So, we had a great time watching Blizzcon this weekend. Way fun, especially things like watching the Paragon live raid and cheering them on. Had a nice visit with my brother and mom too even if Mom didn’t quite “get” Blizzcon.
The most interesting thing to me was how well it worked as a showcase for the company. It was really neat getting a glance at some of the inner workings. As a software engineer, I could look at that environment and understand just what it would be like to work there, and once again say nope, that was not the career path for me. I’m glad some people can enjoy it and make awesome games for me to play though.
I’ve never played Diablo, didn’t think I wanted to play Diablo – but watching a few clips and some interviews about Diablo 3 made me interested in trying it. It helped that I could look at the videos and immediately identify a class that looked fun to me (no, not demon hunter. Reversion is the ranger-hunter-type of the pair. I’m the “giant balls of fire from heaven SET YOU ON FIRE” one.) So now we have that to look forward to.
Ok, I’ve already seen half a dozen posts already but… Blizzard. Women. They have a higher female audience than most video games so why do they just try to screw things up? Ignoring/brushing aside a female player’s concern that all the women look like they come out of Victoria’s Secret… how about answer straight up? You could say “we don’t think they do” or ask for more details – I’ve seen confusion over whether she meant body style or outfit, player or N PC. It’s still a valid point and I thought their answer was rude, crude, and dismissive.
Then the tree form bits – it was obvious to me whenever tree form came up that there were a lot more women unhappy about Ugly New Tree than guys. So why act like “making a female version” of the tree would be so hard? It really shouldn’t be and if so, who cares? You guys screwed up and made a really masculine tree, and it makes us sad. I think they may be shocked just how many “grandma trees” there are running around. (And again: you called old tree form ‘grandma tree’ which I think is… rather revealing)
Someone asked during open Q&A how many women were on their team. The answer was exactly what I expected…. more or less none. Maybe some on the art. I could have told you that, both from my industry knowledge and the results. You can tell from some of their decisions that there just aren’t women in the decision loop. Things that would just not get past a woman who was at all sensitive to these issues. Things like, oh, RealID. Or Super-Male-Ugly-Tree, I refuse to believe a female artist signed off on that one.
Anyway, I really loved watching and I don’t want to get all negative about it. Watching from home gave me most of the fun of being there without the stress and hassles and ack-twenty-thousand-people-must-not-panic sensations. I’m stoked for Cataclysm (dear hipster bearded dude types: ‘clysm’ or ‘the clysm’ is not a cute or hip way to refer to the expansion. ‘Cata’ is a better shorthand if you must use one in conversations). But this week I have to come up with my plot for NaNoWriMo, so excuse me….
It’s really too sad that their are not more women on the development team/art teams, etc. I do believe that there are quite a few women that play this game. Even within Crits and Giggles probably ~33% of the players that are typically online are women. I think that’s an unusually high number for an RPG and really pride myself that we have an environment where we have lots of women, women that top our DPS meters and tank Lich King. AWESOME!
But from Blizzards perspective, it would be better if they didn’t make the women’s outfits so “Victoria Secret”. Sure let the Lovely Black Dress and other “non-combat” outfits be all slinky er whatever, but for gods sake, no woman wants to tank a boss in a metal bikini; those are only good on Tatooine anyways. To me it adds more a sense of realism if their armor would look as tough as the male counterparts. Or maybe to make things fair, the men can also wear Katy Perry style outfits. Daisy dukes and bikinis on top. I’m sure some of the women wouldn’t mind some more man abs.
Also, “the clysm” just sounds nasty, like maybe something you need a doctor for. :X
I don’t think generalizations of any kind are useful – from “women don’t play WoW” to “there just aren’t women in the decision loop”. (You did add “who was at all sensitive to these issues”, I admit.)
I’m a bit tired of all these posts – not yours specifically, but you know the blogosphere will fill up again. I am a woman, and I don’t generally agree with the wow_ladies/”feminist” opinions… does that make me less of a woman? (According to some/many wow ladies, yes it does.)
I think the question was frankly dumb – why does everyone ignore that and focuses on the Blizzard guy? *Most* of the body types in WoW are obviously *not* Victoria’s Secret, and most of the Wrath armor isn’t revealing at all. So why exactly was she there? To troll irl? Was she just stupid? The guy could have answered better, of course, but I can’t anything offensive with what he said. He just didn’t choose the right words. And I’m not sure that the question deserved a better answer…
(Also, a “clisma” is an enema in Romanian. I hope that abbreviation doesn’t catch on…)
I *think* that what she was actually referring to was female NPCs in skimpy outfits. Look at Jaina in Icecrown, or Sylavanas. But her question was badly posed. Not the only badly posed question there, of course. And the answer was terrible, no matter how bad the question might have been.
I didn’t buy the stream, so I didn’t actually see any of it. I did hear that a lot of the questions were pretty pointless… as a guildie put it, “you have the opportunity to talk to a Blizzard developer and *that’s* the best thing you can ask?”
I don’t have a problem with Jaina or Sylvanas… *shrug* Unless I’m looking at a wrong picture, Jaina has a metal breastplate and some tummy showing, right? And Sylvanas is wearing the same thing as Alexstraza? (I don’t play Horde.) Jaina is a mage, so she doesn’t need a lot of armor to shield her, and Sylvanas looks pretty badass to me. It might just be me, but skimpy clothes make me very self-conscious and insecure IRL, so the fact that my characters can kick ass while wearing stuff like that is actually pretty cool.
(Some of the Vanilla armor was ridiculous though… someone linked a couple of pieces in guild chat and one of them was an actual metal bra… supported by magic, probably o.O)
I don’t remember the exact wording of the question, but the impression of what she meant to ask stuck in my brain based on the full context of the subject of the panel and everything else… was this: Why can’t we get some female NPC leader type characters that don’t dress trashy.
Their answere was majorly dismissive and completely did not ‘get’ what the issue was.
I don’t think “there just aren’t women in the decision loop” is a generallization. We saw ZERO blizard employees that were women at the con. All through the panels were all the big tream leaders and people in charge of this or that. And every one of them was a 25-50 male.
Coming from a corporate environment, and being a white male, I am pretty grumpy about ‘deviserity’ stuff. Mostly because I have seen actual management training videos at a company I use to work for where they explained (for managers eyes only) how they descriminated against white males to preferentually hire and promote women and minorities. In numerical quotas. It was revolting. So I tend to scoff at things that claim deversity of ideas as the reason for being diverse in hiring. What the usually mean is deversity in skin color and gender. Which is quotas and such and just ends up being a different sort of wrong. But in Blizzard I see so many things that, darnit, just plain need a few woman to sanity check them.
Women tanking in belly-shirt armor? Don’t have a problem with it.
Top heavy characters? Fine. Give people what they want.
supposidly strong female leaders standing around in their underwear? Why? Seriously, just why?
Actually I was remembering Jaina wearing something that I can’t find a shot of her in… so I am probably remembering wrong.
Oh yeah, I was thinking of Alexstraza
I was refering more to the part about “no woman could let this pass by”… I think I would have let a lot of controversial things pass by simply because the generalizations about women don’t always apply to me.
I can’t comment on diversity and equality and the like. Discrimination goes both ways, as you pointed out, and since I have no idea what goes on at Blizzard… maybe they make it a point to never hire women; maybe women simply don’t apply.
This might get me a lynch mob, but my boyfriend is a programmer and he sometimes does interviews. He’s told me several times that he/the company works for don’t have any kind of problem with women, it’s just that most of them simply aren’t knowledgeable enough. Of course, there’s always exceptions, he knows brilliant woman programmers… they’re just rarer than men. Maybe it’s the same at Blizzard… maybe not.
If part of your job was signing off on the look and feel of things, would you have a bit more sensitivity and say, well, that doesn’t bug me but I can see it might? I’m very non-feminist. I don’t get easily offended by sexist things – I’m a programmer myself. I agree with your boyfriend that there are a lot of women “programmers” who get by on their gender rather than their knowledge and I hate that. That’s part of why Blizzard doesn’t have many female programmers. Also a lot of other factors. I’ve talked about them before. Games programming is not friendly to a woman who wants a family. Period, end of conversation.
Still, the fact is the new tree form has a beard, is stuck on a freakin’ male orc skeleton – it’s not gender neutral, it’s very male. And they didn’t see that as a problem. At all. Because….
I would be curious to see if their marketing teams include women. I would hope so, but maybe not? Perhaps they aren’t interested in increasing their female player base, but if you ask me, it might be a smart move. I would wager a bet that from a sales standpoint, novelty in game items may be more tempting to a female player base (in-game pets, mounts, etc.) While I realize that comment may be completely generalized and potentially sexist, my guess is that cute pandas and other minipets that could be purchased might draw a greater percentage of the female player base to spend another $10. Perhaps not–I’m no marketing specialist. I mean, I still like cute mini-pets—but I know that many of my male counterparts could really care less about things that don’t increase their ePeen, I mean DPS, no I guess I mean ePeen.
I think the tree form comes from a large helping of dumb. I can’t imagine what they were thinking – first removing the old form, then giving us… this. They probably don’t care, to be honest. We can just glyph the old one and I doubt they’d have time to redo it, so they said “fuck it”.
I’m sure I’d be more sensitive to things, but it’s not (at least I think so) because I’m a woman, it’s because I tend to look at all possible alternatives. (Some call it fretting without any reason… oh well.) We have a name for this in Romanian – “the mother of the wounded” (kinda like “champion for the underdogs”).
I do agree with one thing: mini pets! I do know a few guys who collect them, but they’re mostly doing it for the achievement points. We girls squee over them
(Although I also know women who don’t give a damn either.) Either way, the day the moonkin pets are in the store, me and the boyfriend are getting one each!
I can see the development team “decision” about a new treeform coming from a midnight conversation about how to get more players to heal. Treeform is a very old, Vanilla-WoW type skin and “improving” that was likely just one of a huge list of recommendations that went to an art designer that spent weeks doing it. He (or she) likely had a couple of ideas and maybe personally liked the “beefier” model so it just got passed up the line.
The conversation about who plays it and identifies with it likely never even got considered.
The marketing group are likely more gender-sensitive. But seriously, do you think they have any impact on small details like treeform?
I’ve committed to my wife to doing NaNoWriMo and I’m starting to freak out…
Plot? Characters? Huh?
The NaNoWriMo slogan is “Not Plot? No Problem!” but yeah, I hear you…