You guarantee immunity and anonymity?

Is that the same kind of guarantee you gave about never attacking Ukraine when they gave up nukes?

We’re not going to hit those targets anyway… SO LET’S MAKE IT WAY FUCKING WORSE

I wonder if we’ll ever get to the place where people like this unexpectedly meet violent ends. They’ll sacrifice any number of lives for their shareholders interests.

Any one want to guess who will really end up paying for the price hike?

It’s not AT&T.

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.

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

So you want to try create the right moments for deeper conversation, I think that would be more likely away from his mates? I don’t know them so just guessing.

With that in mind, maybe Google around for anything interesting or different happening in the area. A gardening or book faire, wine or coffee festival, anything relaxed. Then ask him if he wants to go. Ideally something quiet that has some walking around?

That might create helpful conditions.

Tricky, but you could take the approach of just putting it on the table:

"Hey, I have a weird random question… " And then ask if he thinks there is life elsewhere in the universe or what he thinks is going on with flat earthers or whatever. It isn’t bad to be a bit random in timing.

In terms of timing specifics though, you don’t want to do it in the middle of some other discussion, so you normally wait for a quiet moment or a lull in the current conversation. Typically depends on what’s going on. I find something like building puzzles together is great for this, because you’ve both got something to do but it’s not so intense as to block easy conversation that just meanders a bit. Just an example though.

When you are together, what are you normally doing? Long drives are easier to find ok moments, studying in the library or in the middle of a dentist appointment less so

You could try asking some deep questions, see what comes out of that.

Exactly, if you choose to work for a company then that is in support and furtherance of that companies goals / operations.

We are not so helpless as we sometimes like to claim.

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.

Moved to Firefox some months ago, it’s fine. Small adjustment but browsers generally offer high interchangeability

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.

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.

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.

Wow you’re being down voted hard.

One of the problems with anonymous payments is that they can be used by foreigners with deep pockets, money laundering (which snowballs into much bigger problems), etc. I can understand why they’d push back so hard.

The problem with tracked payments is the loss of privacy and over control. Can understand why they’d push back so hard here too.

One of those issues with no good solutions in sight. Yet. Maybe. You basically have to pick your poison.

I thought it was hilarious