LogInIt was inspired by cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian.
A week ago, Activision Blizzard released a blog post introducing a "Diversity Space Tool" made by King. It was designed to help developers evaluate the characteristics of characters and identify how diverse a set of character designs is. The idea then got harshly criticized for being cynical and inhumane.
One of the architects of the tool said it was not meant to make developers look at characters as a set of score points.
"The idea was to slow down time a little bit and have a little bit more discussion and reflection at that crucial point of creation," MIT Gamelab research coordinator Mikael Jakobsson told Axios.
The project was started several years ago by mobile studio King's developers who were inspired by a presentation from Anita Sarkeesian, a cultural critic who often speaks against game characters stereotypes. The designers created a paper prototype for marking a character’s diversity, presented it at the Game Developers Conference in 2017, and asked MIT to help make a digital version that could be used by game makers.
According to Jakobsson, the vision was to offer the tool as part of a workshop, alongside readings, and to avoid putting stats on character traits, otherwise, it reduces efforts for diversity to “a numbers game."
The tool was then mentioned in a message to shareholders last year.
It's hardly the first time noble intentions get crushed by the wrong approach. After receiving the backlash, Activision said the Diversity Space Tool is not being used in active game development.
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