, Clever Endeavour Games made a public commitment to help improve our industry by helping people from groups who have typically been marginalized in the games industry. This commitment included steps taken within education, within the studio, policy changes, sponsorship of accelerator and professional programs, sponsorship of events, paying into grants, and investing in a game/studio (where any profit is reinvested into similar initiatives).
The financial commitments we made only lasted until the end of our fiscal year 2023 (September) because we had no idea where the studio would be more than three years in the future.
Our team’s core values are:
We put people first
We communicate honestly
We are leaders (as individuals and as a team)
Putting people first (#1) includes prioritizing our team member’s health and well-being, respecting one another as people, and helping our community as much as possible, both in and outside of games. Being leaders in our industry (#3), even as a small indie studio, means that we try to create positive change using our position—financial, reputational, etc.—as leverage. This is why these commitments are important to us and a core part of what we do at Clever Endeavour.
It’s 2023, and we’re still here!
There have been a lot of changes in the studio in recent history, and it’s time to make new commitments for the next few years. Below are the new commitments, as of October 1st, 2023. We will stand by these commitments so long as the company continues to exist, and we will check back in at the end of fiscal year 2026. Our commitments are listed below by category.
We’ve done a pretty good job with mentorship throughout the years, and want to continue doing so. Where opportunities arise, we will help mentor developers through existing programs like Pixelles, Code Coven, and others that are similar. If you work in a similar program and are looking for mentors, please reach out to us at contact [at] clevendeav.com and we’ll see if we can help.
If we invest in more projects run by marginalized devs in the future, we will offer mentorship to those teams as well throughout the process (assuming of course that the developers want that).
Pixelles — $15,000 per year for their various programs
Code Coven — $10,000 USD per year
Game Devs of Color — $5,000 USD per year