Their commitment to ESG is more terrifying than anything Pondsmith dreamed up.
Why?
Since there's absolutely nothing controversial in there and commitments eg to encourage more women into game development can hardly be viewed as dystopian (does Blizzard sound like a pleasant and desirable working environment to you?), I can only assume this relates to your own personal beliefs rather than anything wrong with what the company is doing.
Regarding representation in art / entertainment, it's difficult to explain to people who aren't in minority groups how important it is for people to see themselves represented.
In the 70s in the UK there was an entire sitcom devoted to jokes about a black family living nextdoor. I am not black, but how is that going to help black people see themselves -- and be seen by others -- as a perfectly ordinary part of society. Likewise, see Nichelle Nicholls talking about why she agreed to stay on Star Trek despite being the receptionist: because it mattered to have a black woman in space doing a job AT ALL.
I *am* gay, and I can tell you that seeing gay people depicted in entertainment with fully functioning personalities and lives, rather than as the butt of jokes or as people who do nothing but have sex and fuss about being gay as if it were a personality type and the sum total of their character, would have made a world of difference to how I felt about myself growing up. It would also have helped some people who aren't gay get over the absolutely ridiculous and juvenile obsession they have to this day with thinking about gay people first and foremost as what they do with their pee pee parts rather than as human beings.
At the end of the day,
[...] whether a character is black or white, straight or gay, whatever, matters about as much as whether they have brown or blond hair. Because underneath the prejudice, we are all the same: we're human beings with the same motivations, the same needs, the same feelings. And if a story is to be interesting, exploring different perspectives certainly helps.
And, yes, you may find it more difficult to relate to a female character, or a gay one, or whatever. But if you do, you have perfectly illustrated what women and minorities feel like every single time they are presented with the generic steroid-pumped white American male with a gun who populates every other game as their "interesting" game hero. It's alienating. It's narrow. It's dull. And it's fake, because that is not any recognisable depiction of the people who live in the real world. If leaving that fantasy bubble makes people insecure or upset, quite frankly the issue more likely lies with them than anyone else and they have some growing up to do.
I'm sorry some people don't like this stuff. I'm sorry some people think it's silly. But not everyone in the world looks like you or feels like you, and it's unhealthy to pretend they should or that they should not be represented. To a great extent, it's that very attitude that makes messages of social inclusion in mainstream media so important. The problem is less with these initiatives than with the backward attitudes that make them necessary in the first place.
PS I'm not even going to start on how important it is for a Polish company to defend these values in the face of Poland's current politics.
