Board 8 > Activision Blizzard being sued California for a toxic work environment.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Leafeon13N posted...

Somewhat? Where are you trying to go with this?

Going nowhere, that just seems lame.

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I've gotten the impression that FFXIV is the outlier here, having a continuous story matching and honestly exceeding any regular Final Fantasy game. Most MMO seem to only loosely continue the narrative from one expansion to the next, or in case like WoW (allegedly) retconning stuff left and right.

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pso2 had a continuous story over 8 years!

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Didn't PSO2 take the story out of the game and put it in a menu because people didn't like it interrupting the gameplay?
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kind of. the original system was that you'd explore an area and stumble across cutscenes, which was pretty dumb, especially because you had to choose the level to get there in the first place. a few years after it released they added a proper mission hub for the main story and let you talk to relevant npcs to get their substories instead of needing to waste time going to the right field for their events

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https://twitter.com/Megan_Nicolett/status/1430251288944644106?s=19


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How does this keep getting worse, Jesus.

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They weren't shredding documents, just making some puzzles.

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https://twitter.com/BlizzJess/status/1430259139071025158?s=20

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As speculated, McCrees name is being changed.

https://twitter.com/playoverwatch/status/1430964453865046025

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I hope nobody actually feels like that's meaningful. Like it's not a bad thing but nobody actually cares.

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Thats gonna be pretty weird. I mean I get the reasoning, but despite sharing the same name the character isnt the same as the employee and after 5 years its gonna be super weird calling him anything else.

I think they need to worry a little more about their company culture than the name of an Overwatch character. I mean, you can do more than one thing at a time, I guess, but just seems like they're learning the wrong lesson here. "I know you guys have heard about everything going on, but don't worry--big changes on the horizon. We WILL be renaming McCree!"
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Yeah but name changes are easy (even though it will "take time to roll out correctly"??) whereas actual growth as human beings is difficult and time-consuming. Better to just do the former and hope people forget about your actual problems.

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Changing his name is real dumb. The voicelines either need to be deleted or rerecorded, and Reunion will forever exist.

Or imagine it won't. Imagine if they take it down and reupload with Ashe and Echo saying different names. Will people be sharing pirated copies of the original cut???

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I think this seems to be the actual dev team and not like an Activision-Blizzard corporate response, but it's pretty unclear. My impression is that it would be a weird PR strategy to intentionally delay a major game update and generate more bad press and hot takes than the classic corporate strategy of ignore it and hope it goes away. (Edit: Also as noted this is straight up just extra work for the devs, writers, VAs, etc.)

It's kind of weird and difficult to tell, but the context of who is behind this and the goal they're trying to accomplish is really going to affect my opinion here

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What do we think it'll change to?

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I think this seems to be the actual dev team and not like an Activision-Blizzard corporate response, but it's pretty unclear. My impression is that it would be a weird PR strategy to intentionally delay a major game update and generate more bad press and hot takes than the classic corporate strategy of ignore it and hope it goes away. (Edit: Also as noted this is straight up just extra work for the devs, writers, VAs, etc.)

It's kind of weird and difficult to tell, but the context of who is behind this and the goal they're trying to accomplish is really going to affect my opinion here

Dont let the response fool you. It was in no shape or way a major game update being delayed. It was more than likely going to be a very short story about McCree (kinda like what 76 or Baptiste got) where youd have to read it outside the game and a Challenge Skin tied to it. Other than Crossplay there hasnt been a major update to the game in like 2 years at least now.

Waluigi1 posted...

What do we think it'll change to?

McCrayCray

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Kenri posted...

Yeah but name changes are easy (even though it will "take time to roll out correctly"??)

As a software engineer, depending on how clean your code is/how your code infrastructure is set up, it could be a tricky thing to do. Making sure it's changed everywhere that's needed (including in other repository you may not be working on), not breaking other people's in-progress code, tests expecting McCree breaking, processes to deploy it slowly so damage is minimized if finding out it breaks something else in production , etc.

We want to rename our 'master' branches to 'main' but it destroys a lot of the automation we set up and everyone's own setup as well

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I don't think breaking strings is really the problem with a name change since the code could honestly stay the same. It's more like every image, video, or audio file that references McCree will need to be changed so now artists and VAs need to be tasked to work on it. Plus you have localization with all the languages so the work to change something like that is a bit more substantial.

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Yeah, the actual instances theyd need to change in the code itself would all be strings, and its incredibly hard to break code by changing strings. The vast majority of the work is going to be images/audio/etc., which is also the most costly work.

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I disagree with it being hard to break code and that the changes are only strings, but agree that definitely youre right that the harder part is all the pre-made stuff

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Its easy for people to forget that many of the victims of the culture and harassment still work there and their attempts to do what they are able with what little power they have to improve things (like erasing a gross misogynists in-game legacy) shouldnt be met with the same hostility that executive-level actions (or lack of actions) deserve.

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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

https://twitter.com/BlizzJess/status/1430259139071025158?s=20

This seems dumb. I think if you shred documents, the fine should be DOUBLED.

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https://twitter.com/SirLarr/status/1431346893079015424?s=19

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Wow. That is some top level assholery

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GTM posted...

I disagree with it being hard to break code and that the changes are only strings, but agree that definitely youre right that the harder part is all the pre-made stuff

If it's well written code, it should be extremely hard to break code by changing strings, since you should never be referencing those strings directly. It should be variables that are referenced.

So, for a very basic example, if you've got a bunch of character objects that have different strings and the like, and you want to display a name, you should be using a variable to display that name that then gets said name from the object. So you'd be calling upon a variable like "charName" that changes depending on which object it's referencing. That way, even though the name string itself would be changing from "McCree" to "Winston" to "Tracer" to whatever else based on the need, the actual reference to that is always just "charName." There should rarely, if ever, be an actual reference to the actual string "McCree," which is what COULD break things, yes, if you're not careful.

EDIT: Now, in the example of changing the repository name from "master" to "main," that would break things, certainly, because it's a direct reference that your local repo is matching to. If your local repo is expecting "master" but the repository itself was renamed "main," that's definitely going to cause headaches. One other such instance that could break things would be file names, but the file names themselves aren't gonna be seen by your average player, so they can definitely take their time doing that more carefully and just roll out the simple changes like strings and the like right away. And even then, you'd kinda need to be pretty negligent to miss a file name or reference. The repository thing is definitely a much bigger headache than anything else since you've gotta worry about local repos and pipelines.

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Regardless of whether or not changing the text is likely to break anything (I was under the assumption that it shouldn't but I admit I'm not an expert), I will say that I completely overlooked the existence of voice acting because I'm mentally still living in 1998 where it isn't a thing. It does make sense that it would take longer to fix it given the need to record a bunch of new lines.

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just mute the voiceclip whenever they say "McCree" and replace it with TTS of his new name

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Yeah, the actual development portion itself is nothing, unless Blizzard is a lot more inept than we think. Having to design any new images and get new voice acting seems pointlessly costly and makes the entire decision questionable, though. It definitely sounds like a "We're gonna throw money at this and hope it pleases people enough to say we did something" solution, which is lol

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HashtagSEP posted...

If it's well written code

I don't have any experience with projects remotely near this scale but that strikes me as a big if lol.

Like what you're saying is absolutely right, just...

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xp1337 posted...

I don't have any experience with projects remotely near this scale but that strikes me as a big if lol.

Honestly, it's a bigger if than it should be, given what we've learned about the gaming industry lately.

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Kenri posted...

I completely overlooked the existence of voice acting because I'm mentally still living in 1998 where it isn't a thing.

You were almost a Kenri sandwich!
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StealThisSheen posted...

Yeah, the actual development portion itself is nothing, unless Blizzard is a lot more inept than we think.

I mean...

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I really don't think this is them trying to band-aid the problem. He was literally named exactly the same as a horrible human being, so this basically had to happen.

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Waluigi1 posted...

I really don't think this is them trying to band-aid the problem. He was literally named exactly the same as a horrible human being, so this basically had to happen.

Eh, to be fair, I don't think most people actually knew that. I'm not saying it's not a good change, but I'll reserve judgment to see what else they do.

Like, I can't speak for other people, but "Mc___" just sounds like a generic western name to me, so I didn't even know he was named after somebody.

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they should change his name to Johnson Johnson

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I remember hearing that he may have also been named after Mad Dog McCree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_McCree

But really, it's the fact that his full name is exactly the same as the real person. It's hard to ignore that. If it was just the "McCree" that was the issue and he had a different first name maybe it could squeak by, but in this situation they're way too closely linked to each other.

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Grand Kirby posted...

I remember hearing that he may have also been named after Mad Dog McCree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_McCree

But really, it's the fact that his full name is exactly the same as the real person. It's hard to ignore that. If it was just the "McCree" that was the issue and he had a different first name maybe it could squeak by, but in this situation they're way too closely linked to each other.

Yeah, exactly. I'm sure mad dog mccree was also considered when thinking of the name and it was coincidence that Jesse had the same last name and so they went with his full name. But idk never heard the full story.

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But other people knew.

And you don't leave your hero with the name of one of the 9/11 terrorists because most people don't know his name.

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i had always assumed his name was a reference to a combination of Jesse James, the most famous IRL wild west outlaw, and the video game mad dog mccree

i'm not emotionally attached to overwatch and if they feel like changing it for $$ or moral reasons they can go right ahead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_James
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_McCree


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GildedFool posted...

hero with the name of one of the 9/11 terrorists

OW 2 spoilers

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banananor posted...

i had always assumed his name was a reference to a combination of Jesse James, the most famous IRL wild west outlaw, and the video game mad dog mccree

Blizzard loves to be self referential. Your assumption was wrong.

GildedFool posted...

But other people knew.

And you don't leave your hero with the name of one of the 9/11 terrorists because most people don't know his name.

Right. Again, I'm not saying it's not a good change. I'm just saying don't be surprised if it's pretty much the only thing they do. It kinda screams corporate "Look we did a good thing okay bye."

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Can Blizzard employees spell tether?

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Leafeon13N posted...

Your assumption was wrong.

No shit, sherlock!

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