Spring Drive
Banned
Ask five people who follow the video games industry what to expect from an E3 press conference and they’ll all paint you a similar picture. Bright lights on a big stage, lengthy cinematic trailers for shooters starring gravelly-voiced stubble-faced white men, interspersed with awkward patter from white men in suits (or, depending on the publisher, suit jackets and T-shirts and trainers), cheered and whooped at by a largely white male audience. This industry is often unwelcoming to women and underrepresented minorities, and these widely watched events do little to counter that.
Of course, some conferences do better than others. This year, we’ve judged EA, Bethesda, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Sony for the diversity of their speakers and of the games and characters on show. How do they compare?
EA:
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Conclusion: While even one woman on stage is more than some others manage, a company as large as EA has no excuse for being so limited. The Play to Give programme suggests an interest in diversity, but it would have been nice to see that represented on stage. Still, with a game as hotly anticipated as Mass Effect: Andromeda it was nice to meet the female Ryder first.
Diversity rating: 2/5
Bethesda:
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Conclusion: The only identifiable woman in Bethesda’s press conference was Emily Kaldwin, and while she made a strong showing it’s unfortunate she has to share the limelight with her ageing father.
Diversity rating: 1/5
Microsoft
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Conclusion: Microsoft gets points for featuring a game that you can only play as a female character (and her robot dog). As far as diversity on stage, it was the first conference to feature more than one female speaker, and there was an effort to include female players in demonstrations of multiplayer games, though only ever one per group.
Diversity rating: 3/5
Ubisoft
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Conclusion: Only one of the games Ubisoft showed this year has a named protagonist, and it’s a black guy. Most of the speakers on stage were white men, but for the fifth year in a row the best person for the job of holding it all together was a black woman.
Diversity rating: 3/5
Sony
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Conclusion: With few speakers at all, the diversity of Sony’s conference has to be judged on the games, two of which focused on female protagonists.
Diversity rating: 3/5
More at https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ity-report-microsoft-bethesda-sony-ubisoft-ea