Last I heard, Blizzard was hemorrhaging WoW users as well. Not a great run for them over the past couple years, with the terrible Warcraft III remaster as well.
Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
161–170 of 570 posts
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is fascinating. I'll have to look into this more. From my brief understanding, there are multiple narratives of what "true" Gamergate is.
I could very likely be wrong and have been misled about the core issue of Gamergate. Thanks for the kind correction!
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#163Earlier 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…
Harassment intentionally includes observers. If you do something to someone, and a third party observes it and is made uncomfortable, that is harassment in the workplace. To say "Guys are just ribbing eachother" ignores people that observe that behavior and find it uncomfortable/hostile/toxic. This is also an extremely generous description of what happened. Women were harassed, both sexually and not. Their pay was lo…
> It's also worth noting that the military is a toxic cesspit for sexual abuse. Comparing any sane workplace to the military is a joke. Nobody should want to be like the military, including the military.
Can confirm true from experience. To be fair, the military (USMC experience only) is structured to intentionally harass all members below certain ranks continuously, with the idea being that it keeps them sharp and willing to follow orders that put them or others directly in harm's way. Sexual harassment was punished severely, but at the lowest levels possible, and wasn't often reported.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#164Earlier 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…
That wasn't what Gamergate was about at all. What started it was first Doritogate, and later the Zoey Quinn and Anna Anthropy Business (both cases of women getting lackluster or bad games reviewed just because they had some kind of relationship with the journalist, Zoey her boyfriend accused her of seducing the journalist, and Anna Anthropy was roomate of journalist that covered her games).
The misoginy accusations came later, and only then the whole thing morphed into a culture war thing.
Yes, threats happened, nasty stuff happened, but part of it was false flag too, for example Brazillian police arrested a Brazillian that was making death threats in the name of Gamergate, but also was making such threats in name of a ton of other random organizations, the guy just liked to see the world burn and was self-professed progressive.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
As you pointed out CS was once secretarial work. But what constituted CS also underwent a transformation during that time period. No one was muscled out so much as barriers to entry broke down thanks to market forces.
Here's a comment I wrote in response to a similar point addressing the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767280
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
There are literally too many to name, but this one comes to mind[1]. [1] - https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy... EDIT: 4 responses within minutes of each other all pointing to a different game just underlines my "too many to name" comment.
But they said 2018 which implies there is a specific game in mind. Forbidden West was announced in 2020. Based on other answers it sounds like Battlefield V.
I understand this is a common theme but I was actually curious which specific game they were talking about.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend claimed that she was dating a gaming journalist to get good reviews. She was dating that gaming journalist, but the only things he'd written about her work were from before they'd met. Despite that, an endless parade of assholes on the internet immediately used that to justify harassment, doxxing, rape and death threats, hacking of accounts, etc.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#168This 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…
Please don't conflate "white men" with these assholes.
I'm so tired of being blamed for the behavior of folks with the same genitalia/skin color as me.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#169Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what changes they're hoping to achieve with it.
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…
> it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "ribs" you when they know you know they're not being serious.
As long as everyone is in on the joke, it's fine. I've never heard of a situation where all parties agreed something was a good natured joke and it was still labelled sexual harassment. In virtually every case the "I was just ribbing" is conveyed after the fact in the same tone of voice as "It's just a prank bro" - even if it was genuinely innocent on the harasser's part, it obviously wasn't apparent to others, and that "if" is often questionable.
A really simple rule to follow is "if you don't know how someone will react otherwise, treat them politely with kindness and respect." This rule works in 100% of situations and costs nothing to follow. No one has ever or will ever say "man I wish the first time I talked to that guy he teased me about my physical appearance, what a jerk for denying me that taste of his quick witted humor."