As much as I don’t care for DEI as a guiding “doctrine” for hiring, I also think companies shouldn’t be anti-diversity by law. Like intentionally hiring people because they aren’t white, no (and feels like tokenism/racism) but also intentionally hiring only whites (or the majority race) is a bigger no. Especially if more qualified candidates are being passed over solely because they’re PoC. Also companies should be inclusive so as to not be shit companies in general? Can someone tell me if/why my take is dumb or poorly thought out?
Because DEI is intended to (and very often successful at) help hire the most qualified people. No one is color blind, and pretending people are only perpetuates inequality.
DEI is the reason phones can take pictures of black people now. Once Google started hiring more black people, they could make changes to the software that used to always default to trying to adjust exposure for white skin. Now everyone’s skin tone looks good on Google phones. And all because Google hired a few black people who actually knew it was a problem in the first place.
The same goes for any representative technology. The internet didn’t just start working for blind people automatically. Companies had to start hiring blind people before they knew it was an issue. We had a blind engineer come in to our team at Google and tell us how shitty our product was for him to use and how to fix it. Most people wouldn’t think a blind man could be a good software engineer, but he helped us make our product work for millions of additional people that wouldn’t have been able to use it otherwise.
Everyone has different experiences, and just because someone knows how to build what you tell them to doesn’t mean they can make a good product. It’s only when you have diverse input throughout product development that the product you make will truly be good.
Hell yeah, thanks a lot for taking the time to spoon feed my ignorant butt. Very informative reply, thank you. I guess a reply would be “that can be done without DEI” but then that just circles back to your no one is colourblind remark. If google wasn’t diverse organically without DEI, I don’t have much optimism other corporations would be.
Piggy backing off of this, the DEI council at my job ensures that everyone has what they need to succeed in their role. For example, the All Gender restroom didn’t have feminine sanitary products which was troublesome for some of our non binary staff. Instead of forcing them to use the women’s bathroom, we installed a dispenser in the All Gender restroom.
Also, many of the field employees shower at the office after their shift because it’s dirty work. But the shower facilities were just one big room, high school style, which made several LGBTQ employees uncomfortable. We pushed for individual shower stalls as a DEI effort and now everyone feels more comfortable showering.
These are things that straight, white, cis people probably wouldn’t think of. The DEI council allows minority voices to be heard.
I posted above a few studies that show unconscious bias in hiring practices against people of color. There is a reason why DEI exists. It’s like OSHA laws. Every rule for these programs has a great misfortune behind it.
One good thing to come from this shitshow is that it’s made it really easy to figure out what people and companies to never support again. Before I might’ve accidentally supported a bigoted, shithole developer. Now I have a historical record of entities not worth interacting with, let alone giving them money.
“Numerous studies demonstrate that without fair hiring practices in place, certain groups of people are often favored over others due to unconscious biases.
A study by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley found that applicants with white-sounding names received 9% more callbacks compared to those with African-American-sounding names, despite having similar qualifications[1]. In some companies, this gap widened to nearly 19%[1].
Research from the UK showed that white candidates were favored in about 47% of hiring tests, with ethnic minority candidates needing to send twice as many applications to receive the same number of callbacks[6]. A more recent study by the University of Oxford found that candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get the same results as white British applicants[6].
Gender bias has also been documented. A study on science faculty hiring revealed that identical applications randomly assigned male or female names resulted in men being rated as more competent and hireable, and even offered higher starting salaries[6].
These biases persist even in organizations committed to diversity. Research suggests that firms may unconsciously favor candidates from privileged backgrounds, such as those able to take unpaid internships, which introduces socioeconomic bias[7].
Without fair hiring practices, these studies consistently show that white candidates, males, and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be favored in the hiring process, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce bias and promote equity in recruitment.”
That’s the thing though, these biases against people based on their ethnicity and gender already exist, whether the people doing the hiring realize it or not. The best people may lose out on job opportunities because of these qualities. The whole point of DEI is to compensate for these biases.
Then that company just missed out on a qualified employee, and said employee probably dodged a bullet by not working for a company that would engage in not hiring someone based on their race or ethnicity.
“Guess that minority shouldn’t work there then. It’s a good thing we have fair, gainful, and plentiful employment where every company with a hiring bias is perfectly balanced out by another company with the opposite bias. I sure am glad our perfect egalitarian society ensures that the minority’s kids are fed clothed and housed until they find work at an exactly comparable company - with the same exact pay - that hires minorities.”
This isn’t unique to any company. This is systemic and pervasive through our entire culture and society. Countering it requires education and effort, not ignoring the problem and experiences of those it effects. The status quo is not a fair playing field.
Hi. You’ve gotten some very good responses from the community so I’m going to leave the thread up for now, but please be aware that pushing more will likely result in removal or a temp ban. Thanks.
@PlainSimpleGarak@TheRtRevKaiser one white dude to what I suspect is another: be better than this. You get to say you don’t care because of many privileges you enjoy. Most everyone else has to care about this because of how it affects them. No one is even asking you to champion the cause but could you at least not actively be a dick about it?
That tells me you’re either a cishet, white, male, or you’re woefully uneducated and selfish. You’re totally in favor of development crunch too, aren’t you?
While it can be tempting (especially with posts like this one) if you cannot respond to a comment or post that is not be(e)ing nice in a productive manner, please just report it so that a moderator can deal with it.
In both Left for Dead games, somebody had to either play a black person or a woman. Hell, in L4D2 two people had to play a black character, and one was, gasp, a woman.
Got 2,000 hours in both games. Never heard a complaint or even a jokey racist comment. None.
No one whined and the games were a smash success, people still playing.
Yes, marketing schemes often capitulate to the lowest common denominator. This is why Veilguard happened, and it’s why we’ll see some equally atricious dogshit from the opposite end of the spectrum.
It’s something not every game needs for sure; since it’s based on real world based feedback when a game could be way beyond the world’s scope.
But putting it as a marketing thing is as dumb as putting dei as a marketing thing. Whether it’s needed or not will depend a lot based on what the game’s story and theme is based on.
putting it as a marketing thing is as dumb as putting dei as a marketing thing.
Idk chuds love licking the capitalist boots and pay extra for it, and the investors care only about that. When you view it through that lens, it’s not dumb.
It’s something not every game needs for sure; since it’s based on real world based feedback when a game could be way beyond the world’s scope.
What is this attempting to convey? I think it got lost in typos.
You must at some level make a product that is attractive and relatable to your audience or you will never sell a product, and the only way to do that is by taking aspects of the existing world.
In my naïve hopes I hoped this could be from stopping harrasment within Square Enix and its development partners, but alas no. It is stopping fans from harrasing, which is good but really they should turn that policy inwards as well.
I remember playing this back in the day. I just replayed it, and even though I knew exactly where it was going to pop up, it still startled the s*** out of me, lol.
I’ve had it wishlisted for a while because the trailers and screenshots look fantastic. Unsure if the sprawling scope will result in anything ever playable.
My hope is for something akin to a Mount & Blade style RPG but who knows of it’ll ever see the light of day.
Yeah, I’m… skeptical, to say the least. I don’t think any of these sprawling, massively-scoped “everything games” have ever actually lived up to the hype. It’s a problem of pure logistics. Making a game with so many different segments each with entirely unique gameplay loops is essentially like developing more than half a dozen games at once. It’s the problem Spore had - the scope was just too broad, and even with EA and Will Wright behind it, it eventually released as a pretty decent creature creator stapled to four shallow, rushed game stages.
No studio has the resources or inclination to commit to the 10-15+ year development cycle for a single game needed to fit that much scope, and even if they did, the entire game design landscape would have changed between the beginning and the end of the project, which would make major technical and design components of the game obsolete before it was even finished.
I’d put money on this game either becoming vaporware or releasing as a chaotic, disjointed mess with the depth of a puddle. I’d love to see them prove me wrong, but I just don’t see how anyone could overcome those kinds of logistical hurdles.
I think keeping it in an isometric perspective helps to simplify things a lot. The mechanics wouldn’t have to be as immersive and it should allow for more freedom for things to change depending on the player’s preferences. I’m still skeptical but at least it seems they’re going in a reasonable direction.
Wrath of the Righteous does it pretty good. The only sub game in the game that kinda sucks is the strategy game for the giant wars toward the end, and it’s more due to the fact that it’s not super robust; it’s just the bare minimum needed for that style of play.
Really that’s the most common flaw I see with “everything games;” they spend too much time putting everything in, but it’s never as fleshed out as it would have been if they focused entirely on one aspect.
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