Balanced Solutions

JAN 21 | EDITION #85
Happy Thursday fam. What a great week so far, let's keep it that way.

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WEEKLY'S PATREON

📓 Lil Note

Guys, I need your help.

Weekly is my side project. I'm a videographer/designer from Argentina currently living and doing an MBA in Kansas, USA.

My intention is to work in the sports industry in the next few months.

This year I edited videos for different pro-athletes and filmed a lot of content during 2020. Yesterday, I posted my Reel which luckily made a lot of noise in the sports creative community. I'm dreaming and aiming with teams in the NFL or NBA.

However, working a year and a half for FNATIC and and running Weekly for almost two years, made me fall in love with gaming and esports. I would definitely stay in gaming if orgs like Team Liquid, 100 Thieves or NRG are looking to expand their creative teams. I can bring something different to the industry.

If you put my portfolio (francorivas.com) in front of people from those teams, it would be forever appreciated.

Much love,
Franco

🍺 Beer Talk

👉 Diversity in Gaming
Let's bring the good old Reality Face-Slap Report:

Froskurinn, former Riot Games employee, let everyone know that Riot Games doesn't give a shit about diversity when it comes to on-air talent.
Among all the reactions a common one was: "companies shouldn't be hiring people just because they are black, it should be because of skills qualification".

Both parts respond in extreme ways with provocation hints on Twitter to create an instant reaction from an easily manipulable audience to take a side, and once again... divide.

I understand if they do this with daily shitty drama, because it's a business. Provocation mines attention, leading to followers, which generates money. However, it isn't understandable to take the same approach to a real and problematic issue such as racism.

People don't know the behind the scenes. I'm sure Frosk has been trying to make gaming a diverse and talented place for a long time, and I'm sure people against her, like Thorin, also tried to help promote diversity and skill in different or similar ways. But this isn't gossip or meaningless drama, we're talking about race. So if the public figures want to help, why don't they pick up a fucking phone, talk like adults, and use their platforms offering solutions to improve the system instead of vomiting on Twitter?

What's the balanced solution then?
All industries have incredible talented black people working in important positions, so I'm sure they are able to cast games. The problem isn't attached to skill, its because of the few amount of black people currently active in gaming. And why is that? Hundreds of factors, one of them being systemic racism (I wrote about it in gamer terms last year: The Gamer Gap).

Riot promotes diversity, I mean the on-air roster is very international. The problem is that they don't have enough black people applying for casting jobs, which makes employees who worked with them in the past their go-to options; and they all happen to be white.

Riot isn't the cause of systemic racism, but they aren't doing a lot to change it. That's where Froskurinn comes in to place. You want to find talented black people? Allow more into the scene by risking a bit of "safety". Teenagers looking at it from stream will be like "holy shit, if he/she did it... I can do it too". Cultural attachment is a powerful thing that companies are scared of first, and regretful later.

There are so many examples of teams making the change and improving a scene. Marvel had a similar situation with white main actors, and look at what happened with Black Panther. Can you imagine the amount of black people lining up to work with Marvel now?

💡 Game Spotlight: Hitman 3
Review and scores.

🃏 Cards Collectors Update
What a time to be alive as a collector.

Extremely rare Blastoise card selling for $468K.
Unopened Pokemon First Edition Set Booster Box sells for $408K.
MTG card, Black Lotus, selling for $250K on eBay.
Mickey Mantle Baseball card sold for $5.2M.

🙌 Barstool Moves Forward
The Nickmercs x Barstool collab is true hype right now. Somebody should make a proper study case on this guy. What an absolute game changer.

🌏 Origins Matter
The smart people at Niko Partners put together some predictions for Asia's videogame market for 2021. Most of the initiatives we see in the west, happened in the east first. If your wallet depends on it, I would pay special attention to this market.

📖 Read of the Week
Ultralearning: How I Became a Top 20% Chess Player in Under 50 Hrs, by Taggart Bonham.

🐦 Thread of the Week
Netflix 2020 Performance, by Lucas Shaw.