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

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408 points seapunk | 5 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 1.164s | source
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remon ◴[09 Oct 19 12:44 UTC] No.21202602[source]▶
One of these again. I struggle to form a coherent opinion on this one. Yes the player broke tournament rules and yes you can argue that he should be banned on that basis alone. But oh my god. Even if they banned him just on the basis of enforcing that rule rather than pampering to the Chinese market (and that's a huge if) the visuals of this are so predictably bad.

What meeting can they possibly have had where the options were "Just reprimand him in private" or "Ban him, get into the news cycle and face weeks of public backlash" and they landed on the latter?

It's hard to imagine the decision wasn't almost completely fuelled by Tencent's part ownership of Blizzard and Blizzard's stated goal to expand their marketshare in China. If so, it devolved from a company increasingly known for just poor decisions and communication (mobile Diablo announcement anyone?) to a company that publicly and blatantly prioritises shareholder interests over ethics.

And let's be frank; there's not that much anyone can do about it. People can claim they're uninstalling Blizzard games. And I'm sure some do. But the next time they release an objectively good game everyone's back in.

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wlesieutre ◴[09 Oct 19 13:18 UTC] No.21202859[source]▶
>Yes the player broke tournament rules and yes you can argue that he should be banned on that basis alone.

The rule in question is

>Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image

Which is so open ended that it's impossible to not break it if you have an opinion and are speaking to a global audience. You could go up on stage and say "It's bad to murder people for being gay" and a portion or group of the public in some other countries would get offended about it.

But Blizzard wouldn't be banning people and taking their prize money for that. 100% this is about Tencent and Blizzard's access to the Chinese market.

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mwyah ◴[09 Oct 19 13:38 UTC] No.21203060[source]▶
>Which is so open ended that it's impossible to not break it if you have an opinion and are speaking to a global audience.

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.

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1. reroute1 ◴[09 Oct 19 13:46 UTC] No.21203132[source]▶
No opinions of any kind... sounds like a super interesting stream!
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2. TeMPOraL ◴[09 Oct 19 13:50 UTC] No.21203174[source]▶
Well, being a professional e-athlete means being an entertainer first and foremost. Everything you do and say is supposed to maximize the amount of money made for you, people who manage you, and the sport. Just like in physical sports.

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.

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3. reroute1 ◴[09 Oct 19 14:02 UTC] No.21203331[source]▶
I'm not disagreeing that it goes against company mission/guidelines, but if part of your product is player streams and you give them a caveat of not having the ability to freely express opinions that is going to be an incredibly boring stream.
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4. TeMPOraL ◴[09 Oct 19 14:09 UTC] No.21203397{3}[source]▶
It will be boring only if you're seeking some philosophical or moral insight in it. Entertainment is the opposite of boring by definition. The entire industry is built around optimizing the value of (average interest * audience size), which means that successful streams aren't going to be boring no matter how little freedom the streamer has to voice their political opinions.

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?

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5. reroute1 ◴[09 Oct 19 14:25 UTC] No.21203558{4}[source]▶
I disagree. Lots of the streams I enjoy are largely based on the personality of the streamer and their interaction with viewers. If you start removing their freedoms of what they can and can't say that would heavily impact their interactions and limit their opinions/speech. Yes it's true that most of the dialogue isn't heavily political, but politics is a wide sweeping topic. What if they are bringing up legitimate problems with the game, or the parent game company? Totally reasonable and interesting opinions that actually happen all the time on streams would be in danger of getting banned. Not to mention discussion of everyday life outside of the game which is also commonplace on many streams.

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?