Developers at Activision Blizzard King have created a tool to quantify how diverse game characters are based on several attributes, in hopes of better representing women and minority groups in its games.
As reported by Fanbyte, the tool breaks down character attributes and rates them on how diverse they are.
In a blog post, Eric Alt explains that King’s intention is to “inspire game teams…throughout the Activision Blizzard King network, to think outside the box and challenge preconceived notions around how characters should look and act.”
The end result, King hopes, is for characters to “better represent women, non-binaries and other under-represented minorities in the industry.”
The tool uses a set of character traits, including culture, race, age, cognitive ability, physical ability, body type, facial features/beauty, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background, to determine how diverse the character is.
Once it establishes a baseline for typical character traits, which is set by the creative team working in consultation with diversity and inclusion experts, the tool can then weigh new character designs against it to measure their diversity.
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The tool was tested by development teams working on Call of Duty: Vanguard and also the developers at Blizzard working on Overwatch 2.
The plan is to release the tool internally across Activision Blizzard King from the summer and into Q3 of this financial year, with the ultimate aim of making it widely available to use across the industry.
In other news, Square Enix has outlined plans to establish new studios, after recently revealing it will sell off three of its western developers.
The announcement was made during the publisher’s quarterly financial briefing. It hopes the new studios will help its intellectual property ecosystem and boost game development capabilities.