Designing for Inclusion: On Diversity, Characters, and Tools : A Critical Reflection on the King’s Diversity Space

Abstract

The thesis connects the research areas of diversity in social sciences with game production studies and intersects to some degree with game design as the case study discusses a tool called the King’s Diversity Space, which is supposed to facilitate character and narrative design processes. In the public discourse the tool gained a lot of negative attention with the framing it was presented in. Namely, its connection to Activision: Blizzard, the video game Overwatch 2, and the corporation’s complex past in relation to diversity and inclusion in workplace culture.

The aims of the study are to tackle a phenomenon that is partially obscured or inaccessible by applying research methods that have the potential to uncover the dynamics and layers of the tool’s embeddedness in game production and game culture by critically examining whether a discourse of diversity can be enacted on and in a game. The sub-question for the thesis focuses additionally on what meaning content analysis of the diversity space tool can reveal.

Methodologically, the thesis employs a case study framework, studying the diversity space tool through a screenshot and a complementary expert interview with Mikael Jakobsson, a researcher involved in the collaborative tool project with King. This allowed for a perspective of research and reflections based on viewing an official illustration of the tool with contextualized information provided by the expert. Content analysis is the chosen method for analyzing the picture of the tool with a deductive coding approach through theoretical literature and a mix of inductive and deductive coding for the transcript of the expert interview. Due to the complexity of the King’s Diversity Space tool, obstacles related to availability, and scarce data, the literature review includes an extended background section that tries to situate the tool in terms of time and space for the analysis.

The study found that there is a disconnect between the presentation of the tool through official game development channels and the project’s designed intent. The company further described diversity as a solvable problem and turned it into a marketable commodity. While the intersectional perspective could not discover a direct category interaction in the visual elements of the tool, the categories start to intersect and interact when they are being discussed in a workshop session, utilizing the tool for co-creation. The potential for the misuse of the tool was addressed in the thesis and it reflects the complexity of conceptualizing and categorizing diversity. This aspect demands both contextualization of the tool and keeping it in iterative cycles. A lack of framing could furthermore present as harmful and move away from potential positive properties that would allow the tool to be a mediator in design processes, reflecting on the users’ unconscious bias in character design.

The limitations of the study relate to the difficulty of accessing material related to the diversity space and the tool itself, as well as the tool’s embeddedness in game and game production. With the chosen methodology and the compatibility of methods some of these obstacles were overcome, yet the approach remains experimental.

Lastly, amidst structural corporate changes and company mergers, the hope remains that the future accommodates marginalized and vulnerable individuals. When the tools they are using are framed correctly, they can contribute to designing for inclusion and diversity.