A gaming industry for everyone—Our people, our communities and our games

Learn about how we’re creating inclusive games and fostering a workplace where everyone belongs.

At Activision Blizzard, we believe that having a workforce with a broad set of perspectives and backgrounds leads to more inclusive games where players can explore expansive and welcoming worlds, show up as their authentic selves in alignment with our values, and feel that sense of belonging we’re all looking for. That’s why we continue to invest in fostering a culture of belonging — it creates an environment where people can do and be their best, and therefore deliver the best experience for our players.

In last year’s 2022 DEI Look-Back, we shared how we set the foundation to make Activision Blizzard the most welcoming and inclusive company in the industry.  In 2023, we continued to build on our momentum on putting inclusion into practice across the whole organization and within specific business teams to help continually foster a deeper sense of belonging. This work has led to more innovations in accessibility and inclusive game design.

Takeaways

• Inclusive game design (IGD) continues to be an area we invest heavily in because we know that when games are designed with everyone in mind, our industry can continue to grow and become more welcoming. 

• We believe that the people who make our games should reflect the people who play them. Women and non-binary people currently represent a combined 27% of Activision Blizzard’s global workforce, a 1 ppt increase year over year.

• We’ve prioritized nurturing an inclusive mindset in our workforce to continually foster a welcoming workplace culture. Respecting and celebrating everyone's lived experiences helps us to retain and attract the best talent in the industry and relate to the communities we serve. 

Embedding inclusion into our games

We invested heavily in our inclusive game design (IGD) efforts in 2023 to better serve a broader population and give gamers choice and flexibility. 

This year we built even more resources to upskill game developers. We deepened partnerships with organizations like AbleGamers, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and Center for Scholars and Storytellers by launching an Inclusive Game Design Council. These relationships help us to bring more expertise and resources to support our teams as they’re creating new characters, storylines, and games. 

The inclusive game design practice at Activision Blizzard is focused on three pillars: representation, accessibility, and community.

Representation

It is important that our games showcase different cultures, identities, and lived experiences in an authentic and compassionate way.

Lifeweaver in Overwatch 2

One of the best ways to create more representation in games is to have representation in the workplace. For example, an artist on the Overwatch team inspired and helped create the first Thai hero in Overwatch 2, Lifeweaver. 

At Activision Blizzard we employ many veterans who are passionate about contributing their talent and skills to the industry and creating and increasing visibility for veterans. This is one of the many reasons we launched the Call of Duty Endowment Warrior Pack in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. The bundle was inspired by and created in close collaboration with a decorated retired U.S. Navy SEAL who shared how his Samoan heritage is a crucial influence in his life. 

Another way we’re striving to authentically represent characters is by hiring voice actors who identify with the character. The Overwatch team searched to find an actress with a shared lived experience as the new Peruvian character, Illari — enabling her to record Illari’s voice in English, Spanish, and Quechua, the indigenous language originating in central Peru.

Catbat in Crash Team Rumble

Another example is Crash Team Rumble’s first non-binary character, Catbat, voiced by a genderfluid actor who uses all pronouns.

We’re proud to have employees with different lived experiences at Activision Blizzard, but we know that alone isn’t enough. That’s why we provide our game teams with resources and workshops to help guide their thinking around nuanced topics. In 2023, we hosted learning sessions that focused on topics like appropriation in storytelling, gender identity, and gender bias.  

Accessibility

Anyone who wants to play our games should be able to play our games. Nearly 200 employees across Activision, Blizzard, and King became certified as Accessible Player Experience (APX) Practitioners through AbleGamers. 

Deadzone input settings in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III

Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Diablo IV launched with new accessibility features, like dead zone inputs and button remapping. These features allow players to customize their controllers so those with motor disabilities can still play. Diablo IV was recognized for this work by the Game Awards when it got nominated for “Innovation in Accessibility”. But these are nothing compared to what this work means for our players like @tyleniphe, who is the first blind player to complete Diablo IV without sighted help — he finished in six days!

Precision Help in Candy Crush Soda Saga

Accessibility features in our games expanded across our mobile games as well. In Farm Heroes, a music accessibility menu now allows players to change the audio playback which can help those with hearing loss or sensitivity. Candy Crush Soda Saga includes a new “Precision Help” option in the accessibility menu that gives players more feedback when selecting a candy by enlarging it. 

Community

The work to create inclusive and welcoming online communities is an ongoing effort. We’ve made some great strides this year and are continuing to innovate in this space for our players and the industry as a whole. 

In 2023 we continued to share progress around our anti-toxicity efforts in Call of Duty, including the latest blog post that shared an update to the Code of Conduct. Blizzard also shared their efforts to cultivate a positive and fair gameplay experience in Overwatch 2 through Defense Matrix updates.

Call of Duty’s in Game Updated Code of Conduct

At the end of 2023, we launched new in-game voice chat moderation in Call of Duty. This feature was implemented globally (excluding Asia) in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Examining month-over-month data, Call of Duty saw an 8% reduction in repeat offenders since the rollout. Our voice moderation and reporting, combined with username and text chat moderation, provide our players with both proactive and reactive protection against disruptive behavior.

Representation at Activision Blizzard

Our global workforce currently has a combined 27% representation of women and non-binary people, a 1 ppt increase year over year. The representation of all racial and ethnic groups remained constant year over year. In the future, we plan to integrate these updates into Microsoft’s Annual D&I report. We remain committed to strengthening a culture of inclusion across every part of the Activision Blizzard business.

Fostering and promoting an environment of inclusion and belonging

Our progress in inclusive game design is driven by our incredible, talented team across the globe. We’ve doubled down on our efforts to encourage inclusive mindsets and behaviors and provide our employees with opportunities for growth and support. This culture of inclusion that we’ve worked so hard to foster at the company helps our people be their authentic selves and create the most impactful games for our players. 

Mentorship opportunities to cultivate support

Mentorship and sponsorship took center stage in 2023 across the company to provide the support, connection, and development our employees need to grow in their careers. Activision Publishing launched its first mentoring program, with over 1,400 people signed up to participate. Blizzard piloted a sponsorship program that matched senior leaders with executive team sponsors to support their continued career growth. The program participants included over 60% women, and represented a broad range of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. King continued its mentorship program with over 630 participants and Activision Blizzard in the UK launched reverse mentoring this year where mentors had the chance to learn from their mentees. 

Programs that fuel conversation

We worked in partnership with our Learning & Development team to launch collections of learning content focused on awareness, belonging, and inclusion, with an emphasis on facilitating inclusive conversations. Our employees completed over 900 courses, including sessions on topics like inclusive language and how it creates safety and belonging at work. 

Upgrades to our technology

In addition to supporting our people, we continued to invest in technology that supports an inclusive workplace. We now support 28 languages for real-time translation on video conference calls. We also fostered connection through technology by rolling out a new platform to our Global Employee Networks called Teleskope. Teleskope enables our Networks to better engage members, plan and track events, manage budgets, and share information. Updates were also made to the company’s HR tool, giving employees the opportunity to share their pronouns and name pronunciation globally. In addition, gender and race and ethnicity categories were updated to further reflect our employees’ broad spectrum of identities, giving our employees a more affirming self-identification experience.

Looking Ahead

2023 was a year of immense change for the team at Activision Blizzard — a year full of connection, commitment, and conversation. We’ve made incredible strides to ensure our values and vision for a more inclusive gaming industry spread into every corner of our organization. We know that this work to foster belonging in our workforce and strengthen our culture of inclusion creates an environment where our team can be innovative and creative. Now, as part of Team Xbox, we’re excited to continue this critical work and do even more to bring our games to everyone, everywhere. We are confident that our combined efforts will drive more progress to create a stronger, inclusive organization as part of Microsoft.

Footnote: The data we shared in this blog is representative of our employee base as of Dec 31, 2023. The reduction in force in January of this year is not reflected in this update. 

The data included in this presentation represent our best estimates based on data included in our systems. Data was pulled on 1/10/2024. Our gender data is global, where permissible by local law, and represents employees’ self-selection between fields of “Woman,” “Man,” “Non-binary,” “Something else,” and “Prefer not to say.” In calculating gender representation, we consider the percentage of known employees (i.e., those who have not selected “Prefer not to say,” or have not identified in any way). Gender representation data reflects regular, non-temporary employees with employee contract type “regular,” that were employed as of 12/31/2023. Our race and ethnicity data is limited to the United States and, like our gender data, represents employees’ self-selection. In this case, the fields from which employees select include “White,” “two or more races,” “Hispanic or Latinx,” “Native American or Alaska Native,” “Black or African American,” “Asian,” “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander,” and “Prefer not to say.”  Again, in calculating ethnicity representation, we consider the percentage of known employees (i.e., those who have not selected “prefer not to say” or have not identified in any way). Race and ethnicity representation data reflects regular, non-temporary employees with employee contract type “regular” and a “work location” in the United States that were employed as of 12/31/2023.