King's Diversity Space Tool: A Leap Forward for Inclusion in Gaming

[Zalraki]

Our guild is already using this tool.

Right now we're only recruiting characters with a visual disability (Demon Hunters), Overweight women (Kul Tiran any class) or vertically challenged people with artificial limbs who can only press 1 button (BM hunter Mechagnomes)

[Mendzia]

Yes guys.
All new 'interesting' characters will be now basically procedurally generated using correct numbers.

[Ghost of Cow]

I'm a straight white cis-genderd male, and I'm sorry (and apparently pretty boring as well...)

Rated 0!

Sorry, mate.

Remember when the entire point of all the social and civil movements was to NOT categorize and judge people based on appearance or other physical attributes?

[Echo of Soul]

"We're not using it but we gunna!"

[Kralljin]

Bro, what is with companies turning things like diversity or sexual preferences, or race, into a checkbox on a list?

I mean, that's the logical conclusion of trying to represent as many backgrounds as possible within the media.

At a certain point, you need a list to keep track of them.
And from a list to this, it's frankly no massive leap anymore.

[Okacz]

Then it's useless. Then whoever paid for the development of such tool should be fired.
If I spend the next months designing something out of pure pleasure with absolutely no benefit for my company, I can guarantee I'll have to explain why. I'm not sure this'll be the case here.

That's probably a lie anyway. Those tools are both used AND useful. Tho it's usually just a spreadsheet, but I guess when you're King, you make a neat tool out of everything.

Some idiot Director of Diversity must have seen a glimpse of this and decided to make it a press release, not understanding that this tool is in the same category as "How to use matchmaking to trick players into making in-app purchases" and other predatory tools to squeeze value out of customers with minimal effort.

[Malcho]

Gaming sure has changed a lot. Here we go, accelerating towards a drab and consumerist neoculture with added dystopia sauce.

[Illuminance]

This is another level. They are now actually assigning numerical value to each thing. That is what is the backlash seems to be about. Yikes a straight character? 0 points! Hmm BI? 5 points. Ah Gay? That is worth 10 points! Trans? Yahtzee!! Thats is a 15 pointer right there!

People (including apparently Blizzard) don't understand how dangerous this is. Now that quantitative values are being assigned, it makes various attributes of diversity seem directly comparable when they otherwise wouldn't be.

If you look at the example they provide of Overwatch's Ana, being Arab, Egyptian (nice double dipping), or old are characteristics individually worth more diversity points than being a woman. So, now they open the door to people arguing about the total sum of diversity a character brings. People meme about diversity olympics but now we have the grading model fully exposed for people to compete. Good luck being "just" Native American in the future, etc.

[McNeil]

This is the only thing that matters to them, not making good games. Sometimes I wonder at what point it all went wrong

[DarkAmbient]

Why is this posted again?

[exsanguinate]

what a bunch of hoars shieet

[Denso]

So the rating technically goes from 0 flaws (0/10) to an abundance of flaws (10/10). Interesting.

[Dioporco]

Sneakpeak on how Blizzard makes gender and diversity approved characters

[vincink]

This is the only thing that matters to them, not making good games. Sometimes I wonder at what point it all went wrong

It all went wrong when progressive culture invaded corporate America and tore it apart from the inside out. In some organizations, it has been going on since the 1970s. Game studios are only the most recent prey of the disease. Art is now secondary to ideology.

[Lollis]

You can't have "virtue signaling" without the signaling part.

Yep. And this is exactly what they are doing.

Look, I get that diversity is a good thing, having a varied cast of characters that might make players feel as though they are represented and thus 'part of the universe' of a game is something to aspire to. It's often a comforting prospect to feel as though you aren't left out.

But what I can't fucking stand is just how many companies like this just try to throw it in your face as a "LOOK WE'RE DOING SOMETHING, LOOK THEY KISSED, WE ARE INCLUSIVE." I don't care if a character is gay, straight, lesbian, trans, black, white, or yellow. What matter is the characters actual personality and actual traits with regards to the videogame in question. A person's sexuality, gender, race, or ability/disability isn't their whole identity.

I don't know if the story changed when I let my sub lapse (or if I missed something) but the way that they wrote about Thiernax being a married gay person is exactly the way that it should always be done: i.e. it's just mentioned that he was married to a man that he loved, so fucking what, get over it. That's basically it, them being married isn't Thiernax or his husband's entire identity. They need stop trying to make it be so important for every other character.

People (bigots included) make a big deal about this stuff because the companies make a big deal about it. These companies want to score points which is the exact wrong way to go about it if people are supposed to be made to feel included. "We'll treat you special because we think you need treating special."

[Daevied]

Lol bunch of crybabies

[Syncr]

I find it absolutely hilarious that anyone can even have a ‘diversity score’. Like how in the actual fuck can you score a 0 on a diversity score for your race or sexual orientation. That literally makes no sense at all.

[chorx]

This is pretty disgusting. I’ve already been pushed out of all blizzard games, so All I can say is… this is really lame and makes me want to engage with this, less than I already am.

[Avicularia]

Guys, do you know what will be the best build for Paladin in 9.2.5?

I am thinking of putting 31 points into sexual orientation to get "Raging blow" talent, but then I will have only 20 points in gender, so I will miss one extra talent for sex change perk :/ Also, with this build I have 0 points in Ethnicity, and actually I think in this patch there will be quite a lot of looting to do, so maybe I should throw extra points there.

Please advise,
HolyHomo69

[Lionhearte0]

This is the only thing that matters to them, not making good games. Sometimes I wonder at what point it all went wrong

Companies (and in this case, Blizzard) losing touch with reality isn't exactly a new thing. Remember when Blizzard told everyone they'd be forced to use Real ID and were horribly confused why people were so upset about it? Then a game developer tried proving to everyone they had nothing to worry about and put his real name out there and a day later someone called in a bomb threat at his daughter's school?

Then remember Blizzard thought it was a good idea to shelf the announcement for Diablo 4 and instead just announce a mobile entry into a predominantly PC based franchise and they were super confused why people were upset about it?

Remember when Blizzard randomly decided they hated flying and built an entire continent (Draenor) WITHOUT Flying in mind (to the point where there were unfinished areas and buildings from higher vantage points) and were super confused why people were upset about not being able to use more than half their mounts an entire expansion so they had to spend development time finishing the zones and enabling Flying 2 major patches later?

Remember when Blizzard dropped development into WC3 Reforged midways through and released a shitty, broken product that literally made the original game unplayable and worse (with downgraded textures for classic) and didn't understand why people were so upset so they relented and offered full, no-questions asked refunds for the game to this day (even if you beat the game) and now pretend like it just doesn't exist?

Remember when Blizzard tried to force the HotS eSports scene without addressing all the issues and the competitive scene first (matchmaking, MMR, Roles, etc) and when it completely failed due to negligence on their part they just abandoned the whole game?

Do I even need to bring up Overwatch 2? Racist tropes in Exploring Azeroth? George Fisher's video rant at Blizzcon that Blizzard edited and approved calling Alliance players "f*ggots and to kill themselves?

Blizzard is not a good company. It's a shadowy monstrosity surviving off the legacy of Blizzard North and the original great developers