It is getting somewhat annoying how most of the posts on the Boards are about DZK rather than PAX. Don't get me wrong, what DZK and some others like him have been doing is not ok in any way, shape or form, and they should be held accountable. But, as Automated Riven and others have said in other places, the big issue here is PAX.
By all means, promote minorities in gaming, but don't do it simply by finding a table from 60 years ago and flipping it. 60 years ago people would say that women don't belong in science or engineering or finance or law, and thankfully we've matured enough today to see that that stance is wrong. So why is it acceptable to exclude men now instead?
Seriously, the number of times I've had to mention stuff like Noughts and Crosses, or the period of time and geography that saw Rhodesia become Zimbabwe is getting truly scary; it's like people can't understand the greater lesson of history, that advancing one group by disadvantaging another, irrespective of who either group is, is backwards, unsustainable and just plain wrong.
How hard would it have been for Riot to have their talks on things that apply to everyone, like story and art and production, include everyone, and do little stall-like things around the room in the AMA time; one along the lines of 'How to get a job at Riot: for women, by women' and another like 'How to deal with workplace insensitivity; people may not know they're being assholes' and anything else that doesn't cater to the masses, where if it applies to you and you're interested you just pop along and talk, in a less crowded, less formal setting.
We do it in hard science all the time: if you go to a conference, there are free to attend seminars that anyone interested, irrespective of background, can attend (e.g. I'm a genetic engineer, but I can still attend biophysics seminars if I want, or immunology, or oncology, or developmental biology, or inorganic metallochemistry or astronomy if I really feel like it); between these sessions everyone wanders around posters brought by assorted researchers and just observes and asks questions. Not once have I seen "you're a chemist, you don't belong at this physics talk" or anything like that.
The fact of the matter is that there were plenty of ways Riot could have handled both PAX itself and the fallout from it better, and whilst everyone is hung up on DZK and Froskurinn and that leaked Slack, actions speak far louder than words, and Riots actions are badly misguided at best, and dangerously backwards at worst.
Also, if you have an individual who spends more time with bacteria than people, and has medication to deal with crowds of more than three, coming up with a better way to run a panel in 5 minutes than however long it took the people who are paid for that shit to fail badly, you have some serious issues as a company....
