Let me try.

By creating a culture that singularly valued money and production over all other concerns, including the well-being of staff, Kotick created and cultivated the conditions needed for abuse to set in.

And Kotick is the kind of sociopath that leads to this when other things are swept under the rug.

Maybe it wasn’t a line item on his payslip though.

Yeah, but Kotick was not really the real issue. He’s a straw man of sorts, a target dummy, designed to draw fire for unpopular decisions.

It is the board and shareholders who massively incentivized him into that behaviour. CEOs are brought in to act in the interests of shareholders, while also abstracting them away from blame and direct culpability.

The goal of blizzard (and any other publically listed company) is wealth creation for shareholders via share price growth, not making games per se.

I believe the answer is “A lot of Americans”.

If this game releases with good quality my friends and I are day 2 customers for sure. Seems fun as hell from the videos.

Yeah, I like them but I’m firmly in the camp of waiting for player reviews. We’ll see.

With his ethics there’s no way I’d let any company controlled by him attach itself to my brain.

I have a hard time imagining that for any profit driven corporation, but most especially him.

Only some people will get access I presume

Well, rather this than a bad release

Yeah you’re right, a divider. Or a 0.x multiplier I suppose.

And you’re also right about the divide between highly skilled and not, but I think that’s what we saw quite strongly in SAO. The side effect of serious consequences separated the players.

I don’t think it’s a successful design approach for a commercial game, most players do not play permadeath even if it’s an common option.

The underlying threat of serious consequences changed player behaviour, psychologically.

Today gamers throw themselves into monsters with limited regard for consequences, which changes our perception of the encounters.

I wonder what would happen if number of deaths was a tracked stat that acted as a multiplier for player skills / powers.

Thanks for the heads up.

We demand infinite growth. Why? Because shareholders want to buy shares and sell them later for more.

Do anything it takes to make that transaction happen, cut people’s jobs en masse, whatever.

Forever.

Pump the rage into their veins, that’s the ticket. Can’t possibly go wrong, and even if it does it wasn’t us.

OK, maybe it was us but it’s not that bad. Ok, it’s bad but who knew?

OK, we kinda knew, but that monetization tho!

He’s broadcasting to all businesses and billionaires that anyone who strongly supports him gets their back rubbed right back.

He’s not saying EVs are great, that we should support them because it’s good policy, the right move for America etc.

Its simply quid pro quo.

Yeah, fully agree. This is one of the reasons big tech is dangerous with AI, their sense of humanity and their instincts on what’s right are way off.

Oozes superficiality. Say anything do anything for market share.

I like Kamala. You have a real shot at taking Trump out with her. The stakes could not be higher. Maybe for the world. He is a truly dangerous person.

I wonder if I can get the next statement out without venom coming back at me, but I’ll say it anyway:

I think you guys should try hard to steer the rhetoric away from anything polarizing (race or gender), and do everything you can to create inclusion (from anyone). I’m seeing a lot of things like that, and I don’t think it plays out into more support. And there’s nothing more important now than maximizing support.

Does anyone else notice missing comments here?

There were comments here yesterday.

I thought it was hilarious

There should be consequences for companies (and specifically the leadership) that cause danger to innocent lives in their pursuit of profit over all else.

Making those promises was good for shareholders. Good spin, positive pr, keep share price stable etc.

And then staying in Russia was also good for shareholders. Moves more product. Easy.

So that’s what they do. Shareholder value above anything else, there are no exceptions.