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Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

theguardian.com

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Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#61

Post by poisonarena »

meristohm wrote: post #58
poisonarena wrote: post #44

From the article: "Just 20% of Activision Blizzard’s 9,500 employees are women, and leadership at the company, one of the largest video game makers in the world, is largely white and male." I am 36 years old, white male. I imagine alot of the employees there are within my age range give or take 5-10 years. For me it just makes sense. in the late 90s and early 2000s if you asked me, an obsessed computer gaming white g…

Why would a publicly-traded company not want to appeal to as many potential gamers as possible?

Thats not my argument, I just think the whole thing is silly, yes men and women should get paid the same according to their position and value to the company, but the idea that there should not be a company with "too many white men" seems crazy.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#62

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

hkarthik wrote: post #35
ditonal wrote: post #6

Did the walkouts at Google change anything? Not only did Sundar enable the disgusting, predatory behavior of Vic Gundotra and Andy Rubin, but as far as I can tell, he’s still a darling of the press. Even on HN Sundar and Google get the kid gloves despite the abhorrence of the culture they created. Walkouts are pointless. True Employee organization and collective bargaining is the only answer to holding execs accounta…

It's unfortunate, but walkouts and other employee activism around social justice can achieve the opposite effect. The marginalized leave because they don't feel heard, and potential new hires who might represent change stop applying or responding to recruiting attempts because of the company's tarnished reputation. Over time this leads to increased marginalization and concentration of the vary behavior that provoked…

Also the employees who agree with the sentiment but find the tactics to be naive (or worse) become less likely to speak out.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#63

Post by [deleted] »

epicureanideal wrote: post #12

Is there a VC out there that can just throw a few tens of millions of dollars at these employees and literally just teleport them from Blizzard to NewBlizzard in the same roles in a new company with a culture they prefer? I'm actually surprised this isn't "a thing". If a large percentage of a well known, profitable company doesn't agree with a direction it's taking... why doesn't a VC or private equity just help fina…

[deleted]

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#64

Post by dbsmith83 »

kevingadd wrote: post #30
winphone1974 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are busy as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

This specific criticism goes both ways and isn't unique to unions, though. Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance. Maybe one of your parents ends up sick or injured so their performance at work is suffering and you really want them to be protected while they get through that temporary hurdle instead of being laid off and replaced with che…

> Even in a non-union workplace, the bosses' friends are likely to be protected from termination despite bad performance

Maybe one or two, but not a large proportion of an aging workforce riding purely on the protection of the union

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#65

Post by wonderwonder »

tehjoker wrote: post #56
wonderwonder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so the capitalists have no where to run" Who is going to finance the companies and workers that build those games then? These games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, who is going to front the money if they don't expect a significant return. That is capitalism in a nutshell.

The lords of finance have historically been the enemies of the working man. All their money comes from our pockets and the people's printing press. We can run things ourselves.

You just parroted a couple of slogans at me that sound like they belong on a Bolshevik pamphlet, you did not answer the question. Who is going to fund these things? You can claim that there are successful solo developers and you would be right, people like Notch and Eric Barone but these people are the exception and they certainly don't pay for teams of hundreds or thousands. So again, who is going to pay the bills for all of these people that are going to work at these new companies? Don't get me wrong I am not endorsing any of the actions of the people in these lawsuits but they don't represent capitalism; they are just creeps, and all groups be they economic, religious, or corporate have them. I am all for workers getting treated better and paid better, I am a worker; but just repeating slogans is not it.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#66

Post by micromacrofoot »

taeric wrote: post #33
micromacrofoot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkouts are an easy way to get more attention to an issue and it costs an employer real money. A single action doesn't need to solve everything.

The sceptic in me is unsure how much money this costs. They aren't an assembly line, so did any deadlines get pushed back? Similarly, they are not a services company, so no services were lost. Certainly bad press. And I hope it has impact. But I'm not seeing direct lines to it.

just the simple math of N productivity hours multiplied by ~500 employees... hard to quantify but greater than 0

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#67

Post by goldenManatee »

poisonarena wrote: post #44

From the article: "Just 20% of Activision Blizzard’s 9,500 employees are women, and leadership at the company, one of the largest video game makers in the world, is largely white and male." I am 36 years old, white male. I imagine alot of the employees there are within my age range give or take 5-10 years. For me it just makes sense. in the late 90s and early 2000s if you asked me, an obsessed computer gaming white g…

You identify with dev and gamer culture and feel that it reciprocates a sense of belonging. Therefore you have no reason to protest; all your interests align and not protesting is the path of least expended energy. The people complaining do so because they too identify with a culture of devs and/or gamers, however they feel there is an overwhelming majority that identifies its members who are alike and yet does not accept them specifically as part of that culture. So these protesters are not foreign aliens - you could think of them as a version of yourself that enjoys the games and tech but is not fully accepted as being “in” no matter how long you hang around the “in” people. Are we to respond to those people: “Why are you complaining about things being this way or for change - when you knew this has always been who we are, and that this culture is created predominantly by us, for us.”?

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#68

Post by SecretDracula »

redwood wrote: post #2

I'm going to take a minority position here and say that I've always hated their games. To me they're somewhat akin to cigarette or vape companies or even Facebook... They're driving addiction and causing people to pour their lives or at least their time down the drain. How widespread are these types of issues in other game companies?

Blizzard always made the worse, but more popular game of the time period. Total Annihilation was better than Starcraft. Baldur's Gate 2 was better than Diablo 2.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#69

Post by tehjoker »

wonderwonder wrote: post #65
tehjoker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lords of finance have historically been the enemies of the working man. All their money comes from our pockets and the people's printing press. We can run things ourselves.

You just parroted a couple of slogans at me that sound like they belong on a Bolshevik pamphlet, you did not answer the question. Who is going to fund these things? You can claim that there are successful solo developers and you would be right, people like Notch and Eric Barone but these people are the exception and they certainly don't pay for teams of hundreds or thousands. So again, who is going to pay the bills f…

Industry should be funded in a planned way with public money. Institutions similar to NIH/NSF should provide grants for people to be experimental. There would be a track for "scale up" for successful experiments.

In certain cases such as entertainment, it might be desirable to maintain markets as a significant fraction of the industry, but we've seen how large concentrations of private money lead to companies taking "safe" and monoculture approaches to movies, games, etc.

We already have huge concentrations of media doing their own planning exclusively for their own benefit right now. The planning should be made democratic.

The workers will control their workplaces. The exact division of control of the industry will have to be negotiated politically and the way the rewards are shared between industry and the public generally will also be democratically decided. There are many proposals for how this might be done.

It's helpful to think about the division of labor between town, state, and federal levels. The company would form a new democratic level. It forms a political entity now, but not a democratic one.

The slogans are helpful because they elicit questions like yours.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#70

Post by 0xy »

tehjoker wrote: post #39
fhjkkkg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this isn’t parody, and I am guessing it’s not, then it’s still a perfect depiction of what changed in the American left in the 1960s. Politics became more about changing the orientation of one’s mind than the orientation of one’s society. Walkouts are worthless.

A walkout is worthwhile if it signals that the employees are ready to strike.

Which they aren't. The attempts to unionize Google employees have been a total failure. The union is extremely unpopular. Without collective support, there is no strike.
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