Activision tests Mario’s ‘diversity tool’ and the game fails

A video that was recorded at the 2017 Game Developers Conference, but has now been released to the public, showed an embarrassing presentation by The Diversity and Inclusion team at Activision Blizzard While trying to apply concepts from the diversity analysis tool to games in Super Mario.

Activision Blizzard announce Proudly its space versatility tool on May 12, when it reported that the development teams for Call of Duty: Vanguard and Overwatch 2 tested its features with great enthusiasm. Created by the company’s new diversity employees, the tool consists of assigning performance scores to items to consider such as race, gender, ethnicity and physical disability, in a process that does not appear to involve technology, but merely converts observations into data, statistics and graphs.

Overwatch’s character Anna, for example, gets a 7 in race and culture for being Arab and Egyptian, plus 4 in the disability category for wearing an eye patch and 5 in gender for being a woman. In terms of body and sexual orientation, the score is zero because the character is slim, curved, and straight.

We use [a Ferramenta Espacial de Diversidade] To see what “more diversity” would look like across all of our characters across multiplayer, campaigns, and live seasons,” says Alayna Cole, Activision’s Diversity and Inclusion Specialist. “Now we will use that data in the next games we’re working on.”

The presentation of the tool at GDC, which has now appeared, shows Activision employees applying the concept to characters in the Mario series. The Nintendo game was rejected for not being diverse enough.

Apparently, the Mushroom Kingdom lacks diversity, especially with regard to physical disability and sexual orientation, since the characters are not disabled and presumably heterosexual.

However, experts at Activision Blizzard praise the fact that brothers Mario and Luigi are Italian, which allows their place in the instrument chart to be more “there”. Mario also gets away with zero for being low and “rounded”.

Activision Blizzard’s versatility and inclusion team cardboard cut-outs have scared even cause activists in the US, and issued a response from the company, which now denies the tool was used in the development of Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty Vanguard.

In addition to creating a diversity analysis tool, the D&I team at Activision Blizzard aims to ensure that in the next few years 50% of the company’s workforce is made up of women and non-binary people.

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