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Ex-World of Warcraft developer's thread about China and the gaming industry

(twitter.com)
408 points seapunk | 3 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 1.291s | source
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Miner49er ◴[09 Oct 19 12:35 UTC] No.21202534[source]▶
> It’s one thing to keep politics out of games, which I am still a proponent of doing. It’s another to unfairly and harshly punish voices that speak out against corruption, against abuses of human rights, and freedom.

What does he mean by this tweet? It seems somewhat contradictory. I assume he means that he's against Blitzchung bringing up politics, but he's more against Blizzard's punishment? Seems like he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Not sure how you can prevent politics in gaming without creating and enforcing rules to prevent politics in gaming, which is what Blizzard has done here.

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1. stevenkovar ◴[09 Oct 19 12:39 UTC] No.21202559[source]▶
I'm pretty confident he means keeping politics out of games' content.
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2. baud147258 ◴[09 Oct 19 12:52 UTC] No.21202676[source]▶
Or (remembering older tweets from him), keeping out political content/messages that might appear too blatant, preachy or out-of-place in the context of the game.
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3. eropple ◴[09 Oct 19 13:30 UTC] No.21202988[source]▶
With the caveat that his idea of "preachy" or "out of place" is existing, sure.

There is a mendacious and regressive strain of insecurity amongst game consumers these days where being expected to countenance the existence of those unlike them in their entertainment--when that Other doesn't just exist to be killed anyway--is an attack on that consumer, and Kern has done a lot to feed that tire fire.