The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

It is the reality. If they can unionize, they can change that reality.

I’m sure NFTs and the Metaverse will save Gaming

Oh, the same Fandom backed by private equity? I am SHOCKED.

Fandom pretty clearly just wanted Giant Bomb's wiki, and indeed, it seems pretty likely that the layoffs there could easily kill the site. In a recent podcast, Jeff Grubb was asked how they could continue, and replied "We can't." One of those laid off, Jason Oestreicher, had some pretty well know health problems, and the community is quite concerned for him.

But, reality, that's the way it is, this is just how things "work."

I guess this goes here because it is about the business of gaming.

I just tried to post a couple videos about Hogwarts Legacy on Reddit and the post was instantly removed. I messaged the mods and "Yes, it is temporarily banned here too. We kept on being brigaded."

I know JK has said some horrible stuff and holds beliefs that are repugnant but as far as I can tell she isn't involved in the game so hating on the staff at Avalanche is not going to hurt her much.

I don't know. it is so hard, for me maybe you find it easy, to figure out where to draw the line on not supporting a person by ignoring their brand.

I know some people here feel they won't buy the game and have a problem with discussing it.

Anyway just mussing I am not sure what is appropriate or "right"

Every time I see stuff about that game I imagine some random level designer or dialogue writer or QA tech, who loves HP fandom and worked really hard on the game, sitting at their PC reading tweets about how everyone should boycott it. While presumably, JK Rowling sits in a bathtub full of emeralds somewhere, completely unaware that there's a game at all.

From all accounts it's actually a good game, but yea even tacit approval of anything that leads back to JK is still being boycotted.

ranalin wrote:

From all accounts it's actually a good game, but yea even tacit approval of anything that leads back to JK is still being boycotted.

And I kind of get that but I also have so many things in life that are tied to problematic originators. Walt Disney was horrible in many ways so I should boycott Star War: Andor? Mel Gibson has been a jerk but I love Lethal Weapon - but I shouldn't?

From my perspective it is impossible to live in the modern world and not have to make decisions about moral lines. Do I still pay taxes despite the governments torture of prisoners in Guantanamo? Do I buy electricity from Alliant Energy knowing that coal burring is a major cause of global warming? So we do this all the time, every day about almost everything.

That doesn't mean different people can't choose to boycott the game because of her insanity but the active attempts to ruin other people's enjoyment seems off.

farley3k wrote:

I know JK has said some horrible stuff and holds beliefs that are repugnant but as far as I can tell she isn't involved in the game so hating on the staff at Avalanche is not going to hurt her much.

I'm not going to buy it and I'm never going to recommend anyone buy it. I think the point isn't to try and stick it to JK. The point is to state in public you arn't going to support the product thus showing solidarity with transgender people.

It's also possible that any backlash might deter people planning future projects from working with terfs.

It gets additionally complicated when your kid already has a deep and adoring relationship with the IP.

The material itself isn't radically anti-trans like the author - so it's not like I need to protect her from that.

And explaining a boycott like this to an 8 year old is..... Let's say that's a discussion that may not be age appropriate for everyone.

So do I say "you can't play this" because f*ck Rowling or do I encourage her to enjoy a fiction with a strong female character (Hermione obvs) that she identifies with and cosplays as?

Cos honestly, that last point is gold. For all the sh*ttiness in and around Harry Potter, Hermione is goddamn gold-dust for little girls - she's unashamedly smart, strong willed and good hearted, and i celebrate my kid identifying with a character like that.

fenomas wrote:

Every time I see stuff about that game I imagine some random level designer or dialogue writer or QA tech, who loves HP fandom and worked really hard on the game, sitting at their PC reading tweets about how everyone should boycott it. While presumably, JK Rowling sits in a bathtub full of emeralds somewhere, completely unaware that there's a game at all.

While this is no doubt happening, that random level designer, dialogue writer, or QA tech has already been paid, and as we've seen over and over and over again, "success" is no guarantee of continued employment. Even in the extremely unlikely hypothetical situation where a boycott does have a tangible monetary impact and the bosses do say that is the reason they're closing the studio...well, that's bullsh*t, all we have to go on is their word that they wouldn't have done that otherwise. Boycott away, JK is the only person certain to feel the financial hit.

I enjoyed the act of reading HP back in the day, but have no special affinity for the setting, and from all accounts, the game is about JK's poorly thought out goblins allying with her thinly veiled Nazis to stump for rights and equitable treatment, and it falls to the player to quash this uprising and keep the goblins oppressed, which is...uh... a spicy choice, lets say.

I think we're dealing with three separate but overlapping factors:

A.) Will my supporting this work give monetary support to a sh*tty individual or organization?

B.) Is the actual content of the work itself sh*tty?

C.) Irrespective of A and B, does it just kinda feel icky?

This article kind of shows how the game will be being treated good/bad/otherwise.

I’ll be the first to admit that rote morality meters in games can be unimaginative and a real drag. But having clear consequences for the choices you make, like whether to blow up poachers or murder a goblin, seems like the bare minimum for a player-fantasy centered around attending a school to become a powerful wizard.

It’s also hard not to see parallels between the stated non-judginess of the game and the larger controversy surrounding Hogwarts Legacy’s connection to transphobic author J.K. Rowling. Like many others crying wolf about cancel culture, she embodies the contradiction of someone who wants to promote sh*tty views while also not facing any consequences for them.

Publisher Warner Bros. and studio Avalanche Software have tried to distance themselves from the ethical debate around buying or boycotting the game. It sounds like that cowardice might trickle down into Hogwarts Legacy’s world building as well. We’ll know better when the game finally comes out a few weeks from now.

why would having "clear consequences for the choices you make" be "the bare minimum for a player-fantasy centered around attending a school to become a powerful wizard." but not for a game centered around freeing a tropical island from a evil dictator (Just Cause), or any number of games that let you kill or not kill people?

It is just weird.

I think what you are talking about Farley is less about a personal choice of should I purchase this or not, and more about trying to force that personal choice onto other people? Like the original example of you couldn't post about this game on Reddit because other people were trying to force their choice of not buying it onto the other people using that subreddit.

Even still, that is a gray area. Like as an extreme I am happy to see people protest against Nazis and stamp out nazism wherever it may exist and would encourage them to try to force that choice of not supporting Nazis. Does that extend though to products that Nazis may tangentially benefit from? What about products originally made by Nazis but Nazis are no longer involved in? And so on... hard to know where that line of trying to force that choice is on the spectrum of bad from, say, Nazis to the neighbor that you kind of don't like. Except people that don't return shopping carts. I hope we can all agree they should be removed from society.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I think what you are talking about Farley is less about a personal choice of should I purchase this or not, and more about trying to force that personal choice onto other people? Like the original example of you couldn't post about this game on Reddit because other people were trying to force their choice of not buying it onto the other people using that subreddit.

Yes that was what first started me thinking.

Even still, that is a gray area. Like as an extreme I am happy to see people protest against Nazis and stamp out nazism wherever it may exist and would encourage them to try to force that choice of not supporting Nazis. Does that extend though to products that Nazis may tangentially benefit from? What about products originally made by Nazis but Nazis are no longer involved in? And so on... hard to know where that line of trying to force that choice is on the spectrum of bad from, say, Nazis to the neighbor that you kind of don't like. Except people that don't return shopping carts. I hope we can all agree they should be removed from society.

This too!

Volkswagen was "Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party" but most of us would no consider spamming every event they have for a new vehicle showcase.

Now of course that was a long time ago so not a great example but even today we have lots of examples to pick from.

I think trying to define a "line" where everything falls on one side or another is a futile effort.

My thinking is, when you say or do some repugnant stuff, any product related to you ends up in the Zone of Uncertainty, a place where people may or may not decide that they just don't want you and your stuff around. And that people are justified in picking and choosing which products in the Zone of Uncertainty to dissociate with, and aren't required to stack their choices against other Zone'd products whose producers may have similarly offended.

Perfect being the enemy of the good, all that "why are you boycotting X when Y and Z are just as bad?" arguments do is establish a paralysis that prevents any sort of accountability from being held towards X.

Right I agree Legion. But the problem arises not from where an individual decides for themselves their line is, but from that person trying to force their own “line” decision onto others. Saying “I boycott this” is ok. Saying “I boycott this so I am going to force you to boycott it too” is what can get problematic.

I think this is getting to a moot point as some people online are posting to boycott because of her views other people are posting to buy because of her views. So it comes down to me to decide where my ethical lines are on if I feel like I can buy this game.

I don't have to tell anyone if I buy the game or not so no one can force me to take either action.

But what metric do we use to determine the ethics of a video game?

Well Kant says: "What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity."

My big issue is that she also created a pretty awful world in addition to being a horrible human being. There’s very little in the way of diversity..it’s seems white folks dominate all aspects of her Wizard World.. the elf’s are slaves but are happier being slaves and grow morose when given free will.. the goblins have all the awful antisemitic tropes..the names of the few minority characters are just brutal. It would be cool if the HP world became public domain and other authors and creators could make it something better.

Maybe this game is just that a chance to tell a better story and build a better fantasy world.

My view on game boycotts was transformed some years ago when I read an article about an indie game where the game director was fired for having harassed female employees, and in the interview all 3-4 of the women involved said variations of "please don't boycott the game, I poured my heart into it and I want it to be seen, it's the only thing on my resume and my future jobs will depend on how it sells," and so on. So my reflex is to think about the anonymous devs involved, as opposed to the famous person that's more visible but who isn't directly affected by the boycott.

The other thing is: HP fandom is so established as a huge part of a certain generation's life that I imagine it will ultimately wind up like Cthulhu fandom or the Wizard of Oz - where people decide it's okay to enjoy the universe even though the original author was a dickhead. And for the last decade or so that seems to already have been happening - the spinoff movies, various books, and even games all seemed to get judged on their own merits (even if they didn't really have any, like the AR game from Niantic).

I guess the furore here shows a change in that, but one suspects that's less because the upcoming game is dramatically more problematic than previous spinoff content, and more to do with the audience, where they're at in life, social factors like brigading, and so on.

I find it a bit amusing that a bunch white dudes with incredible privilege are debating the merits of defining a line where you can have your moral high ground and abate the consequences of supporting someone who's written work and public stance has been unquestionably and transparently morally repugnant. To me this falls squarely in the category of: "if you choose to purchase, talk about, and support the work" you are making a statement to the transgender community that you do not fully support their dignity and rights.

Does that make you a transphobe? No. Does that make you an ally? Definitely no. Can you do something that will set your moral equilibrium at ease? Kind of. Donate to the Trevor Project (or your local equivalent) the cost of what you purchased the game for. If your child loves the series and thinks the world of some of the positive role models in the book, that's awesome! But also consider using your privilege to educate and share, when and where appropriate, the issues and implications written into the story (the overt fascism, transphobia, homophobia, token black, Jewish, and Asian characters). That's where you can start fostering a critical examination of art/literature at a young age through nuanced discussion.

It's your choice what you decide to support. You do not get to control how others perceive and are impacted by your choice and that's something I strongly consider when making what some may see as "gray area" decisions: who am I benefitting? and who am I hurting with this decision? I have many family and friends who would be very disappointed in a decision to purchase and play the game, that's enough for me.

TheGameguru wrote:

Maybe this game is just that a chance to tell a better story and build a better fantasy
world.

Yeaaah, I don't that's going to happen.

TheGameguru wrote:

the goblins have all the awful antisemitic tropes..

If I recall correctly, the story of the game is supposed to lean pretty heavily into this.

Perhaps maybe someone can talk me through this, the lone neophyte to the Harry Potter world; never read one of the books, never saw one of the films. What is it about this franchise makes it worth trying to go through all these mental gymnastics to keep espousing its greatness versus the hatred espoused by its creator?

Rat Boy wrote:

Perhaps maybe someone can talk me through this, the lone neophyte to the Harry Potter world; never read one of the books, never saw one of the films. What is it about this franchise makes it worth trying to go through all these mental gymnastics to keep espousing its greatness versus the hatred espoused by its creator?

Nothing you can't find in a million other places (probably also created by huge pieces of sh*t).

Edit: But at the same time, if it's something you enjoy, it's something you enjoy. I operate under the assumption that multiple people involved with everything I enjoy are huge pieces of sh*t. Sometimes I go looking, sometimes I don't. I'm yet to be proven wrong, because it turns out humans are terrible.

In conclusion, don't have kids and let our species die out. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

I don't think anyone in this thread has said a single positive thing about Harry Potter, let alone espoused its greatness - there is moral blue sky between supporting a thing and supporting a boycott for it. Also, since this thread is already teetering on the verge of ad-hominems, it would be nice if we can tread carefully with the sweeping statements and excluded middles.

Incidentally on the topic billt just raised, the creator of "High on Life" Justin Roiland, who is also the co-creator of Rick and Morty and related stuff, has just been fired from both the game and the show for being a domestic abuser. Apparently the accusations go back a few years but it's all just coming out now, for whatever reason.

fenomas wrote:

Incidentally on the topic billt just raised, the creator of "High on Life" Justin Roiland, who is also the co-creator of Rick and Morty and related stuff, has just been fired from both the game and the show for being a domestic abuser. Apparently the accusations go back a few years but it's all just coming out now, for whatever reason.

Yeah, 2 years later when it became public. You can't tell me all of the people/companies he worked with knew nothing. Firing him/distancing themselves from him now gives them no moral high ground.