Blizzard was fine introducing politics into their competitions when it suited them to do so. In that case it made them look progressive and they sold a lot of pins and t-shirts. In this case, they could lose a whole bunch of money.
Their stance on this sort of thing isn't consistent unless you view it from the angle of "what will make Blizzard money?" They also went completely nuclear on this guy by taking his winnings and banning him for a year, not to mention firing the two commentators.
I said essentially the same thing in another thread yesterday, but the issue at hand here isn't whether or not Blizzard has the right to enforce some vague rule; it's whether or not they should have and what were their motivations. We need to be very careful about allowing China to dictate what we can see and hear in our media.
These companies are quite literally helping an authoritarian government to further oppress its people, and their only motivation is money. It's insane to me that so many people are arguing in Blizzard's favor because apparently the only thing that matters is the bottom line, integrity be damned.
A political opinion isn’t a political opinion anymore, once it’s spread to fixation. “Political” in this case—and most cases where it’s used in discussions like these—is a euphemism for “damagingly controversial to support.” Even an opinion on politics can cease to be a “political” opinion. (For example, “the US should not be a British colony” is an opinion about politics, but at this point, not much of a political opinion.)
But, I think it’s important to note, this doesn’t mean that these opinions that companies dislike espousing aren’t political in the literal sense. They’re a subset of what would be more objectively defined as “political opinions.” And, as such, it’s not these companies making this determination; for it really is considered a matter of civic etiquette—in at least Western culture—to avoid discussing “political” topics in any venue where something other than politics is trying to happen; and plenty of people really do get mad at companies just for the fact of their breaking this social more, even when the political statement itself is one they have no stake in either way.
> I agree with you. In fact, I didn't buy Overwatch because of the way they were shoving gay stuff into it.
I fail to see how this could be your takeaway from his statement. His point is that they will pander to whatever cause makes them the most amount of money.
LGBTQ+ content in a game should not be the reason you don't want a game. There are games that handle it very poorly and are just trying to virtue-signal. They make the point of the game that the character is gay (generally a lesbian as that hits more checkboxes) and as a result these games suffer quality wise. Being non-binary isn't a good story, your media should have a good story. The character having "being gay" as one of their character traits is fine. "Being gay" isn't (far from it) the only thing that defines a person (or character)
Games have been political for as long as games have had stories. It's just that in 1981 killing nazis in Wolfenstein was a completely non-controversial topic. We fought in WWII. Shooting nazis is the American thing to do.
Bioshock? Fallout? The worlds portrayed in those are intensely political topics.
But the "keep politics out of my games!" crowd only shows up when it turns out one of the characters is gay.
There's a reason Metal Gear rewards players for avoiding a head-on fight at least as often as engaging one (and rewarded players significantly more often in the original games).
Hell, there's a reason there are bishops on the board in chess and they move diagonally.
If you simply played the game, you wouldn't know or care that the gays infiltrated it. You didn't play it because you researched a reason to not play it, and that reason just so happens to be homophobia.
https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23013827/
Blizzard was fine introducing politics into their competitions when it suited them to do so. In that case it made them look progressive and they sold a lot of pins and t-shirts. In this case, they could lose a whole bunch of money.
Their stance on this sort of thing isn't consistent unless you view it from the angle of "what will make Blizzard money?" They also went completely nuclear on this guy by taking his winnings and banning him for a year, not to mention firing the two commentators.
I said essentially the same thing in another thread yesterday, but the issue at hand here isn't whether or not Blizzard has the right to enforce some vague rule; it's whether or not they should have and what were their motivations. We need to be very careful about allowing China to dictate what we can see and hear in our media.
These companies are quite literally helping an authoritarian government to further oppress its people, and their only motivation is money. It's insane to me that so many people are arguing in Blizzard's favor because apparently the only thing that matters is the bottom line, integrity be damned.