Comment by alex_c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alex_c | Hacker News Reader

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Context is important.

Context #1: there has been a years-long trend for Western entertainment media (movies, games) to cater to the Chinese market. This ranges from voluntary censorship that seems odd in the West (no skeletons?) to more sensitive topics like sexuality.

Specifically, last year Blizzard disappointed fans by announcing a mobile Diablo game that no one really asked for and that many felt is squarely aimed at the Chinese market.

Context #2: the trade war and Hong Kong protests have brought a lot of attention to China in general. The Hong Kong protests seem to be particularly popular with younger people online.

Context #3: Blizzard's reaction seemed particularly swift and heavy-handed, giving the impression that it was more about not offending China than about discouraging political statements on streams. Blizzard's announcement on Chinese social media supported this impression, and their delayed and lukewarm non-apology statement in the US didn't do much to change that perception.

Further, Blizzard's support for LGBTQ suggests that it's not just about political statements on the stream, but the content of the statements is important. Put another way: would Blizzard's response be the same if the unauthorized statement was pro-LGBTQ rather than pro-HK? There is no way to know for sure, but if the answer is "no" that means Blizzard is indirectly picking sides.

Combine all that and Blizzard put themselves in an impossible situation with no good way forward.

My personal opinion: it probably was about China, it probably was a decision made locally further down the corporate ladder, and US HQ is now stuck with something they can't fix.

> Context #1: there has been a years-long trend for Western entertainment media (movies, games) to cater to the Chinese market. This ranges from voluntary censorship that seems odd in the West (no skeletons?) to more sensitive topics like sexuality.

I .. take your word for it. I'm not sure what the "no skeletons?" references and I'd argue that sexuality is already a pretty weird thing if you - say - take the US and Europe (during the 2006 soccer championship US visitors got an "informational leaflet" that - among other things - said something along the lines of "On tv back home? Gore is fine, sex is bad. Here? Expect less gore, more nudity"). But again, without said context and without catching your references I .. can't really disagree.

> Context #2: the trade war and Hong Kong protests have brought a lot of attention to China in general. The Hong Kong protests seem to be particularly popular with younger people online.

Not sure how that's related to HK per se, but I agree that this was on the news a lot (I'm.. using a Huawei phone myself).

> Context #3: Blizzard's reaction seemed particularly swift and heavy-handed

Fair enough, that's true.

> Further, Blizzard's support for LGBTQ suggests that it's not just about political statements on the stream

I .. don't get this. What does LGBTQ have to do with .. anything? How does the fact that BLIZZARD can make public statements one way or another on BLIZZARD streams or elsewhere have anything to do with private unrelated individuals making their own loaded statements on BLIZZARD streams?

> Combine all that and Blizzard put themselves in an impossible situation with no good way forward.

I guess there's no debating this: They're in a bad spot and I don't know what they could/should do.

> My personal opinion: it probably was about China

I don't even disagree with this, I'm not thaaat naive. I assume it was mostly about China. My problem is that I still think that the guy was out of line and should be banned/punished for hijacking the event.

Pro-gamers often lament the fact that they aren't considered "athletes" in the general public, that people like to say things like "eSports aren't real sports" etc.

But in this case I feel this professional Hearthstone gamer got treated like an athlete - just not in the way he probably would've liked: If you're representing your sport, if you're on camera/in public, then you're not a private person and keep your private agenda to yourself. Otherwise there will be consequences for your career and your club/league/whatever association is relevant might remind you of that in fines/bans.

I agree with you, and I think most people do, that disrupting a tournament with political speech deserves some kind of punishment, perhaps up to a ban, though ideally not for the first offense. The punishment should be made clear in the rules and enforced objectively rather than selectively.

But note that what actually happened is much worse than a minor punishment: full ban for a year, confiscation of prize money that had previously been won, firing both the (Taiwanese!) interviewers for a crime that was extremely close to just being unavoidably in the wrong place at the wrong time, having the company representing Blizzard in China issuing an apology about defending China's "national pride".. it feels like a set of consequences that were likely dictated by China, or at least planned explicitly to try to please them.

You can object to a specific punishment without objecting to the idea of giving a punishment, and I think that's what's been happening here.

I think you gave me the most pause in this argument so far.

I do think punishing the player itself, even in the original 12 months / 10k way before they relented, was .. acceptable? Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly. Which I think was the case here, completely ignoring what he was advocating.

You're bringing up good points about the rest of the disaster though. Unless they were secretly in on this (and all coverage I saw makes that highly unlikely), the casters are complete bystanders and not responsible in the slightest¹.

I won't weasel around and say "It wasn't _Blizzard_ directly who apologized" or stuff like that. The apology is - in my opinion - the worst part in all of this and the single part I find a little disgusting.

Ban/Fine the guy? Yup. Fire casters: That's stupid. Apologize to China: Ewww..

I guess what made me burn my karma in this thread is that so far I've seen a lot of discussions focus on "Freedom of Speech" (not applicable on a private platform, not a global/unified concept anyway) and actually .. supporting the gamer.

Player vs Blizzard: Both fucked this up. The former intentionally², the latter incompetently. I don't see why Blizzard alone gets the hate and is painted as the bad guy.

① One might mayyyybe wonder if the production team could've cut to a commercial, but again.. no use blaming other people.

② I've never watched that player myself, but I extend him the courtesy to believe that he knew he was doing something stupid/risky way in advance

I agree with most of this, yeah.

> Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly.

This wasn't improper behavior that affected the result of the athletic event, though. Is it true that people are getting year long bans from their sport just for behaving improperly? Like, isn't Nick Kyrgios' on-court tennis behavior worse than this and yet he's still at events? I think as an athlete you have to be doping -- actually affecting event results -- to get this severe a punishment.

Another reason to be more lenient is that while Blitzchung knew some trouble would come, this was an unprecedented situation and the amount of trouble wasn't predictable by him.

Blizzard absolutely has the right to punish Blitzchung for his statement, and I am sure he expected and accepted there would be consequences. The issue is, was the punishment:

1) Strictly because Blizzard did not want unauthorized political statements on its video game stream - perfectly understandable, or

2) Partly because Blizzard feared retaliation from China, and acted more harshly than it normally would.

We can't know for sure from the outside, but context suggests 2 is more likely.

This is where the LGBTQ thing comes in. It's not central to the controversy but it is one small piece of the puzzle. It's an instance, in the past, where Blizzard has calculated it is worth it to take a public stance on a non-gaming related topic.

Now we would not normally expect Blizzard, out of nowhere, to take a public stance on the HK protests. But Blitzchung has forced them to consider the issue internally at least. We now know they have calculated, unlike LGBTQ, that it is not worth it to take any public stance on HK even though it might be the only way to disprove 2) and repair PR damage at home. Their silence doesn't prove anything but it is one more clue.

Also, regarding skeletons:

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-deal-with-skeletons-being-ba...

It's a silly example, and I don't have a big issue with localized versions of games or movies customized for local norms. But it becomes interesting when US content starts to self-censor at home to avoid losing money in the Chinese market. For years American entertainment has been some of the most effective propaganda globally, now American citizens are indirectly starting to be exposed to Chinese propaganda (by avoiding content or topics) in American entertainment. It's only tangential to the Blizzard situation but I think it's part of why it struck such a nerve.

This is why I find this mess so fascinating - it goes far beyond just the statement on the stream and it ties together so many different threads into a perfect storm for Blizzard.

> We can't know for sure from the outside, but context suggests 2 is more likely.

Can't it be .. both? And if we at least somewhat agree that this had to have consequences, why .. does it matter?

> For years American entertainment has been some of the most effective propaganda globally, now American citizens are indirectly starting to be exposed to Chinese propaganda (by avoiding content or topics) in American entertainment.

I'm not trying to be infuriating, but that seems something very American to worry about. As you write, American propaganda is huge worldwide (personally I cringe at - random examples - Independence Day speeches or Captain America). In addition, I don't quite understand how that is "propaganda" in the first place. Video games already tried to "censor" themselves before, to get around various gore acceptance level before for example. That's .. hardly propaganda. And if you build some erotic novel game that purposely avoids showing pubes and genitals to reach the Japanese market .. then I don't see censorship here either.

Now, I obviously don't deny that there IS censorship in general and around HK/TW specifically - I just feel the examples/comparisons aren't applicable?

> This is why I find this mess so fascinating

It certainly is interesting to observe, I agree.

>And if we at least somewhat agree that this had to have consequences, why .. does it matter?

This might be where our views diverge. If you don’t think it matters whether a US company punished a Hong Kong national, in Taiwan, for political speech in support of democracy out of fear of potentially offending China, then I don’t think we’ll find much common ground.

>that seems very American to worry about

It is, and that’s the whole point. If this were a French company punishing a Romanian caster for potentially offending the Bulgarian government, no one would care (other than mild confusion, probably).

This is one very small battle in a global struggle between the US, where democracy and political speech are supposed to be sacred, and China, where they are supposed to be taboo. Blizzard brilliantly got themselves caught right in the middle.

By the way - I’m not American either, I’m watching this from the sidelines just like you.

> I'm not sure what the "no skeletons?" references

https://www.techinasia.com/china-doesnt-censor-skeletons-the...

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