Activision Blizzard devs condemn company’s creepy diversity tool
Activision Blizzard devs have spoken out against a diversity tool that was revealed to the public over the weekend.
The diversity tool belongs to King, known for games such as Candy Crush and Crash Bandicoot: On the Run. According to the blog post from Activision Blizzard, the diversity tool is used as some sort of measurement, a way to “help identify how diverse a set of character traits are and in turn how diverse that character and casts are when compared to the ‘norm'”.
In this previous blog post, the way King’s tool did this was by using numbers that examined characters and ranked them depending on what was considered ‘diverse’ and outside of the ‘norm’. One character they used was Ana from Overwatch, where the tool ranked her depending on 10 different characteristics: culture, race, age, cognitive ability, physical ability, body type, facial features/beauty, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. This diagram has since been removed from the blog post, but a screenshot of what it looked like can be found below.
The tool also apparently is able to detect a difference between “token characters” and “true representation.” To put it simply, it looks at unconscious biases, stereotypes and how to make characters that avoid offensive tropes, etc.
The diversity tool was met with heated conversation online, with those involved in the gaming industry accusing the tool of being the opposite of helpful and instead used as a way to prevent the inclusion of marginalized developers within game development from telling their own stories, as well as actively playing into tokenism and eugenics by assigning values to different characteristics.
“Turning on a big dial that says ‘ethnicity’ on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on The Price is Right,” commented Twitter user TheGorphist, referring to the tool’s bizarre ranking.
“Sure, Activision could hire a more diverse staff to create more diverse games *OR* they could assign points to races and sexualities like they’re balancing a character in Skyrim,” Mike Drucker said in reply to Activision Blizzard’s tweet.
Afterwards, Activision Blizzard updated the blog post to reflect the discussion that was happening online – also clarifying that the tool was in beta and that, in spite of saying so previously, it was not currently being used as a development tool for Overwatch 2 or Call of Duty: Vanguard. This does seem to check out, as Activision Blizzard staff and developers have spoken out about the tool, criticizing it and the company as a whole.
“God I swear our own company tries to slaughter any goodwill the actual devs who make the game have built,” Melissa Kelly, character artist on Overwatch, said. “Overwatch doesn’t even use this creepy dystopian chart, our writers have eyes. The artists: have eyes. Producers, directors, etc, as far as I know also all have eyes.”
Another developer working on Overwatch, Dylan Snyder, commented that the removal of the mention was mostly because “we’re not using it and didn’t know it existed until yesterday.”
Will Reynard, a senior graphic programmer on Overwatch, answered OP’s reply about how Snyder’s response only raised more questions. “It does. It should also answer one, this isn’t how OW characters are designed. Never has been, never will be.”
The King’s diversity tool is currently in beta.
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