Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

I feel so happy I never really got into wow, blizzard are going down the toilet so hard.

Last expansion for WoW was solid and the next one looks even better. Blizzard is doing just fine. The devs unionizing will only make them stronger.

Actually he pointed 3 different things that dont necessarily correlates to each other to prove a point.

The biggest question is: whats the point hes trying to prove.

It will make the devs stronger, absolutely. They'll get to work reasonable hours and have a home life and be treated like human beings.

It's not going to make WoW or Blizzard better, it's delusional to think workers unionizing is good for the company or the company's customers.

Still a good thing, by most reasonable standards.

Oh hell yes! STO is adding 3 ships from some of the classic Trek video games. And they even remade scenes from those games' intro cinematics for the trailer. I spent so much time playing Star Trek Invasion on the PS1 as a kid; seeing the Typhon in something again is just awesome lol.

That Borg Fusion Cube at the end has me concerned though; that wasn't in the game before... Guess the next episode is gonna have something to do with that. :x

This is the correct take, it good for human. But it bad for profit. Bad for profit mean company sell. Sell company bad for consumer.

That means you lose, those greedy humans wanting to be treated fairly will ruin your entertainment. That's all that matters right, you will be impacted negatively, *** those pieces of equipment wanting their lives improved at the cost of damaging yours. They're so selfish.

Make rich people happiness indicator go down. What about my 401k! Won't someone think of the investors! Commies.

If that group of people make more money your eggs and milk will cost more rabble rabble rabble.

Here we go again in the endless discussion about human individuality, but again, better work conditions translate to more people looking for a particular offer, and if there are more people looking for some job, higher the probability of having better candidates that will translate to more value added to the company.

Despite how much people try to simplify life, things are not that linear. Neither people are 100% adherent to behaviourism.

Also, pay attention the profit is the maybe the lowest in importance in some business. Games in particular, and many others, are in competition for supremacy in their fields. Saving few coins means nothing if your product isnt BETTER than the others. So, again, deciding things solely on profit is a narrow and not sustainable point of view in our current world.

Maybe you could argue that increasing someone salary or reducing their work time could help the restaurant in your street to have better business result. Thats not the case to any big corporation out there

It's funny to me that upper middle class people are now taking something created for the lowest class of workers in society.

The reason low skilled workers originally created unions, was because all the workers were easily replaced and had no power against the employer. If you're digging coal in a mine and get uppity with your boss, there are plenty more than can dig coal.

If you have a skill and you need a union, you suck at your job. Because they won't want to fire you, and even if they do you can easily get another job if you're good. The skill and knowledge you have is your power over your employer, coding, artist, musician in the gaming industry etc.

The reality is, that this is a sign that the people working in these companies are fully aware they suck balls at their jobs and know they need protections (Blizzard and Bethesda in 2024 = lolfactories). They are fully aware for instance that huge amounts of work was done in Indian sweatshops for Starfield and many other games, they also see AI coming along fast.

All the good developers at these companies have left long ago, the financial incentive from companies like Blackrock to have high DEI scores is also falling away so...these people know what's coming.

They can unionize all they want but if people aren't buying their crap they are gonna be laid off anyway, and this will lower the quality of their games...that are already crap.

GTA6 is going to be hilarious and a wakeup call to the general public about how far the gaming industry has fallen, that game is going to be review bombed to hades when it comes out. Not only is it going to be lacking compared to 5, but it's going to be full of progressive pap.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/grand-theft-auto-vi/publisher-review-bombing

Unions are bad. Bosses are good.

Also, making stuff up.

I never stopped paying my own syndicate contribution, because if I need help at some point, at least I have the right to demand for it.

I dont like the political use of syndicate. Thats my main problem with unions.

Bosses are people. People can be good or bad. But I dont like bosses per se. Its like youre selling your time to be a subordinate to other. Thats one interpretation of being a salaryman: give me my salary, and during work hours, you can command me.

Thats also why my life goal is to have a freelancer job in the future. I will still be employee for some years yet, but I dont want to spend my entire productive years being a lackey of someone else that only difference is some ficticious title that just have a meaning inside company.

Ahh, yes. If you're a game developer worried about your job, it must be because you're lazy, unfit, or make bad games.

Xbox head praises Hi-fi Rush a day after sacking the entire studio that made it ...oh. /s

With how consolidated the industry has become over the past decade, layoffs and studio closures often have nothing to do with employee performance or the quality of their games. MS in particular absolutely jettisoned a ton of headcount after the A/B merger, because... market demands? investor confidence? executive bonus targets?

It's entirely reasonable that the devs remaining would like some kind of protection from the same thing happening to them at the whim of some faceless executive up-org trying to hit the metrics for their annual bonus.

Yes bosses are good, they create jobs and boost the economy.

Yes modern unions are bad, they create all kinds of problems for the general public / customer and prop up crappy workers and disincentivize the good workers by forcing them to work less hours (even if they want to) and not be paid what they are worth compared to the other shi**ers doing the bare minimum.

Correct.

It is true that unions do allow for bad actors to act badly (lazily), when you can't be fired, shockingly you don't do more than you have to.
(This is a problem with work being miserable, and being tied to survival)

But, it's more positive than negative.

Good and bad inherently in every situation. Nothing is without cons.

I've had a few friends of the years go to work at Blizzard and none of them lasted more than a year or two. By every measure they had it was an absolutely horrible place to work

Thats one hell of a way to sugarcoat bosses.

But I think the correct relationship is that economy create more demand, that in turn generate more jobs.

Because there are more workers, you need more bosses to coordinate that work.

Its more like to associate jobs with enterpreneurs and investors than with bosses. Bosses most of time just need to deal with people, Not rarely they even have a single clue about businesses, let alone "creating" jobs

Bosses are the ones more subjected to see workers as "profit/cost" element.

You need a higher holistic view to see the value over raw money.

This trailer was made with AI, it's really quite good.

This tech is progressing super fast

Its about the only way to sugarcoat bosses.

Wtf are you talking about lol. Working at Blizzard doesn't make you "upper middle class".

According to indeed and Glassdoor, QA tester salary is same as everyone else: 15-20 per hr. Only the very high rank positions like senior software engineer are entering the territory of 100k+ per year. Most other positions are below 100k.

Making 100k per year makes you middle class, not upper middle class . All the upper middle class people that I know irl makes way more than that, and their main income generally isn't from employment salary.


This is a silly thing to say. It's 2024, "Skills" in job market are easily replaceable, because what we called "skills" these days are in fact common knowledge of a job. Being able to code well is common knowledge of software engineer, not irreplaceable skills.

80% of the positions in the job market are easily replaceable.

Go google game/tech industry layoffs 2023, who the hell cares about "skills" when layoffs happened? Or go google what happened when a studio shut down: everyone is gone.

The only irreplaceable resources in the job market are resources that directly increase revenue of a company.

I.e: If you are Hidetaka Miyazaki, you are probably not replaceable. Because any game with your name on it people buy it in droves.

Or if you have the connection to open certain "doors" to the government or big customer, then you are not replaceable. Because this leads to more revenue in a company.

Your average programmers, artists, QA that only offer a common skill in the job market? No amount of "skills" will protect them from losing their jobs in 2024.

That's a very biased pov on bosses. Bosses(or business owners) are just like you and me. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some of them absolutely knows business far better than most people. Some of them fails their business.

Saying ALL are good or bad is unfair. No individual are the same.

That being said, I spent significant amount of time in life studying business and economy. I would say it is absolutely one of the hardest field to be successful. (And the most rewarding one too).

If many bosses sucks at business, it's perfectly understandable.



There are demands in the market, and bosses are the one who FINDS demand, creates products and sell things.

It's absolutely correct to say bosses created jobs. Well yeah demands created jobs too, but someone has to turn demand into products. That's the job of business owners.

It's a role that does way more than coordinate people.

Good morning, you who are FFXIAH employees.

If you guys join an union, you are fired!

This is pretty true these days actually, mainly because in the past people who were irreplaceable and had too much power to demand raises. Now companies much prefer to hire 100 people (with one doing eyebrows) over hiring 10 exceptional people, and have them all be easily replaceable.

So I guess you're correct, the game industry is full of worthless cogs now, all doing smaller jobs and being paid less. There are no named developers these days, the creation process has been compartmentalized so much everyone is a nobody.

The reason they can get away with doing this, is people defend it as social justice. In the past you would be expected to make a good product, with the best writers and directors possible. Now you hire random woman or PoC and everyone gushes all over you on twitter for making crappy TV shows.

The companies don't care if they make good games or bad games, good movies or bad movies, they only care about money. So if they have a built in group of people who defend them for making garbage, if it aligns politically with their views they are all about that.

currently playing ZOE 2 on Stream the Steam edition on Hard mode i FORGOT HOW *** GOOD this game is

France having a hard time with Olympics opening.

The question is: WHO did it?

Advertising creates demands. They do not spring into existence like Athena from the head of Zeus.

Some people boss only themselves. Some bosses are themselves employees. Some bosses are hired to "streamline the workflow" which is corporatese for laying people off. IE destroying jobs.

That's the job of engineers.

The job of some bosses is to anticipate demands. Some others merely oversee people who oversee workers. The boss of a modern dairy farm has hundreds of things on his plate and 90% of them are different from what the boss of a modern dirt farm has.

You gotta give 'em a chance to figure it out before you just solve it for them.

Yeah, maybe the term "boss" is being loosely used here.

Personally I define "boss" as a hierarchical role in a company: its the one giving you (employee) commands. It wouldnt be wrong to say this type of "boss" as a "manager" also, but I think the word "boss" has higher hierachical impact.

If youre looking for a small startup, a small business or small company, then "boss" can also be the "owner", the "enterpreneur" in that business. My enterpreneur classes said well the difference: owners wants the business he/she owns to meet its goals. Enterpreneurs wants to find good opportunities to create new business. Bosses can be any of those or neither: maybe its just someone subordinate to them, and try to meet his particular goal in the context of the company.

For larger scale companies, most likely it will have a department structure with each playing a specialized role. There will be a "business" department that will prospect opportunities, there will be the "HR" department that will actually hire employees, there will be the "business" department that has business goals to meet. All department will have someone responsible for the people allocated in the department, and thats the so called "boss" in my context.

"Boss" is a generic role. There will HR boss, strategy boss, business boss. The term itself doesnt define whats his specific role for any medium-large size company. For smallers ones, boss role can overlap with others, then they can be anything they wish, so really no point discussing this particular situation

I don't agree. There are a lot of new invention that changed the world, they don't rely on "advertising" to sell.

Do you really think world changing technology like AI relies on advertise to sell? No. AI existed since decades ago. People were aware of it. But now people knows that there are more use for it, such as writing a letter, translation etc. because of improved AI technology.

Such demand is not created by advertise. It always existed, just that technology made it possible.




Steve Wozniak is the engineer, Steve Jobs is the business person and CEO.



A decade later when we talked about how the industry has changed because of Apple, who's name were brought up more frequently? The engineer Steve Wozniak or "idea person" Steve Jobs?


Engineer has the skills to build things but it is business person who turns an engineer's skill into actual profit. You can't ignore business person's creativity when it comes to building new products.