the primer squid playwhose entirety was made available to the public in August this year, was one of the issues raised by the candidate for the presidency of Brazil, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (PT), in an interview with the podcast flow on the night of this Tuesday, 18.

The document is the result of dialogues between the Lula Institute and around thirty professionals and specialists in the field of games, including developers, journalists, professors, lawyers and businessmen, to the elaboration of public policies that promote the consumer market and the productive sector of games in Brazil🇧🇷

To understand more about its emergence and proposals, check out, in the lines below, details about what the Lula Play booklet is.

What is the Lula Play booklet?

The Lula Play booklet is a document that suggests public policies for the promotion of the video game industry in Brazil, covering both the consumer market and the productive sector.

The initiative came from the Lula Institute itself in May this yearwhich invited dozens of professionals and specialists from different areas, who are involved with electronic games, to discuss the subject and form a special committee.

The document argues that, like films, music, literature and any other cultural industry, games are culture and need public investment from the government🇧🇷

Its signatories also note that the electronic games agenda has been hijacked by the current president, Jair Bolsonaro (PL), and by the ideological field of the extreme right for political indoctrination. This practice follows the misogynistic Gamergate movement, which first took place in the United States in 2013, and plunged communities into successive cases of abuse, moral harassment, racism and misogyny, according to the document.

To support the argument, they cite the study “Who are and what do voters of Jair Bolsonaro believe”, carried out in 2018 by anthropologist Isabela Kalil, from the University of São Paulo. The survey points out that gamers are considered one of the 16 groups that support Bolsonaro – alongside “nerds, hackers and haters”.

Who signs the Lula Play booklet?

As previously mentioned, around thirty professionals and specialists in the field of games participated in the meetings that shaped the suggestions for public policies in the Lula Play booklet.

However, the final document, handed over by the committee to former President Lula in August this year, was signed by 13 professionals. Check out the names below:

• Alan Richard da Luz: Doctor Professor in the area of ​​Game Design;
• Anderson do Sponsorship: Lawyer, Master’s student in Human and Social Sciences (UFABC) and co-host of the game studies podcast Regras do Jogo;
• Eddy Venino: Journalist, founder of the NOIZ Play project and founder of the Nerfando website;
• Eric Santos: Lawyer and doctoral candidate in Human Rights at USP. National Director of the Believe Movement. Member of the OAB/SP Human Rights Commission and the Municipal Executive of REDE Sustentabilidade. Host of the Overkill Podcast;
• Erika Caramello: Doctor professor in the area of ​​games. CEO of Dyxel;
• Gilson Schwartz: Associate Professor at the Cinema, Radio and TV Department at ECA-USP. President of Games for Change Latin America;
• Gustavo Mendes: Candidate for federal deputy for the Workers’ Party (PTMG);
• Henrique Sampaio: Designer and journalist, co-founder of the Overloadr website and creator of the First Contact podcast;
• Italo Furtado: Product Designer. CEO at Rogue Fairy;
• Kao Tokyo: Content Editor for the news site Drops de Jogos and Cultural Producer;
• Leila Dumaresq: Game Designer at Ilex Games;
• Marcelo Rigon: Partner and Executive Director at Ilex Games;
• Pedro Zambarda: Editor-in-Chief of Game Drops news site. Journalist and BA in Philosophy.

What does the Lula Play booklet say?

To organize public policy proposals, the Lula Play booklet is organized into five development axes, namely: Training and Employment🇧🇷 Inclusion and Diversity🇧🇷 Education🇧🇷 Digital Sovereignty🇧🇷 and Industry🇧🇷 The goal is for the guidelines to be integrated into the slate of government plan Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Geraldo Alckmin🇧🇷

Among the highlights of the booklet, as raised by former president Lula himself in an interview with Flow Podcast, are the following topics:

• Regulation of the game developer profession as a guarantee of rights for industry workers;
• Creation of technical and higher education courses for game developers;
• Review of broadband legislation to extinguish the data consumption limit and improve connection speed;
• Tax incentives and adequate financing for the creation of new companies in the sector.

In addition to touching on the issue of tax reductions, the booklet is dedicated to suggesting labor revisions to improve the entire ecosystem. Among them are issues aimed at strengthening workers, in addition to the resumption of public incentives from the BNDEs.

It is also worth mentioning the formation of supervisory committees in order to combat cases of racism, homophobia, transphobia, machismo and other digital crimes that occur in the sphere of electronic games, such as in online chats at eSports events.