Really Quick one today:
Japanese game developers have traditionally been slow towards creating more diverse work staffs, which makes Capcom’s announcement that they’ll be investing in medical benefits to encourage employees with children to stay with the company. In their annual report, which has lots of information about Capcom and where they see the industry headed, the veteran gaming made the commitment to keeping working mothers.
Capcom is engaged in improving the employment environment for women, promoting projects in which both women and men participate, and the proactive hiring of non-Japanese employees…In particular, with respect to improving the employment environment for women, we have introduced systems that promote utilization of paid leave before and after childbirth, childcare leave, and shortened working hours. In fiscal 2016, we promoted the establishment of children facilities within the company
It’s a small step, but an important one for a company that historically has had a lot of issues with gender representation. Capcom’s current workforce is made up of about 20% women, so hopefully this step towards retaining their currently female population will increase those numbers in future year.
You may be asking: “Hey, why should I care about female employees at Japanese gaming company getting benefits?”. Well, person who hates talking about benefits for Japanese women, the more video game companies invest in programs to diversify their work force the more we’ll get a diverse range of ideas and perspective in our games. Had Capcom had more female employees on their staff, maybe they wouldn’t have received such backlash for their depiction of female characters in Street Fighter V….Just maybe.
The Sociology of Videogames 
I think you nailed it on the head in that last paragraph. Gaming companies that have equal representation are more likely to create games that appeal to a wider audience. I mean look at Blizzard and Overwatch. The diversity is so vast in this game, and not just with gender– culturally, too! Fun fact: Zarya was based off of one of the women who works on the game. Great post!
I’m actually the Community Content Manager for NowLoading.co, and I would be thrilled if you considered posting on our platform (while still posting on your personal channels). If you don’t know much about us- we’re the same team behind Movie Pilot, and push to give awesome writers (like yourself) some exposure. Feel free to email me! My email and more info is on my about page. 🙂
Thanks for the comment! I’ll check out the site!