Activision Blizzard creates "Diversity Space Tool" to aid in creating "inclusive" characters.

[kubev]

I think someone involved with this had the right intentions. Problem is, it seems really cold when you're basically just trying to apply math to someone's humanity. I suspect this is supposed to balance the "believability" of a character with their diversity in the sense that some people think diversity sometimes feels "forced" in spots. Maybe they should've just continued using this and not surfaced it to see how things went.

 

[L Thammy]

Great job Activision. You created a literal diversity algorithm that conservatives love to whine about.

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I guess this is the complaint, but if someone talks about a diversity quota in hiring, my honest feeling is that they're a good thing and it's especially necessary when bias may be unconscious - even blind hiring practices may not actually produce diversity that sufficiently matches the population.

 

[Exposure]

That's cool. The dwarf archetype gets more points on the diversity chart than the buff woman and the black man. What a useful tool.

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Yeah this is like

#1 problem with trying to quantify this kind of thing

If the rules are set by biased people in the first place then it's very easy to create a ruleset that just fits the pre-existing biases instead of being helpful and likely won't be called out for a long while because your problems is caused by people who are biased in key positions in the first place

the use cases where this could be hypothetically useful are also the use cases where it's very likely to be useless because of the exact problem it's purporting to solve, because the actual problem you need to fix is "a lot of your higher end employees are both not that diverse in general makeup and also incredibly bad in terms of workplace actions and harassment and just about nearly everything."

 

[Cantaim]

Lucio is a fan of hockey because he was originally going to be from Canada, until Blizzard realized they had no South American heroes.

I don't know if that's better or worse.

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I will say Michael Chu has come out in the past and said that the "Lucio was originally Canadian" story is made up.

 

[airbagged_]

If I increase the gender identity dial then people won't get mad.

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Literally my first thought.

 

[Ferrio]

Honestly it's kinda a neat tool looking at it, it shouldn't be soley what you rely on but that's a good way of visualizing the the difference between cast members in a game and would identify biases among the cast.

 

[Spinluck]

i'm not seeing what's wrong with this, it's just visualizing data.

 

[Z-Brownie]

I ... don't get the point. Will it helps them to find out that it took 6 years to include a black woman?

 

[Delusibeta]

It's like one of thouse troll "check your privilege" image macros 4chan made, except this is entirely serious.

 

[vestan]

Dudes would rather go out of their way to soullessly distill diversity into a dumb algorithmic pseudoscience instead of just hiring people to make cool ass characters. These people are so incubated and out of touch that it's genuinely impressive. How the fuck do you even quantify ethnicity 💀

 

[AbsoluteZ3R0]

Leave it up to Activision somehow fuck everything up. Rather than actually hiring diverse people make diverse character from their own life experience why not just let an algorithm calculate generate a character with peak diversity score.

 

[Griffith]

I'm so fucking confused by this. What's the purpose of this thing?

 

[Spinluck]

wait, Zarya is younger than Lucio?

 

[Vinx]

How hard is it to make a fucking character, Jesus.

The fuck does Cognitive Ability have to do with "diversity?"

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Symmetra is on the autistic spectrum.

 

[TheChrisGlass]

They found a way to quantify diversity. That's terrible.

 

[Kittenz]

Some of you act like they press F7 and it spits out a character.

We absolutely know that so many devs just default to the white male characters. So if there's a tool that reminds them to vary the makeup of characters, why is that bad? Would it be best if they didn't need a tool? Sure. But is this lightyears better than not pushing people to think about it? Definitely.

I reckon devs know who the primary characters are (for better or for worse). But I think it'd be quite useful for secondary cast, NPCs, questgivers, window dressing. etc.

 

[Tygre]

Imran over at FanByte already said this better than I could:

 

[samcastor]

What's the difference between the numbers on each of the categories? Like what separates a 2 ethnicity from a 3 or 4 ethnicity? I ask this as someone who read the whole thing and still have no clue. It sounds unbelievably awful.

Just have more diversity in your company, particularly in leadership positions. Why did this need to be a thing?

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Probably based on how often/much they are represented in media or games. For example, white people are more prevalent than black people who are more prevalent than native Americans or something like that would be my guess.

 

[nihilence]

How do you qualify those things?
Looks like bars and charts instead of checkbox.

They are trying. But it feels too analytical, clinical.

 

[MechaJackie]

Symmetra is on the autistic spectrum.

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Between being in the autism spectrum and having ADHD, who ranks higher on the diversity meter by the Phrenology AI? 🤔

 

[Ashlette]

I'm so fucking confused by this. What's the purpose of this thing?

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to protect bobby from more lawsuits

 

[Crumrin]

How about making your creative teams more... you know... diverse?

 

[Brinbe]

what in the fuck... this is insultingly absurd in the worst ways. fuck this garbage.

 

[Transistor]

How do you quantify those things?

Looks like bars and charts instead of checkbox.

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I really want to see the numbers behind it on how they quantify things. Where do different races compare? How do fictional races and species rate? How did they come up with these values?

Assigning numeric values to peoples identity is god damn insulting.

 

[TheChrisGlass]

How do you quantify those things?

Looks like bars and charts instead of checkbox.

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Reading the article, it seems like what they're TRYING to do, at least from King's original application, was to avoid perpetuating stereotypes when introducing diversity, like having the black guy on the team be into sports.

But from the way they're presenting the data, it comes off as just filling up a bucket for each 'kind' of category.

 

[Gobias-Ind]

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"Body type: slim+curvy. 0 diversity points"


Lmaoooo

 

[Sheldon]

I mean in the real world is it wrong?

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In the real world. Are Blizzard in the business of creating documentaries or EPIC ENTERTAINMENT?

Yeah this is like

#1 problem with trying to quantify this kind of thing

If the rules are set by biased people in the first place then it's very easy to create a ruleset that just fits the pre-existing biases instead of being helpful and likely won't be called out for a long while because your problems is caused by people who are biased in key positions in the first place

the use cases where this could be hypothetically useful are also the use cases where it's very likely to be useless because of the exact problem it's purporting to solve, because the actual problem you need to fix is "a lot of your higher end employees are both not that diverse in general makeup and also incredibly bad in terms of workplace actions and harassment and just about nearly everything."

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Absolutely. Can you imagine being in the shoes of whoever poor sod has to assign a racial diversity score to Tauren and Orcs? Where do you even begin to untangle that mess...

 

[Kain-Nosgoth]

 

[Aeroucn]

This geniunely reads like a parody lmao

 

[Javier]

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Confirmed Ana stupid as fuck.

 

[.exe]

I wonder what it's like to have not just zero but negative self-awareness.

 

[OmniStrife]

How do you measure ethnicity...?

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They learned from the South Park game?

 

[canderous]

I feel like maybe you don't publicize that you need a software tool to make sure you're being diverse enough.

 

[MechaJackie]

I really want to see the numbers behind it on how they quantify things. Where do different races compare? How do fictional races and species rate? How did they come up with these values?

Assigning numeric values to peoples identity is god damn insulting.

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A person that would be considered white in Brazil, but would be considered black in the USA, how does the Phrenology AI ranks that? 🤔

 

[Dark Knight]

I'm so fucking confused by this. What's the purpose of this thing?

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Seems like they're just checking off enough points for each character on this tool in order for the character to achieve a consensus of "inclusive."

Which I guess is at least sadly more forward thinking than much of the industry. But it reads very cynically. Like it was a bunch of board room stiffs that came up with this method. As if it was a cold PR directive and not an organic, functional vision of the future as Overwatch media and interviews have described it as.

 

[vixolus]

Need to see what a maxed out graph would produce according to Blizzard's numerics lol.

Like Imran said it doesn't seem to be -bad- or malicious, but feels like parody especially coming from ABK.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Outside of Age, I don't know how any of those others are supposed to be "measured".

Wtf is this shit.....

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0 race = raceless

10 race = raceful

 

[Mirado]

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So from what I understand, a zero is "normative" i.e. they aren't calling her stupid, just average intelligence. With that in mind, the rest of these categories make even less sense: being a woman gets you points, and points are apparently assessed for being further from "normal", so does that mean being a man puts you at zero? Meaning being a man is..."normal"? Being 60 gets you seven out of ten, so is "baby" a zero? Also, the whole beauty slider is sending me, as we're both putting qualitative metrics onto beauty (ick) and also giving them completely nonsensical data points.

"I went on a date last night."

"Bro, is she hot?"

"She's slightly aged."

"...wha?"

This whole thing is a hilarious disaster. Leave it up to a megacorp to try and "fix" diversity by assigning nonsensical metrics rather than, I don't know, diversifying your workforce.

 

[Lausebub]

Does Lotr now have a super high diversity score with Dwarfes, people who are thousands of years old and Orcs that are short and ugly?

 

[Dyle]

Imran over at FanByte already said this better than I could:

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That's missing the point, isn't it? It's not meant to take the place of hiring diverse workers but to help augment their work and to ensure that they do not unconsciously overlook certain aspects of diversity as they work, which could happen with anyone no matter who they have working for them

 

[ventuno]

Racking your brains to find an idea that ensures you never have to talk to people who can give you the very perspectives you need. If someone made a joke about this, people would think they were exaggerating.

 

[White Glint]

I wonder what it's like to have not just zero but negative self-awareness.

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Could ask Jim Ryan

 

[Paroni]

What does "Facial Features / Beauty" even mean? How is it measured? Do they show character designs around the office and ask people to rate their fuckability?

 

[Transistor]

Could ask Jim Ryan

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[MechaJackie]

Does Lotr now have a super high diversity score with Dwarfes, people who are thousands of years old and Orcs that are short and ugly?

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According to the Phrenology AI, LOTR is much more diverse than the Netflix She-Ra series!

 

[Chindogg]

This is so awful and misses the point so much the Democratic party is looking to license this technology for means testing student loan forgiveness.

 

[convo]

All this effort to automate a process that would usually require some consulting with diverse people, it's the opposite of saying you care.

 

[Dust]

I really want to see the numbers behind it on how they quantify things. Where do different races compare? How do fictional races and species rate? How did they come up with these values?

Assigning numeric values to peoples identity is god damn insulting.

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It actually doesn't even make sense to turn this into data. How can you measure someone's culture? Is a japanese girl with katana and wearing a yukata a 5 in culture? Is a japanese girl in jeans and t-shirt using a gun a 1 in culture? Just...the hell is this?

 

[Transistor]

It actually doesn't even make sense to turn this into data. How can you measure someone's culture? Is a japanese girl with katana and wearing a yukata a 5 in culture? Is a japanese girl in jeans and t-shirt using a gun a 1 in culture? Just...the hell is this?

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Exactly!

 

[TheChrisGlass]

So from what I understand, a zero is "normative" i.e. they aren't calling her stupid, just average intelligence. With that in mind, the rest of these categories make even less sense: being a woman gets you points, and points are apparently assessed for being further from "normal", so does that mean being a man puts you at zero? Meaning being a man is..."normal"? Being 60 gets you seven out of ten, so is "baby" a zero? Also, the whole beauty slider is sending me, as we're both putting qualitative metrics onto beauty (ick) and also giving them completely nonsensical data points.

"I went on a date last night."

"Bro, is she hot?"

"She's slightly aged."

"...wha?"

This whole thing is a hilarious disaster. Leave it up to a megacorp to try and "fix" diversity by assigning nonsensical metrics rather than, I don't know, diversifying your workforce.

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It's not a strict linear scale for each category. I imagine it's more of a bell curve or a comparison against norms in the industry and how much of an outlier it is, compared to a Nathan Drake or Marcus Fenix.

But this is still the weirdest way to do it. I... I have some grand assumptions about the people that put this design together. Because I imagine most people wouldn't be this tone deaf.