Granath
2058
IGN’s public apology for the Dead Cells review.
Mr.GRIM
2060
Having not read the article, because I don’t really care what Riot is doing, I will say that reading in this thread about the type of culture there surprises me very little.
It seems game companies can reflect their game communities very closely in some cases. Concerning the players that make up LOLs fanbase, I can see how that type of culture creeps in and becomes acceptable, then normalized.
It still requires a lack of…something from middle and upper management. Given the money LOL makes, that part is what I find surprising.
Perhaps part of the problem is that you aren’t different from most people. Few people care, so crappy shit happens.
The problem is, there is so much to care about and none of us have the time or energy to actually do much of anything.
Personally, I blame stagnate wages and longer work hours, making it hard to worry about bigger issues, when you still need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s almost like somebody read Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and used to it make life worse for all of us. Except the rich.
Mr.GRIM
2062
They say human attention is the single most valuable commodity on the planet. I would tend to agree.
No argument. I just feel the system is set up in such a way that regular people couldn’t make the necessary changes to society, even if we wanted to. Some of us are just treading water, with jobs, kids, bills and the like. And then, we have the circus to entertain us in our free time.
What I am doing with my life?
Nesrie
2064
This is, of course, harder for women to do if people refuse to hire them because they are women or treat them like garbage when they do which puts stuff like Riot not in the political or identify political realm but just day to day life for a large part of the population.
Again, no argument.
Let me know when we get to go all French Revolution on the rich people (also, let know what I need to qualify as a non rich person).
Whew, you’re getting pretty heavy in the thread about farting on people.
JonRowe
2070
THIS!!!
A group of men not listening to a woman’s opinion is definitely not just a tech thing. It might be worse in tech than other industries, but I have seen or heard of this many times.
Sadly I have seen this often. In particular women being talked over. The solution is always the leadership of the studio or team leading by example and insisting on people not interrupting others and giving space for others to answer after a speaker has finished instead of the same person every time immediately jumping in.
One extra benefit of this is soft spoken or thoughtful people of both genders are also included in the discussion.
One of the key things about the Riot story is that some of their policies would seem fine on paper. They emphasize meritocracy, which is naively a hard thing to argue against. You can re-cast the “hardcore gamer” thing as being “customer-centric”, which most people would agree is a good policy. Another of their corporate values is listed as: “Default to trust”, which again, is hard to argue with in general.
The problem is that these weren’t applied consistently, or were actively undermined by management, or were even weaponized against the people they’re meant to protect. Which is simply a problem with bad leadership.
Also, I think the article does a good job touching on the fallacy of meritocracy. Due to cognitive biases, etc, if you aren’t actively selecting for diversity, you’re subconsciously selecting against diversity, because everybody naturally prefers people that are like themselves.
We talked a lot about diversity in tech at the coding bootcamp I attended last year (promoting it is in the mission statement of the organization, and they absolutely live it). One of the things that was brought up, which I wasn’t totally sure I bought into at the time, was the idea that more diversity literally means more people that think differently, which makes the ideas and designs a group comes up with stronger.
Now having been in the job for a minute, it’s so so true. It’s ridiculous that I didn’t immediately realize it based on my previous experience - a publication with a more diverse editorial staff is obviously, objectively stronger than a homogeneous one - but we are imperfect animals.
Things like this are I think a good avenue to try and explain why diversity is good to people for whom the moral arguments fall flat. It really does make your team and its output stronger.
Nesrie
2074
I’ve spent most my life understanding diversity is important and wanting to be in company of a diverse group not due to philosophical reason but because the simple fact is when I look around a room I have zero expectations that anyone will in anyway ever resemble me unless my sister is also in the room. It’s just not an expectation I have… but diversity itself doesn’t solve anything. In order for diversity to actually help, those members also have to be empowered otherwise you just wind up with token xyz member that looks good in company photos. Numbers also matter or you might wind up with someone who just wants to fit in with everyone else who is different.
Absolutely true. As much as it may not seem that way on qt3, I do consciously try to shut up and listen in real life, especially since my personality and upbringing tend to lead me to being one of those loud voices if left unchecked.
I’ve found over the years that I get listened to plenty without having to take over whatever space I happen to be in, so it’s not like I’m sacrificing anything anyway.
Okay someone else talk about how woke they are, I’m going to throw up on myself. I’m going to have my MN citizenship revoked if I talk about myself any more.
Nesrie
2076
I do a little better myself as well, although professionally I have learned that while keeping quite might make more friends, speaking up has kept me from some really nasty clean-up and 2AM phone calls.
My main point though is the appearance of diversity is not the same as actual diversity and in some companies where you see continued problems despite their stats and efforts, what you also see is after a certain level, you realize there was no change so… leadership.
Assuming Riot wants a change, really wants them, hiring new content creators willnot do it, nor some new token diversity title which will be treated like nothing… they need a change in their core leadership, now.
He didn’t say all women, he named one in particular. The lumping everyone together is a problem that both sides fall into way too often. Nobody said if all women were perfect except for you. Your comment is actually of the same sort of hyperbole that Jessica throws around constantly which hurts the very side she/you are supposed to be defending.
regarding the cultural climate inside Riot, I’ve worked at places like that. I didn’t stay long and I’m not sure there is any way to change that type of environment short of nuking it. The type of people that allow that stuff to happen in the first place and encourage it to keep happening are not the kind of people that will allow even small changes to take hold, let alone broad sweeping change like the type needed to fix it. It’s a shame in many ways that their games are successful just because those types of people often will view the success of the game and link it to the environment they had when they hit that success and double down on it.
jsnell
2078
And more on Riot:
That place sounds just amazingly dysfunctional.
