Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday
axios.com
axios.com
I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.
This "we like you" can and does lead to discrimination.
But here's the even darker side of this. Toxic cultures of sexual harassment as alleged in the complaint against Activision-Blizzard always come down to a few key individuals who then "spread" by hiring or promoting other people who are like then. I doubt this is ever explicit. It's more that you can sense a fellow predator (make no mistake: they are preying on vulnerable staff).
So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread. Those who oppose it will leave. Those who tow the lines get promoted.
And it's leadership's responsibility to root this out and eliminate it. Heads should roll here. Maybe even J Allen Brack's and/or Bobby Kotick's. If you want to take credit for the successes you also have to take responsibility for the giant failures here.
Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.
"culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria.
Things I've seen teams consider "culture"
- will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery?
- will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us?
- is the candidate entertained by all the Star Wars lingo we use?
If you don't find these discriminatory, think about how well a recent poster from Gaza would have done with them. Not well, I suspect
We had a guy from Gaza in our office - he complained about informal emails sent to invite people for drinks because it was sinful, he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest.
I don't know what lines to draw here - but be careful when playing with double-edged swords.
As someone who doesn't care for drinks, the quickest way to shut-down all that drinks-are-vital-to-our-culture talk is to declare that I used to have a problem with the drink, but I'm sober now, and watch them stammer something about the event being optional.
Just tell them you don't like drinking. We organize the same kind of meetings over at where I work, and if someone says they don't like drinking, we tell them that water is fine, if they say they don't want to join for whatever or no reason, then we say fine and let them know that the meeting will be always open to them.
Uhhhh... dare I ask to explain what was going on with said mannequin? What kind of “special occasion” requires this... ritual?
Also, I can’t tell whether you are implying that it would have been better for your coworker to have been filtered out because you think they are too sensitive, or if you are implying that your office asks weird things of people. What is the “double-edged sword”?
Other than that she sat in the corner (nearish the pool table) being inoffensive.
The second edge: there is the risk that healthy aspects of a prevailing culture will be eroded for the sake of an overly vocal regressive minority.
You better be able to articulate what job-relevant reason is behind your dislike and be able to express it in those terms. If you go with your gut feel alone, you could be easily selecting for physical attractiveness, extroversion, a nice smile or some of the many less acceptable biases. Maybe you have perfectly diverse personal discretion, but most people choose copies of themselves or attractive members of the opposite sex.
If you make a job posting, get 5 applicants, interview 3 of them and hire 1 it's hard to point a finger and say you did (or didn't) do anything wrong.
But let's say over the course of a year you receive 10,000 applications for various positions and 15% of those are African American. Now say that 10% of applicants get to the interview stage but none of the African American applicants made it to the interview stage then, in the very least, that looks bad. You would need to justify why that's the case.
Discrimination can be subtle. A lot of people who are discriminatory but don't think they are. In the US, for example, you have what are called "second syllable names". These are names that are traditionally AFrican American (eg Lakisha). I vaguely recall reading a study where someone took a bunch of resumes for assistant positions and for a bunch with "first syllable names" they replaced just the name with "second syllable names" and there was a statistically significant decrease in response rate.
So your personal discretion doesn't extend to unlawful hiring and firing practices.
Do they dismiss any approaches besides their own? Do they think mentoring is a waste of time? Do they think that their code is so obvious that there's no point in documenting? Do they think their code is so perfect that unit tests are unnecessary? These are good reasons to dislike someone and not hire them.
Do you dislike them because they seem kind of boring? Get over yourself.
I don't know if a friend of yours took MDMA, but my friend told me that it is pretty much impossible to be aggressive under its influence, you can't help but love everyone. So, how can it lead to hate?
The explanation was that MDMA strengthens the bounds between people, and the closest people are within that group, the more the outside of the group is seen as a threat, a threat you have to protect your group against. Think of an aggressive mother protecting her baby.
So yes, I see how "culture fit", can lead to harmful discrimination, even when centered around positive values and topics as harmless as Star Wars and craft beer.
1) does this candidate have a positive attitude about the work that they do?
2) is this candidate respectful to the clients they work with? (E.g. a coworker of mine routinely calls our client contacts a "fucking bitch" on internal calls.
These aren't really possible to evaluate in the hiring process, but can be a big problem once theyve already been hired.
In my opinion, evaluation of culture fit is about things that are specific to the company, not “good” vs “bad”, but rather “we do this way, although other ways might be valid in other companies” and “we don’t do this way, although doing so in other companies has merit”.
For example, “we work as a family”. Surely work in this kind of company might bring more joy to some people, but will degrade work-life balance. Other company might have a culture of “work-life balance”, and if observed strictly, it will reduce the quality of team work, but will be much better long term for mental health of employees.
Both cultures are possible, and there are certainly people with strong preference for one culture or the other. I think it is crucial to articulate what kind of culture you have in your company, and select candidates who fit.
Yes, any time you make a decision which treats people differently on any basis, is it is discrimination.
What you probably mean to ask is whether it is illegal discrimination. For which the answer is more complicated. It doesn't seem to be directly illegal discrimination, unless “into the same things” itself directly involves protected characteristics like religion. But it could still be illegal as disparate impact discrimination [0], if it has differential impact on a protected axis without sufficient business necessity.
[0] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...
Your state may have a specific and more restrictive law, but you are free to be as discriminatory as you want until you have at least 15 employees (under Federal law).
https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/small-business...
Back to the spirit of your question; it is legal discrimination. Frankly I support your ability to hire who you want at your company within legal bounds. I also support teams hiring people who will go to the pub so shrug.
You could probably get away with it. Would you feel good about yourself? Would you feel pissed if you found out that you didn't get a job you really wanted, only because another company was trying to fill out their rugby team?
You can separate the culture of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter as easily as any brand, like Nike and Reebok. Those cultural brands are surely dissolving without the guiding hand of in office guidelines.
The Star Wars lingo probably gets old though. It should really be Expanse lingo if they want to stay cool.
There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.
But the bigger, weirder argument you seem to be making is that you shouldn't hire people that you like. I would say life is too short to be spending it around people you don't like, if you can help it.
I say that it is very possible to hire only people you like, and still end up with a diverse workplace free from abuse. You just need to start with good leaders.
Yes, you are an outlier. There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026540750809670...
Fair enough
There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.
The link you provide shows a coefficient of .47 for actual similarity, and .39 for perceived similarity. I'm not good at statistics, but that seems like a far cry from "the reason why people like other people is that they are like them." which is the line I was replying to. If I'm understanding it correctly it would be more accurate to say "people are somewhat more likely to like someone who is like them." If that's what was originally written, then I probably wouldn't have replied.
^1: it is, however, curious that similar visualizations can be found in woowoo circles
Anyway I highly doubt his head can really roll from this.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-06-22-activision-bli...
And I'm a long way away from getting that, unless one of my investments pulls a GME or something.
There's a bad way to do "culture fit" which you describe. There's also a good way: list the things you want in your culture (openness to criticism, appetite for learning, honesty, unafraid of challenges, or what have you) and then you construct questions specifically to find those things out, grade the result and weigh together into a culture fit score.
The good way to determine culture fit is to ask the candidate about the specific things you want in your culture, not go by general feeling because then you're indeed measuring something your biased System 1 likes, which is probably just the chimpanzee in your brain trying to determine how likely your blood relations with this person is.
But let's talk about 'culture' for a moment.
In my experience, the tech workers in the US make their "work" their "life" way too frequently to be healthy. What I mean by that is that they do not choose to separate their "work" life from their "non-work" life in any meaningful way. As a result the parts that would nominally be "non-work" like friendships where you travel together, or date, or share political affiliations, or other causes, are not kept separate from your "work" life.
It isn't easy. People interact on social media and at work and so if you're angrily criticizing the plight of the Palestinians on social media, your pro-Israel co-worker may bring that conflict into work with them, which make it harder to get things done. And even when you support the notion that employees are their own people and what they do in their own time is their own business, and not to bring it to work, it shows up anyway.
For a long time people have advocated to "not bring your work home." That helps you maintain family relationships because at home that is your priority. We now also have to "not bring home to work."
I am aware of the situation of an excellent engineer who lost their job because at "home" they were a supporter of the policies of an administration that many of their co-workers despised. I can assure you from my experience with this person that their technical capabilities were in no way diminished by their political preferences, and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
So ActiBliz really needs to be corrected here, and firmly, because they allowed a non-professional culture to emerge and flourish within their company at the expense of many of their employees. But it isn't just "bro" culture, it is any non-business culture.
It is one of the under appreciated complexities of what a good manager can overcome.
There are many dimensions to this:
1. Is Alice speaking for the company or can be construed as speaking for the company? Like does her Twitter profile say "VP of X at Y" and is a verified profile? Like I know there are certain topics that have been in the news about my employer that I simply won't comment on because I never want to be quoted in the press as "Employee of X said ...". That's just common sense. And you can also be (rightly) terminated if your actions or statements reflect badly on the company or the company otherwise has to spend time dealing with;
2. Assuming the first person isn't speaking for the company and the second person is simply aware of their social media presence, it gets a lot trickier. I can sit here and say "just do your job" but would I be saying that if I were African-American and my coworker was spouting some White supremacist crap on Twitter? Probably not. There are degrees too. Reposting links on your personal Twitter in your free time is one thing. Putting up a Confederate flag in your cubicle is something else;
3. You should generally be comfortable with what your employer does. So let's say you're deeply evangelical and completely anti-abortion. Should you work for Planned Parenthood? Probably not. I mean if you can and want to, that's fine. But there are limits on what an employer should be expected to do to accommodate your views.
> ... and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
Obviously specifics matter here but let me express some generalities.
If you express views where your coworkers don't want to work with you because of those views then yeah you've created a problem. Even for an engineer the technical side isn't everything. You will still need to work with people. Supporting homophobic policies when you have a gay worker means you've brought something into work that has disrupted that work (as an example).
It is tone deaf and irrelevant, but they should not lose their job over that. Let the person who has never held a poor opinion throw the first stone.
Not that this is what happened, still bad bosses reap bad behaviour.
I mean I do kind of agree, but I'm not sure if "hire people you dislike" works either? It probably needs to be more of a situation of like "if you're a stanford grad the world isn't just other stanford grads" or something.
Professionals should be able to cope with culture clashes. Fundamentally, if someone isn't professional enough to get along with people who aren't from the same monoculture, they're not fit to work in a modern office.
The issue goes much further than simply "we like you". How safe one feel in ones choices and decision is heavily influenced by choices of peers. If other Stanford grads work at the same place I do, then how bad can the decision to stay be? Similar, if every Stanford grads left, then is the decision to stay still safe or am I missing something.
The relation between culture fit and the probability that someone will commit a crime (like sexual harassment) seems less direct but I suspect there are an connection there. At a society level we know that mixing demographics will reduce trust, and with reduced trust we see an increase in crime.
It is correct to be angry about this, but your answer seems to be vindictive. Next step is to wait for the verdict.
> So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread.
Most businesses operate without sexual misdemeanor happening. On the contrary, I doubt the measures now announced by Kotick will ever be non-toxic. Because here you institute a group that will turn on random employees as they see fit. It is the wrong medicine in my opinion.
Useful would be to accuse the people responsible and use the law against them in a court of justice without arbitration.
Kotick voted for group punishment and I don't really understand how anyone would want to work at Activision to be honest because that isn't the way to get a non-toxic workplace. I doubt we will see much cooperation here.
I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the visibility raised when Riot went through this was outside of the Riot gates where employees were congregated.
Without speculating on the claims, I do find it interesting that the DFEH has lawsuits against both Riot Games and Blizzard for similar issues. I recall reading that Riot's response was that the DFEH was not working in good faith: are both of these companies aligning their responses, is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken?
Yes, because Riot's C-level executive was literally dry humping interns and shoving their ass into faces and still has their job? Clearly "visibility" has not worked past creating PR articles.
Does DFEH have the same problem with any other major game studio there that isn't embroiled in this type of behaviour?
I've played League before. The player base is ludicrously, absurdly toxic, and if they are hiring anything from there, then, well...
Sexism:
[2018] https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-game...
[2018] https://twitter.com/MiniWhiteRabbit/status/10269232332814213...
[2019] https://www.vice.com/en/article/evyz7p/over-100-riot-games-e...
COO specific:
https://www.businessinsider.com/riot-games-suspends-coo-scot...
- tbh just google riot games farting
CEO specific:
[Feb 2021] https://www.wired.com/story/riot-games-ceo-culture-complaint...
[Mar 2021] https://www.dailyesports.gg/alienware-has-terminated-its-spo...
It looks like EA is based in LA and isn't under investigation by the DFEH, but Riot and Activision/Blizzard are two of the biggest game studios in CA, right?
Yes, the C-level executive that dry-humped employees, "ball-tapped" employees, and any other inappropriate behavior should be removed... but that actually isn't included in the DFEH lawsuit, IIRC.
The parent post does make a decent job of pointing out that it's pretty rotten, from the top to the bottom.
The players at the bottom are terribly toxic, the C-levels are allegedly just as bad.
I am curious if this is more about culture - I would imagine EA and Niantic for example to have a relatively boring office, just normal cubes and meetings. Just engineers and designers going to work.
Riot and Blizzard both have large flagship franchises that they practically decorate their offices around, statues and all. When I was talking to recruiters in the past, Riot stood out as one of those "don't bother applying if you aren't absolutely shitting passion for our games out of every hole" as culture fit.
My point about the C-Levels is that it is primarily 1 C-level who is being spoken about: The COO. While there was an allegation against the CEO earlier this year, it was found to be unsubstantiated and thrown out because the claimant was proved to have stolen money/scammed Riot and falsified the claim. I am not sure if it's fair to group all of the other executives into the same bucket as the COO.
I can see how the culture is playing a part in it. Riot has softened up on the "need not apply if not a gamer" in the past couple of years, but many of the people who started that are still there. I guess my big question is: Why Riot/Blizzard? Are they the worst companies in California right for sexual harassment and inclusion? These have been the two prominent DFEH cases against tech companies in the past couple of years.
I'll agree on Unity, apples to oranges, but 2K/T2 as a company is 3b revenue. EA is 5.5b revenue. Nexon is ~3b revenue. FrontOfficeSports and several other sites says League of Legends property was 1.75b for 2020 - both Niantic and Roblox exceed that as single games. Disney and Lucasgames are massive. Why aren't these lined up for DFEH suits or repeatedly being complained about by ex employees?
I honestly don't know, but I do think there is something with Riot/Blizzard culture that might make this type of behavior "normalized?". I guess my questions are more surrounding DFEH and tech in general. I don't know if Riot/Blizzard are the worst companies in the state, or are they?
I interviewed at Riot when I was trying to move back to Saint Louis. I could not muster up very much enthusiasm for League, and you could just feel the room shift into "just get through this interview ASAP" mode.
Can't help but feel I dodged a bullet.
statements like this are why i have no interest in investigating allegations of sexism because neither of these things are sexist.
is your starting point that we're supposed to assume this is only being done to women? assuming women are being treated differently is a poor premise for proving women are being treated differently. or are you implying that doing the same thing to men and women is sexist to women? either way, its a very poor argument and calls into question your judgement.
...i actually have no idea. i was gonna say maybe i read it in another comment, but i dont see any other comment talking about sexism.
i dont know what im on about. sorry folks!
No chance DEFH is out of line.
The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known.
Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp. That was in 2018... That's the _average_ person who is making a video game.
... In Saudi Arabia?
> It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known.
It's common for men to talk down to men on video games too ("talk down to" is a very mild phrasing). Turns out there are a lot of jerks who play video games, and for $reasons they tend to skew male (but we're still talking about a tiny minority of men; this isn't an indictment of men; the predictable "10% of m&ms are poisoned" rebuttal is inherently sexist, racist, etc).
> Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character
I'm not sure which game you're talking about, but I suspect you misunderstand the criticism. There have been thousands of female video game characters going back to the dawn of the industry. Many titles which prominently feature female characters have done very well (e.g.., Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, etc). I'm guessing there has never been significant controversy because a video game featured a female character, though no doubt there has been controversy about specific characters (e.g., Battlefield 1's and Battlefield V's wildly disproportionate emphasis on female WWI and WWII combatants) or about the cringe deployment of token diversity characters.
> biased in favor of white men
There's not even good evidence that CS is biased in favor of white men. The only "evidence" is that the demographics skew toward white men, but that's almost certainly minimally related to bias in the field because
1. There are tons of Asians (male and female) in the field as well
2. Demographics remain relatively constant despite a much more welcoming environment and a decade-long push at all levels of the pipeline to incorporate more women and non-whites
3. Women achieved near gender parity in law and medicine without any similar concerted effort during a time when the fields were overtly hostile to them
4. The countries with the most gender equality have more stereotypical occupational demographics, including women in tech
This is very tone deaf.
I have spent probably thousands of hours playing games (with a mic) and the % of times I've been "talked down to" is very small, and it was never because of a natural property about me (that I'm male, etc).
Literally every woman that I've played with who has used a mic or otherwise presented themselves as female has faced vitriolic harassment (and/or sexual harassment) for no reason other than that they were female. I've been in lobbies with them and suddenly see men becoming -far- more judgemental and critical about the female player's ability/skill than usual. This is why a lot of women don't use mics at all or otherwise identify themselves as female in online games.
The "talking down" (or just general random toxicity) that men sometimes face from other male players is not even remotely comparable.
My point is that there is any controversy when there is a game where the female main character is not explicitly sexualized. You are absolutely right that there are beloved female main characters, but they are almost always shown and viewed in a sexualized manner rather than as a human being.
And yes, there are definitely 'sexualized' men (God of War) but they never seem to be explicitly in there as sexual objects rather than as part of the story. Like, if you took Lara Croft out and replaced her with a red square, would that game be regarded as the same? Probably not.
People legit get mad about Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn) being unattractive and "looking manly". Maybe not a massive controversy, but enough that I, someone who passively follows video game news, know about it.
I agree thought that my original post was poorly worded and not specific enough about my perceived reception of female characters in video games. I was trying to incorporate "female main character" and "unattractive female characters" into one point and failed.
That's debatable. CS was overwhelmingly male and wasn't prestigious until recently.
> video games even more so
I wonder how much of that we can attribute to DOOM. The DOOM devs wanted to make an hyper-violent game centered around Demon and heavy metal, and that reflected in the culture at id (not the violence). And they made a bunch of money which spurred copy-cats and got investors thinking game devs had to look like this to be profitable.
> Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp.
Links?
We're talking about the same career that's been known as a money-printing machine for the past 25 years?
I'm so tired of being blamed for the behavior of folks with the same genitalia/skin color as me.
What game are you referring to?
[1] - https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/horizon-forbidden-west-aloy...
EDIT: 4 responses within minutes of each other all pointing to a different game just underlines my "too many to name" comment.
I like the fact that someone else responded with another that also works.
It shows how frequently this happens.
What?
I am sure some was valid criticism. I am not really a fan of "every game must be progressive", etc. but the fact men got mad that women dared criticize video games should say a lot about the state of the video game industry.
Not only that, but also, for a long time, video games just weren't marketed to girls at all. All video games catered to males and were specifically targeted as such.
It's mainly the Wii, Nintendo DS and Switch that were a big on-ramps for women into mainstream gaming. Even now, many men assume "female gamer == Candy Crush" or some other weird idea. Or joke that if you are a woman on a video game that you _must_ be a trap.
I only play games where you can't tell anyone's sex (Starcraft 2 for instance) and you get insulted all the time. You get insulted when you're playing badly, you get insulted when you're playing too well, you get insulted whether you're a man, a woman or a dog.
Contrast that to say World of Warcraft or LOTRO where most people are very nice, and any ladies that come up on voice comms are treated with respect. This is just anecdata I guess.
Mrs PacMan? Samus? Peach? That was all before 1988
- Mrs. Pac-Man is not a human. That said, the marketing shows her in full make-up, laying in a seductive pose. Now, compare that to marketing and images of Pac-Man. https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tw-mspacm...
- Samus was shown at the end of the original Metroid as a slim woman in her underwear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samus_Aran#/media/File:Samus_a...
Other images show her as a young, curvy, attractive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samus_Aran#/media/File:Zero_Su...
- Princess Peach is exactly the type of "conventionally attractive" character the poster was mentioning. A young, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, damsel-in-distress - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Peach
Samus is covered up entirely by armor, and when she's not she's in a skin-tight suit that shows off every single curve
Mrs. Pacman... I'll give you that one.
Anyway, I think any spaces dominated by teenagers will always be pretty toxic places, no matter if we're talking about schools or gaming servers. I have no idea what could be done about it, other than proper supervision by staff or server moderators.
Gamers talk down to everyone on video games and have since they have been invented. This sounds like a new group of people entering an existing space and not understanding the dynamic (namely incessant shittalking). I can't even count how many strangers have not so kindly informed me of their sexual adventures with my parents. Am I missing something here?
It's not trash talk. I can handle trash talk. It's stuff like "Ah, a f_cking girl. Cool guys, now we are going to lose", before the round even starts, or "Get back to the kitchen, B_TCH" or just harassing me until I leave the game, either through team-killing or preventing me from playing.
And if everyone is "behaving", I get treated differently in PUGs than just another team member. I don't want that. I don't want special attention or treatment. And then you get harassed for your social media or phone number or get incessant in-game messages or get asked if you're hot or some other variation of thing that isn't "Yo, you, we are doing X, Y, Z. Sound good?" like you are just part of the team.
The trash talk isn't the issue. When I, a male, join a multiplayer session I'm largely ignored. If I'm talked to, yes it's usually to trash talk me.
But when a female joins a session, they become the center of attention. They can't simply play the game; everyone is watching them and wanting to interact with them. In addition to that, the conversations from other players isn't just trash talk, it usually includes a heavy mix of flirting and sexual advances. Not funny, trolly, trash talk sexual advances. But intentional advances.
Not to mention the stalking outside of that session that females can experience.
The vast majority of people joining a multiplayer session are there to relax and have fun. Not get hit on by strangers on the internet, be the center of attention, or be open to harassment even after the session.
It's a qualitatively different experience.
Unwanted dick pics and other unwated advances, stalking, people masturbating in voicechat. Comments like "do you really want to listen to females"/"she's sleeping with xyz to get a raidspot".
I never had to deal with that. I get a generic idiot/retard/kys comment every now and then and that's it. No stalking, no dick pics.
could any of the downvoters please tell me how I'm wrong?
Crossing my fingers for widespread changes either way. The video game industry has a long-standing reputation for many other things besides just not being inclusive.
Ohh Please, I remember vividly playing my Grandmother in Sonic the Hedgehog on the original Sega Genesis many decades ago. That trope is just plain incorrect and a complete revisionist history
> The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men
Who cares?
I'm a black man, have been gaming since 6 years old, and never once in my circle of friends or family questioned silly things like potential political implications of 3D cartoons that I can manipulate. If I want a black, yoked mofo with a giant sword and a colourful pony sidekick with a red peacock feather in a video game - I know what I have to do.
Start my own gaming company to build games to do just that.
> It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming...
Ofcourse, it's video games not nobel prizes, not civil engineering projects, not...
edit: I'll assume this is about the US then. At any rate, my earliest memories of playing video games with female friends go back to the 1980s, and I don't recall a single moment where that wasn't "socially acceptable".
It should be mentioned that this was different from the usual exclusion of women. Women were mostly discriminated from outside the group of those playing games.
The average person who was making a video game was upset at themselves for putting non-conventionally attractive females in the games they were making?
It's about totally rewriting history to appease the modern woke sensibility that people were complaining about.
I mean, Battlefield has never really been about super serious war simulator, it has always had a goofy undertone.
Battlefield has always been a little wacky. They had an offshoot game that was TF2 meets BF, everything cartoon-y. Then their _main line_ games for a few years involved a rogue group of US soldiers who blew stuff up, drove around in golf carts and had humorous lines. After that, they had a game that was cops-and-robbers meets BF.
People who mix up ARMA and BF, and I don't say this to be mean, probably aren't real Battlfield fans. Battlefield has never _necessarily_ been about realism or pure historical accuracy.
There has always been wacky tactics that aren't just purposefully put in but explicitly promoted by their trailers (see Zooking, Rendzooking and my favorite, loopzooking.)
Like, yeah, I too was thrown off by the triple amputee woman in the trailer. It was a little weird, I thought / hoped they were going for a cyberpunk / time-traveling motif but nope. I am more than happy to discuss how DICE & EA has ruined Battlefield though, that much I do agree with and likely ties into poor marketing and PR.
Nobody ever complains about gold-plated rifles, hipfiring LMGs, or frankly the entire existence of portable automatic weapons in a WWI game.
If you don't like it, it is what it is, but don't hide behind excuses like "historical realism" and "rewriting history".
Battlefield is not ARMA, if you took out everything that wasn't historically accurate there would be basically no game left, at all.
I'm not aware of many historical instances of pilots jumping out of planes in mid-air to snipe other pilots and jump into their planes.
Game companies who make games for this audience rely on this audience as their talent pool because no one else will build these games on absurd timelines at great cost to every other aspect of their life. They are in effect paid in 'cool points' which matter only to those already hazed or yet-to-be-hazed.
I used to live with such guys at uni, had them as flatmates - you wouldn't catch them dead talking about video games, "nerd" was probably the worst insult for them, and they religiously bought every single Fifa every year to "play with their mates" and CoD to play some multiplayer. Year on year. So yeah, I'm absolutely tempted to believe those stats, and I'm also absolutely tempted to believe any backlash from this will be minimal to Activision.
Consumer backlash is not the intended means/outcome here. Blizzard is being sued and there is massive organizing within the company. They will likely end up paying out lots of money in compensation to the employees who were wronged, heads will roll, and the toxic culture will end up being cleared out forcibly (like what happened at Uber). Consumer backlash is an orthogonal concern.
Then I am very out of touch with the average having never bought any of those games, nor do I own a console. My recent purchases would be the Valve index and subnautica. The only "AAA" title in my steam library is ES:Oblivion. I'm probably not Blizzard's target market, but I am also not a broke kid. Give me a game I want to play and I will pay for it.
I know several current and former Team 2 (WoW) developers, from QA up to leads, and they are all unified in their rejection of their executives.
And I live nearby, so I'll be joining them on the pavement tomorrow.
From a fan perspective many are disappointed and/or concerned with the direction of WoW, Overwatch, and other Blizzard franchises from a gameplay perspective.
And from what I understand, the WoW community is talking about the recent news with many seeing this as the same leadership that is making poor decisions about the games they like as the same leadership behaving badly in the workplace.
They will stick with you through little fuckups, but if you want to make a big change, for better or worse, then you're going to hear about it.
It's why ex-smokers and ex-drinkers complain about having to stop hanging out with their old friends. It's not just the temptation to revert, there's also social pressure for you to be the old you. If you want to go the other direction and become an ass, you're in for a similar treatment.
The real danger comes when the project fails, for any reason at all. People who like the new direction self-select into the experiment, and if the experiment fails they are more likely to find themselves laid off, give notice, or be disillusioned and stick around anyway.
I am very suspicious, for instance, if this is what happened at GM with the EV1. Effectively the rabblerousers got put onto a project, which they cancelled it quite abruptly and then backed away from the green vehicle space for a very long time.
I think ultimately the workers staging a walk out or even stopping work would have the quickest and surest effect. The government setting labor standards isn't always the most effective, not to mention no one knows the pain suffered or actions needed more than the workers themselves.
No king rules forever, my son.
Activision Blizzard's Chief Compliance Officer released an absolutely disgusting statement in response to the lawsuit: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1418619091515068421
It's surreal knowing that she is also complicit in the war crimes committed at Abu Ghraib (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Townsend#Career).
It sends a message, but I wouldn't say it's _that_ drastic considering the demand for developers and difficulty hiring in the Orange County area.
The game industry is overflowing with college educated, computer science degree wielding, software developers eager to work on a big game project. Few will ever touch Engine code - the rest are easily replaceable.
This is part of the reason companies like this are able to get away with things that other industries aren't able to. Everyone wants to work on the next AAA title - few want to toil away making ads more clickable...
So yes, they'll replace the walk-outs with "scabs" in short time, and move on.
Not to mention - this is a tiny percentage of Blizzard employees - and seems to have morphed into a beef with the binding arbitration agreement - not better employment treatment. "As of Tuesday, signatures surpassed 2,600 current and former employees" - and later on the article states "A group of roughly 300 employees across Activision Blizzard". That's out of 9,500 employees at Activision - you can find 3% of any workplace that's outraged by anything. My guess... wait it out a couple months and everyone forgets this ever happened.
It was difficult to hire new grades or less experienced developers because the cost to train them in the custom frameworks, infrastructure, and other technologies was exceptionally high.
It was terrible and there weren't a lot of excuses for it. My only point is that there are a lot of nuances to hiring from the talent pool.
I was under the impression that junior devs aren't that hard to come by in any development category (a specific type of junior will be more likely to join a AAA team for sure). I suspect senior staff is harder to get just like any other industry - but I have no insight into this industry.
Of course the institutional knowledge lost will be drastic.
Entry level devs typically suck. Source: A former entry level dev.
It's also difficult to understand how a billion-dollar business gets to this point, with what seems like zero adult oversight, but it is what it is.
There is daylight between unions and anarchy. In that daylight are California’s general labor laws and the NLRA.
Walkouts of this sort are considered protected activity under the NLRA, regardless of whether or not the people involved belong to a union.
However, I work in the industry, and I think you'd be shocked by how replaceable American developers are. Huge amounts of artistic labour _is_ done cheaply, and in relatively decent quality, oversees in countries like South Korea, China, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Thailand.
Here in Canada, we have a thriving industry that includes both primary developers and developers who focus on outsourced work. Most of my career has been involved with shops that were sub-contracted labour from American studios.
Not that American developers are necessarily more skilled, just that the lack of a culture and sometimes language barrier is pretty evident in the resulting work product, in my experience.
The situation in Canada is interesting: their own government heavily pitched the country as an outsourcing destination, boasting Canadians devs are worth 50k less than American ones. [0]
Is that a popular measure?
[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-wor...
Game engines and pipelines are savage beasts, and often heavily customized and under-documented (everybody using them "just knows how they work;" internal cultural knowledge and on-the-job training are the standard operating procedure). You'll need a particular type of developer or artist to come up to speed quickly on the pipelines and toolchains studios in-house develop, even given the relative standardization of the Activision space.
Last year, or was it the year before? COVID messes with my perception of time, they had another big walkout over the events in Hong Kong and a big name gamer in one of Blizzard's tournaments refusing to tow the party line in regards to the CCP. I'm curious how many of the employees who walked out then are still around today and how many that are will also be walking out now.
I think it would be very telling about a good many things. Did Blizzard sack them all for contributing to bad PR? Did they retain them but threaten them if they stepped out of line again? Or do they feel empowered and walk out both times?
Wild
First, pay and promotion discrimination are widespread and are less shocking. Acceptable? No. I like DFEH's authority to go hard after companies to get this addressed, but I somehow shrug and say "Let the lawsuit parade begin. Ok, Blizzrad can go first."
Second, some of the anecdotes in the Blizzard complaint come off as problematic but not shocking. "Cube crawls" which seem like "get drunk at work" parties that led to sexual harassment: getting drunk at work is a management-stupid recipe for trouble. DFEH Lawsuit worth? Less obvious.
Third, the named executive who was a creep comes off as a problem for that creep. He was let go quietly and management didn't otherwise change. It's hard to tell if this is worse than average for creep executives. Lawsuit worthy by DFEH? Unlikely on its own: management acted to address the issue.
But the suicide. The victim was exploited, harassed, and abused as an employee. The complaint insinuates that her traveling coworker had demeaning sex toys on hand. It's not obvious if she was the intended subject of the coworker toys, but it is implied. Her suicide seems to have been preventable and, therefore, tragic. More than anything else it suggests that the other elements of the complaint led her to a feeling of hopelessness in her work environment. It is not a stretch to imagine that she was not alone in that feeling as a result of that environment.
RIP, victim. The lawsuit will bring insufficient justice for you and negligible peace for your family. Perhaps it will begin some broader change.
The tone at the top.
Pretty fucked situation
When you throw women into the mix and they get "ribbed" (perhaps for being "one of the guys," as it were) does this often become sexual harassment?
Perhaps the culture of "ribbing" needs to go away for everyone, or at least from the workplace, but it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "ribs" you when they know you know they're not being serious. (That is why the definition of ribbing is "good-natured teasing".)
Of course, the danger there is misinterpretation (perhaps with self-fulfilling negative expectations primed by media, but I digress)
I may be biased, I spent 4 years in the military where ribbing was literally CONSTANT (it was worse than anyplace else I've worked) and the women there really had to have a thick skin. (I'm also 49 years old and a lot has changed.)
Note: Some of the claims made here go far beyond "ribbing". I'm not talking about those.
To say "Guys are just ribbing eachother" ignores people that observe that behavior and find it uncomfortable/hostile/toxic. This is also an extremely generous description of what happened. Women were harassed, both sexually and not. Their pay was lower, their performance reviews were tougher, they were fired more frequently. Worse, they were groped, sexually harassed/assaulted, one of them commit suicide over it. To compare "guys just ribbing" to what happened is a real gross take.
> I may be biased, I spent 4 years in the military where ribbing was literally CONSTANT (it was worse than anyplace else I've worked) and the women there really had to have a thick skin. (I'm also 49 years old and a lot has changed.)
"Women have to have thick skin" is just nonsense to not have to type "The women are harassed relentlessly". It's also worth noting that the military is a toxic cesspit for sexual abuse. Comparing any sane workplace to the military is a joke. Nobody should want to be like the military, including the military.
Can confirm true from experience. To be fair, the military (USMC experience only) is structured to intentionally harass all members below certain ranks continuously, with the idea being that it keeps them sharp and willing to follow orders that put them or others directly in harm's way. Sexual harassment was punished severely, but at the lowest levels possible, and wasn't often reported.
> A survey for the Department of Defense conducted in 2015 found that in the past year 52% of active service members who reported sexual assault had experienced retaliation in the form of professional, social, and administrative actions or punishments.[5] In addition to retaliation against soldiers remaining in active service, many former service members who reported sexual assaults were forced to leave after being discharged. Reasons for discharge included having a "personality disorder" or engaging in misconduct related to the sexual assault such as fraternization or (prior to the end of don't ask, don't tell) homosexuality, even if the homosexual conduct was non-consensual.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault_in_the_United_S...
I would say that the punishment seeming severe is mostly a display.
Justice under the UCMJ is similar to how a grand jury operates, where the highest ranking officers will hear a case with evidence, and make decisions about guilt and punishment. Platoon level punishment is much more freeform, and tends to ignore those rules about type and duration of punishment; much more corporal in nature.
So, not severely, then?
Probably could have phrased it better. The military culture is very different than civilian culture, jokes and turns of phrase that would be completely unacceptable in the civilian world are common, and the tolerance for them is higher. It's very much like the difference between working an office job, and going out to a seedy bar; different culture, different expectations and rules.
But as for what I said, there was a lot of borderline sexual harassment (and much of it that I witnessed not involving females at all) that went unreported. But when something was reported, it stayed at lower levels most times, and involved squad and platoon level justice, which is very, very severe. Like more severe than is allowed under the UCMJ.
Which is also a false translation (and thus a strawman) of what I said. The vast majority were treated quite damn well.
> It's also worth noting that the military is a toxic cesspit for sexual abuse.
I did some Googling here and found that in 2013, 0.9% of all military members reported sexual assault. I don't know how that compares to civilian life, and I'll just toss this out there, I bet this varies A TON by military branch, and I will leave it at that.
> Comparing any sane workplace to the military is a joke. Nobody should want to be like the military, including the military.
You sound like a person who would never make it in the military. I learned a lot of good things in the military: Integrity, diversity, work ethic, respect, adventure, confidence, attention to detail, and what an actual 8-hour shift felt like (which I would never see again; most work for corps done since has gone over 8 hours/day). I also had an absolute blast after work and on weekends, it was a happy coming-of-age time for me. Perhaps it was due to it being the USAF and not the USMC, but it was positive for me.
I copied and pasted exactly what you wrote.
> I did some Googling here and found that in 2013, 0.9% of all military members reported sexual assault. I don't know how that compares to civilian life, and I'll just toss this out there, I bet this varies A TON by military branch, and I will leave it at that
If you care to educate yourself, in another post I made in this thread I referenced the actual data on sexual abuse in the military. The dramatic majority goes unreported, and the cases that do get reported face retaliation from superiors. It’s a toxic cesspit.
edit I'll just add them
> Sexual assault in the United States armed forces is an ongoing issue which has received extensive media coverage in the past. A 2012 Pentagon survey found that approximately 26,000 women and men were sexually assaulted that year; of those, only 3,374 cases were reported.[1] In 2013, a new Pentagon report found that 5,061 troops reported cases of assault. Some are optimistic that this increase in reports is indicative of victims "growing more comfortable in the system".[2] Of the reported cases, only 484 cases went to trial; 376 resulted in convictions.[3] Another investigation found that one in five women in the United States Air Force who were sexually assaulted by service members reported it, for one in 15 men.[4]
20% of women reported.
> A survey for the Department of Defense conducted in 2015 found that in the past year 52% of active service members who reported sexual assault had experienced retaliation in the form of professional, social, and administrative actions or punishments.[5] In addition to retaliation against soldiers remaining in active service, many former service members who reported sexual assaults were forced to leave after being discharged. Reasons for discharge included having a "personality disorder" or engaging in misconduct related to the sexual assault such as fraternization or (prior to the end of don't ask, don't tell) homosexuality, even if the homosexual conduct was non-consensual.[6]
52% of active service members who reported experienced retaliation. 52%. Getting discharged for homosexuality as a result of _non consensual_ homosexual contact. Tell me again about all that integrity and respect in the military.
> You sound like a person who would never make it in the military.
I don’t care, truly at all, if you think I’d make it in the military. I criticized an obviously disgusting group (that you’re a part of), and you’re making a judgement of my character out of adversarialism.
And then misparaphrased it with a crystal clear bias.
> I criticized an obviously disgusting group (that you’re a part of) and you’re making a judgement of my character out of adversarialism.
Ah yes. Adversarialism, after you make a blanket statement like that is totally surprising, lol.
The fact is that the chance of sexual assault in the military is low, and reporting of it is improving, and the exact number of incidents cannot be known, only speculated on. But apparently, if 2% of Muslims become suicide bombers, all Muslims are bad, according to you; and if most rapists are men, then all men are assholes, according to your reasoning; unfortunately that is what I'll generously call "illogic"; you can speak to countless military members who had good experiences, but if a few women (and a handful of men) got fucked over, then I guess the whole system is fucked, eh?
Good luck applying that to society at large (which, by the way, is IMPROVING along with the military).
Making approval depend on perfection (instead of consistent improvement) is the enemy of good, once again
Skips the whole post.
> The fact is that the chance of sexual assault in the military is low
Where did you get the "low" figure from? I wouldn't call it low at all. I would call it insanely high.
> But apparently, if 2% of Muslims become suicide bombers, all Muslims are bad,
You're saying a lot of very ridiculous things. If an institution condones sexual abuse, it is fair to point it out.
> Good luck applying that to society at large (which, by the way, is IMPROVING along with the military).
I guess it all depends on how you look at it (meaning, if you choose to throw your hands up and say "it's going great!" without actually paying attention).
> Making approval depend on perfection (instead of consistent improvement) is the enemy of good, once again
Who brought up perfection? I'm saying it's an absolute shitshow, for which there is data to corroborate. You're saying "no it's improving", based on legitimately 0 data at all.
As long as everyone is in on the joke, it's fine. I've never heard of a situation where all parties agreed something was a good natured joke and it was still labelled sexual harassment. In virtually every case the "I was just ribbing" is conveyed after the fact in the same tone of voice as "It's just a prank bro" - even if it was genuinely innocent on the harasser's part, it obviously wasn't apparent to others, and that "if" is often questionable.
A really simple rule to follow is "if you don't know how someone will react otherwise, treat them politely with kindness and respect." This rule works in 100% of situations and costs nothing to follow. No one has ever or will ever say "man I wish the first time I talked to that guy he teased me about my physical appearance, what a jerk for denying me that taste of his quick witted humor."
The problem is that there may not in fact be anything "good-natured" about it - on both sides - yet the culture forces the recipient to act like it is or they will be punished.
In other words: the only way in which that kind of thing is not toxic is when a recipient can at any time say "that's not funny, stop it!", and the reaction will be a sincere apology and an actual stopping.
Now how often is that actually the case?
Are you saying my entire generation grew up in toxicity?
I mean... It's entirely possible, even if it seemed more innocent at the time.
I was ribbed a lot too, but obviously not sexually. And I still really could have done without it.
OK so, since this mentality absolutely and wantonly pervades "male culture", the real problem is male toxicity to other males which spills over towards women?
noun: ribbing
1.
a riblike structure or pattern, especially a band of knitting in rib.
"a fleecy sweatshirt with ribbing at neck, cuffs, and hem"
2.
informal
good-natured teasing.
"he took a good deal of ribbing with the utmost good humor"
let's see... anatomical (I got called "HEED" because my hat size was larger than anyone else's there (it's a reference to So I Married An Axe Murderer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-OCjvbV2Z4))... sexual (your manliness was often called into question, usually humorously), combative (sometimes your reputation was called into question)... There are probably more categories of teasing I saw
Heck, my significant other and I rib each other plenty. We know each others' strengths and weaknesses. It is arguable that being fine with some ribbing is proof of comfortableness with oneself and a lack of insecurity.
But, yes, people like you exist. I once teased a former boss for his fear of puppies (yes, puppies. Not just "dogs"... Puppies) by playing a prank where some puppies barked from behind his desk. He jumped. It did not fly very well. Actually, in hindsight, perhaps don't tease your boss, even if you think you're on good terms with them...
Staging a virtual walk out where everyone just doesn't sign into Slack, Github, and/or read email for a day wouldn't have the same impact.
What exactly does this means? What is "representation across all employee levels" and why not competency?
In the US-based company I work for, we have a "diversity and inclusion" program that had resulted in promoting cafeteria managers to director level and hiring any (all) applicants of certain races in certain countries (varies by country) because targets had to be met. I have a friend in US that was told by all his mentors : "come on, you are a white male, you have no chance to be promoted". Is this what these people want?
I found that outcome unlikely, but if the employees put pressure on ownership in this way, it may perhaps create enough incentive for the ownership to oust the top-level leadership. Not sure.
They have leverage because activision can't hire scabs, and news employees will have to ramp up for months before they're useful on current projects. They have contractual deadlines to meet, I'm sure.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210727183853/https://www.axios...
California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841 - July 2021 (461 comments)
Activision ruined the company. Sure, the market changed but Blizzard was doing much better under Vivendi.
I could not imagine any business abandoning billions of dollars of IP like that.
Some people believe that has already happened, which is why we have the Diablo mobile partnership and no new StarCraft 3.
They'll just continue to invest less and less in actual playable desktop games and more and more in toxic mobile dogshit as time goes on
so... more of that: fewer and fewer Blizzard IPs developed by "Blizzard"
“believe that our values as employees are not being accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership,”
Sorry they pay you to do a job, not reflect your values. And anyway whos values? I'm pretty certain values are a personal thing, how can the leadership possibly reflect all their employees values?
Plus, you know, I'm not buying it because Blizzard is straight up ghoulish.
Wonder why they're walking out on a nothingburger.
The ones who are actually affected don't work at Blizzard anymore. The time to walk out was _years ago_. There's no chance it was wide-spread knowledge that one of the executives was assaulting people at work and yet no one was frustrated by that fact.
Agree that this seems a tad late.
I know law offices like very much to get public opinion on their side with strategic leaks so that they can push for a settlement ASAP. If things go to trial, it's likely to come out that their clients are gold-digging scumbags who didn't follow the process through HR like they were trained to do.
As someone else wrote, HR works to protect the company, not for you.
I never understand why in the world we currently live in there are so many people willing to be silent for so long. Weinstein did his crap for years, the US gymnastics assaults went on for years.
This probably isn't a popular opinion...but when victims choose to remain silent they are complacent in allowing other people to be victimized in the future. A sexist culture is one thing, but straight up sexual assault is a completely different issue.
It's a sad, often poorly understood reality about whistle blowing, given the heavy survivorship involved. For every success story you hear, there are dozens you don't hear about, because nobody believed them, they were successfully demonized, or because it wasn't "big" enough to really, ultimately matter to American society in a way that could effect change.
That's why it's so impressive when people to come forward anyway, knowing this. It's far from "risk free" to come forward, and usually it's a gigantic negative experience, sometimes rivaling the original abuse itself in negative impact on your life. It's one thing to have the worst day of your life happen, now imagine having to relive it publicly, forever.
The FBI was also extremely negligent - the special agent working the case was inquiring about job opportunities at the place he was investigating.
As for victims "choosing" to remain silent, you have to understand two things:
1. The victims are most often children, and often do not understand that his actions were not okay, especially when the team says they are, and calls them hysterical for feeling disgusted with him.
2. The older victims don't want to have their careers ended by speaking up to power.
Between the way the team and the FBI handled this it's really hard to argue that this is the victim's fault. The people they trusted let them down for decades. You can (and should) educate children about what is right and wrong, but you also need to be willing to investigate claims and ensure people feel comfortable to raise them.
When any of us remain silent when we witness or hear about abuse we are allowing other people to be victimized now and in the future.
Apparently, this does not happen at enough places.
Both gatekeepers for Hollywood and the Olympics.
Very few people would've been able to call him out on it because no one had enough experience to call him out on his BS. The only reason he got caught was because he got bold and took it too far.
Not only can it destroy your career, there are also consequences when you confide in family and friends. They will treat you differently and maybe you don't even want that and put everything behind you.
Legally there might even be low chances of recourse because you have no evidence. Especially when celebrities are involved, the requirements for that are high.
This might not be something you can change with culture and is intrinsic to the respective crimes.