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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

#131

Post by chadcmulligan »

winphone1974 wrote: post #27
chadcmulligan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

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.

Some unions did some bad things, therefore everything unions did is bad. That wasn't my experience with unions, I see kids now being treated very badly by dictatorial management, things that just wouldn't happen with a decent union presence. Sure unions need to be kept in line, but no unions isn't a good solution imho.

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

#132

Post by emptysongglass »

MattRix wrote: post #101
matheusmoreira wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is downvoted. Politics has been de-economized and the economy has been de-politicized. Not surprising given how dangerous this sort of organization is to the big corporations. Better to have people fight over gender politics than better working conditions and compensation.

People clearly care deeply about about both these things. It’s possible for the left to fight over gender politics AND working conditions.

The issue is that identity politics are a race to the bottom of purity politics. The amount of black you can be or whether you're LGBTQ+ enough is a spectrum that lends itself to eating your own young. Conversely, all of us are workers. We are united in the blood and sweat we offer to the increasingly well-to-do.

Consuming ourselves in intra-labor factionalism while the wealthy elites feed anti-union propaganda does everything to reduce our bargaining power and our feeling of love and respect for our fellow human beings. Because at the end of the day it's not how much melanin you have in your skin or how female you feel or what terms you're using at your workplace, it's your humanity and your labor that unites us.

Buddhism, which I often reference, makes much to do over the uselessness and continued suffering we bind ourselves to by the reification of concepts. We need to stop reifying those ideas which divide us and find the common in which to celebrate our closeness.

There is a stark difference between lifting up and listening to women (which I am strongly for) because they are our fellow human beings in labor not because their state of being will never be understood by their male counterparts, which is often the refrain of the new far left.

Class politics not identity politics.

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

#133

Post by ThePadawan »

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?

That is exactly what the heads at ATVI are thinking.

That's why they're censoring Hearthstone cards worldwide because it appeals to China.

That's why they punished a Pro gamer for voicing his support for Hong Kong in 2019, because it appeals to China [0].

That's why they're releasing a mobile-only Diablo!

And that's why the customers are saying "Blizzard isn't what it used to be". Because at no point does anyone still care about the quality of the product.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

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

#134

Post by hulitu »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #15
d4mi3n wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a whole line of discussion to be had around the realities of outsourcing to be had, but I’d like to focus on discussing employee rights. Are we OK with employees being treated like this? Are we willing to make concessions on our relationships with our employer under threat of losing our jobs (outsourcing is just one of the many ways a job can be taken away). I’m of the thinking that companies should not be ab…

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

The problem with unions is that power corrupts and some of them become political organizations.

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

#135

Post by garmaine »

seanhunter wrote: post #127
garmaine wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions work where labor is interchangeable. That is definitely not the case in game industry, where people are highly specialized and super creative.

There are unions in the film industry for example which seems extremely comparable.

Not for the creative roles. Maybe you're thinking of guilds? They're both forms of collective representation, but quite different on the ground.

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

#136

Post by pronlover723 »

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…

My experience with unions from from (a) conventions centers and (b) aerospace. In both, they are a net negative from my POV.

At convention centers they inflate prices by passing rules that no one but a union worker can carry anything into the convention center. The monitor broke and your booth and you run to best buy to get a replacement. Sorry, find a unionized person to carry it in for you or GTFO. Oh, you want to plug in it in? Sorry, call a unionized electrician or be sued.

An aerospace it meant everyone's role was super strict and trying to do anything outside your role was against the rule. In software that would mean things like front end programmer not allowed to touch backend code. UI programmer not allowed to touch business logic code. Etc.... Maybe someone will argue that's a good thing but AFAICT it just slowed work to a crawl and made people uncooperative

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

#137

Post by drdeca »

jessaustin wrote: post #87
wonderwonder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Money doesn't come from rich people. Most money nowadays comes from the state. Rich people might have it temporarily, but it exists independently from them. (Of course many states are controlled entirely by rich people, but at least theoretically that doesn't have to be the case.) Of course money itself is mostly an abstraction. It represents the value of human creation, and you don't need rich people to create value…

I don’t think “money doesn’t come from (in the sense of originate from) rich people” does much to address the question of “how do you propose that game development projects involving many people be funded?” .

The question is not “what is the ultimate origin of the money”, but “by what mechanism does it come to be allocated to the project”.

I think some would answer “the funding for the project should be democratically allocated by the employees of the company, from previous company income”, which, I suppose is coherent, though I think some substantially overestimate how much of a benefit it would have.

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

#138

Post by pjmlp »

underseacables wrote: post #112
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.

My grandfather worked in a Coopermill and you had to be a member of the union. If you tried to leave the union, as a few people tried, your legs got broken. Unions can be effective, but not if you forced everyone to join it.

In Europe many appreciate the benefits they get from union agreements, even without belonging to them.

Ironically I have never heard of anyone going to management stating that they wanted to be out of the agreement that was settled for the industry they were in, regardless of their actual job.

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

#139

Post by pjmlp »

garmaine wrote: post #120
nielsbot wrote: post #3

Wouldn't forming a union help them better negotiate as a group? FTA: "Activision Blizzard employees are also calling for an end to mandatory arbitration in employee contracts, which prevent workers from taking conflicts with their employer to court, policies to improve representation of women and marginalized groups, the publication of salary data, and an audit of the company by a diversity, equity and inclusion task…

Unions work where labor is interchangeable. That is definitely not the case in game industry, where people are highly specialized and super creative.

Apparently it works in Europe, go figure.

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

#140

Post by toofy »

kbenson wrote: post #126
toofy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is almost nothing which would change the minds of the people who don’t already understand these as problems. No one seeking change is targeting them as the audience. Though, in their own heads, they probably delude themselves into believing they are.

That sounds like an easy way to discount any criticism of your own actions or views, which doesn't seem a particularly healthy way to go through life. You could almost mistake it for being the same thing you're saying causes others to be not worth engaging with...

Who is saying not to analyze the event? And who is saying never to engage with others? I’m certainly not saying either of those things.

Did you respond to the wrong comment?

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