"diversity should not be a focal point of the design of Riot Games’ products because gaming culture is the last remaining safe haven for white teen boys"
This was said unironically.
What
Don't read the comments.
Haven't the faintest why anyone would ever want to work for this company.
We need to protect the poor white teen boys from seeing females and colored people in their games, they wouldnt survive it.
The possibility of these women not stating all the facts or blowing the known ones out of proportion is out of the question, isn't it.
I'm totally willing to believe that a video game company may be full of dickweeds seeing as a similar story blew up about Quantic Dream not too long ago, but
Furthermore, Negron claimed that "in just one month, she counted that her male colleagues at Riot used the word "dick" over 500 times," and one of Negron's supervisors said that "diversity should not be a focal point of the design of Riot Games’ products because gaming culture is the last remaining safe haven for white teen boys."
Not only does that "white teen boys" quote sound incredibly artificial/fabricated/paraphrased (who the fuck talks like that ?), but caring this much about the use of the word dick is pretty ridiculous in its own right, especially if it's called out as a sexist thing. Like, what now, are Australians the world's most sexist nation because everybody says cunt all the time ?
No, which is why it's going to court and not being handled in-house. 'Listen and Believe' is just as dumb as anything purported to have been said in the article in the opposite context; but...
This behavior is Riot in a nutshell. They hired people who had demonstrated this behavior online and in public with documented, vetted examples. Ben Cureton is a case study in whom not to hire and that nigga had clout at Riot and true to form started his usual shit day one, so I can easily imagine any female employee having to work under him and being 100% on her game at all times having anything resembling a decent work environment.
Never mind there's a decade of anecdotes like this, with many instances that turn out not to be anecdotes.
I was expecting them to get sued for the women and non binary people only shit they pulled at some game events in past because that wasn't discrimination at all right
It's so weird that that sort of shit was a thing that was going on at Riot Games while there are stories about the same studio having a shit ton of sexist frat boys.
Part of me is wondering if the whole "women and non-binary only!!!!!" segregation shit was just a not-so-well-thought-out response to the whole boys club culture in Riot Games, or if the studio has always been this painfully shitty in more ways than one.
Good thing I kept getting redirected to the SEA regional site in which the comment section is always almost empty. The hell, IGN.
IIRC Riot wouldn't hire you if you didn't know the name of your WoW characters leveling dungeon trinket from Cataclysm launch.
League of Lawsuits
The Story of Why I Left Riot Games | Barry Hawkins
The meeting began with me being asked to tell everyone what I think happened. I said something like, “the day began, the AMA happened, Brandon said the ‘no doesn’t necessarily mean no’ thing, we had the rest of the day, Nancy put that in the deck, and we all went to Happy Hour.”
At some point I think I referred to the slogan as a rape joke. Brandon pulled up a picture of a t-shirt that had an iceberg floating in water on it with the words “just the tip”, and said he had that t-shirt, and what did I think of it.
Maybe I'd start paying attention to the dumb shit people are saying around the office too if this is the example the CEO sets for the workplace. Obviously she's paraphrasing but I don't doubt that they said something justifying exclusionary principals toward anyone who's not a teen boy, as Riot seems to foster that attitude.
Australians may say cunt all the time, but do they do it constantly at work? I could see that being really annoying.
Is it bad that I almost sort of agree with the stance of "diversity shouldn't be a focus?" (not the rest of that statement fuck that, just the first bit).
I'm not saying games shouldn't have diversity, they very well should if it makes sense and/or just comes up naturally, but I guess what I'm saying is games shouldn't use diversity as a selling point. It just comes off as feeling patronizing and playing off of others concerns and wishes for profit.
Basically, a character should be X simply because they're X, not because they're X so the character, devs and publishers can scream about how progressive and diverse they are for being X or for having a character that's X.
Take Emil from Nier. He's gay. He's not gay because Yoko Taro or Square Enix wanted to have a gay character in Nier for the sake of diversity and to bank on that diversity. He's just gay because, he's gay. It's just who he is.
It's like Youtube comments have congealed.
I kind of agree with you, but at the same time someone somewhere had to make the conscious decision to make Emil gay. I absolutely agree that diversity shouldn't be paraded around and treated as another commodity to be advertised and sold, but I think you do also need to make room for developers to say, 'hey, what if this character were gay? That'd be nice. We don't have any gay characters in this game yet'.
Like, I think it almost comes down to how developers conduct themselves in the real world more so than the game itself.
as long as they focus on the discrimination expressing itself both vs Women and vs Men.
Honestly them firing Daniel Z Klein alone should enforce the fact they are actively trying to improve themselves, but we shall see.
Diversity can totally be a selling point as long as the characters are executed well. Because seriously, video games (and movies too) are filled with so many straight white male protagonists its not even funny. Which, considering how diverse our country and the world at large is, having more diverse progatonists and casts of characters legitimately will get people on board when it might not have before. Look how massive Black Panther was compared to every single debut film of any standalone comic book character. The entire reason it made so much money was because black people, who statistically don't see superhero movies as much as other demographics, turned out for it in droves. And let me tell you, if DC ever goes and makes a quality Blue Beetle movie based on the Jaime Reyes incarnation, the Hispanic/Latino audience is going to turn out in record breaking numbers as well, cause they're represented even less in big Hollywood movies than black people are.
And there's nothing wrong with any of this, because most people - regardless or race, gender, or sexuality - like to see protagonists and characters that are like them. It's just that white, straight, and male was seen as default for so long it's taking a while for entertainment industries to break free from old habits.
I remember when the other thread was out we had trilby harlow/stev ranting and raving about how riot games are evil bloodsucking maoist stalinists and that gamers are the next kulaks.
The women-only session thing was pretense. At the same time as that was happening they hired an extremely anti-union law firm to crack down on their own workers and fired/intimidated the people complaining about discrimination against women. All a sham. (I said so back then too)
I'm not surprised, they should be considering this shit:
https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483
Diversity shouldn't be a focus at all, it should just exist naturally and be seamless, organic and just how things is. It ain't rocket surgery either, despite anyone saying it is.
I think diversity can be implemented very naturally like the folks above have mentioned. That being said, I really appreciate it when games use more diverse characters to counter a more clichéd role. Like if you hear about a terrifying warrior who has slain countless others and when you meet them it's like a tiny, frail old grandma or something.
I'm sure there's an actual term used to describe such examples, but it's always a nice little twist on stereotypical storytelling.
That's the worst thing though. For so long, media companies have treated it like it is. But that's because they're so allergic to trying anything new whatsoever. They treat literally anything outside of the norm as though it's a super risky bet - which is why they follow the leader the second a new genre or type of movie/game/etc has become a massive hit. Ironically, following the leader often stands to lose them money far more than trying for something new aimed at an untapped market. Universal learned that the hard way when they tried to duplicate Marvel's success with fucking movie monsters played by a cast filled with safe, very white picks (seriously, the whole plot of Mummy reboot was literally an excuse to make Tom Cruise the titular monster. Cause Tom Cruise is guaranteed money, amiright?).
The main thing you want to avoid when making diverse characters is that you don't create 'diverse' characters, where their only defining traits are their 'diversity', AKA Captain Planet Syndrome
Having diversity of background or race means shit all if your characters are made of cardboard.
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