An active member of our tech community is leading an important new campaign to bring about much needed change around one of the world’s most popular game franchises.
Kulpreet Virdi is a lawyer and regular attendee of Tech Nottingham and Women in Tech who you will remember from her informative and very entertaining talk explaining Intellectual Property using Pokémon at Tech Nottingham. She is also a leading figure within the community of fans around the Assassin’s Creed game series.
Recently Kulpreet has kickstarted a movement within the Assassin's Creed community to help to improve female representation in the games and to help campaign against a number of sexual misconduct allegations coming to light about certain individuals at Ubisoft, and claims by individuals at Ubisoft that “women don’t sell”.
The Problem
This attitude held by individuals at Ubisoft has meant that female roles in the games were often scrapped completely or diminished. The movement is also working to highlight, appreciate and support the women and gender minorities in the Assassin’s Creed universe, community and dev teams, and create a safe environment.
The movement is not just for women, those of other genders who support the cause are welcome and encouraged to join. Kulpreet recently posted an article outlining the aims of the movement in more detail.
The string of high-level resignations at Ubisoft are a start, but movements such as #ACSisterhood demonstrate that the people who helped make massive franchises like Assassin’s Creed what they are are demanding meaningful, permanent change, change that should be carried forward by whoever takes their place.
Kulpreet’s work is already yielding positive outcomes, the movement has grown rapidly, and she's achieved traction with leading community members and the game developers having shown their support.
Kulpreet Virdi speaking at Tech Nottingham in July 2019
Show your support
This is an important campaign Kulpreet is leading within, of all places, the videogame community - a community with more than its fair share of toxic elements, and surprise surprise, there are (male) parts of that community that are fighting it and doing their best to put her through hell for it.
Let's show our support. A member of our family is doing something wonderful and paying the price for being on the frontline of progress.
Follow Kulpreet on Twitter, the hashtag is #ACSisterhood. She is in the process of setting up a discord server which will be heavily moderated so that women and others supporting the cause are able to have a safe space to discuss all things Assassin’s Creed.