Musician Bryson Tiller recently announced that he’ll be putting his music career on pause to focus on launching his first video game.
Speaking to magazine Complex, Tiller said that he’ll be moving towards focusing on video game creation. Throughout his career, the musician revealed that he’s also been designing in his free time, working on his debut game for the past three years.
Although he didn’t officially announce the launch date, Tiller said that he would like to release his video game by the end of the year or around the release of “Grand Theft Auto 6,” one of his favorite gaming franchises.
The announcement comes during the release of his self-titled album. Considered his fourth album overall, “Bryson Tiller” was praised for its “experimental” elements with the Grammy-nominated artist incorporating a variety of elements into it, including elements of “Grand Theft Auto” itself.
“I just want to take a hiatus because my No. 1 passion is video games. I’m a designer in my spare time,” said Tiller per Complex. “I’ve been looking into internships for different companies. That’s what I want to prioritize after this album comes out.”
“I want to make sure everything’s right. I’ve been playing it [his new video game]. I play it every day,” he added.
Tiller previously made his foray into video gaming with the creation of his company, Trapsoul Games. Announced in an Instagram post, the company’s launch promised new content, labeling it as the “beginning of something great.”
With the creation of his newest company, Tiller joins a small group of Black video game developers. The field has notoriously been slow to diversify, with a majority of video game creators given platforms being white.
Per a 2021 survey by the International Game Developers Association, only 5% of current video game developers are Black; in comparison, 80% of game developers are white.
The 5% of Black developers supported in the video game industry marks a slow increase from previous reports. For multiple years, the percentage of Black video game developers stayed stagnant at 2%.
Prominent video game companies have also begun to diversify their teams at a slow pace. While previously 2.2% of Black video game developers made up Riot Games’ workforce, the number increased to 3.1% in the span of two years in 2021.
Meanwhile, at Electronic Arts, there was a 0.2% increase in Black video game developers in the span of one year.
As a result of the lack of diversity, a variety of Black-owned companies have been created in the past decade such as NuChallenger, 3-Fold Games, Decoy Game and Aerial_Knight.
