Over the weekend a video from BlizzCon 2010 resurfaced and was shared around social media. This video features some executives at Blizzard Entertainment laughing after a female fan asked if they would make a female character in World of Warcraft that did not “look like they’ve stepped out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.” Now one of the men in the video has come forward to comment about the resurfaced video.
Greg Street, the former Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft and current Executive Producer for Riot Games’ MMO project, has since taken to Twitter to issue an apology.
Street made the following statement:
There’s a 10 year old Blizzcon video going around of players doing a Q&A with a panel of devs of which I was a member. Look, it was a shitty answer at the time and it certainly hasn’t aged well. I wish I had said something better then.
You can’t really see the people asking the questions well from the stage, and I feel terrible now seeing the look on her face. I have more experience now answering questions live, but no doubt that won’t be my last shitty answer. I apologize for those as well as for this one.
I think some folks are interpreting my saying I will make mistakes again as some kind of blasé attitude about the situation of women in the gaming industry. That’s my interpretation of their interpretation anyway…
I think devs talking to players is really important. I want to encourage studios to keep doing it. But I know it’s scary for a lot of developers. They are afraid they will say the wrong thing and make players or their company mad. The only way to get better is to do it a lot…
I have been doing it for 23 years plus or minus. I still make mistakes. It happens. Learn from it. Apologize and move on. I hope the lesson that anyone is taking from that Blizzcon video is *not* how risky it is to talk to the community…
I was talking internally to Riot the other day and I was trying to compliment a team and ended up insulting them instead. I felt like shit for a couple of days. It happens…
I was only talking about the video, and really only because @tha_rami brought it up, and I respect the hell out of him. I wasn’t trying to call whatever happened at Blizzard an accident. I hope I didn’t contribute to that and I even hope I made the culture a little better…
I’m not trying to speak for Blizzard and I’m certainly not trying to speak for the women or POCs at Blizzard. I do believe men in leadership roles have a responsibility, a duty, to make sure women and other marginalized folks feel welcome, happy, and successful at our studios…
I mean really all men at a studio do, but especially the leaders of the studio. I take that very seriously at Riot, and we have worked very hard to make our company a better place to work…
As I have said, I think we are doing well, but it’s a long journey, and it won’t be me but the women of Riot who ultimately decide if succeeded or not…
I find the video embarrassing and I apologize to the player who asked the question and all others who were disappointed with our “answer.” I think there are more important voices that we need to hear right now. But the video can be a reminder that we can be better.
GC out
