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BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

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Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#81

Post by root_axis »

joshstrange wrote: post #54
FDSGSG wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>See the date. As others have noted, even thought this post was on Friday, which was the 11th, the date on the post is the 12th, indicating that it was posted from overseas, possibly China. That's not a big deal in and of itself, but let's me talk about how these things are done. Ah yes, UTC == China. Very reasonable logic here! This post was almost certainly made on Fri Oct 11 2019 17:18:58 PDT from Irvine, CA. Ever…

> Either Mark Kern is misleading on purpose or he's a complete moron. Out of 33 tweets he makes a single mistake/overreach and you want to brand the whole thing as a "ridiculous conspiracy theory"? That seems to be a rather hasty generalization based on the 2nd of 33 tweets...

I think it's fair to disregard the analysis at that point since the author demonstrates they cannot necessarily be trusted to interpret the facts.

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#82

Post by recursive »

plopz wrote: post #32
Shivetya wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can eliminate the April Fools problem they had last blizzcon by simply lot allowing fans to ask questions direct to the panel but instead have them submitted and chosen. April Fools problem was when a person asking a question chose to comment and ask something else, namely about mobile version of Diablo.

That would be a pretty big admit of defeat though. Blizzcon for the last 10 years has had real customers asking questions from microphones. I assume they won't do that this year because they would be worried about what people will say, but I think that act in and of itself is very telling.

Do they have to admit it though? Is there any way an observer of the event could actually tell that the questioners were all plants?

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#83

Post by pennaMan »

CivBase wrote: post #50

IMO, Blizzards actions have been borderline incompetent. I completely understand them not wanting their platform to be used to make political statements. This isn't like the NBA situation where Morey used a private social media account to show support for his private political opiniona. This was a platform owned by Blizzard with a very specific content focus. But banning Blitzchung for any amount of time was just dum…

>Blizzard made a mistake and they are refusing to learn from it.

That's the standard Blizzard MO in everything from business decisions to gameplay patches in all their games.

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#84

Post by learc83 »

dwoozle wrote: post #57
CivBase wrote: post #50

IMO, Blizzards actions have been borderline incompetent. I completely understand them not wanting their platform to be used to make political statements. This isn't like the NBA situation where Morey used a private social media account to show support for his private political opiniona. This was a platform owned by Blizzard with a very specific content focus. But banning Blitzchung for any amount of time was just dum…

No. The Chinese government is using this entire crisis as a way of testing the limits of its power. They wanted to test it in a 0-10 scale but found the needle zoomed up to the right stop, so they adjusted the scale to 0-100 by dialing up their actions to even more extreme. That’s why they’re forcing these companies to bend the knee in public rather than quietly. They didn’t want to just disable the HKLive app, they…

>retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing.

You could argue that China may have worked like that in the past, but they don't under Xi. Dictators are never very patient. They are too concerned with personal power to put long term interests ahead of personal gain.

Just look at the HK situation for evidence. All they had to do was keep going slowly and wait till 2047, but Xi couldn't handle looking weak.

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#86

Post by FDSGSG »

dzamie wrote: post #47
FDSGSG wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>See the date. As others have noted, even thought this post was on Friday, which was the 11th, the date on the post is the 12th, indicating that it was posted from overseas, possibly China. That's not a big deal in and of itself, but let's me talk about how these things are done. Ah yes, UTC == China. Very reasonable logic here! This post was almost certainly made on Fri Oct 11 2019 17:18:58 PDT from Irvine, CA. Ever…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#87

Post by twh270 »

ekianjo wrote: post #63
CivBase wrote: post #50

IMO, Blizzards actions have been borderline incompetent. I completely understand them not wanting their platform to be used to make political statements. This isn't like the NBA situation where Morey used a private social media account to show support for his private political opiniona. This was a platform owned by Blizzard with a very specific content focus. But banning Blitzchung for any amount of time was just dum…

> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." How about let people say what they want and let the public judge by themselves? Is that so hard to…

When you don't publicly dissociate your company/party/whatev from statements that are made by people associated with your company/etc, people will take that as tacit acceptance or approval.

Blizzard's initial response was awful, and they've done little IMO to walk back from that. However, they do have a right (and the responsibility) to enforce their policies. Hopefully, if this same situation occurs again, they respond with something less than the nuclear option.

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#88

Post by deminature »

falcolas wrote: post #24
romanovcode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the media wouldn't be discussing it at all. But the Chinese government might. And that might be much worse for them.

Unless Activision Blizzard plans to move their HQ to China, having the US government talking about you in a very negative light is likely worse for them.

The playerbase for some of their games is apparently as high as 70% China-based [1]. We can't verify this, because Blizzard doesn't release that information publicly, but if even remotely true, losing access to the Chinese market would be financially devastating.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAlh9l-c7Q

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#89

Post by bsanr2 »

ahelwer wrote: post #74
mdorazio wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it still would have been met with backlash because Blizzard previously hopped on the sociopolitical issue bandwagon when they thought it would win them public points [1]. A lot of people see the current situation as transparent bullshit because Blizzard obviously wants to have its cake and eat it, too. [1] https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says...

Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.

And, unfortunately, it has been deemed more profitable historically to subscribe cynically to the bigoted aspects of conservatism. Whether it's truly more profitable or not is up for discussion, but fear of Middle American backlash has stayed the hands of a good many companies who would have like to have been able to market to marginalized groups. I think it's good that they've shed that fear, even if only in the interest of profit. You make it sound like it's a bad thing that we opened lunch counters or run ads with openly gay or mixed couples; that we stopped letting backwards taboos throw a wrench in our markets.

Re: BlizzCon 2019 Protest “Full-Steam Ahead,” Say Organizers

#90

Post by Beltiras »

My son-in-law has lived in China and confronted me about my boycott. His position is that the content in Blizz games is kinda subversive to the authoritarianism practiced by the CCP. No other gaming company has the breadth of socially reformative messaging contained in WoW, Overwatch et.al. Should Blizz perform corporate harakiri by appeasing the angry SJW (not spoken derisively) in the West, the CCP would have no problem shutting down access to Blizz and the population would hardly notice. They would however not be exposed to the gaming content meaning the generational war with culture will be lost.

I stood firm and maintained that CCP was now fighting with plutocracy for changes to the culture in the west. An example is Marvel changing a Tibetan male monk to a western woman. His contention is that even that change was handled as well as you could expect. Even choosing the Celts as her culture is a small poke at the Chinese for their oppression of the Tibetans. Making it a woman even more so.

I'm still angry at Blizz and thinking about what he said. I will at the very least boycott past the Nov. 7th earnings call to see how deep it runs.

He does have a point about the greater good. This might be the wrong target for outrage.

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