What does everyone think about this aspect of game industry culture?
polycounter
https://twitter.com/BlackDGamer1/status/1270582586503462913
From twitter thread:
"Game developers, are literally being pushed out of this industry, by left wing activists! I'm having developers come to me, left & right, telling me that they don't want to do this social justice crap! They only want to make games, like normal people!"
When I was in Toronto I did witness this on several occasions.
Didn't realise it was such a widespread problem or just the way things are now.
Interesting read to get up to date on the challenges caused by this, i.e who's hired, what kind of content they have to work on, who remains and the perception of the audience given market/revenue considerations.
I don't particularly relate to this, certainly don't see it as a sound or ethical business model for longevity of a company.
From twitter thread:
"Game developers, are literally being pushed out of this industry, by left wing activists! I'm having developers come to me, left & right, telling me that they don't want to do this social justice crap! They only want to make games, like normal people!"
When I was in Toronto I did witness this on several occasions.
Didn't realise it was such a widespread problem or just the way things are now.
Interesting read to get up to date on the challenges caused by this, i.e who's hired, what kind of content they have to work on, who remains and the perception of the audience given market/revenue considerations.
I don't particularly relate to this, certainly don't see it as a sound or ethical business model for longevity of a company.
Replies
Unplug, go online to the extent you find a reason to log off. Work on your art/programming. Nobody is going to fire you or not hire you because you have different opinions. They will, however, judge you based on your behavior and rightfully so.
This one incident comes to mind,
https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/6/17540382/guild-wars-2-developers-fired-arenanet
Sexual content and the depiction of women is a unique situation, particularly in the Japanese market which have a very different view of it. Sony recently took a stand against that without going into specifics of what is actually okay by its standards and its got the japanese market pretty confused.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-metoo-censorship-playstation-games-2019-4
As for the Sony thing, that's just a company reacting to the market. People tend to think that companies carry some strict ideological goal and that's pretty funny. An international conglomerate only cares about one thing and that's money. They have no ideology. The whole point of the past 40 years of neoliberal politics is to eliminate ideology and replace it with markets. Sony will work what works for their profits and that's going to be pandering to different markets. I think the real problem is that there's a group of consumers who assume they're the only consumers that matter. But they're really only a small part of the market. So to dispel the cognitive dissonance they come up with this idea that billion-dollar companies are somehow left wing communist strongholds. And somehow Marx forbade boobs in video games. Again, poor political instincts. Sony just doesn't care as much about their dollar as they do all dollars. There's a solution here and that's stop having these giant profit-seeking entities. If they don't seek profit then they don't chase the market forces that alienate the small groups of consumers.
When I was in San Diego/Southern California, different vibe. Same with in Seattle/PNW, different vibe. New York/NorthEast, different vibe, etc. Mix that with transplants, foreigners, POC, people with different religion, etc. It doesn't always work for certain personalities, and that's where HR comes in, soft skills, training, and all that.
Just because its the internet - its an honest question, since I've not played the game and only seen a review of the story, so maybe I'm really missing something here.
Thanks for taking the time to expand on it, its really appreciated
Regarding the original topic - honestly people like the OP on twitter shouldn't get even remotely the time of the day. Whatever issue might be there to discuss is a wasted effort starting from posts like his. Its not about me disagreeing with his view, but his whole thing is about fuelling the flames, far away from facts or reality. I don't see a post like his a starting point for a discussion, just for a yelling match of entrenched positions.
It's now 30+ years that I've been playing video games. To expect society not to change through out that time and that affecting projects, both from consumer side as well as by who is actually creating the games, is ridiculous. My understanding of what is cool and entertaining has changed throughout the years and probably same can be said by everyone out there. Sometimes I disagreed with the changes and sometimes the changes just catch up with my preferences and worldview and sometimes the changes actually affected me and moved me forward. Games have become more inclusive and representative, but so has most of media (like Alex has shown with Disney), but that's not forcing some 'agenda'/'view' on society but more a reflection of what the society is actually like. You can see the same shift in who younger voters support and that shift has been going on for decades.
Since games are done by a younger generation of workers you will find these moral views rather represented. But at the same time I can guarantee you if you go to other industries you will find also some different predominant political views. From own experience most legal professions tend to be on the conservative side for example. Still I'm quite certain that in 99% of the cases its nowhere near as extreme as that twitter user presented it just to gain attention, and its far from being a real issue affecting your daily work. Its not like everybody out there stands 100% behind his company or product. After a decade working in different places its the first time I actually can say I really like what my company is doing, the project itself and how they do business.
If it really matters that much to you that your work represents your own moral values I guess you might get lucky or you have to start you own company...
This is more along the lines of the current situation with women speaking out about sexual harassment in the game industry, (Ubisoft Toronto in this case)
I do know that a lot of hiring in Toronto is primarily motivated by maintaining diversity quotas and there are financial incentives to hiring women, but it does not cover treating them like human beings apparently.
What struck me as interesting is that this person was hired despite having no experience for the role and then trained for the role.
As a bonus she was groped in the back of a car and treated like dirt by her superiors.
Ultimately I'm not sure if this made for a good game release in the long run.
Also what is the fascination with getting drunk in the west? Like I don't mean light social drinking, drinking to get absolutely smashed in the back of a cab where a horny asshole coworker who smells your hair in his time off fingers you?
The victims assessment was that she was trying to fit in.
Where I was raised besides drinking being considered unhealthy and bad for your liver, the idea of losing control is considered logically unsound so why is it tolerated here? It doesn't seem to lead to anything worthwhile as far as I know.
Also this one, its pretty f*ed up
https://twitter.com/PotvinRachel/status/1277371758266380288/photo/1
I'm not sure if this is a unique problem plaguing the game industry, both women seem to have moved to IT and haven't experienced anything similar.
I sometimes feel that it is because the demographic is too uncultured since they are hired primarly for technical skill rather than their ability to be professional?
Anyone who worked at Ubisoft care to verify these experiences?
A great share of people working in this industry like games, right? Many grew up gaming. Many pretended they didn't see, applauded or directly engaged in the smaller creepy types of harassment like, dunno, demanding a female gamer to do a video call to prove she's a woman—"because women can't play games!", "use 'she' when referring to you? c'mon, you just want free loot!"; trying (or successfully) hacking them in an attempt to find nudes in their PC; repeatedly pestering a game dev company about how they hate the next game in this franchise has a female protagonist or how the company's new hire (a woman) will make them miss their launch deadlines "because you know how they are!".
Sexism doesn't need to be at overt sexual harassment levels to be damaging. When you create an atmosphere where low key sexism, racism and other flavors of discrimination and hostility is presented as "lol JK" whenever it looks like there'll be consequences they'll end up as sort of background radiation in that cultural circle. It's always there, tinging most interactions, omnipresent enough it's normalized just through its unrelenting, continued presence. That's what avoiding "normalization" is about: Trying to keep a shitty behavior from taking roots and leading to more extreme types of aggression by not letting their watered-down versions go unchallenged.
All these people who learned it's A-okay to be shitty won't stop being shitty overnight. They aren't pushy and hostile because they think it's funny, they do this because they think they're right and they have the right, and they learned all the tricks to avoid answering for it when called out. So when they enter in the industry, something they regard as an extension of the gamer culture, they take that baggage with them right through workplace door. And because their fellow coworkers are also used to participating or accepting this sort of behavior it'll fester, and because victims are seen as disruptive since no one else (who isn't being singled out for abuse) is complaining there's a huge pressure to take it in silence to not mar the workplace atmosphere. Who likes to deal with abuse? People will instinctively distance themselves from the concept, and that can mean downplaying and isolating victims who speak up and siding with the aggressor who is doing the possible to make it go away while being a nice guy to you in particular.
So you get someone with bad behavior, put them in a position in which they have both access to victims and power over them through the threat of directly or indirectly taking away their livelihood, in an environment where there's high peer pressure about not speaking up and doing that "woke SJW thing", the alarming escalation of the aggression and ensuing corporate rot comes as no surprise except to people blind to the origins of it, may it be because they lack the experience of being in a group being constantly targeted by abuse or because they deliberately insulate themselves or downplay it.
More likely to get feedback from puppets who's strings are cut, than one still under the whim of their corporate masters.
Interestingly that analogy puts an interesting spin on the idea of "fingering" lol
Also I realise that even people that once worked there are unlikely to be candid about their experience, if they want to get back into the studio or in other studios.
Both those women now work in the IT/programming industry, so I'm wondering if its a combination of harassment, lack of mobility, poor working conditions and below average compensation that made them give the finger back.
One can of course be anonymous and say whatever I suppose.
Its why I find the industry so fascinating, its like a cross between entertainment industry (hollywood) and marketing (big tobacco) but attempts to project itself as a STEM field filled with intellectuals.
And a lot of drinking,.. what is it with people drinking to get smashed drunk and become vulnerable in a professional setting?
I don't understand why they don't have a cap on drinks served during company events, would atleast reduce liability on the company.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/365769/The_Ubisoft_paradox_How_the_publisher_enabled_a_culture_of_abuse_and_control.php#comments
This one I don't know what to think, I've never really understood north american/western dating culture.
https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr9o30