A 50 man raid group forming outside Blizzard to take on the final boss, blizzard management. No king rules forever, my son.
Remember the line that follows: "Control must be maintained. There must always be a Lich King."
Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
241–250 of 570 posts
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say it wasn't a thing, and taking things to that extreme isn't really having a good-faith discussion. I said that "toxic gamer culture" has always been a thing, until these large corporations realized that sanitizing it could, in theory, lead to more people playing their AAA games, thus resulting in higher profits. what's controversial about this statement?
The way you start by questioning weather or not making things less toxic is a good idea and put quotes around "toxic gaming culture" sure makes your post read like you were brushing off the whole thing as some kind of overly-woke-brigade cancel-fest or something.
well that sure sounds a lot like building a strawman out of some random debris but ok.
I do question whether making gaming communities less toxic is a "good" thing. of course, anyone is welcome to do anything they want to their communities, and if they think making them less toxic is some combination of altruistically good, potentially profitable, and plain ol' good PR, then good for them. however, not everyone who plays games wants to play their games in a sanitized environment, and not everyone takes everything said in anger to pseudononomous handles on the Internet personally. when Call of Duty 4 Remastered was made free on PS+, I wholly unironically had a lot of fun having the CoD4 online experience for the first time in years, complete with epithets and bong rip sounds in my headset. I kind of miss the days of 360-era Xbox Live vocal toxicity; I always found it amusing. of course I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea, but personally I find experiencing raw competitive energy in online games to be kind of weirdly exhilarating. Dota 2 wouldn't be the same without the Russians and Latin Americans cursing at each other as well as me, in incomprehensible abbreviations of their native tongue.
so again I have no issue with companies sanitizing their online communities, except that I take issue with the idea that said sanitization is somehow morally, altruistically good, as though preventing someone from calling someone else—whose sexual orientation they're more than likely entirely unfamiliar with—a "faggot," will cause them to somehow reevaluate their life and linguistic choices going forward, thus making the world an objectively better place in the process. this seems absurd on its face, yet it seems like people actually believe it implicitly. sure, it might make your game more friendly to more people (again, increasing your company's profits), but, like, c'mon. not only is the idea that the actions of a corporation that coincidentally theoretically increases their profits could be a form of altruistic moral do-goodism hilarious on its face, but also, it raises the question of whether or not the "toxic" core audience that fell in love with your franchise in the first place will continue to buy future installments. (again, it's up to the corporations to make this value judgement—maybe they'll get enough new, toxicity-adverse people to play (and keep playing) their games, enough to more than cancel out the toxic boys leaving!) but pretending it's an act of justice or something is just silly.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#243Earlier 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 not about having female characters in games, that's never been a problem. It's about totally rewriting history to appease the modern woke sensibility that people were complaining about.
>It's about totally rewriting history to appease the modern woke sensibility that people were complaining about.
Nobody ever complains about gold-plated rifles, hipfiring LMGs, or frankly the entire existence of portable automatic weapons in a WWI game.
If you don't like it, it is what it is, but don't hide behind excuses like "historical realism" and "rewriting history".
Battlefield is not ARMA, if you took out everything that wasn't historically accurate there would be basically no game left, at all.
I'm not aware of many historical instances of pilots jumping out of planes in mid-air to snipe other pilots and jump into their planes.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#244Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses. I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lini…
I have been playing WoW since the first year, and the developers have my full support. I know several current and former Team 2 (WoW) developers, from QA up to leads, and they are all unified in their rejection of their executives. And I live nearby, so I'll be joining them on the pavement tomorrow.
The biggest Blizzard fans I know personally are pretty fed up.
From a fan perspective many are disappointed and/or concerned with the direction of WoW, Overwatch, and other Blizzard franchises from a gameplay perspective.
And from what I understand, the WoW community is talking about the recent news with many seeing this as the same leadership that is making poor decisions about the games they like as the same leadership behaving badly in the workplace.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#245This 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…
>>considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago.
Ohh Please, I remember vividly playing my Grandmother in Sonic the Hedgehog on the original Sega Genesis many decades ago. That trope is just plain incorrect and a complete revisionist history
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#246Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses. I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lini…
The thing is, your "average gamer" won't know or care about any of this. I work in the industry and according to our own stats the "average gamer" is a 20-30 year old, owns a console, and buys exactly three games every year - fifa, CoD, and one other title that got the most advertising that year. I used to live with such guys at uni, had them as flatmates - you wouldn't catch them dead talking about video games, "ner…
Forgive me but that sounds... outdated? With the proliferation of e-sports and people making a living on twitch and all, it just seems a little unbelievable.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
The post you're responding to is just repeating the same 'just asking questions' crap that led to the harassment campaign in the first place. What actually happened is pretty well-documented: a woman developer made a short game about dealing with depression to which various people then responded with rape and death threats; her ex-boyfriend lied about her sleeping with a gaming journalist in exchange for good reviews…
Is there any documentation why people harassed her that isn't just speculation? The gamer culture works just like twitter mobs, they attack things for almost no reason and do it hard, harassment and death threats etc. There is no big plan or conspiracy behind it, just thinking that maybe she slept with some reviewer to increase her score is enough to trigger the hate mob.
With that said, I'm not saying it was justified. Gamers are biased against women, yes. Gamers overreact and harass people who don't deserve it, yes. But they don't just harass any woman who publishes games, there are thousands of women who do that and nobody cares. It requires a spark, just like a twitter mob, and they become relentless attacking the target. And of course, if you accuse them of misogyny here they start attacking you, since they didn't attack her due to misogyny, similarly how when a twitter mob attacks a man with little evidence they don't do it due to misandry, they just attack someone they think did something wrong.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#248Earlier 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?
Its a bit more recent than 25 years, probably 2003-2005 maybe.
When I was a young "computer nerd" who went off to college we had a pretty decent CS program but it was awfully dusty to those not into it. I think there were maybe 5-10 "great" CS programs in the US, now major cities have 2-5 real "learn to code" programs outside of colleges.
In 96, a "programmer" could make decent money but it was defo not a money printing machine.
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gamergate was a harassment campaign organized against women in gaming. It was organized by men who were assmad that a female game developer released a game with a mental health theme rather than the usual focus on skill and violence favored by men, to critical acclaim. Her dating and sexual history were brought into it because that is a common tactic used by men to undermine women and discredit their achievements. On…
For anyone wondering, there was plenty of harassment, doxxing, and a number of rape and death threats against Zoe Quinn entirely because people hated her short game Depression Quest for being "political" or "not a game", well before the term 'Gamergate' or any of the 'ethics in journalism' conspiracy nonsense even came into the picture.
Sources for this, please?
Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
#250Did the women go to HR? If so, just fire all of HR and get a new HR. Did they not go to HR? That's on them and no one should feel bad for them then. No one should be persecuted for not solving your problems for you . I know law offices like very much to get public opinion on their side with strategic leaks so that they can push for a settlement ASAP. If things go to trial, it's likely to come out that their clients a…
HR works for the company, not for you.