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Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

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Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#311

Post by myohmy »

loourr wrote: post #291

I've spent a lot of time hiring software developers and I usually receive about 25 male applicants for every 1 female applicant. Achieving equal representation across the entire industry is going to be literally impossible without a huge influx of woman into the industry. Further, because the big tech companies are pretending this is not the reality and strive to have equal representation in their workforce it means…

Oh look, its the hiring manager at Activision! Good job confusing equality for equity. A decent manager could easily achieve gender equity with a "25:1" ratio. Unfortunately it seems that might be beyond your capacity as a sub par hiring manager

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#312

Post by heavyset_go »

stale2002 wrote: post #214
elicash wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market." It's just a smarter way to negotiate (more power collectively) and the end result is a contract between a company and a group of workers. It's not like, say, a minimum wage where government sets a price.

Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself. That is definitely a free market restriction on my rights as a worker, to have a mutual agreement with that specific company.

> Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself.

No, they don't. Actors are able to negotiate themselves and with the help from their union, and they're all members of SAG-AFTRA.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#313

Post by tarsinge »

brainfish wrote: post #26

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…

The Blizzard that made Diablo and Diablo 2 is not the same as the Blizzard of the today, the key people have moved, so I don’t see the issue with playing their older offline games.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#314

Post by [deleted] »

mcguire wrote: post #218
acituan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feelings alone do not make a rational standpoint. This ex-pressing (pressing outwards) of our feelings was the problem of romanticism, and it has to be balanced with what the reality tells back at us. In other words, people don't seem to be saying they shouldn't have shared their feelings, but when they did they should have been ready to receive the criticism especially on logical results of their reasoning. Not usin…

From a rational standpoint, buying and playing games is a waste of time and money.

[deleted]

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#315

Post by scrollaway »

Fordec wrote: post #259
LeSaucy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What were you doing when you were 19 that's any better than calling yourself tigole?

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#316

Post by stale2002 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #312
stale2002 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself. That is definitely a free market restriction on my rights as a worker, to have a mutual agreement with that specific company.

> Collective bargaining takes away my right to bargain for certain agreements for myself. No, they don't. Actors are able to negotiate themselves and with the help from their union, and they're all members of SAG-AFTRA.

> and they're all members

So, in other words, their rights to bargain and engage in mutual agreements is restricted.

You literally just explained how their rights are limited.

Specifically, it is limited in that you have to be a part of this group, to engage in certain agreements.

And even within that group, people are prevented from engaging in certain mutual agreements.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#317

Post by thatguy0900 »

smolder wrote: post #289
milkytron wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit like Paladins. It has elements of TF2. Regardless, compared to games in genres like battle royale or real time strategy, or more traditional first person shooter, Overwatch is pretty lonely. I don't want to sound like I'm frothing at the mouth over their product, but I feel that it's well beyond any other first person game in terms of the variety of heroes to play and the huge scope of the balancing act th…

I'd say that the hero variety wasn't a good thing honestly, they never did a great job of balancing it. They shut down duplicate heros, then the game lurched from one overpowered unpopular meta to another until it got stuck on goats meta and they gave up and forced 222 team comps, which is when I stopped playing. There's a good reason other hero shooters kept the scope low, noone knows how to balance a high scope game for all levels of competitive play, and it's likely that you can't.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#319

Post by aftbit »

milkytron wrote: post #251
__john wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As a 500hr+ Overwatch player and 1000hr+ TF2 plater, I also thought this at first. While Overwatch was certainly heavily inspired by TF2, it plays considerably differently. Overwatch has six players per team each playing one of 32 different unique heroes. TF2 has 12 players playing one of 9 classes. The abilities feel much more impactful in Overwatch. TF2 was all about supporting your engineer and racing for Uber, while Overwatch is much more about positioning and mechanics (though ult economy matters too). Removing the ammo mechanic entirely was brilliant IMO as well. Anyway, just a few cents from someone who has played a lot of both of those games.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#320

Post by aftergibson »

dylan604 wrote: post #268
aftergibson wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celine and Hamsun aren’t getting engagement activity from their in-app analytics. They also can’t respond to all of the legitimate criticisms against them. Activision can and they’ve decided to bring in the Pinkertons. At the end of the day, another player booting up an Activision game is another (tiny) data point that says whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player. It’s not revenu…

>whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player This is definitely how Activision/Blizzard will interpret it. However, not every single gamer is tuned into these kinds of stories about the game makers. Some will be totally unawares of any of the shenanigans that occur behind the game. Not everybody has the time and/or interest for that. Just like people do/don't care about Amazon, Walma…

I completely agree that you can’t act on what you don’t know. It’s almost impossible to act as an entirely ethical consumer today, who could know if a suppliers, suppliers supplier is doing something dodgy?

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. This case however is a pretty simple B2C relationship and if a consumer is aware of what Activision is up to and continues to support through revenue or engagement, simply accept that you don’t care about these issues enough to change your behaviour, we all make compromises in life.

What I’d like to avoid is consumers deluding themselves into thinking that playing Starcraft is fine because it’s the same as people buying the books of dead racists.

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