by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Imagine you are a rich person. Not just a little bit rich, but really, really rich.

Imagine you are Oprah.

Your weekly routine would consist of sifting through piles and piles of requests from charities and social causes for your support. All of them approaching you for a gift do so with a fire in their belly, believing that their cause is the most worthy. In one week, you may get asked to help abused animals, homeless mothers with children, infants starving in third-world countries, or the rain forest.

Every one of them is a good cause. You, Oprah, have to decide where to direct your charitable dollars. This week, you opt to support a no-kill animal shelter. You remembered your parents adopting a shelter dog when you were 10, and you still carry very fond memories of that dog with you.

Not supporting homeless mothers, starving children, or the disappearing rain forest does not make you a bad person. It simply means you value something else more. That makes you a friend of animals, but doesn’t make you by default an enemy of mothers, infants, or the environment.

In my non-gamer, non-parent life, I work as a fundraiser. I have yet to ask Oprah for a donation, but I have asked many mini-Oprahs for a gift. There are three things that need to be in alignment before any gift to a charity occurs:

• the person needs to have the assets to make the gift you ask for;
• the person needs to have an affinity for your cause in general; and
• the person needs to understand how your organization specifically will impact that cause in a meaningful way.

If the donor has the money, believes in the cause, and trusts that you can deliver positive results, then a gift will be made.

Just because Oprah gave to abused animals this week, does not mean gifts to the other three causes will never, ever be made. Those other charities just need to either:

• frame their cause in a way that’s meaningful to the donor and in alignment with the donor’s interests, or
• find a different donor to help them achieve their goal. Just because a specific issue is important to you does not mean it automatically is equally important to somebody else.

As a fundraiser, you need to find a way to present the cause in a way the donor understands and relates to. It’s not about your needs, it is about their needs first.

Then, there is Blizzard.

Every day, the game maker gets bombarded with requests to fix PvP, raid encounters, professions, their website, the mobile Armory app, the outdated character models, the lack of compelling diverse characters in the story, the lack of flying in the new expansion, and the continuing murkiness of a future release date.

Each person taking the time to voice their concern with any of these game aspects is very invested in that particular one. As a company, Blizzard does not have the time or the resources to address them all equally, just like our donor – no matter how rich – does not have the money to give to every single charity. Requests are prioritized, and they are prioritized based on overall objectives.

As a game maker, Blizzard has to evaluate which aspects will impact their game in the most positive way. To paraphrase, they can please most players sometimes, but they cannot please all players all the time.

If diversity and minority representation is important to the player base, it does not make it important to Blizzard by default. We know that Blizzard is a company that makes slow, deliberate decisions based on user feedback, research, and lots and lots of data analysis. Blizzard rarely makes decisions on a whim, or because they are the “right thing to do” – though they have responded quickly when taken to task for stepping over the line.

As a company, their main concern is to release a good product that players enjoy.

If diversity in storytelling and gaming is important to us as a player base, it won’t happen because we insist on it. We need to frame the argument in a way that Blizzard (our Oprah) understands. Blizzard can and should deliver more diversity in World of Warcraft because:

• Changing the lead in the storyline from male to female requires no additional resource commitment. None. It would however be a measure of being more inclusive to approximately half their player base with no additional cost to the company.
• Our society has changed drastically since World of Warcraft first launched. Gay marriage – once thought impossible – is now embraced by over half of all Americans. It stands to reason that featuring gay characters now isn’t nearly as radical a concept. If anything, this trend would indicate that Blizzard could capture more new gamers than it would lose by being more inclusive. The only consideration of course is that Blizzard releases games worldwide; while Europe is miles ahead in this regard, other countries are not. Without a doubt, Blizzard isn’t going to rock the boat in markets that represent significant revenue streams, however it wouldn’t be the first time one of their games has been iterated differently for a foreign market.
• World of Warcraft has achieved its mega successful status by sticking to its core vision. It has also seen a steady decline in subscriber numbers since it reached its peak in the Fall of 2010. Perhaps it is time to make a change. At this point, the subscriber trend points only one way, and that is down. There is a demand in the market for more diverse, more inclusive game play that isn’t being met effectively by any other MMO right now. There are hints of it in the game, but those hints are very subtle at best. Blizzard should seize this opportunity, not because it is “the right thing to do”, but because there’s an argument to be made that being more inclusive and minority-friendly would ultimately make shareholders (and of course players) very happy.

Finally, while gameplay FIRST is the first bullet on their corporate mission statement (and the one that they have highlighted above all others), their fifth and seventh objective are every voice MATTERS and lead RESPONSIBLY. If every voice truly matters to them, and Blizzard wants to be a leader in this industry, then we must ask that they hold themselves accountable to all their standards, and not just the ones that are easy to get behind.

To make a convincing argument for diversity and inclusion, we as players need to present it in a way that Blizzard can understand from their point of view. We cannot hold them accountable to our standards, but we can hold them accountable to theirs.