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Ubisoft Studio Boss: We Aren’t Doing ‘Enough’ to Encourage Diversity

J Station X: In a new interview, the managing director of Ubisoft Reflections admits that the company isn't doing 'enough' to encourage diversity in the games industry,

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3572d ago Replies(1)
-Foxtrot3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

Here we go

It's not about including diversity willy nilly, it's about looking outside the box and go "does this character fit in with MY story? No? Well I won't add him"

However some do it for the sake of it. Films are the worst, all the race swaps they do with films they are adapting from comics or novels. Sulu being Gay in Star Trek Beyond is another...when in the original timeline he had a wife and child...like somehow a change in the timeline makes someone grow up and go "Gee...I feel so gay today, I'm now a homosexual". Those things feel forced.

game4funz3572d ago

Yes. Almost makes me not want to watch the movie.
It's a betrayal to the creators original vision.

-Foxtrot3572d ago

Funny thing is even George Takei said that...and he was Sulu lol

Like they tried to lick his ass and they failed

He even told them he didn't approve when they told him before filming and they STILL did it

GeraltOfRevia3572d ago

Hopefully we won't hear that word again once Trump is in the white house.

Becuzisaid3572d ago

Dude. Diversity is good. Diversity as a checklist item, not good.

GeraltOfRevia3572d ago

Diversity is good when the writer is doing it to tell a good story with good characters, not when they're doing it just so SJWs won't bash them on social media.

Becuzisaid3572d ago

That's exactly my point. Basically anything by bioware.

whitesoxfalife19763572d ago

dude get yo ass out the thread wit that bullshit you typn

Becuzisaid3572d ago

Trump is a terrible choice for president. But Clinton is equally as dangerous. There are no winners in this election.

jholden32493572d ago

So I guess only people with your political leanings are allowed in the thread huh?

Seems that whole tolerance thing people preach is a one-way street. "Be tolerant to my views but I'll ravage you to pieces for yours"

I see how this works.

Becuzisaid3572d ago

That's how Democrats operate.

whitesoxfalife19763572d ago

its not what he said its how its said, i dont care for none of them to be honest. Im not a dem or a republican. This thread was not about trump tho diversity shud be a more on a even playing but it ain't bottom line.

Tho we have came a long way in gaming history it still can be more added to fix the problem for a better solution, but to add a nonsense line "Hopefully we won't hear that word again once Trump is in the white house" tells me you want things to be segregated again. And that where i type this------ at......Stop and think about what you type instead of following a silly trend cuz it shows how ignorant you really is.

AnotherProGamer3572d ago

@Becuzisaid

I won't say say Trump is equally as dangerous as Clinton, he is a better option

Trump is anti-TPP, anti-corruption, individual healthcare program but Hilary has been shown to work with big companies and does whatever they want and is taking millions of dollars from them

3572d ago
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3572d ago
quent3572d ago

He should run for president

opinionated3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

Lmao it's not about characters guys it's about their studio. I can see these French guys sitting in their office thinking "wow it sure is white around here..."

It's called affirmative action and it's a complete failure. Look at the results, we have race quotas and black unemployment is worse than it's ever been in modern American history.

Game development should be merit based, not gender based or racially based. These people are so full of shit it's sickening. Not Ubisoft in particular but the entire identity politics crowd in general. A completely warped view of the world and society.

rainslacker3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

For the most part, much of the game industry is merit based. More importantly, it's experienced based. It's also very insular, and not very welcoming to new people of all colors, creeds, sexualities, or genders(including white males). Because of this, most people just get moved around, and eventually leave by attrition.

however, due to the fact that you actually have to know what you're doing to get a job, and can't really half ass it in order to keep it, the experience part is what is removing most of the diversity from the gaming industry in today's corporate culture. There just isn't enough time passed since this became a thing to have a diverse selection to choose from, and the thought of more females(in particular) entering the industry is still rather new in the grand scheme of things.

Changes like this take time, but for the most part, something like affirmative action just doesn't work in the industry, because there is too much money on the line, and someone who can't perform their job, won't be hired, and it can seriously set schedules behind to hire based on the premise of anything other than quality of work.

It's OK to encourage diversity though, because there aren't enough people to fill the jobs available now, but that diversity comes from the long term outlook, and is not an immediate result of a company just saying, "OK, lets try to be more diverse". I can't think of a single developer that wouldn't give a fair chance to someone who isn't white, or isn't male, and outside of gender, one's race is likely to be unknown before they ever come in for an interview, and outside entry level positions, you get those from your resume, and your portfolio, or in many cases, just knowing a guy who knows a guy who is looking for a job and you worked with them before.

opinionated3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

Exactly. That goes for pretty much any industry. It's a lot harder to get your foot in the door these days for numerous reasons. Thinking diversity will fix any of it is ass backwards to me. Race and gender would be the last thing I would look at in a portfolio (if at all). The whole idea is superficial and shallow to me.

I'm willing to bet that women aren't flooding into game programming classes in college but there are many that can paint/draw some crazy concept art, model, write or animate. If you want more women in games they need to learn their options at the education level, not the workplace. It's not up to Ubisoft to encourage that interest through quotas and skin deep platitudes.

rainslacker3572d ago

When i went back to school, there were maybe 1 in 20 of the students were female, and I only knew two who were in the programming track...and one switched from the art track as they made the two tracks available during our 3rd semester. Artists and animators have an easier time breaking into the industry, although a lot of that work is also not directly with the development studios themselves anymore. I went to give a presentation there about a month ago, and in a class of 48 students, there were 6 females, and the class itself was on the programming track, so it's an improvement from when I went, but since it's the only time the class is offered and if you miss it you have to wait out our pre-reqs, it may have been a skewed look at the overall make up. The director of the program is female though, and maybe 1/3 the professors are female, and the program is active in STEM programs, which is the reason I was there for a presentation.

Biggest problem is more cultural and the gender roles that exist within society as a whole. I know the whole, "women can do whatever a man can do" is a big thing nowadays, but it's one thing to say it, and it's another to get more women actually interested in doing whatever a man can do.....something that most of these SJW need to figure out to have a side mini-rant.

opinionated3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

Makes sense, you're right. It's just the odds, if 75% of programming interest is white males then they have a significantly better chance of landing a job. They make it seem like systemic racism when they say shit like this though lol. It annoys the piss out of me.

Were those classes as unbalanced with ethnicity as they were with gender or was it more evenly split? Why is everything but programming outsourced? It seems like the art side would be the cheaper side to have in house.

rainslacker3572d ago (Edited 3572d ago )

Racial make up was pretty diverse. I didn't count or anything, but for the presentation I'd say at least half were white, some asian, maybe a few black, and a few hispanics or indians. It was more diverse than I remember when I went to school there, where it was mostly white. Keep in mind I'm speaking anecdotally though, and the region I'm in while diverse as it's kind of an East Coast Silicon Valley, is still predominately middle to upper class caucasion. However that one class wouldn't be indicative of the entire program which I've been told has seen an increase in female participants, who actually complete the program at higher percentages than their male counterparts. However, tech fields in general are pretty diverse on the race side, as tech is kind of a thing worldwide now. This is an improvement over maybe 10+ years ago, where it was actually kind of rare to see anyone other than white, asian, or to a lesser extent indian.

In game development though, it's still mostly contained to regions where the racial make up is predominately white or asian, so North America, western Europe, Japan, Korea, a decent amount of russian, and China mostly, with a smaller selection in other regions, but even those tend to be predominately white or indian.

Programming can be outsourced, and some parts are, however the bulk of the programming is the core of the game, so it's usually done in house for productivity reasons. Most art that's outsourced is usually for design or animation, as it's cheaper to have a company that is more fluidly staffed to handle such things than it is to maintain a staff or pay independant contractors to do the work. Some studios still do their work in house though, but bigger games are often outsourced heavily, and they tend to be the buggiest games out there(like AC3 where they said they had 400 people working on it). OTOH, you have studios like Square Enix who heavily outsourced FFXIII, and despite it's poor story, was still technically well done and relatively bug free.

Art tends to take a lot of people a lot of time to do in a big game. One person could spend a week making a single prop in a game which may never be seen. In house is usually more important character models, general level art work which will be seen or interacted with, or animation involved in actual game play. An outsourced studio can have a hundred artists or animators on staff ready to go, whereas a studio will have to hire them, maintain the facilities for them, pay taxes for them(or higher rates for contract employees), and run the risk of unemployment claims once those people are eventually let go.

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Devil18703572d ago

is that why the last 5 games they made were total shitfest?

opinionated3572d ago

Because they were all French white dudes? lol Maybe?

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70°

Microsoft Gaming Revenue Drops 7% Year-on-Year, Content and Services Down 5%, Xbox Hardware Down 33%

Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.

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Jin_Sakai23d ago (Edited 23d ago )

Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.

dveio23d ago

To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.

Jingsing23d ago

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Tanktopmaster9223d ago

Once they re-evaluate exclusive all will be fine….

S2Killinit23d ago

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

Jingsing23d ago

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Tanktopmaster9223d ago

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

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50°

Spiders Studio, Developers of GreedFall: The Dying World, Announce Liquidation of the Company

Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.

What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.

We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.

If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."

40°

Koei Tecmo Announces Record Financial Results After Releasing Many Big Games

Today, Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the full fiscal year 2025, related to the period between April 2025 and March 2026.

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