More and more former employees Blizzard tries to speak out about the growing wave of protests against the atmosphere in the company. This time it was Greg Street’s turn, who was once the lead designer. World of warcraft, and now working on an MMO in the universe League of legends…
Thanks to the host of the People Make Games podcast, an annoying episode from the press conference during BlizzCon 2010 surfaced. The video shows a girl from the audience asking the developers a question: why do all the strong women in the World of Warcraft universe look like they left the catalog pages Victoria’s Secret?
A group of Blizzard men, including Jay Allen Brack, now president of the company, Alex Afrasiabi, whose name appears in the lawsuit, and Greg Street, greeted the question with laughter and jokes. They asked which catalog it would be better for them to work with, and continued to make fun of the question even after the girl left.
Then Blizzard did not promise to remove the excessive sexualization of female characters, since this issue was not on the agenda of those years. Only on BlizzCon 2014 the company announced that loincloths, armored bras, and stalkinis were being dropped from the game.
I’m not trying to speak for Blizzard, and I certainly am not trying to speak for women or people of color at Blizzard. I believe that men in leadership positions have a responsibility to make women and other marginalized people feel welcome, happy and successful in our studios. In a sense, all men in the studio should do this, but this is especially true for the leaders.
Greg Street
More on review
