Judith on 19/11/2018 at 10:26
IMO it's kind of mutual disrespect and using language as a weapon to achieve certain goals for both sides. "True fans" are often very vocal, entitled, whiny, and generally this is a bunch I prefer stay away from. But corporations are very disrespectful to their audiences, both in terms of the way they speak about their customers behind the scenes, and how they design their games now. Basically, gamers are super gullible bunch of junkies. Does the drug dealer respect his customers? Of course not, he will tell them everything they want to hear, but he'll be doing worse and worse stuff to keep them hooked. At some point the disdain for the customer, especially among higher-ups, is so high that they're sure they'll buy anything. And IMO that's what happened at BlizzCon, they didn't care, because "you'll buy it anyway". You whined about microtransactions, lootboxes, but you bought every installment of CODs and FIFAs anyway. That hubris cost them like 12 bn USD so far?
And on the language level, while fans are rabid and agressive, corporations have this culture of "tyranny of being nice". We can exploit you in every way possible, but no, you can't protest or display any stronger emotions about it, let's talk about it in our polite, sugar-coated corpo-speak. At this point I'm not sure if that's something that was derived from English culture itself, this superfluous tone of politeness and interest on the outside with no true intentions inside, or from something else. Still, it can and is used as a weapon, mostly to disarm and discourage any criticism, especially any more harsh forms. And on the corporate media level, it lead to e.g. "polite omissions" when it comes to reviews. I stopped reading Eurogamer when around the reviewers started to evade problems like lootboxes or, like with DX: Mankind Divided, didn't even mention that the main quest is rushed and unfinished.
icemann on 19/11/2018 at 13:10
Quote Posted by Thirith
I don't have much of a stake in this; I've enjoyed all the
Diablo games to date and I've liked the craftsmanship that goes into the Blizzard games I've played. They did screw this up in terms of PR and I do understand the frustrations of a player base - but I also think that fandoms tend to have an overinflated, petulant sense of entitlement, and this very quickly makes me lose patience with them. Over the decade, so many people who'd identify themselves as the "true fans" of this or that IP have proven toxic, spouting stuff along the lines of "you owe me" and "you betrayed us", and as much as I appreciate fan disappointment, as soon as it gets like that my sympathy for them is very, very limited. Doubly so if it's the kind of hyperbole we got with the supposed rainbowification of
Diablo 3.
By this line of thinking, everyone should have been singing Command and Conquer 4's praise. Oh wait that sold really bad. Dayam.
Thirith on 19/11/2018 at 13:13
If that's what you think, then you're welcome to that. Myself, I think that you read that entirely into what I wrote, and I can't even see how you'd arrive at it.
N'Al on 19/11/2018 at 13:20
There are millions of ways to react that don't involve kowtowing or calling for a jihad on the developer. It's not an either/or situation. How difficult is that to understand?
Edit: Gah, not for you, Thirith.
Gryzemuis on 19/11/2018 at 14:20
Blizzard is not the company it once was.
Not since Bobby Kotick has been in charge.
(
https://kotaku.com/5359567/bobby-kotick-wanted-to-take-all-the-fun-out-of-making-video-games) Bobby Kotick Wanted To Take All The Fun Out Of Making Video Games.
I can tell you when I started to notice the change: August 5th 2009.
WoW has been downhill since then.
Activision's only goal is to make money.
They don't care how.
It shows because they 1) take their current customers for granted, and 2) are only interested in acquiring new customers.
This might make sense if you are upper management. Upper management in any company is mostly interested in the 3-12 month results.
But in the long run, you'll piss off every customer you ever had.
Sulphur on 19/11/2018 at 14:39
Quote Posted by Thirith
If that's what you think, then you're welcome to that. Myself, I think that you read that entirely into what I wrote, and I can't even see how you'd arrive at it.
I'm just echoing Malf here, but: don't worry about it. My reading of the kneejerk you're encountering is that, like a primitively written Eliza algorithm, the key trigger is the word 'entitlement'.
Quote Posted by Judith
And on the language level, while fans are rabid and agressive, corporations have this culture of "tyranny of being nice". We can exploit you in every way possible, but no, you can't protest or display any stronger emotions about it, let's talk about it in our polite, sugar-coated corpo-speak. At this point I'm not sure if that's something that was derived from English culture itself, this superfluous tone of politeness and interest on the outside with no true intentions inside, or from something else. Still, it can and is used as a weapon, mostly to disarm and discourage any criticism, especially any more harsh forms.
While I don't have anything in particular to say about everything else in your post, this bit made me curious. Corporations don't control how you voice yourself on a neutral platform - the tried and trusted corporate method is to manage perceptions by taking control of their own language in a heated situation, and diffusing resentment by a) deflecting it onto another, more positive topic, b) issuing vacillating non-answers, c) outright ignoring hot-button issues, and so on. They can
try to make you respond in a 'nice' fashion, but the thing about vocal mobs in today's internet age is that they're rabid and angry and have free access to vent, which neatly slots them into a certain PR firefighting bracket where asking them to 'be nice' just stokes the flames again.
While the 'be nice' approach works in theory, it only does so at an individual level and to a limited extent in practice, or if you control the medium of communication, both of which are not tenable for public groups moderated by a neutral platform unless you're a
very charismatic speaker. And you don't really come across those too often, nor are they immune to being skewered - see Shu Yoshida for example.
Judith on 19/11/2018 at 16:47
I wonder what do you mean by "neutral platform", because AFAIK, there is no such thing. Eurogamer comment section is heavily moderated corporate space. Not only because of trolls and entitled true gamers, but also to stay in line with whatever corporate media policy the Gamer Network has. At the same time, GN has no problem with e.g. Eurogamer video team rising donations on Youtube streams, as if they were amateur streamers (they're awful amateurs in most everything else, but that's a phenomenon for another topic).
Google and Facebook have entire legions of outsourced "content moderators" (mostly in Asia), who censor not only trolls, terrorist propaganda, or the most gory videos, but also more vague or disturbing art. And people who do that are unqualified to do that. There's this document, The Cleaners, which describes most of these problems, although in a tad too dramatic fashion. But the conclusion is still pretty valid: platforms like FB, Twitter or Youtube pretend to be virtual public spaces, but they're highly regulated corporate spaces. Obvious thing, I know. All these services are ignoring the social and political influence aspect of these platforms, because that would require some actual expertise, corporate responsibility, and would probably generate big costs. "Just be nice, and let us make money on you and your data, okay?"
Sulphur on 19/11/2018 at 16:51
To clarify, a 'neutral' platform inasmuch as one exists is where people are moderated by a third party, such as Twitter. EG and other sites owned by media conglomerates obviously have corporate overlords to appease when it comes to their reporting.
And while I'm sure that censoring trolls and gore videos happens on social media, as it should, I doubt that the big corporations can pay them off to censor people or apply a stricter set of rules than the ones they already have (like instituting a 'be nice' protocol that overrides the platform's current terms of use), and at that on a per-topic basis - if hate speech and cursing isn't tolerated, it's not tolerated across the board regardless of the conversation. The uniformity of this application isn't consistent at times, but that's people in general for you; they tend to be slightly inconsistent given a large enough sample set. That's why they're investing heavily in machine learning algorithms to deal with this right now, which raises its own troubling questions.
But for now, a level of inconsistency applied discreetly at certain events like the Blizzard fiasco is something else: if there's overwhelming evidence of companies directing conversations towards being shut down on Twitter just because they're difficult topics, I'd accept that, but without seeing it I can't really take that at face value.
Addendum: re: The Cleaners, a quick skim of its talking points outside of outsourced content moderation reveals an obvious conclusion that FB and Twitter etc.'s business models profit from bursts of outrage, which further makes the idea of censoring the users who're responsible for a platform's engagement peaks improbable.
Judith on 19/11/2018 at 17:28
True, but that was more about problem with platform neutrality, not problem of being nice. That's stuff reserved mostly for gaming news sites like above or publisher-owned gaming forums. Which again, as a rule itself isn't bad, obviously; it's more problematic when it's used as a weapon against criticism, and that line can be pretty blurry.
Sulphur on 19/11/2018 at 17:30
Fair enough. That's a pretty relevant point in these polarised times.
