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

You are a professional player in a tournament, you should not use an official stream to spew political opinions... or opinions of any other kind.

In this case, the player violated this on their own accord. As right as this was, no surprise it made the business people unhappy. 'stronglikedan is correct in saying it's pretty much like misappropriation of company resources.

(In other news: entertainment is fake to the core. It's not about the game, it's about making money.)

But I also think it's 100% fair for the audience to be angry about this. It's a free market, and if people don't express their morality and/or politics through ways that impact the profits of the offenders, the market will not take those morals and politics into account. Bad press is a market signal too.

https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23013827/

Blizzard was fine introducing politics into their competitions when it suited them to do so. In that case it made them look progressive and they sold a lot of pins and t-shirts. In this case, they could lose a whole bunch of money.

Their stance on this sort of thing isn't consistent unless you view it from the angle of "what will make Blizzard money?" They also went completely nuclear on this guy by taking his winnings and banning him for a year, not to mention firing the two commentators.

I said essentially the same thing in another thread yesterday, but the issue at hand here isn't whether or not Blizzard has the right to enforce some vague rule; it's whether or not they should have and what were their motivations. We need to be very careful about allowing China to dictate what we can see and hear in our media.

These companies are quite literally helping an authoritarian government to further oppress its people, and their only motivation is money. It's insane to me that so many people are arguing in Blizzard's favor because apparently the only thing that matters is the bottom line, integrity be damned.

Politics and sports have been intertwined for as long as there have been organized sports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games#Politics). If e-Sports are in fact Sports, and if Blizzard intends to exercise control over political speech of ostensibly independent players, then ultimately Blizzard has accepted responsibility for its corporate political speech via the sport, which evidently includes a pro-mainland stance on Hong Kong.

I mean, take your favorite sports/e-sports stream. How much political opinions does the streamer voice? Would you really recognize, from just watching the stream, if they were censored by the Chinese?

They could coherce your speech, say x about issue y. If you refuse then ...

Just watching gameplay with no opinions and interaction is a watered down boring stream in my opinion. Maybe there are times when that is what someone wants when specifically looking for gameplay tips and how pros play, but that is only a subset of game streaming even by professional gamers. If the streamer is a sponsored pro, sure they have to worry about those sponsors but what kind of advice is it to tell them they should have no opinions? It feels short-sighted of the sponsors because they are limiting the potential of the stream and if they already sponsor someone, why wouldn't they want their opinions heard?

You should use whatever platform you've earned to state whatever views you wish. If there are consequences, so be it.

https://spitztengle.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/cathy-freema...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Freeman

But, I think it’s important to note, this doesn’t mean that these opinions that companies dislike espousing aren’t political in the literal sense. They’re a subset of what would be more objectively defined as “political opinions.” And, as such, it’s not these companies making this determination; for it really is considered a matter of civic etiquette—in at least Western culture—to avoid discussing “political” topics in any venue where something other than politics is trying to happen; and plenty of people really do get mad at companies just for the fact of their breaking this social more, even when the political statement itself is one they have no stake in either way.

I fail to see how this could be your takeaway from his statement. His point is that they will pander to whatever cause makes them the most amount of money.

LGBTQ+ content in a game should not be the reason you don't want a game. There are games that handle it very poorly and are just trying to virtue-signal. They make the point of the game that the character is gay (generally a lesbian as that hits more checkboxes) and as a result these games suffer quality wise. Being non-binary isn't a good story, your media should have a good story. The character having "being gay" as one of their character traits is fine. "Being gay" isn't (far from it) the only thing that defines a person (or character)

Curt Schilling?

There's a reason Metal Gear rewards players for avoiding a head-on fight at least as often as engaging one (and rewarded players significantly more often in the original games).

Hell, there's a reason there are bishops on the board in chess and they move diagonally.

Bioshock? Fallout? The worlds portrayed in those are intensely political topics.

But the "keep politics out of my games!" crowd only shows up when it turns out one of the characters is gay.

We've known Blizzard to be fuckers since at least 2002. The only way I can play their games now is by getting comped copies via pro player friends; I refuse to ever give them a dime.

Games are art.

Art is opinion.

Opinions are political.

You won't get what you want.