Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 570 posts

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#111

Post by brazzy »

underseacables wrote: post #66
pmarreck wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Guys often "rib" each other, it's part of the culture among males. When you throw women into the mix and they get "ribbed" (perhaps for being "one of the guys," as it were) does this often become sexual harassment? Perhaps the culture of "ribbing" needs to go away for everyone, or at least from the workplace, but it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "r…

I think it’s just important for everyone to recognize the new paradigm: make no comments about your coworkers whatsoever, do not complement, do not ask about their personal life, do not talk about politics, because the only safe thing to do is to be as robotic as possible.

It's generally enough to just not be an asshole. But if that's too difficult to you, sure.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#112

Post by fxtentacle »

bin_bash wrote: post #42
madamelic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken? No chance DEFH is out of line. The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use vo…

> Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp. That was in 2018... That's the _average_ person who is making a video game. What game are you referring to?

My guess would be the poster is referring to The Last of Us Part 2, where criticism of the storyline was presented by most mainstream media as people hating the female lead character. But one could also easily argue that it's the actions taken in the story that cause people to hate her.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#113

Post by vmception »

madamelic wrote: post #21
0x500x79 wrote: post #13

This seems to largely match a lot of the same things that happened with Riot Games over the last couple of years. I am hoping that these actions can help spread awareness of any issues that may be present at Blizzard and past, current, and future employees won't face the same issues. It is a long road to be traveled to get there. I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the vis…

> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken? No chance DEFH is out of line. The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use vo…

It is extremely possible that DFEH is either not the authority, ill equipped by the legislature to be the authority, and or bungled their own case, while it being simultaneously possible that the companies are problematic and that individuals are marginalized and hurt in a way unrelated to doing a good job

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#114

Post by edoceo »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #87
wayne-li2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If devs aren’t unionized, there’s no such thing as scabs right? Blizzard can just terminate all the disgruntled employees and hire other devs, perhaps more desperate or entry level or morally ambiguous, whatever. Of course the institutional knowledge lost will be drastic.

What person in their right mind would go work for a company that just fired all it's staff for demanding better conditions?

It may be a step up for many. What's a shit-job for you might be a step-upping stone for someone else, who's opportunity selection is more limited than your own.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wayne-li2 wrote: post #31
bagacrap wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't think Blizzard is going to be able to bring in scabs to replace software devs. This comment reveals how poorly the industry is understood by outsiders, or at least this one journo.

If devs aren’t unionized, there’s no such thing as scabs right? Blizzard can just terminate all the disgruntled employees and hire other devs, perhaps more desperate or entry level or morally ambiguous, whatever. Of course the institutional knowledge lost will be drastic.

> If devs aren’t unionized, there’s no such thing as scabs right? Blizzard can just terminate all the disgruntled employees and hire other devs

There is daylight between unions and anarchy. In that daylight are California’s general labor laws and the NLRA.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#116

Post by danparsonson »

j_walter wrote: post #50
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's almost like people keep silent because of the power imbalance that leads to the abuse and blaming the weak because they aren't able to stand up to the strong is the wrong thing to do.

They could stand up to the strong, but they choose to go along with it for their own personal reasons (ie, make it in Hollywood or become an Olympic athlete). However even after those things happen the abused continue to keep silent.

Aside from the other comments here, another thing to consider is that it's usually incredibly painful to relive abusive treatment, let alone potentially having to endure the humiliation of having it dragged out into the public, where a million and one disinterested onlookers will potentially pull the victim apart and blame them for what happened. Unless you've been in such a situation yourself, you can't imagine what it's like.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#117

Post by void_mint »

colinmhayes wrote: post #75
underseacables wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s just important for everyone to recognize the new paradigm: make no comments about your coworkers whatsoever, do not complement, do not ask about their personal life, do not talk about politics, because the only safe thing to do is to be as robotic as possible.

I mean if you're not able to tell when people are uncomfortable yea. Otherwise just be respectful. One of the blizzard employees killed herself after being sexually harassed and you're trying to play this off by making a strawman.

Yeah the parent's comment is just a person refusing to have any amount of tact. Harassment isn't defined as an isolated incident, nor is it immediately a huge deal. Almost all rational humans have some amount of tolerance for ambiguity, if you really can't possibly fathom what would or would not be offensive to a person, you have absolutely no business working alongside other people.

Not to mention, a lot of what was reported couldn't possibly have been ambiguous. Commenting on a coworker's breasts (the report of a woman repeatedly being questioned on whether her breasts were real, and then having a manager demand to feel them to verify) is just totally unacceptable.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#118

Post by fxtentacle »

madamelic wrote: post #102
omgitsabird wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago What?

Look up what sparked Gamergate. It was largely based in men getting mad about women calling games out for being misogynistic. I am sure some was valid criticism. I am not really a fan of "every game must be progressive", etc. but the fact men got mad that women dared criticize video games should say a lot about the state of the video game industry. Not only that, but also, for a long time, video games just weren't ma…

If I remember correctly, the gamergate controversy was about a female indie developer dating a male indie game journalist. I can imagine why that would make people search for conflicts of interests.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#119

Post by madamelic »

kook_throwaway wrote: post #39
madamelic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken? No chance DEFH is out of line. The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use vo…

>It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known. Gamers talk down to everyone on video games and have since they have been invented. This sounds like a new group of people entering an existing space and not understanding the dynamic (namely incessant shittalking). I can't even count how many strang…

Sorry, should've been more specific.

It's not trash talk. I can handle trash talk. It's stuff like "Ah, a f_cking girl. Cool guys, now we are going to lose", before the round even starts, or "Get back to the kitchen, B_TCH" or just harassing me until I leave the game, either through team-killing or preventing me from playing.

And if everyone is "behaving", I get treated differently in PUGs than just another team member. I don't want that. I don't want special attention or treatment. And then you get harassed for your social media or phone number or get incessant in-game messages or get asked if you're hot or some other variation of thing that isn't "Yo, you, we are doing X, Y, Z. Sound good?" like you are just part of the team.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#120

Post by munk-a »

Daishiman wrote: post #68
908B64B197 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men That's debatable. CS was overwhelmingly male and wasn't prestigious until recently. > video games even more so I wonder how much of that we can attribute to DOOM. The DOOM devs wanted to make an hyper-violent game centered around Demon and heavy metal, and that reflected in the culture at id (not the violence). And they made a bunch of money which spurr…

> That's debatable. CS was overwhelmingly male and wasn't prestigious until recently. We're talking about the same career that's been known as a money-printing machine for the past 25 years?

And fifty years ago it was incredibly female dominated - the "male shift" in CS is easy to observe and pretty handily defeats any of those false claims you'll see about "men's brains being wired" for programming. It's important to remember that men muscled women out of programming initially once the field became seen as something more than a secretarial position.
Post reply on HN