Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#211

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

dang1234throw wrote: post #165

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #20

This is probably not going to be a popular opinion here, but I wonder if any folks have considered what it looks like on the China side? Specifically, you are in China, and the HK protestors want what to happen to China? You have HK protesters waving American and British flags. These are the countries that have started wars all over, in the last 70 years since the end of WWII, ostensibly to promote democracy, and eve…

I'm Chinese and can say some words explaining the perspective from where I sit. I don't think memory of historical wrongs lie at the root of Chinese reactions. They may be the reasons most commonly given, but I don't think it's psychologically operative for most Chinese people. (This as following partly from introspective observation as a Chinese, and partly from the general principle against giving much credence to…

> Are you to give in to such a person so that he can get what he wants?

That depends. Is it the right thing to do? From a moral perspective, are they correct, regardless of their other motivations?

The only thing that matters, is if the moral condemnation is actually a correct moral condemnation.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#212

Post by kop316 » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

patrec wrote: post #195

jasonlotito wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see people give up Blizzard games, but still continue supporting companies like Apple that do far worse, like effectively giving the keys to iCloud to China. I think the conversation is great, and maybe now we'll actually reconsider what the TPP's goal was. But in the end, the people picked money first, so it shouldn't be a surprise when businesses do this as well.

Can you explain why you think that complying with hard legal requirements that are a hard pre-requisite to doing business in an authoritarian country is worse than eroding freedom of speech in a non-authoritarian country? Apple can chose to operate in China and backdoor iCloud there or they can chose not to operate in China at all. It's hard for me to see how either choice will substantially affect people's liberties…

To me, this is why:

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Tim Cook defied the US goverment over the exact same issue, and even said:

"Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us."

So to me, seeing him allow Chinese authorities access to that same data in China in the name of sales is incredibly hypocritical.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#213

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

tossAfterUsing wrote: post #78

_bxg1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that today's China is communist in name only. They literally arrested the president of Peking University's Marxist society on ideological grounds: https://news.yahoo.com/china-arrests-marxist-student-leader-... China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Edit: Fixed a broken link

> China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Maybe the community could help me to understand whether this is accurate?

Only if words don't mean things, though you can see how the least charitable (which is not to say least accurate; who knows) reading of Chinese policy would lead you there. In particular, I think there's a trap where if you cherry pick from Maoist China and modern China, you can assembly a Frankenchina that meets some of the definitions.

There are some pretty obvious elements of most common academic definitions of fascism that China flunks, no matter how you read them; for instance, Chinese society has not been mass-mobilized and militarized by any reasonable definition of those terms. Modern China not only doesn't reject modernism, it wholeheartedly embraces it. If there's a secular civic religion, with ceremony and liturgy, it isn't powerful enough to crowd out other faiths; there is a national patriotic spirit, but it isn't articulated through quasi-mystical symbols and rituals. Violence isn't employed for its own cathartic sake, and is largely "professionalized".

People want to use fascism as a shorthand for "authoritarian nationalism", but it isn't; there are plenty of examples of authoritarian nationalist states that are demonstrably not fascist --- in fact, there are plenty of right-wing authoritarian nationalist states that aren't.

Maybe a good acid test for this: if you were living in a fascist state, you'd know it, in much the same you'd know if you were living in an actual according-to-Hoyle theocracy. China is a huge country and millions of people there live with a relationship between themselves and the state that we would recognize in the west.

I want also to acknowledge that it is kind of squicky to debate whether China is "fascist", in that it's an extremely loaded term that carries implications for ordinary Chinese people living their lives (that's part of the point of fascism). But a discussion about what fascism is or isn't is at least more in the spirit of HN than a lot of the other comments on these threads.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#214

Post by themacguffinman » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #98

bduerst wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but Execs will gatekeep the final review and approval for larger responses and campaigns.

This shouldn’t be hard though. Execs shouldn’t think “we should maximize shareholder value while following the law”. Execs should think “what will I wish I had done when I’m 90”. Does it really hurt that much to tell your shareholders “we think it’s the right thing to stand up for democracy and human rights even if it means we are bennes from China and our profits are halved”.

As much as I'd like execs to do that, I think it is actually hard. The board, made up of investors and other stakeholders, have a lot of power too. Execs can tell shareholders that they want to stand up for human rights, but shareholders can also tell execs to stand up for human rights somewhere else (ie. they get fired; execs can be fired too).

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#215

Post by K0SM0S » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

hnick wrote: post #188

jknoepfler wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the good will that Blizzard earned with their early games has been eroding for a long time. They did, legitimately, used to have enormous community good will. I can think of two ways that's eroded: (1) Blizzard's early games earned huge amounts of goodwill by enabling players to mod them. The map editor of Warcraft and the UI mod-ability of WoW let people build entire communities around modded content (DotA,…

You're right, the goodwill has been eroding for this lifelong fan. I adored Starcraft: Brood War, it was great to play online even over dial-up and relatively well balanced (though looking back I think that was mostly by accident) and as you say it had a great mod scene when you wanted to take a break from serious competition. I didn't particularly like the shift to heroes, creeps, and semi-3D in Warcraft 3, but that…

I experienced the loss of that "spark and magic" in games twice in my lifetime.

The first time with Japanese console games, sometime during the PlayStation/2 era. There was something of a golden age on the way to mastery of 2D in the 1990's. I'm talking about the craftsmanship, the attention to minute details, the cognitive approach in designing difficulty and progression and outright "fun" games playing on our senses etc. The ingenuosity of some RPG systems, etc.

All that gradually took a back-seat as 3D was emphasizing visuals and "shiny" replaced "smart", "realistic" replaced "immersive".

The second time was with Blizzard, in very comparable ways — when you go back to the basics, how characters move and behave, how actually fun it is to press a button over and over, etc. Things that make some games absolutely stellar and others garbage and you just can't know until you try your hands on it for some time.

Needless to say I don't bother with most AAA today. (not that I game a lot if at all)

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#216

Post by euske » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

dang1234throw wrote: post #165

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #20

This is probably not going to be a popular opinion here, but I wonder if any folks have considered what it looks like on the China side? Specifically, you are in China, and the HK protestors want what to happen to China? You have HK protesters waving American and British flags. These are the countries that have started wars all over, in the last 70 years since the end of WWII, ostensibly to promote democracy, and eve…

I'm Chinese and can say some words explaining the perspective from where I sit. I don't think memory of historical wrongs lie at the root of Chinese reactions. They may be the reasons most commonly given, but I don't think it's psychologically operative for most Chinese people. (This as following partly from introspective observation as a Chinese, and partly from the general principle against giving much credence to…

I think there's information asymmetry here. Do you think that many Chinese people know that in nearly all developed countries there's a lot of dissatisfaction and (public) vocal opposition to their own government? It's reasonable to assume that's the fact that China wants to hide from its citizens, because they certainly don't want their citizens to think that they have an ability to do that. Assume all the governments are corrupt and shady and all that, but that's still a stark difference between China and other reasonably developed nations.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#217

Post by throwaway66920 » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 11:56 PM UTC

undefined3840 wrote: post #175

mrosett wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really good point and not one I had considered in the context of everything that's happened recently. McKinsey has been involved with a lot of bad stuff internationally over the last decade or two. Monitor's work with Gaddafi was also really gross. There's an odd dichotomy though - the ex-McKinsey employees I know personally and work closely with are all very thoughtful, ethical people.

A lot of good, decent human beings justify doing awful things in their day job. Wasn’t there just a post on here a few days ago about someone who worked at Capital One writing about how everyone working there justified getting poor people deeper in debt?

FWIW, most McKinsey employees won’t be doing anything immoral. In fact it’s perfectly cool to turn down assignments for personal ethics. E.g. not wanting to work for a gas company, even if the specific task doesn’t have any moral implications.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#218

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #132

_bxg1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that today's China is communist in name only. They literally arrested the president of Peking University's Marxist society on ideological grounds: https://news.yahoo.com/china-arrests-marxist-student-leader-... China in 2019 is a simple fascist dictatorship. Edit: Fixed a broken link

This is commonly said. Can you help me understand how Communism is distinct from Fascism? It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long. What is an example of a Communist country, or does every country that calls itself Communist fail the test? And if every country fails the test, what precisely would be different about a true Communist…

It is my understanding Fascism was invented by disaffected Socialists and Marxists who felt the revolution was taking too long.

The opposite statement is closer to the truth: fascism as a reactionary response to Marxism and progressivism.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#219

Post by kop316 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 12:08 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #95

kop316 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 They allow a Chinese company to manage iCloud data.

They are legally required to do this. The alternative was completely disabling iCloud in China. This only applies to Chinese users of course.

They were legally subpoenaed in the San Bernardino case too:

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

Tim Cook even said: "Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk."

And yet, here he is in China compromising personal data, all to make a buck.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#220

Post by hnick » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 12:14 AM UTC

K0SM0S wrote: post #215

hnick wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, the goodwill has been eroding for this lifelong fan. I adored Starcraft: Brood War, it was great to play online even over dial-up and relatively well balanced (though looking back I think that was mostly by accident) and as you say it had a great mod scene when you wanted to take a break from serious competition. I didn't particularly like the shift to heroes, creeps, and semi-3D in Warcraft 3, but that…

I experienced the loss of that "spark and magic" in games twice in my lifetime. The first time with Japanese console games, sometime during the PlayStation/2 era. There was something of a golden age on the way to mastery of 2D in the 1990's. I'm talking about the craftsmanship, the attention to minute details, the cognitive approach in designing difficulty and progression and outright "fun" games playing on our sense…

Yes the shift to 3D was absolutely a mixed bag. It is simply so much more work to make a 3D world, from level design to art. It enables some genres and games to exist (something like Monster Hunter: World just wouldn't be the same, and while Dark Souls is similar to Zelda and Metroid it also gains a lot from 3D) but it just diverts so many resources.

A common complaint about the open world trend is that environments feel bland, sparse, and copy-pasted. There is a lack of that hand-crafted attention to detail you mention when compared to something like Hollow Knight with beautiful backgrounds and precise control.