Blizzard hires female Vice President of Culture to overhaul toxic values

This widely reported development hopefully spells the end of Blizzard prioritising male employees for promotions over their female counterparts.

Beyond just internal ramifications, though, it provides us with a glimmer of hope that systematic discrimination within the wider industry can start to be chipped away at too. It’s massively encouraging to see that more women than ever before are entering traditionally male-dominated industries.

We're excited to announce Jessica Martinez as our first Vice President, Head of Culture.

📜 https://t.co/BO9a87RnF8 pic.twitter.com/DZ7k2PMjx2

— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) May 5, 2022

Martinez will no doubt ensure that equitable values begin to prosper throughout Blizzard. The company describes her responsibilities as ‘growing and implementing culture strategy, ensuring team alignment across all teams, and revamping learning and talent development programs.’

Essentially, she will be pushing to ensure that inclusive values are known throughout the company, and that they’re reflected in day-to-day operations going forward.

In a company statement, Martinez added, ‘Making the values of our connections show up in what we do is how we bring humanity back to business.’

Having ticked off two major positions within Blizzard, Ybarra is now on the lookout for organisational leaders in human resources to ‘build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone.’

Given the scale of change at play here, there may yet be a chance for Blizzard to salvage its reputation – so long as it doesn’t compromise on this positive vision.

As for winning gamers over with better quality products, that’s down to Microsoft to fix.