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  1. #201
    Reforged Gone Wrong The Stormbringer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ragedaug View Post
    I would agree it's a worthy goal to increase your target demographic. The problem I often see is that those efforts go sideways as companies tend to alienate their current (often loyal) audience in order to attempt to gather new customers.
    Personally I tend to see that more as corporate greed than anything else. Why should they cater to their long-term, loyal audience when they "know" they'll stick around? We saw that frequently with World of Warcraft, with all the promotions coming out to entice new players or bring back people who had left ages ago, while doing nothing new for their current players. Would it really hurt them that much to throw out a free week of game time here or there? A pet or toy or mount for loyal fans?

    Every time my bosses get too focused on metrics, I remind them that if we focus on the client first and foremost, all the supporting metrics will fall in line.
    I will agree that I do see a lot of companies get too obsessed with metrics, though again I think that comes heavily from corporate culture, top-down as it were. We need Executives, CEOs, Presidents, and so on that are more willing to focus on making a valued product rather than milking as much money from people as possible... but good luck convincing them of that.

    Focusing on creating something that people want to buy is still a better recipe for creating a strong company versus focusing on hiring folks based on their immutable characteristics on the chance that their lived experience produces a superior product that we hope someone will want.
    I think I would at least partially disagree with this myself, if only because I very much welcome the American ideal of a melting pot. You only have to look at American cuisine to see the benefits of taking things from other countries and cultures and integrating them into a greater whole.

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    Quote Originally Posted by vincink View Post
    What you are asking for has already been standard practice for decades: companies choosing what demographics they want to sell, and who they hire to make their products, and having the autonomy to do so without legal or social recourse. Of late, though, the forcing of DEI+ESG+SDGs has actually reduced that autonomy.
    You say it's "forcing", but it's not. Companies are choosing to do it themselves. That's not forcing, that's just a business decision. You can trace it back to them wanting to sell to, as I mentioned before, wider demographics. They're all just chasing $$$$.

  2. #202
    Quote Originally Posted by vincink View Post
    What you are asking for has already been standard practice for decades: companies choosing what demographics they want to sell, and who they hire to make their products, and having the autonomy to do so without legal or social recourse. Of late, though, the forcing of DEI+ESG+SDGs has actually reduced that autonomy.
    No large company wants to limit their appeal, I don't know where you're getting that from. The idea of trying to target specific groups would only fly for small companies who don't have the money to push further, or focus on product that only is used by certain groups (like a company focusing on pregnancy for example).

    Video games are hardly a product that's meant for a specific group, and your idea of "companies should be able to hire who they want" is exactly what led to the current fiasco across multiple big companies having harassment and mistreatment lawsuits, because they kept hiring the same group until they decided "oh we should have a few women or something but never treat them seriously". It also led to less interest in the field in general for some because of weird gatekeeping.

  3. #203
    The Patient vincink's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Stormbringer View Post
    You say it's "forcing", but it's not. Companies are choosing to do it themselves. That's not forcing, that's just a business decision. You can trace it back to them wanting to sell to, as I mentioned before, wider demographics. They're all just chasing $$$$.
    ESG is a scoring system in large-scale financing, which many game studios depend on either directly or indirectly. ESG dictates to companies that in order to get access to large pools of credit, said company needs to meet certain criteria relating to environmental matters, social matters, and governance matters. The higher their scoring, the more capital they have access to. DEI is under the "S" of ESG. That doesn't sound like a company with autonomy; it sounds like... well, I can't say what it sounds like this forum without getting banned.

    You're right that it is about the money because these studios only get money if they make products that meet certain ESG requirements and set up their own governance to align to ESG. If you want to know who these peddlers of ESG are: Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street are the behind-the-scenes capital firms that provide financing to many studios and also adhere to ESG orthodoxy. Blizzard receives much of its financing (both directly and indirectly) from at least one of those three.

  4. #204
    company number 5 by ex blizz devs/boss/the dude who drinks momma milkers milk.
    who cares?
    these guys proved time and time again that they dont know jack.

  5. #205
    Reforged Gone Wrong The Stormbringer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by vincink View Post
    ESG is a scoring system in large-scale financing, which many game studios depend on either directly or indirectly. ESG dictates to companies that in order to get access to large pools of credit, said company needs to meet certain criteria relating to environmental matters, social matters, and governance matters. The higher their scoring, the more capital they have access to. DEI is under the "S" of ESG. That doesn't sound like a company with autonomy; it sounds like... well, I can't say what it sounds like this forum without getting banned.

    You're right that it is about the money because these studios only get money if they make products that meet certain ESG requirements and set up their own governance to align to ESG. If you want to know who these peddlers of ESG are: Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street are the behind-the-scenes capital firms that provide financing to many studios and also adhere to ESG orthodoxy. Blizzard receives much of its financing (both directly and indirectly) from at least one of those three.
    And...? The company is willing to accept those requirements in order to get that financing. If they didn't want to, if they wanted to focus on a smaller demographic and ignore the ESG, they could just find different financiers. But they're not, so they clearly don't care as much as you think they should.

  6. #206
    Quote Originally Posted by The Stormbringer View Post
    How is market research going to tell you what it's like to be a Middle-Eastern woman? Or a South African man? Or any of a thousand other perspectives? Market research can only go so far. However I will partially agree with you and say that hiring people from wider demographics isn't necessarily enough to properly reach said demographics. Combining it with market research (as you mentioned) and working with historians, archivists, or interviewers can take you that much closer to getting what you want, which in this case is a product that can better represent and reach larger groups of customers.
    You can buy said information separate from many sources which will give a better perspective. Hiring historians is good but that's not the case here. This is trying to hire a graphic artist that is also supposed to be the history expert for you just cause they come from same country... Your categories are already telling themself. The scales of middle east is too big for some random person to know everything about. It's just shitty pokemon gotta catch em all on a superficial level.

  7. #207
    Quote Originally Posted by The Stormbringer View Post
    Your statement that diversity is unimportant, and your insinuation that people from diverse backgrounds can't be competent, says loads about you as a person.
    You clearly did not comprehend what you read, and made invalid assumptions on my character because of it.

    I never said "diversity" is unimportant. What I said was, they should hire for competence, and capability. What they should not do is create some arbitrary hiring criteria that would preclude the most competent or capable from being hired. The person being hired should be the best regardless of whatever, race, religion, orientation, or <insert any other non-important non-sense here>.

  8. #208
    Reforged Gone Wrong The Stormbringer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mst3kfan View Post
    You clearly did not comprehend what you read, and made invalid assumptions on my character because of it.

    I never said "diversity" is unimportant. What I said was, they should hire for competence, and capability. What they should not do is create some arbitrary hiring criteria that would preclude the most competent or capable from being hired. The person being hired should be the best regardless of whatever, race, religion, orientation, or <insert any other non-important non-sense here>.
    I'll say it here, though I said it when replying to someone else earlier. Diversity itself is a positive metric which needs to be weighed when judging someone's overall competence and capability. Someone who comes from a demographic outside of the majority of demographics in your company brings new experiences, viewpoints, and ideas that could help your company reach out to wider demographics and cell more product. If you're purely just looking at the on-paper qualifications and ignoring everything else, you're doing it wrong.

  9. #209
    The three want to make games more welcoming by putting in mechanisms that reward positive behaviors and eradicate toxicity.
    What they are working on doesn't fit into any existing genre today
    ^Makes me think they are creating Sarcastaball from Southpark.

    You can't really eradicate toxicity if there is any competition in the game even if its something as small as rewarding different colored bracelets for different content there will always be some salty assholes. Remove chat and only let people use emotes and they will be toxic with the emotes. Remove any emotes that could be neutral/negative and people will turn the positive ones into something negative.

  10. #210
    Quote Originally Posted by Jester Joe View Post
    No large company wants to limit their appeal, I don't know where you're getting that from. The idea of trying to target specific groups would only fly for small companies who don't have the money to push further, or focus on product that only is used by certain groups (like a company focusing on pregnancy for example).
    Is there not room for niche, target, or artisanal games? Is the end goal of all studios to appeal to as many people as possible? Is constant growth the only noble goal of game development? Should Elden Ring add an easy mode to appeal to more gamers?

    The frame of that "limiting their appeal" is incorrect I think. Some companies may choose not to expand their appeal in an effort not to alienate their current userbase. For example, the discussion on the previous page. If an all female company would benefit from a male coworker in order to bring in new ideas. That would be a yes, UNLESS the aim of the developers was to appeal strictly to the female audience, in which case the male developer may actually detract from the appeal of the game towards the target audience.
    Last edited by Zenfoldor; 2023-03-16 at 08:57 PM.

  11. #211
    Quote Originally Posted by BigToast View Post
    So many pathetic boys in this thread like this idiot. Clutch your pearls and cry children, you are so oppressed!
    I didn't say i was oppressed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NineSpine View Post
    Yeah, a lot of people like you told me it was a mistake to get multiple graduate degrees in subjects like history.

    Ten years of running my own small international consulting firm later, I could have comfortably retired at 35, while all the people I knew that criticized me were still slaving away as wage laborers, including all the precious STEM graduates. Now, I'm watching all my engineer friends get laid off from tech jobs and having to go back to work at banks and insurance companies for half their previous salary, while I just work to occupy my time.

    Ironically, my most successful engineer friend, who isn't being laid off, has a degree in... oh, African American studies. Weird.
    Did I say anything about history? No.

    You're engineer friend? Either is degreed in engineering, or has experience in the field. That makes your friend more qualified then these professional victims.

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    Quote Originally Posted by qwerty123456 View Post
    The three want to make games more welcoming by putting in mechanisms that reward positive behaviors and eradicate toxicity.
    What they are working on doesn't fit into any existing genre today
    ^Makes me think they are creating Sarcastaball from Southpark.

    You can't really eradicate toxicity if there is any competition in the game even if its something as small as rewarding different colored bracelets for different content there will always be some salty assholes. Remove chat and only let people use emotes and they will be toxic with the emotes. Remove any emotes that could be neutral/negative and people will turn the positive ones into something negative.
    Pretty much, as long as there is a way to communicate--text, voice, emotes, sprays--something will be considered toxic. Even things like griefing, which is throwing a game, or smerfing, intentionally losing to drop rank/rating, are considered griefing. What's worse is people that flame other players while accusing them of those things.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Relapses View Post
    It's not being "forced," it's simply understanding that diversity is more than just something that you have on your resume. This does not necessarily mean quotas, though that is unfortunately how it often gets framed by detractors of DE&I. I've worked in HR and can tell you from personal experience that any HR manager worth their weight understands that quotas result in terrible candidates both in practice and conceptually. What DE&I means when applied to the hiring process is that in an effort to increase diverse candidates, these companies will try to get the message out that they're hiring to people who may not traditionally have been interested in a job in that field. As @The Stormbringer said, this exceptionally relevant for video game development due to the extreme feedback loop of straight white males playing games and then seeking to become developers themselves.
    Agreed. Ideally if all demographics are similar in merit then the candidates should be of similar proportion to the local (or national in the case of remote work) demographics.

  12. #212
    Quote Originally Posted by qwerty123456 View Post
    The three want to make games more welcoming by putting in mechanisms that reward positive behaviors and eradicate toxicity.
    What they are working on doesn't fit into any existing genre today
    ^Makes me think they are creating Sarcastaball from Southpark.

    You can't really eradicate toxicity if there is any competition in the game even if its something as small as rewarding different colored bracelets for different content there will always be some salty assholes. Remove chat and only let people use emotes and they will be toxic with the emotes. Remove any emotes that could be neutral/negative and people will turn the positive ones into something negative.
    You can make some general design decisions that reduce it. The biggest change to core design would be allow a player to solo carry. Would remove the reason pros rage at noobs- After all its not that anyone cares about bad players per se, its that noobs wiping roadblock without any counterplay which is the real source of frustration and resulting rage.

  13. #213
    Quote Originally Posted by Zenfoldor View Post
    Is there not room for niche, target, or artisanal games? Is the end goal of all studios to appeal to as many people as possible? Is constant growth the only noble goal of game development? Should Elden Ring add an easy mode to appeal to more gamers?

    The frame of that "limiting their appeal" is incorrect I think. Some companies may choose not to expand their appeal in an effort not to alienate their current userbase. For example, the discussion on the previous page. If an all female company would benefit from a male coworker in order to bring in new ideas. That would be a yes, UNLESS the aim of the developers was to appeal strictly to the female audience, in which case the male developer may actually detract from the appeal of the game towards the target audience.
    There's no one-size-fits-all approach to DE&I which is why it gets a bit frustrating to discuss the minutiae of the whole thing. It ultimately is up to the company doing the hiring and like anything in this world there will be greatly differing philosophies and effectiveness of said philosophies. There isn't a right or a wrong, though I think framing DE&I as "enforcing diversity quotas" is a particularly bad faith interpretation.

  14. #214
    Person A - Great worker, excellent at their job, does not check some arbitrary metric

    Person B - Awful worker, mediocre at their job, does check some arbitrary metric

    The correct person to hire is Person A.

    You don't go to the doctor, and say, "Nah, I'll take that other doctor because they are "diverse"." You want to see the best possible. Period.

  15. #215
    Quote Originally Posted by mbit2 View Post
    You can make some general design decisions that reduce it. The biggest change to core design would be allow a player to solo carry. Would remove the reason pros rage at noobs- After all its not that anyone cares about bad players per se, its that noobs wiping roadblock without any counterplay which is the real source of frustration and resulting rage.
    If you don't want people to be toxic to each other in a video game, then you make a single player game.

  16. #216
    Titan Al Gorefiend's Avatar
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    Mmhmm, once I saw the word "women" and "games" in the same thread I had to come to the comment sections, did not disappoint.

    This comment section just shows why toxicity cannot be contained, behind anonymity people express their shittiest opinions, argue over anything and say things that they know would get them punched out in public.

    Creating a game with no toxicity, has never happened in real life. Not in sports, in tournaments or any place where people are allowed to congregate like schools. The only non-toxic games are single-player.

  17. #217
    Quote Originally Posted by Al Gorefiend View Post
    The only non-toxic games are single-player.
    ::laughs in The Last of Us Part II::

  18. #218
    Quote Originally Posted by mbit2 View Post
    You can make some general design decisions that reduce it. The biggest change to core design would be allow a player to solo carry. Would remove the reason pros rage at noobs- After all its not that anyone cares about bad players per se, its that noobs wiping roadblock without any counterplay which is the real source of frustration and resulting rage.
    If a single person in a group can solo carry for content designed with group coordination, then the difficulty won't be enough to keep the content relevant.

    You can already solo carry keys up to +10-12's. Hell, as a BDK, you could go so far as +15's.

    Content people don't have to progress through has naturally lower shelf life.

  19. #219
    Titan Al Gorefiend's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Relapses View Post
    ::laughs in The Last of Us Part II::
    I don't know what this means.

  20. #220
    Quote Originally Posted by Relapses View Post
    There's no one-size-fits-all approach to DE&I which is why it gets a bit frustrating to discuss the minutiae of the whole thing. It ultimately is up to the company doing the hiring and like anything in this world there will be greatly differing philosophies and effectiveness of said philosophies. There isn't a right or a wrong, though I think framing DE&I as "enforcing diversity quotas" is a particularly bad faith interpretation.
    There are really only two metrics to hire based on: how qualified someone is, and how well they work and cooperate. Even then determining how cooperative they are can be bigoted/biased. Any other metric is frivolous. Thus rendering a diversity unit/team/department a complete waste of time and money.

    If it has to do with the content in the game, then it's irrelevant to a fantasy world. No matter how you create a fictional setting, there will always be something that gets misinterpreted or found offensive. I immediately think of blood and partial nudity in American video games and how that was always censored. Or things like symbols as innocuous as a crescent moon and star being removed from Ocarine of Time because it's similar to the common symbol of Islam. I guess having a team to prevent such sensitivities would appease the legal team.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Relapses View Post
    ::laughs in The Last of Us Part II::
    Please elaborate.

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