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| Activision Blizzard |
Activision Blizzard official Twitter recently announced the launch of a newly developed game character diversity detection tool, which allows the character design process to avoid symbolism, stereotypes and discrimination in a more tangible way.
Blizzard officially stated that King Mobile Games Studio began developing the project as early as 2016 to prevent unconscious bias and discrimination when creating games and characters, and then MIT Game Lab and King collaborated to turn related ideas into tangible software.
The software monitors the process of character conception and creation, studying all the ways in which basic elements such as gender, size, characters (“hero” vs. “villain”), and even subtle factors such as pose or body movements can reflect a character’s diversity.
According to Blizzard: “This tool can help to identify the diversity of a set of character traits by asking these important questions as early as possible from the character conception stage, making game characters more representative.” Jacqueline Chomatas, tool project manager, said: in the process, the tool can also uncover issues like unconscious bias.”
