281–290 of 379 posts
I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other. I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and qui…
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> Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for myself But it doesn't, you can choose to not be part of the union
No, you missed the point. The union puts a limit on the contracts that I can make with the company. So I would be prevented from bargaining for certain contracts with a company. So me and this other company's mutual right to make an agreement would be limited by the union.
This is a bit like saying that criminal law takes away your right to be mugged, beaten, and murdered.
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A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."' Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
There's nothing "notorious" about a maintstream legal practice representing corporations against unions, and "busting" is pejorative. It's opinion click-bait.
Interesting fact: the current director of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, worked for WilmerHale before joining Blizzard.
What's really surprising is that a former BigLaw attorney is now the director of WoW!
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A note that Jeff Kaplan the director of the title resigned in May. He was heavily involved from its inception and throughout the development of Overwatch 2, and was a huge part of the community.
As a former Overwatch player, you're right. But my (so far glad to say mostly unfounded) fear is that Jeff "Tigole Bitties" Kaplan was part of the problem we're seeing play out the past few weeks.
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AFAICT, this is one of those counter-intuitive cases. Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better. A significant aspect of this (IMHO) is employee empowerment, which relates to the common theories as to why Silicon Valley happened rather than the Boston corridor (legal situation advantageous to employe…
> Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better. Do you have links to any studies backing this up? The idealist in me really wants this to be true, but the cynic in me believes capitalism is set up to reward the most ruthless, unscrupulous people.
But - what's be your top 10 list of successful startups? How many of them are either directly mission-driven, or have a strong mission?
The Steve Jobs quote on why Xerox failed [1] strikes again. The finance people have taken over Acti-Blizzard and they've been coasting for 10+ years on their original franchises. All we have is annual CoD releases and Blizzrad coasting on their old properties where Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years. This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly…
> Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years A quick search tells me that Overwatch has 6M players, which seems significant.
when I was playing a week ago (not anymore), more or less every single game I was matched against the same 20 or so people after a 8-10 minute wait
and it was the same 20 people in month in month out
and if someone quit the 6v6 mode while a game was ongoing (leaving it 5v6): the leaver's position wouldn't be filled most of the time
I am usually against unions in tech because the free market tends to allow a proper balance of supply and demand. However, gaming might just be the perfect sub-domain of tech to benefit from unionization. The supply is massively saturated, with dreamy eyed programmers ready to give their lives to work in gaming. On the other hand, a very small group actually gets to make any of the creative decisions that every gamer…
The supply being massively saturated is also what makes a union impossible to form. The over-saturation of supply means there's plenty of people willing to work a non-union game dev job because the alternative is no job. Also the EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft studios do consistently deliver quality games: COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. Formulaic, perhaps, but it's tough to claim that these aren't…
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> Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years A quick search tells me that Overwatch has 6M players, which seems significant.
Haven't played Overwatch myself, but isn't it very similar to the other games that came before it? From a layman's perspective, it seems like a copy of Paladins, TF2, etc. Upon it's release, it didn't seem like something original (at least not to me), but rather something to compete with the unique games other studios had already created.
2D top-down MOBA games have huge numbers of heroes and a lot of variety, but I think that's an easier lift to balance in that type of game and with that type of control scheme. Other 3D "hero shooters" opt for less variety between heroes or a smaller number of them, or rely on other gameplay elements to help balance things.
I think that the design effort that it took to produce Overwatch is tremendous, and it isn't easily replaced or replicated, though it will be eventually as long as game design keeps on marching forward.
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Is your comment just anti-virtue signaling then? Sometimes people just want to share their opinions, and they actually feel those feelings. Sometimes those feelings are about ethical issues.
Claiming 'virtue signaling' always feels like a presumption of bad faith by the claimant.