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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses. I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lining up for the latest AAA title no matter what they hear about the company that created it. Imho change therefore has to come from something other than public opinion. This lawsuit is exactly that: the government enforcing a code of behavior because the market clearly cannot do it on its own. The system is working.

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The thing is, your "average gamer" won't know or care about any of this. I work in the industry and according to our own stats the "average gamer" is a 20-30 year old, owns a console, and buys exactly three games every year - fifa, CoD, and one other title that got the most advertising that year.

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.

Forgive me but that sounds... outdated? With the proliferation of e-sports and people making a living on twitch and all, it just seems a little unbelievable.

I'm not sure, the numbers on twitch don't even scratch the number of unique individuals who own consoles / buy games.

Atleast inside the mmo community streamers are very relevant. On the start of july a famous streamer started playing FFXIV and look at google trends https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F064ln09

Are people within the streaming community considered "average gamers"? Would the average gamer even care anout streamers?

Whether we like or not, streamers are very influential to the gaming community, all of the games that blew up in the pandemic (among us, fall guys...) Blew up because of streaming.

I believe those stats for most games, but not for WoW, which is still Blizzards cash cow. Those players are invested in the community. Same largely goes for Overwatch. Blizzard has cultivated a community over the years and has their own convention.

Yeah, absolutely - but Activision is a behemoth compared to Blizzard. I'm just saying that WoW players will probably care, but in general customers of Activision likely won't notice.

Which is more of a reason that they probably won't stop giving Blizzard money over this.

>> fifa, CoD, and one other title that got the most advertising that year.

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'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 why did Activision Blizzards stock just drop 8%? Clearly the market believes they wont recover nicely after this.

drops are temporary expressions of fear.

If they're guaranteed to be temporary, you ought to buy in and make easy money, right?

I have been playing WoW since the first year, and the developers have my full support.

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.

The biggest Blizzard fans I know personally are pretty fed up.

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.

The 'problem' with people who are invested in you is that when you do something they really don't like, up to and including breaking their trust, they push back instead of leaving.

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.

Where they'll feel it the most is in hiring. Everyone in the industry is watching and if they don't fix their house, it will be very hard for them to hire and retain the engineers and designers who build and run their games.

Don’t think I agree with this. Rampant sexism and general abuse of workers has been an open secret in the game development world for many years now, and people still line up to work at the big studios because they love games.

Doesn't mean it can't change. It has to start somewhere.

Ehh, maybe.. Lots of people want to make games, and the games industry is notorious for having a perpetual labor glut (relative to most SW development, at least). That's why compensation and working conditions both tend to be significantly lower than average there (again, for SW dev).

But that too makes a dangerous assumption. This behavior is not uncommon. Having a reputation for such behavior may just attract similar people, people who want to work in such environments. While they would probably get fewer women, they might get more of exactly the wrong type of men.

They’ve already been struggling with this too because everyone knows they pay like shit and work people to death

Project oriented companies have the luxury of trying out new cultures one team at a time - if they get management buy-in.

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.

Are you lumping in the workers of Blizzard with the "masses" of gamers saying actions by either wont have a consequence? That's what it reads like.

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.

white collar walkouts came out of the Google Walkout that had no effect.

While many gamers may not care, which i dont think is true but accepting that premise. Blizzard has been doing their best to piss off gamers anyway.

maybe the average gamer won't care. but who will want to work for activision now? even the existing employees are walking out.

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