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Is Buying Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Evil? Also Simultaneously a Sexism Thread
TychoCelchuuu
PIGEONRegistered User regular
PIGEONRegistered User regular
If you've been reading the Elemental: Fallen Enchantress thread, tucked in amongst a lot of game discussion has been sporadic "I won't buy this because Brad Wardell is a silly goose" talk. @Rorus Raz pointed out that this thing would be better suited for D&D, and since I've already talked it over with @Grey Paladin in PMs and thus have my opinion all written out, I figured I'd make a thread!
Is It Wrong to Purchase Products When You Know Your Purchase Will Benefit Bad People?
That's the question for this thread. I do not want to talk about Brad Wardell specifically, really. I don't really care about him. Maybe he's a horrible person, maybe he's literally Jesus and the accusations are way off base. Immaterial. For the purposes of this thread, let's just assume he did all the bad things he's been accused of and more. What are those bad things? Well, broadly, sexual harassment. The specifics aren't super important but because humans are gossipy creatures here's a Kotaku article to satisfy your curiosity. To be a bit nicer to real life Brad, who is innocent until proven guilty or whatever, let's talk about Brad* in this thread. Brad* is a made up person.
Brad* sexually harasses some of his female employees. What a horrible person! He's CEO or otherwise situated such that he's not going to be let go for this, at least not any time soon. Maybe his victims don't feel secure enough to report the harassment or whatever. The important point is that Brad* is basically a silly goose. His company, however, makes some pretty sweet stuff. Video games, or consumer electronics, or cars or whatever. You happen to like this company's stuff, quite a bit.
Is it unethical to buy the stuff?
Maybe that's a bit strong. Maybe you wouldn't be a bad person if you bought the video game or whatever. So it's not unethical in the sense that stealing something is unethical. But here's a weaker position: although it's permissible to buy the game, it also makes sense not to buy the game. That is, you might feel yucky about supporting Brad* with your purchase, and even though you're not going to go so far as to say other people shouldn't buy the game, you still think that it would make sense to not buy it. In other words, you'll post in the thread about the game on PA and say "this looks kind of nice, but I've heard about Brad* and I'm not going to buy this game."
Let's label the questions.
1) Is it unethical to purchase a product from a company when your purchase will support a person like Brad*?
2) Is it sensible to refuse to purchase a product from a company because your purchase will support a person like Brad*?
Preliminary Issues
There are a few things to get out of the way. First, we all know that Brad* is a silly goose. I've stipulated this. In real life it's often much harder for us to make these determinations. Even actual Brad might be innocent, and 99% of the time we don't have a whole article on Kotaku talking about every employee of a company. So, UbiSoft, EA, Activision, and so on have hundreds of people who work on their games, but it's tough for me to know if I support silly geese with my purchase.
It isn't, though. It's late and I'm sleepy so I haven't done the research but this website cites some poll by a reputed polling organization, and also "studies," which suggests that somewhere between 30% and 70% (ehh) of women have been harassed in the workplace. Even assuming the number is lower than that, any reasonably sized company has some sexual harassers on board. The same probably goes for almost any vice you can think of aside from the fairly rare ones like "murder," "pedophile," or whatever. Pick your favorite "I don't want to support a person that does X" and a company of any decent size will almost certainly have people who do X.
Second preliminary issue: there are certain cases where it's fairly obvious (or at least much more likely) that it's definitely wrong to buy a product/support a silly goose, and these are cases where you're directly supporting the bad thing. Supporting unethical labor practices when you buy a Wii is wrong, and if it isn't then it's definitely going to be okay to buy Elemental: Fallen Enchantress from Brad*'s company. What this thread is about is cases where you might not want to buy a product because you have ethical issues with someone connected to the product that are unrelated to the product itself. Brad* could be making shoes or cars or video games: it doesn't matter when it comes to sexual harassment.
My Answer
So what do I think? Well, I think the answer to 1) is "almost certainly not" and the answer to 2) is "not at all." That is, I think it's probably OK to buy Fallen Enchantress, and it's definitely not sensible to say "I won't buy Fallen Enchantress because I don't like Brad*" unless you want to refuse to purchase lots of stuff.
The argument for my position in 2) is pretty straightforward. Big companies have people who do bad things, statistically speaking. Unless you want to avoid all unnecessary purchases, if you want to be ethically consistent you have to either say "I won't buy anything from companies large enough for me to be pretty sure that there are jerks working there" or "it must not make sense for me to refuse to buy from Brad*." The first option is not completely ridiculous: I suppose you could say "I will never buy anything unless I'm sure that I won't support an asshole with my purchase," but I don't think most people will want to go that route. So therefore we have to choose the second option: it's nonsensical for me to refuse to buy Brad*'s game when I already purchase tons of other stuff from other sexual harassers.
But what about 1)? We have to answer the "is it okay" question, and if the answer to that is that it's unethical to buy from Brad*, then the answer to 2) is immaterial (we'll be forced into not buying most things, actually).
So what do I think about 1)? There is a world of difference between supporting sexual harassment and giving monetary support to sexual harassers. When I purchase from Brad*, it looks like I'm supporting a jerk. That seems bad. Really, though, am I? I'm certainly helping him make a living at making video games. If I didn't purchase his game, he'd be a slightly less successful video game creator, and if nobody purchased it, he'd have to find another job.
Does that really help anything? Is my problem with him that he's making video games, or is my problem with him that he's sexually harasses people? If he stopped making video games, would he stop harassing people? I don't really see how that could work. The only way reducing his paycheck or getting him fired would really help things is if he ended up so destitute that he just can't sexually harass people. If Brad* can't find any other jobs and if he can't avail himself of social welfare programs, I guess maybe that could work (although then you have another ethical issue: is it okay to destroy someone's livelihood so as to keep them from harming others?) but it's not really feasible when it comes to Brad*.
And the same goes for everyone else. As long as your purchase supports something innocuous, like "making video games," I don't see what's wrong with funding evil people to make video games. Perhaps it is our duty to starve all evil people out of all jobs so that they can never inflict their evil on anyone else: that seems to me ridiculous. There are better ways to deal with wrongdoing than to ostracize them completely.
It's late and I will sleep. There are more wrinkles you could add to the case, particularly when it comes to real life Brad instead of Brad*, but I'm interested in the larger picture and I want to know what people think. I might proofread this sometime tomorrow afternoon/night and try to fix typos/gaps in the argument but for now, zzz.
Is It Wrong to Purchase Products When You Know Your Purchase Will Benefit Bad People?
That's the question for this thread. I do not want to talk about Brad Wardell specifically, really. I don't really care about him. Maybe he's a horrible person, maybe he's literally Jesus and the accusations are way off base. Immaterial. For the purposes of this thread, let's just assume he did all the bad things he's been accused of and more. What are those bad things? Well, broadly, sexual harassment. The specifics aren't super important but because humans are gossipy creatures here's a Kotaku article to satisfy your curiosity. To be a bit nicer to real life Brad, who is innocent until proven guilty or whatever, let's talk about Brad* in this thread. Brad* is a made up person.
Brad* sexually harasses some of his female employees. What a horrible person! He's CEO or otherwise situated such that he's not going to be let go for this, at least not any time soon. Maybe his victims don't feel secure enough to report the harassment or whatever. The important point is that Brad* is basically a silly goose. His company, however, makes some pretty sweet stuff. Video games, or consumer electronics, or cars or whatever. You happen to like this company's stuff, quite a bit.
Is it unethical to buy the stuff?
Maybe that's a bit strong. Maybe you wouldn't be a bad person if you bought the video game or whatever. So it's not unethical in the sense that stealing something is unethical. But here's a weaker position: although it's permissible to buy the game, it also makes sense not to buy the game. That is, you might feel yucky about supporting Brad* with your purchase, and even though you're not going to go so far as to say other people shouldn't buy the game, you still think that it would make sense to not buy it. In other words, you'll post in the thread about the game on PA and say "this looks kind of nice, but I've heard about Brad* and I'm not going to buy this game."
Let's label the questions.
1) Is it unethical to purchase a product from a company when your purchase will support a person like Brad*?
2) Is it sensible to refuse to purchase a product from a company because your purchase will support a person like Brad*?
Preliminary Issues
There are a few things to get out of the way. First, we all know that Brad* is a silly goose. I've stipulated this. In real life it's often much harder for us to make these determinations. Even actual Brad might be innocent, and 99% of the time we don't have a whole article on Kotaku talking about every employee of a company. So, UbiSoft, EA, Activision, and so on have hundreds of people who work on their games, but it's tough for me to know if I support silly geese with my purchase.
It isn't, though. It's late and I'm sleepy so I haven't done the research but this website cites some poll by a reputed polling organization, and also "studies," which suggests that somewhere between 30% and 70% (ehh) of women have been harassed in the workplace. Even assuming the number is lower than that, any reasonably sized company has some sexual harassers on board. The same probably goes for almost any vice you can think of aside from the fairly rare ones like "murder," "pedophile," or whatever. Pick your favorite "I don't want to support a person that does X" and a company of any decent size will almost certainly have people who do X.
Second preliminary issue: there are certain cases where it's fairly obvious (or at least much more likely) that it's definitely wrong to buy a product/support a silly goose, and these are cases where you're directly supporting the bad thing. Supporting unethical labor practices when you buy a Wii is wrong, and if it isn't then it's definitely going to be okay to buy Elemental: Fallen Enchantress from Brad*'s company. What this thread is about is cases where you might not want to buy a product because you have ethical issues with someone connected to the product that are unrelated to the product itself. Brad* could be making shoes or cars or video games: it doesn't matter when it comes to sexual harassment.
My Answer
So what do I think? Well, I think the answer to 1) is "almost certainly not" and the answer to 2) is "not at all." That is, I think it's probably OK to buy Fallen Enchantress, and it's definitely not sensible to say "I won't buy Fallen Enchantress because I don't like Brad*" unless you want to refuse to purchase lots of stuff.
The argument for my position in 2) is pretty straightforward. Big companies have people who do bad things, statistically speaking. Unless you want to avoid all unnecessary purchases, if you want to be ethically consistent you have to either say "I won't buy anything from companies large enough for me to be pretty sure that there are jerks working there" or "it must not make sense for me to refuse to buy from Brad*." The first option is not completely ridiculous: I suppose you could say "I will never buy anything unless I'm sure that I won't support an asshole with my purchase," but I don't think most people will want to go that route. So therefore we have to choose the second option: it's nonsensical for me to refuse to buy Brad*'s game when I already purchase tons of other stuff from other sexual harassers.
But what about 1)? We have to answer the "is it okay" question, and if the answer to that is that it's unethical to buy from Brad*, then the answer to 2) is immaterial (we'll be forced into not buying most things, actually).
So what do I think about 1)? There is a world of difference between supporting sexual harassment and giving monetary support to sexual harassers. When I purchase from Brad*, it looks like I'm supporting a jerk. That seems bad. Really, though, am I? I'm certainly helping him make a living at making video games. If I didn't purchase his game, he'd be a slightly less successful video game creator, and if nobody purchased it, he'd have to find another job.
Does that really help anything? Is my problem with him that he's making video games, or is my problem with him that he's sexually harasses people? If he stopped making video games, would he stop harassing people? I don't really see how that could work. The only way reducing his paycheck or getting him fired would really help things is if he ended up so destitute that he just can't sexually harass people. If Brad* can't find any other jobs and if he can't avail himself of social welfare programs, I guess maybe that could work (although then you have another ethical issue: is it okay to destroy someone's livelihood so as to keep them from harming others?) but it's not really feasible when it comes to Brad*.
And the same goes for everyone else. As long as your purchase supports something innocuous, like "making video games," I don't see what's wrong with funding evil people to make video games. Perhaps it is our duty to starve all evil people out of all jobs so that they can never inflict their evil on anyone else: that seems to me ridiculous. There are better ways to deal with wrongdoing than to ostracize them completely.
It's late and I will sleep. There are more wrinkles you could add to the case, particularly when it comes to real life Brad instead of Brad*, but I'm interested in the larger picture and I want to know what people think. I might proofread this sometime tomorrow afternoon/night and try to fix typos/gaps in the argument but for now, zzz.
TychoCelchuuu on
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If I have strong feelings about Brad's conduct, supporting him might bother my conscience. That's a way bigger worry to me than what Random Dude X on the internet thinks. Especially if his primary motivation is that he's really mad that some electronic distraction isn't getting as much respect as he thinks it ought.
That is, there is always this assumption or onus put on the boycotters to somehow change the practice they are railing against.
In this case, it seems like TychoCelchuuu's argument hinges on this very thing.
This whole bit here sets up the very same false dichotomy I hate in discussions such as these.
The dichotomy is very simple- either your purchase is directly supporting only the thing you are paying for, or your boycott must be strong enough to completely change the negative behavior in question.
In this instance, the argument is that buying a video game is just that- buying a video game, with the further argument put forth that it is ridiculous to try and stop all evil people from making money.
This is just a line of argument that lacks nuance- certainly it is morally permissible to abstain from a purchase for any number of personal reasons. It certainly is ridiculous to hope that we can prevent all evil people from making money- but this is never really the end goal of any boycott or abstainment.
As Jake said- if it makes you feel uneasy, there ya go. Its certainly not an immoral position to say "this makes me feel like I am supporting someone I would rather not support." Or, as he said more succinctly- "No one is entitled to your patronage."
I would extend that even a bit further- not only is no one entitled to my patronage, and it is the responsibility of those peddling their wares to behave according to the mores of their society. Certainly they can't please everyone, but if this whole scenario is true and Brad or Brad* or whoever did sexually harass employees?
Well it is certainly within the consumer's right to chastise this behavior accordingly- product creators aren't gods, far aloof from the repercussions of their actions.
I guess I really would like you to unpack this statement here
Why not? Funding evil people to make video games, even good video games, eventually means that you are indirectly funding whatever evil action they pursue.
If the way we deal with wrongdoing is not to ostracize them, what is?
Stardock is not a large company, from what I understand and your patronage more directly affects people at all levels than, say, your patronage at EA.
Boycotting Notch has a bigger impact than boycotting Sony- one will directly send your message to your target, the other might see the releasure of a few low-level employees due to poor sales.
But all this talk, and even most of my bigger post misses the whole point.
These things should be undertaken not with an attitude of changing the company with your single action, but rather changing the consumers.
I'm not boycotting to send a message to Brad* that hey, he shouldn't harass his employees!
That shit is ludicrous!
Rather, I am sending a message to all the other consumers that hey! maybe we all shouldn't support a company whose CEO harasses women, or maybe we try and get a PR campaign for his removal if the game is just that good.
But then again it is not my style really
Not buying his products may not change his attitude much. Most consumers probably don't even know who Brad Wardell is. But he's facing a law suit from the woman involved. That probably has a better chance of pushing him to tone down his shit than a few people not buying a video game.
And there are more people who work at Stardock than just him. That's my reasoning for having purchased their games, at least. I like Elemental: Fallen Enchantress and the Galactic Civilization series. The company itself treats its customers fairly well, too. I'd like to see more of that.
That's not to say I don't understand why someone wouldn't buy their games going forward, however. I don't like the idea of supporting someone who sexually harasses his or her employees. But I don't think anyone who continues to buy their products is evil. That's a bit excessive.
FYI, Fallen Enchantress is a new game entirely from War of Magic. It's most excellent.
To weigh in on the issue, Stardock, as a game company, has always treated its customers with respect. Much more so then EA. The people that worked on this game, Kael, Derek Paxton, and others, really put in a lot of time and effort for this release. I think that goes a lot further then trying to punish 1 man for his moral failings. Hell, Stardock in general is not predominately a game company. I believe they make most of their money off office software development to begin with. You buying or not buying the game is going to have little impact on their bottom line.
How would you go about approaching this issue? I know I don't buy any of their office software. I don't care for Brad* as a person, but I suppose I'll take the bad with the good. Elemental: FE is actually a fantastic game, made by people who actually care about it. I'm more then happy to support those people.
doesn't even remotely line up with the court documents and his casually dismissive attitude just reinforces my belief that he's an asshole.
No sale.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Basically this. When it comes to corporations, where you as an individual choose to spend your money is literally the only power you have with regards to them. Will it suddenly make them stop doing bad things? Probably not, but at least you'll be able to live with a bit of integrity. I haven't eaten at Chick-fil-a in like, a decade, and while they are still going strong I can at least know I'm not helping that douche organization stay in business.
Edison was a jerk; don't use lightbulbs.
Because I buy my lightbulbs from Thomas Edison, totally.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
So in short, not unethical to purchase this game, but the boycott is a good thing.
Brad* isn't going to look at declining sales and think "I shouldn't have harassed that employee". People who work under Brad* may lose their employment due to low sales. The revenue brought in by the product are not funding or enabling Brad*'s actions toward his employees, and he is unlikely to see high revenue as validation of his personal behavior or low revenue as indictment of his personal interactions with employees. Brad* isn't likely to change his behavior because of low sales.
It's somewhat different in the case of a company like Chic-Fil-A, where they were using their money - money brought in as revenue from customers - to lobby against gay rights. Those customers can see that the one thing they contribute to the company, their money, was being used directly for a purpose they did not support. At this point, removing their financial support for the company makes sense. The company sees their revenue suffer because people don't want that money to fund a cause they disagree with.
In the case of Brad*'s company, your money isn't being used in a way you disagree with. It's not being routed to organizations that lobby against women's rights, it's lining the pockets of Brad*, who (in the premise put forward above) did something in his personal life you disagree with. Removing that money is not changing his personal life. The best course of action to change how Brad* treats women is exactly the course that is being pursued -- litigation which directly addresses the issue.
All that being said, it's certainly the prerogative of the consumer to choose why they do and do not spend their money, and the fact that there is a direct line for feedback to Brad* as to why they are withholding their patronage may make some difference. But chosing to patronize his company is not inherantly a validation of Brad*'s behavior, and isn't "evil".
To address reality, Brad still has to go to court. If someone has a hangup about the allegations, wait until there's a verdict. Either way, it's not JUST Brad you're giving money to, and simply not buying his game isn't delivering any kind of message unless you also contact him and specifically deliver that message along with your withholding of patronage.
Just to be clear, that would be a fine opinion to have of Brad*'s company, as put forward in the premise of the thread, but Brad hasn't been found guilty/liable of anything at all yet, and this sort of opinion seems like simply trying him in the court of public opinion and deciding on the verdict before hearing out the case.
If Brad becomes Brad*, I think you're completely justified in this view, but it's a bit early to be passing judgement like this just yet.
And in a court of law you'd be correct, Brad is innocent until proven guilty. But the beauty of capitalism is that the consumer is able to make an informed decision about what to spend their money on, regardless of what's been proven or not. Corporations use this to their advantage constantly, minimizing health risks, working conditions, etc. The point here is that buying the game or not depends entirely on a persons own moral compass. If the allegation is enough for them to condemn Brad, and Brad's transgression is a violation of their own moral values, the purchasing of the game is a simple cost/benefit of whether or not playing the game is of greater importance then the person's moral stance on this particular issue.
This is why corporations hire PR firms. Because the court of public opinion usually matters way more to them then a court of law.
Please explain to me how this constitutes an informed decision.
Because the consumer can choose how informed they want to be about it. I didn't say it was a rational decision, or that the consumer had all the information, or even correct information, but enough information that they feel they can make a decision. Although, in writing that I can see informed was not the right word to use. Hmm... how about the illusion of an informed decision?
Label it what you like, when you excuse consumers from making irrational decisions based on incorrect information, I don't see the validity in your argument.
Was outside the premise of the thread, the sexual harassment case. If you want to boycott him for being a right wing booster, more power to you, but that's not really the issue the thread was created for.
It's also not true (the Glenn Beck part, not the right wing part). So there's also that...
http://gamepolitics.com/2009/09/28/boycotting-boycotter-stardock-takes-ups
The thread is about debating whether it is right to withhold money from the company just because Brad Wardell is human goosery.
Where is he monitarily supporting Beck in that story? He's just boycotting UPS because they boycotted Fox News.
He's boycotting them because they took actions he disagreed with such as pulling monetary support from Fox on account of Glenn Beck.
Which is pretty damn funny given this thread.
So you're boycotting him because he's a republican, and in support you post a story about him boycotting a company because they're not.
There's a meta amount of pot/kettle shit going on there. And that still doesn't back your claim that he "used his money in support of Glenn Beck".
So are we just boycotting him because he's a right winger? In that case, he's perfectly justified boycottying UPS because they aren't, which is apparently your whole reason for boycotting him, and I think we have divided by zero now.
Because I can look at the situation, and make a decision on whether or not the entity in question merits my money? (And in the case of Wardell and Stardock, that answer is "no", for a number of reasons.)
This whole discussion seems awfully familiar...
Uh, he is justified to boycott UPS. It's just fucking stupid for him to do so as it introduces a political ideology to his company, but he can since he is the owner.
I am likewise justified to boycott his company due to this.
That can't really be proven tho.
Or, on the other hand, he might do exactly that. In fact, if he ISN'T doing that, he's a complete fool.
Or they leave because they don't like who they're working for. We can make up facts to bolster our opinions all day.
It is being used in a way I disagree with, I don't want to see such a poor example of humanity succeed. He didn't do this and the several other things in private, he was very public about it; he was proud of it. And removing that money may very well change his personal life, there's no way you can just say it won't. But on the same hand, there's no way I can know that it WILL but I'm going to make that attempt.
Yes, you CAN make "a decision". An uninformed, irrational decision, as stated above, if you're just going on the harassment case. You can certainly "look at the situation" and decide something. You just can't claim that morality is on your side if that's what you've done, in the context of the harassment case.
And he allegedly also threatened to fire any employees that didn't boycott UPS as well. But I don't know how true that is.
UPS introduced a political ideology to their company when they boycotted Fox News. Where's the witch hunt there?
He also called anyone against Glen Beck a "hyperventilating leftist".
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/102039/split-stardock-ceo-dumb-enough-to-deserve-own-thread