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

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

#271

Post by cableshaft »

Ntrails wrote: post #264
cableshaft wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bobby Kotick is worth $600 million according to a brief Google search. That's enough fuck you money I'm surprised he hasn't just retired yet. Of course, when you can convince the board to pay you $155 million more, that's a good incentive to keep working I guess. Especially since work at that level is probably just a handful of meetings in a boardroom and a few more on the golf course per year (I don't mean CEOs in g…

Anyone with a net worth over about 100m (and many a fir chunk lower) isn't working for money anymore. He hasn't retired to enjoy his wealth is imo because the jobs selection bias excludes the sorts of people who would do that

Yeah I think once I got to like, 10 million I'd just pull a Joe Rogan and do whatever I felt like at that point and not work a proper job anymore.

And I'm a long way away from getting that, unless one of my investments pulls a GME or something.

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

#272

Post by andrewzah »

tsumnia wrote: post #252
andrewzah wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's common for men to talk down to men on video games too" This is very tone deaf. I have spent probably thousands of hours playing games (with a mic) and the % of times I've been "talked down to" is very small, and it was never because of a natural property about me (that I'm male, etc). Literally every woman that I've played with who has used a mic or otherwise presented themselves as female has faced vitriolic h…

I think the poster's "talk down to" was more referring to the general "shit talking" people do in games. Even if you have a generic username and never speak, people will talk crap, be a jerk, or whatever. Even games that provide built in messages can get converted into trash talk (Rocket League, Overwatch, etc.). Having something "identifiable" just lets trash talkers switch from "you're terrible" to something else.

Well, sure, those things exist. What I'm getting at is that the % of it that happens purely because I'm -male- (or another natural property about me) is basically zero. Either they're just being belligerent in general or they perceive me to be underperforming (rightly or wrongly).

Whereas when I play with women who e.g. use a mic, very frequently it's like a switch gets flipped and people start being weird, overtly sexual, or just flat out insanely critical of every little thing the female players do. If we start losing the round (in e.g. Overwatch), they start blaming the female players unfairly, etc.

Obviously this is all anecdata but from everyone that I've spoken to it's a very common experience, hence most of my female friends just eschewing the mic entirely or only playing with specific groups instead of general matchmaking.

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

#273

Post by kqr »

cletus wrote: post #233

If you haven't read the state of California's claims here you should. It's the result of a two year investigation and the claims are.. shocking. I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.…

I agree with most of your comment but I want to add one level of nuance.

There's a bad way to do "culture fit" which you describe. There's also a good way: list the things you want in your culture (openness to criticism, appetite for learning, honesty, unafraid of challenges, or what have you) and then you construct questions specifically to find those things out, grade the result and weigh together into a culture fit score.

The good way to determine culture fit is to ask the candidate about the specific things you want in your culture, not go by general feeling because then you're indeed measuring something your biased System 1 likes, which is probably just the chimpanzee in your brain trying to determine how likely your blood relations with this person is.

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

#274

Post by ecshafer »

Ntrails wrote: post #264
cableshaft wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bobby Kotick is worth $600 million according to a brief Google search. That's enough fuck you money I'm surprised he hasn't just retired yet. Of course, when you can convince the board to pay you $155 million more, that's a good incentive to keep working I guess. Especially since work at that level is probably just a handful of meetings in a boardroom and a few more on the golf course per year (I don't mean CEOs in g…

Anyone with a net worth over about 100m (and many a fir chunk lower) isn't working for money anymore. He hasn't retired to enjoy his wealth is imo because the jobs selection bias excludes the sorts of people who would do that

That's a good point. Most people that would retire at $100M would probably retire at $10M, and thus wouldn't make it to that $100M level.

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

#275

Post by input_sh »

username90 wrote: post #247
crooked-v wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 justifi…

Speculation? Her former boyfriend wrote a blog post detailing their relationship (and lying that she slept with a game journalist, something he later said had no evidence of), someone posted it on 4chan, they tried to spin it as "ethics in game journalism" discussion (which never made any sense since he never reviewed any of the games she worked on). That's all there is to it, and it's pretty well documented.

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

#276

Post by kgantchev »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #265
cletus wrote: post #233

If you haven't read the state of California's claims here you should. It's the result of a two year investigation and the claims are.. shocking. I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.…

I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier…

The culture fit thing is the sort of keyboard warrior psychologist analysis that we all love... completely made up and is, in fact, how you get a toxic culture in a company.

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

#278

Post by dleslie »

MAGZine wrote: post #255
dleslie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the popularity of Japanese-developed, Polish-developed, German-developed, and other foreign-developed games... I don't think sharing American culture matters much.

You've missed the point. The point is, cultural (and time differences, language differences, etc) differences slow down collaboration. it has nothing to do with specifically american (or german, or polish) culture. How many roles do you think to be outsourced by the polish or japanese? not a lot, which keeps them efficient. especially in creative endeavours, its best to keep things colocated.

Like I said, I work in the industry. I've worked on several projects with teams on more than one continent.

The much-repeated "it'll slow down collaboration" is only a factor of how terrible your company's communication strategy was at the outset. If your company worked entirely verbally and contained little to no digital communication or memory, then you'll have a terrible time.

100% remote work makes intercontinental collaboration almost seamless. My current employer has teams on every continent, except Africa (so far), and we've been at it for over half a decade.

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

#279

Post by kazinator »

leetcrew wrote: post #189
Daishiman wrote: post #68

Earlier 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?

known by whom? I got halfway through my CS degree before I realized software paid significantly better than other STEM work, and I'm in my twenties. my parents weren't convinced it wasn't all a waste of time until I showed them my first offer letter.

Oh, I got an earful at home when I dropped out of engineering in around 1991 to go into CS.

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

#280

Post by [deleted] »

ozarkerD wrote: post #219
FanaHOVA wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some extracts from the lawsuit: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...

Absolute degeneracy. I don’t understand how a professional workplace could devolve to this. I have trouble talking about non work matters for more than a few minutes, How do things get this far?

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