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Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

theguardian.com

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Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#81

Post by tehjoker »

wonderwonder wrote: post #75
tehjoker wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry should be funded in a planned way with public money. Institutions similar to NIH/NSF should provide grants for people to be experimental. There would be a track for "scale up" for successful experiments. In certain cases such as entertainment, it might be desirable to maintain markets as a significant fraction of the industry, but we've seen how large concentrations of private money lead to companies taking…

Good answer, I am not opposed and would actually love if the government would start providing funding to small startups so people could take risks. Currently in many cases the ability to take risk is limited to young single people, people with a supportive family or people with a significant financial cushion. Regarding "Democratically decided" spending decisions how would that be accomplished when the country is spl…

I think there are a couple ways to look at your question.

1) Most people in this country don't vote (outside of a slim majority in presidential elections) for a large variety of reasons, but mostly because they know it doesn't change anything for them. The American system was designed as a system of baffles to insulate the elites from the rabble quite explicitly (indirect election of senators, 3/5 compromise, bicameral legislature with senate apportioned by territory instead of people, voting restricted to white male property owners (literally a vote by the elite only), etc), but these days it has developed into an effective democratic illusion in a path dependent fashion. So in other words, I don't think the country is split in this way, but the partisans of the two flavors of the single political party are highly polarized. Neither of them have any concern for workers, note the total lack of economic issues in their agendas and the tomfoolery around 15 $/hr minimum wage. More political participation would right the ship imo.

2) There are cases where votes are split fairly evenly on contentious issues. I'm not sure that private dictatorships are always better on these questions. Sometimes the mad king flip flops constantly, other times a hard line is taken against the will of half the people. It's something that has to be worked out politically and possibly with leadership. In some cases, I do think such things require constitutional remedies (for example, no one should be allowed to vote to re-institute slavery for example). For such close votes, I would shy away from saying the result is "the people's will", but an outcome of process. Votes are one method of measuring the will of the polity. Unfortunately, I don't think there's ever a way to be completely precise as it's possible even for people to change their minds and switch sides on an issue en mass!

One example of a vote I would be skeptical of: the way Uber rigged the wording of the recent proposal to recognize its employees as contractors to get out of a court ruling. They made it sound like voting yes was voting no. Votes are really effective ways to do democracy, but I don't think there's any method we can use that allows us to stop thinking critically about it.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#82

Post by p1necone »

SecretDracula wrote: post #68
redwood wrote: post #2

I'm going to take a minority position here and say that I've always hated their games. To me they're somewhat akin to cigarette or vape companies or even Facebook... They're driving addiction and causing people to pour their lives or at least their time down the drain. How widespread are these types of issues in other game companies?

Blizzard always made the worse, but more popular game of the time period. Total Annihilation was better than Starcraft. Baldur's Gate 2 was better than Diablo 2.

Total Annihilation is an entirely different type of RTS than Starcraft. Command and Conquer is probably a closer comparison.

Likewise (and even moreso) Baldur's Gate 2 is a totally different subgenre of RPG than Diablo 2 (unless you're talking about Dark Alliance 2 on consoles).

Baldur's gate is a hybrid turn based DnD rules adaptation with multiple player characters and more of a focus on characterization and storytelling. Diablo 2 is a single player character, full real time, random loot, multiplayer focused action RPG.

There aren't really any contemporary games that were a "better version" of Diablo 2 because in improving what they did with Diablo 1 it popularized the subgenre and made way for later games. Later games that could be considered improvements to the formula are things like Titan Quest (great first playthrough experience, but less replay value) and Path of Exile (really feels like a true successor to Diablo 2, with it's endless replay value and deep build customization).

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#83

Post by lmm »

meristohm wrote: post #58
poisonarena wrote: post #44

From the article: "Just 20% of Activision Blizzard’s 9,500 employees are women, and leadership at the company, one of the largest video game makers in the world, is largely white and male." I am 36 years old, white male. I imagine alot of the employees there are within my age range give or take 5-10 years. For me it just makes sense. in the late 90s and early 2000s if you asked me, an obsessed computer gaming white g…

Why would a publicly-traded company not want to appeal to as many potential gamers as possible?

Because a fanatical niche audience is more profitable than a barely-interested mainstream one? Games are fundamentally cultural objects, especially in these days of multiplayer and streaming, but also because the medium demands it; Blizzard's breakout hit was a barely-disguised knock-off of a barely-disguised knock-off of a barely-disguised knock-off of Lord of the Rings, and could only succeed because it was part of that cultural fabric.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#84

Post by noirbot »

shadowgovt wrote: post #52
breck wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had Freedom of Ideas, then yes, you could pull this off. But we don't have that. We have copyrights and patents. Those with capital have a lot more freedom with ideas. Those without, don't. If we abolish copyright and patent laws ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ifa ), then workers will have a lot more power.

Video games are one part idea and three parts implementation. And the talent at Blizzard has no lack of good ideas.

That... seems optimistic about the state of the modern average engineer at Blizzard. Which isn't to say that folks are bad at their jobs, but it's not as if it's a company that's done well-received and breakthrough modern game design in the last 5 years.

If anything, the folks who made the company what it was either were the people being protested or left 5-10 years ago, or both.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#85

Post by georgeburdell »

meristohm wrote: post #58
poisonarena wrote: post #44

From the article: "Just 20% of Activision Blizzard’s 9,500 employees are women, and leadership at the company, one of the largest video game makers in the world, is largely white and male." I am 36 years old, white male. I imagine alot of the employees there are within my age range give or take 5-10 years. For me it just makes sense. in the late 90s and early 2000s if you asked me, an obsessed computer gaming white g…

Why would a publicly-traded company not want to appeal to as many potential gamers as possible?

Some of those gamer groups are more profitable than others, even if it comes at the expense of other groups. Consider why there are so many women-specific clothing stores.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#86

Post by wbc »

taeric wrote: post #33
micromacrofoot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkouts are an easy way to get more attention to an issue and it costs an employer real money. A single action doesn't need to solve everything.

The sceptic in me is unsure how much money this costs. They aren't an assembly line, so did any deadlines get pushed back? Similarly, they are not a services company, so no services were lost. Certainly bad press. And I hope it has impact. But I'm not seeing direct lines to it.

World of Warcraft, the cash cow product, is getting content delayed according to one of the devs:

https://twitter.com/JeffAHamilton/status/1419115702569472003

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#87

Post by jessaustin »

wonderwonder wrote: post #65
tehjoker wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lords of finance have historically been the enemies of the working man. All their money comes from our pockets and the people's printing press. We can run things ourselves.

You just parroted a couple of slogans at me that sound like they belong on a Bolshevik pamphlet, you did not answer the question. Who is going to fund these things? You can claim that there are successful solo developers and you would be right, people like Notch and Eric Barone but these people are the exception and they certainly don't pay for teams of hundreds or thousands. So again, who is going to pay the bills f…

Money doesn't come from rich people. Most money nowadays comes from the state. Rich people might have it temporarily, but it exists independently from them. (Of course many states are controlled entirely by rich people, but at least theoretically that doesn't have to be the case.)

Of course money itself is mostly an abstraction. It represents the value of human creation, and you don't need rich people to create value with and for other humans.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#88

Post by jayd16 »

SwSwinger wrote: post #4

Without harassing frat boy culture, how else could they convince developers to work long hours for such little pay compared to the rest of the industry?

Don't be silly. There's still plenty of starry eyed hope and misplaced loyalty to run a death march through the holiday season.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#89

Post by jayd16 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #53
tehjoker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is global so organizing must be as well. Workers must organize at their company, sectorally across the industry, and internationally with other workers so the capitalists have no where to run.

"so the capitalists have no where to run" Who is going to finance the companies and workers that build those games then? These games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, who is going to front the money if they don't expect a significant return. That is capitalism in a nutshell.

The goal is human rights and profit.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#90

Post by baron_harkonnen »

fhjkkkg wrote: post #36
drdeadringer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did the walkouts at Google change anything? I was a "TVC" at Google several times. One of those times was during the walkout period. Even though I had no way of finding out about it until a lucky "right now in 3 minutes" time period, I participated. Whilst the walkouts may not have changed much on corporate or the outsourced "side-corporates" [the contract companies], it did change myself. For decades I've heard of…

If this isn’t parody, and I am guessing it’s not, then it’s still a perfect depiction of what changed in the American left in the 1960s. Politics became more about changing the orientation of one’s mind than the orientation of one’s society. Walkouts are worthless.

I've participated in a walkout as well, and while I very strongly agree with your overall criticism about the inefficacy of walk outs and the reduction of the American "left" what I feel is essentially a life style brand. When I did the walk I did it for one reason and it was for other people.

I don't want to give away personal info on this account, but the issue was related to treatment of minorities. At this company I was in a management position in a technical role which put me above the vast majority of employees in both pay and autonomy.

I decided to do the walk out because I'm sure there were people who worked at this company who did not feel comfortable expressing their views publicly because they made just enough to get by and couldn't get a new job in two weeks if they wanted.

I want these people to see that there was someone in a management role that at least gives enough of a shit to visibly make their unhappiness with the decisions and actions of senior management known.

Maybe it's a meaningless gesture politically, it certainly didn't change anything at the company, but for me it was like lighting a candle and placing in with others in honor of someone who has passed. It won't change anything but it helps those who are struggling and grieving feel a bit less isolated. Its nothing to be proud of, it doesn't change the world, but for me it was better than sitting at my desk for a few hours completing ignoring a problem that didn't personally impact me.

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