Penny Arcade - Comic - The Quintad

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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Quintad

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Lttlefoot

This is me, except for the netdecking

palidine40

Gabes giving off those Ursula vibes, gonna steal your voice while helping save sanctuary's soul

el_vicio

Really good post

Ringo

I disagree!

Tycho writes:

don't know how to punish Bobby Kotick without also punishing the people who made this game.

Which is absurd. Do the people who made the game not get paid if it doesn't sell? Does Blizzard only pay in company script and stock options?

The people you most care about have already been paid! At best you are saying that you want to give Blizzard money so that those people will be paid to make future games. Which, because of all the variability in what games Blizzard makes and who they employ, is as directly effective as purchasing content from better companies and hoping those people get new jobs.

Bobby Kotick and the shareholders are the only ones who profit from the copies of Diablo 4 you purchase. You are directly rewarding him alone with your money. "But the workers" is a lie

el_vicio

You conveniently ignored the rest of the post wrt attitude towards the devs, and beyond a wage, that those people actually care(d) about the thing they made. And game sales = job security. "It's better for them to potentially lose their job so they might up somewhere else" is a fucked thing to say about other people's lives, especially when it is the dude at the top you would like to hit with it.

I can't imagine how it must feel to be there, to be the ones that endured wickedness we're all decrying, and then to be subject to some kind of soft boycott maneuver because you… kept your job? You clocked in every day, relied on each other, and then fucking killed it under the most insane development conditions? I hate that lesson. And I won't teach it.

Furthermore (also detailed in the post), Kotick has more money than god (and will have more as soon as he's out), and boycotting D4 to claim some moral high ground will have exactly how much impact on his conscience, wealth or well-being? I'll answer that for you: zero. So imo directing impotent anger at people who decide to play Diablo 4 mainly makes those people look like assholes.

Ringo

I'm trying to formulate a response here, but I don't got one. The workers have already been paid. Job security is a myth we hold onto in the hopes that capitalism won't just eat us. I don't personally care that people are playing Diablo 4, and will likely buy it the first time it goes on sale.

I mean hell, if Kotick is going to be gone soon why wouldn't you wait until he's out to buy Diablo 4? Unless you think the D4 team are gonna get fired if it doesn't sell well? And if that's the case, maybe don't support a company with shitty business practices? Maybe just don't!

Tycho's wrong. He is not rewarding the workers. And the fact that he has to tell himself (or us, the audience) that lie to feel good about playing a Blizzard game? Seems like his values don't match his actions

el_vicio

Ringo wrote: »

I mean hell, if Kotick is going to be gone soon why wouldn't you wait until he's out to buy Diablo 4?

What difference does it make? That's the entire point, people getting *angry* that people don't boycott D4 because Kotick. The point is that it has zero impact on him, he has zero reason to care, and the anger directed at people deciding to play the game is imo just an expression of impotence.

Ringo wrote: »

Tycho's wrong. He is not rewarding the workers.

I remind you that you are arguing a strawman you brought into this by claiming that "rewarding the workes" means money/wage.

Ringo wrote: »

I don't personally care that people are playing Diablo 4, and will likely buy it the first time it goes on sale.

Why, if Blizzard is a company with shitty practices that is not worth supporting?

Ringo

I'm not saying buy it or don't. I'm saying Tycho's justification for buying it is BS. If he just said, "I want to play D4, thus I bought it" that would at least be true