As someone who likes watching public events go horribly wrong, I have never been so excited for a videogame convention.
However after the "don't you have phones" fiasco, Blizzard may be so out of touch that we'll see a video of armed guards dragging away some popular twitch streamer in a "Free Hong Kong" t-shirt.
What will be interesting is if these people even get in and how quickly they are put out when they do. If they are silent, just in costume, will that provoke a response as well?
I see discussion all the time about rejecting pre-ordering, rejecting games that are beta-quality at release, rejecting microtransactions and predatory mechanics like loot boxes, rejecting companies that abuse their employees, rejecting games that move core features into paid expansions, rejecting pay-to-win, rejecting invasive rootkit-style DRM, rejecting single-game-store exclusives, and so on.
And yet, games companies continue doing all those things regularly - giving me the impression gamer boycott attempts don't have much impact.
I think that's just it. The vocal gaming crowd is very quick to talk big talk about action but they're a tiny minority of the actual customerbase. For all the bravado you see on Reddit about boycots there's wayyyy more people who just want the latest title from popular publishers or the most anticipated shooter; they're not even aware of the drama going on in the background.
To me the phone and computer are much more difficult to find a replacement for, if I were to boycott Apple. There's all the data tied up in iCloud, and there's a bunch of software on both the phone and computer that would have to be found alternatives for.
In short the sunk cost in games can be pretty deep, but not very wide. On computing platforms the sunk cost can be both deep and wide.
When staring down an existential crisis your clients can and will push you around for misbehaving, even if that misbehaving is out of a desire to get out of said existential crisis.
Put shortly: fuck corporations.
I've had far more fun playing Battle for Wesnoth than I ever did playing WoW.
How hard can they clamp down really? Have a peaceful protest outside the venue in public and there is nothing they can do. (I'm assuming you have freedom of assembly and right to protest in the US)
And I might be wrong, maybe Blizzard will do drastic, irrational actions like involve riot police or something. Who knows.
That's the real problem they're facing with this situation. They pretty much lose right now regardless of what choice they make. I do feel a little bit bad frankly, but at the same time, I'm also quite excited for some schadenfreude.
They might try to straddle the US and China, on the basis that the US has no real teeth, but they aren't going to abandon it.
That's the point. The US can't really shut out Blizzard even if they engage in this kind of behavior, because the US gives them freedom to make their own decisions. I'm saying that if it's a lose-lose sustain then Blizzard might pick appeasing the Chinese market, because there's a limit to what can happen to them in the US. The players might get mad, but plenty of gaming companies exist that lots of players are angry about (eg EA, Ubisoft).
It's not clear to me how likely the US government is to do this, but it's something they have to be aware of given that whole bipartisan letter from congress thing.
0. https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
IMHO that would be a serious tactical error and prove Blizzard's critics right (i.e. this is about China, Blizzard cares more about revenue from the Chinese market than about freedom of expression). If there's zero crackdown, the people in pro Hong Kong stuff will look a little goofy in retrospect. Like they were just overreacting to the initial ban like gamers are wont to do sometimes.
If there's zero crackdown, then the protestors have won and they have a platform to show their support in a public setting for HK. I don't see the downside here. Isn't that what people want? To be able to protest the Chinese government and their actions in HK freely and without punishment?
I don't think most gamers actually care about Hong Kong specifically. If they did there are more effective venues for protest than Blizzcon. My sense is that what really got people upset is the suppression of - seemingly virtuous - speech, and the perception of Chinese influence on Blizzard's policies.
For example, showing up to Blizzcon in a Winnie the Pooh outfit is effectively an attempt at trolling Blizzard and doesn't do much to inform or sway anyone on Hong Kong. If Blizzard responds, the troll has been proven right (Winnie the Pooh is offensive only in the very narrow context of CCP leadership). If Blizzard does nothing, it's just a guy cosplaying Winnie the Pooh and the attempt fizzles out.
Edit:
To reframe this a little bit, I think protestors are going into Blizzcon with a hypothesis: Blizzard is suppressing a certain kind of free speech because of its financial ties to China. So far, Blizzard's official position has been that this is not about China at all. While I'm sure many would like to help Hong Kong, what they really want out of Blizzcon specifically is for their hypothesis to be validated. For them to be proven right (I include myself in this group, by the way).
If Blizzard basically ignores the protestors, it lends credence to the official line that banning Blitzchung was a purely impartial, administrative action and the hypothesis remains unproven.
Cancelling those tickets would be an even bigger PR disaster, and that's saying something.