representation
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Candace Parker is NBA 2K's first female cover athlete
The Chicago Sky forward will feature on a special WNBA anniversary edition of 'NBA 2K22.'
Blizzard makes it free to change gender in 'World of Warcraft'
When World of Warcraft: Shadowlands comes out later this year, Blizzard plans to stop charging players a $15 fee to change the gender of one of their characters.
'GTA V' brings transphobia to the next console generation
"Nobody seems to complain about having trans characters in Grand Theft Auto, because they're not there to be taken seriously." - Dr. Ben Colliver
Facebook plans to double its minority employees in the next five years
Facebook is more diverse than it was six years ago, but the company admits it has a long way to go. Today, Facebook released its 2019 Diversity Report, and while it employs more women and minorities than it did a few years ago, it's still predominantly male. In the US, the majority of its employees are White or Asian. But those numbers are expected to change. In the next five years, Facebook hopes at least half of its workforce will be women, under-represented minorities, people with disabilities and veterans.
Netflix's new trailer for its ‘Saint Seiya’ remake is making fans unhappy
Netflix is ramping up its anime push, dropping a trailer for its remake of classic anime Saint Seiya which will begin streaming in a few weeks.
Intel says its staff is now representative of the US 'skilled workforce'
In 2015, Intel made a $300 million commitment to ensuring its workforce accurately represents the US skilled labor market, particularly with regards to women and underrepresented minorities (African-American, Hispanic and Native American people). It originally aimed to meet this target by 2020, before moving the timeframe up to 2018 last year. It now claims it has achieved that goal.
Shooting the Arabs: How video games perpetuate Muslim stereotypes
Islam has an image problem. And it's not just recent world events that have led to an undue level of scrutiny and prejudice. The media has been pigeonholing Muslims for years. You need only watch a few episodes of 24 or Homeland to see that Muslims, particularly those of Arab descent, are almost always painted as the enemy.
Silicon Valley execs highlight tech's equality problem
Silicon Valley is slowly taking steps to address its diversity and equality issues, but oftentimes this problem is spoken as if just hiring from a wider pool of people will solve everything. There is another issue, which is centered around the toxic bro culture that appears to permeate swathes of the technology industry. That's why a group of prominent women decided to conduct a survey that highlights the indignities that they face on a regular basis. The project polled around 200 people, each of whom has at least 10 years experience in the technology industry, and the results make you wonder if we're still living in the 1950s.
How to include diversity without making it your focus
Yesterday, Polygon published this editorial, which reacted to Rob Pardo (Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard) and his speech at MIT's media lab. The talk was about gameplay and fun in design vs. narrative, and in it Mr. Pardo mentioned that Blizzard is not a narrative focused company, and that they focused first and foremost on epic entertainment rather than diversity. First up, let me say this - I agree with Rob Pardo that Blizzard should be focusing on epic entertainment experiences, and I have no difficulty with their desire to position themselves as a developer who focuses on gameplay and fun over narrative. And I think it's laudable that Rob himself seems to understand that this can sometimes backfire, as he said in the speech. No, my objection is a purely pragmatic one -- I believe it's actually easier to be diverse in how you populate your game world than to not be, and that the lack of diversity ultimately damages that fun gameplay for a sizable chunk of your player base. To use just one example, we know that women make up almost half of people playing these games. Including characters that are women in positions of prominence (as just one example) invests women more fully in your game experience. It benefits you, because it enlists them as allies towards the ultimate goal of creating those fun, epic experiences - and the respect the article mentions? It cements that respect. If you want to have a reputation, it helps to enlist the players, to make them do the work. Especially if your focus is on fun, rather than narrative, this is a decision that costs you nothing and reaps you rewards. The same fervor that can turn to ire and negative media attention can be made your ally - the inclusion of prominent characters that say that women (for example) are welcome and valued enlists women as participants. You can't have fun gameplay without players, and those players will do the work of promoting and proselytizing your work.
Apple is working on getting more diversity into its emoji characters
Sometimes, the awkward white lady with hand to the side emoji doesn't quite represent, or express, who's using an iPhone -- and it's been that way for quite a while. Good news, then, that Apple is apparently working with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to bring more breadth to the emoji pictures it can offer. Katie Cotton, Apple's VP of Corporate Communications, explains in an email reply to MTV Act's Joey Parker, who raised the issue: "Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms. There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard." There's no firm date for an emoji upgrade until the Unicode issue is sorted, so for now, well, there's stickers elsewhere. (Update: There's also been a recent groundswell for the less important addition of a hot-dog emoji.)
Total War fan will live on as a character in Rome 2
The Creative Assembly has decided to include the likeness of one of their fans, named James, in the upcoming Total War: Rome 2. James visited the studio last year the day after the game was announced, and unfortunately passed away from a bout with liver cancer just recently. The Creative Assembly says he was the first person in the world from outside the studio to play the game, and character artist Mauro Bonelli offered to assemble a model of James from reference photos and measurements. The screenshot above is a mockup for now, as Creative Assembly community manager Craig Laycock says the company isn't sure where he'll end up. But he will be in there, according to Laycock, and the team is "determined to make it a fitting tribute" to their fan when the game is on shelves later this year.
Ghostcrawler on class representation and balance
Ghostcrawler has a nice exchange on the forums (and it's not marked "Not Tracked", so you know he wants us reading this one) about how much of a role class representation actually plays in class balance. Obviously, balance itself plays the biggest role in class balance -- if (using GC's completely hypothetical example) Feral Druids are overpowered as tanks, then Blizzard would have to look into nerfing Feral Druids. But what if Feral Druids only make up a small percentage of the tanks in Ulduar? Should Blizzard nerf the 5% of tanks that are Druids down until they're only 2% of the population? Just because classes are overpowered doesn't mean that actual class populations are, and all of these things go into the mix when Blizzard makes decisions about how to balance the classes.Look at Hunters as well -- just last week we talked about how the class population is falling off, and yet they're one of the top three classes played on both factions. So should Blizzard buff or nerf them?
Scattered Shots: The line of sight between hunters and the Arenas
I'd like to take a break from the hunter leveling goodness we've had the last few weeks in Scattered Shots to take a look at where hunters stand as a class in Arena PvP, and where we might be going in the future. Blizzard developer Kalgan's measurement of how the different classes are faring in the Arena got me thinking quite a bit about the state of hunters -- currently functioning at the lowest place with 50% or less representation in the three Arena types at high rating brackets, followed by mages and shamans, in the 2vs2 Arena especially.What in the world is causing such a huge discrepancy between hunters and other classes when it comes to high-rating arena representation? When I play in Arenas and Battlegrounds, I don't feel like my class is somehow deficient or underpowered. My team's Arena rating is average -- we're not the best, but not the worst either. When I get beaten, I usually feel like the other team actually played better (or outgeared us, at least), so it's rather hard to see what's so messed up about hunters.The most obvious issue I can think might be the issue is that of Line of Sight. Hunters obviously have a rough time shooting at things behind sort of obstacle. In battlegrounds there are more wide open spaces, so it seems less of an issue there, but in Arenas it can get fairly annoying. Classes like warlocks and shadowpriests can just put a damage-over-time spell on you, and then hide behind a pillar, while druids can move freely around obstacles to give them plenty of time to heal themselves between your attacks. Warriors and other melee classes can hide for a bit, then get in so close that you can't use your best ranged abilities on them for a few seconds until you can somehow get away.
