Former Riot Games Senior Concept artist and current Easy Games Art Director Michael Maurino claims that video game developers “have an obligation to advance social justice and diverse representation.”
A screenshot from Star Wars Outlaws (2024), Ubisoft
Maurino made these comments back in May 2020, but were recently brought back to public attention by former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern after Maurino personally attacked Kern.
Kern initially criticized Star Wars Outlaws’ protagonist Kay Vess writing, “It’s *always* the jaw line. No reason to give every woman in AAA games a male jaw. So why do they do it?'”
It’s *always* the jaw line.
No reason to give every woman in AAA games a male jaw.
So why do they do it? https://t.co/BtlhnEWd6P
— Grummz (@Grummz) April 10, 2024
Maurino responded, “I’ll f***ing bite. A thread about making female characters in games. This idiot/grifter/probably-feigning-outrage-doughboy really doesn’t seem to get it, even apparently *as* a developer. TLDR: making the nuances of a gentler face can be a real tough one in game art.”
He continued, “Lighting messes a lot with any geometry in games. ESPECIALLY when 3D scanning is involved. A scan will snag virtually any detail, and that detail is translated into depth, texture, volumes, etc which of course cast shadow. More severe angles will create harsher shadows.”
Michael Maurino on X
From there, he would use Keanu Reeves and Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 as an example. After about half a dozen posts concerning Silverhand and shadows and lighting, Maurino took issue with Kern’s criticism of the Vess’ jawline.
He wrote, “There’s a point in that dips**t’s original post, in that men don’t seem to be as “edited” as a female source. That’s a whole f***ing culture thing on top of production. We forgive men for having structure in their faces (chiseled, sharp) and we gasp when women have a wrinkle.”
“Case in point when I worked on the Fiora rework. There was s * * * f i t had by gamers when we gave her a unique face, one that was stylized, but one that showed structure. So much of a s***fit that we caved to the demands. I did this paintover to make her more ‘pretty’.”
Michael Maurino on X
“I was pissed about this (and to be transparent the splash team didn’t want to make the changes) because there was suuuuch a small difference in the changes but here we were. Defending simply chiseling a woman’s face WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SEVERE LOOKING,” he went on.
Maurino then shared, “Going back to the execution, I also did Fiora’s high rez sculpt and I did a TON of smoothing that you just wouldn’t do on a dude because (((reasons))). Not all were somehow misogynistic, but it’s the accepted stylistic treatment to reduce features of women.”
Michael Maurino on X
Next, he provided some more examples from League of Legends and Spellbreak concerning lighting and shadows before getting to Star Wars Outlaws.
He stated, “Going back to hyper realistic models though, ESPECIALLY the scanned models, yeah, you have everything from tons of sculpted detail, maybe not tweaked by the artist, all sorts of maps on the model (spec, roughness, blah blah) crazy shaders for subsurface scattering, etc”
“(Also that last image is badass) So there are so many things to tweak and make balanced. Imagine having like 100 parameters as to how the character will express JUST in a few frames or in a real-time environment which could cause all sorts of weirdness,” Maurino added.
Michael Maurino on X
“So yeah, I can near guarantee you this ‘translation issue’ has MUCH more to do with all those parameters affecting the model in the specific context of this shot to make it look a bit different from the source actor. But also like.. ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CONTEXT HERE,” he wrote.
“My *actual* critiques of this stuff is that scanned models are overleveraged so hard, and take so much information that the eye normally just throws away, that it’s all uncanny valley to me. Even the ‘best case’ the characters still creep me the f*** out.”
Michael Maurino on X
From there he highlighted a number of non-scanned models from Cyberpunk 2077 and how he enjoys them much more than scanned models. He then returned to Star Wars Outlaws, “And back to women, they are given a raw deal because gamers lose their shit when it’s really the actors just NOT WEARING MAKEUP in the game shots versus film/tv contexts. Like dudes.. I guess you just don’t even know enough women to know makeup sculpts the face.”
He added, “This character STILL HAS makeup but it’s just a different style and MY DUDES please dip into a sephora to understand that makeup, in it’s rawest sense, affects how light interacts with skin through chemical/color/material parameters.”
Michael Maurino on X
He then asserted, “And back to the raw deal women get, we apparently only judge them ‘beautiful’ if they’re a terrifyingly reductive version of themselves devoid of any facial features, pigmentation, even like.. blood. Everything is sanded down and it’s f***ing gross.”
“Like sure, get off on whatever you get off on, but maybe ‘gritty space war bounty hunter tale’ is not the format for you to jerk off to. Perhaps that’s a more gritty context where you want to have people like real. Like our bug killing mother,” Maurino added.
Michael Maurino on X
Later in his thread he shared, “Like you can have technical feedback and ick when something looks overproduced, over sampled, over sourced, blah blah because those are legitimate bits of ‘harm’ that game parameters cause to hyper-real executions. The answer is to let artists art.”
“Ultimately the whole conversation is dumb, dumb because mark kern doesn’t actually know how to make a functional art pipeline/product and even if he does, he has shit tastes anyway. Also dumb because we have double standards for women in games. Always have,” he wrote.
Michael Maurino on X
He then concluded by insulting Kern, “So once again, mark and his dipshit suckers can f*** off, because anyone actually making games is making the best thing they can, with the resources they can, and I’d love to see a gamer/grifter even try to make something functional and tasteful.”
“And unless your game takes place entirely in marmoset or statically just standing there inside of unreal with some sort of (probably not optimized) shader or other rendering, this aint it either. Also, yawn. This stuff is so 2013. Good night folks,” he concluded.
Michael Maurino on X
Kern would respond to Maurino’s post by sharing his posts from 2020, “The Riot artist who told me to ‘F*** off’ about Star Wars: Outlaws, Michael Maurino, who made League of Legends Fiora uglier, is a political activist. Calls my followers ‘dips**t suckers.’ He tried to blame it on complexity of doing game art, but his real agenda is found in his earlier tweets. ‘You have an obligation to advance social justice…you are not just making art.’ ‘artists…have a responsibility to wrap diversity and justice in the consumable.'”
The Riot artist who told me to “F*ck off” about Star Wars: Outlaws, @Iron_Stylus , who made League of Legends Fiora uglier, is a political activist.
Calls my followers “dipsh*t suckers.”
He tried to blame it on complexity of doing game art, but his real agenda is found in his… pic.twitter.com/1LoW1NAPNX
— Grummz (@Grummz) April 11, 2024
And in 2020, Maurino stated, “Extremely luke warm take: as a game developer, a manufacturer of cultural content which specializes in resonance, you have an obligation to advance social justice and diverse representation. You are not just making art. You are participating in the formation of bedrock.”
“There was a time we could resort and rest on the creation of aesthetics of the known. That time has passed,” he continued. “As stewards and bookkeepers of artifacts both widely consumed and niche, artists, writers, designers have a responsibility to wrap diversity and justice in the consumable.”
Michael Maurino on X
“The pedantic and irrelevant cry of ‘the SJW’ agenda is not only a tired one, but one of desperate grasping of dying cultural relevance, a vestigial organ of a sunsetting class of consumers which don’t represent the bulk of the audience, and have no ability to create anyway,” he wrote.
“Social justice whether it be gender, class, race, is a prevailing wind, are those which are inevitable,” he declared. “Looking around us at just the last few days makes salient the tide, despite whatever obstacles are placed in its path, crash against shoddy premises of institutional resistance.”
Michael Maurino on X
“Ultimately, even active inclusivity is not sufficient to change fundamentally the framework in which we design. It is crucial to challenge the structure of limited awareness and institutional bias. Those assumptions must be torn down,” Maurino stated.
He concluded, “As a follow-up, this isn’t meant to be a call out to developers who don’t acquiesce to movements of social progress. But it is an invitation to gain awareness of a cause and see which way your audience is evolving. What have you got to lose? You have only appreciation to gain.”
Michael Maurino on X
He would also add a couple of posts to his original post in the thread. The first he wrote, “So as developers of cultural buttresses and bedrock, developers must be alligned with those causes. Stand with those individuals, as they are our audience and most importantly, our most sacred of human brethren.”
Michael Maurino on X
The other reads, “Movements like Black Lives Matter, Sunrise Movement and other orgs fundamentally bring the inherent conflict necessary to challenge institutionalized disenfranchisement to the doorstep of oppression. Other aware cultural contributes must follow.”
Michael Maurino on X
READ: Video Game Developers Reportedly Make Characters Androgynous To Cater To Transgenderism
Based on these comments in 2020, Kern is correct in declaring Maurino an activist. And as noted in his comments above the social justice activism he’s pushing is evil and thus must be opposed.
Bishop Robert Barron explained in an interview with Angelus News, “First, they advocate a deeply antagonistic social theory, whereby the world is divided sharply into the two classes of oppressors and oppressed. Second, they relativize moral value and see classical morality as an attempt by the ruling class to maintain itself in power. Third, they focus, not so much on the individual, as on racial and ethnic categories and hence they endorse the idea of collective guilt and recommend a sort of reverse discrimination to address the injustices of the past. Fourth, they tend to demonize the market economy and the institutions of democracy as part of a superstructure defending the privileged. Fifth, they push toward equity of outcome throughout the society, rather than equality of opportunity. And finally, ‘wokeism’ employs divisive and aggressive strategies of accusation that are contrary to the Gospel demand to love our enemies.”
He added, “And finally, ‘wokeism’ employs divisive and aggressive strategies of accusation that are contrary to the Gospel demand to love our enemies. Suffice it to say that Catholic Social Teaching stands athwart all of this. It wants social justice, of course, but not on ‘woke’ terms. Its heroes are not Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault, but rather Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Jesus the Lord, Ambrose, Aquinas, and Teresa of Calcutta.”
Bishop Robert Barron. Photo Credit: Diegobcardenas, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
What do you make of Michael Maurino’s claim that video game developers must embrace this twisted version of social justice and diverse representation?
DEI / ESG has failed.. its pushing males of all ages further right, its ruining the gaming industry (sales down, lay offs, etc.).., time to stop the DEI /ESG nonsense, as extremes have hijacked it and are over doing it, as greedy managers don’t care, aslong as they get ESG money..
This will be a very interesting time to look back upon for future business students.
Hard to make gentler facial structures in the game? A. It’s been done before so no excuse B. If you’re having trouble because you’re under experienced in doing so, you’re a DEI hire that needs to move out of the way.
Anyway, why did they add a square cleft chin to her? She looks horrible and nothing like the model. They think they’re mad now, wait till these sales don’t happen. We’re sick of this.