Not to be insulting, but some of these arguments are almost cartoonish in their ferocity.
I'll say this, though. By not buying Starcraft 2, how will Blizzard know what your reasoning is? How would Blizzard know you were even a potential sale? There are countless reasons why someone did not buy a game; Blizzard is not telepathic. A boycott isn't just about refusing to buy something to "send a message" -- you have to actually send a
literal message that details the reasoning behind your actions. If you don't, no one will know; how could they?
On the topic of boycotting, in 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from a seat designated for white people on a bus. This ignited the
Montgomery Bus Boycott for racial discrimination. For the sake of relevance, I'm going to simplify this example by leaving out the obvious human rights issues, bigotry, backlash of violence and intensified persecution, and how it took the Supreme Court to finally make the landmark decision.
As a boycott, from the perspective of the city, it worked for several reasons. First, using a bus is a recurring transaction. Second, blacks made up three-fourths of the riders on buses. When that large chunk of business suddenly stopped, in unison, from engaging in daily payments, that revenue drop was noticeable (enough to cause economic distress, in fact). The drop was noticeable because the bus system had
past figures with which to compare to. Given the small, if any, amount of change in how buses operate from day-to-day, a sudden drop in sales provokes thought as to
why. Third and finally, blacks were vocal on
exactly why they were not using the bus system. Thus, everyone heard what the reason was, and the financial loses forced them to listen.
The assertion that by not buying a game you are "sending a message" is wrong, because it is not enough. Contrast those factors of bus tickets to the sale of a video game. A game is released once (not counting Gold editions), and once someone owns a game they are not likely to buy another copy (saturation), so there is little to no recurring transactions. One shot means there are no past figures to compare to. At least, not in any practical way for precisely determining cause-and-effect: They could look at SC1's sales figures; they could look at the sales figures of their competition; they could look at their day-to-day sales (which is constrained by saturation, mentioned earlier), but all of these are fundamentally flawed methods of gauging potential sales. There exists too many significant differences between the two samples, at every level, to do so: graphics, marketing, box art, gameplay, feel, theme, style, nostalgia, word-of-mouth, limited disposable income, release date in relation to competing factors, current events, a restrictive EULA, etc. Beyond the abstracts of fuzzy math based on a hypothetical market size, they have no way of truly identifying missed sales -- much less their cause.
If you do not wish to support a company, for whatever reason, by buying their product, more power to you. That is your choice and right as a consumer. If you want to affect change, however, your grievances must be made public; specifically aired to reach the ear of those who have the power and authority to enact those desired changes. You must work to help organize like-minded people, in order to amplify your voice into a chorus, and lend financial impact to your message with a
real boycott. Anything less is to allow what dissatisfies you to run unchecked and unchallenged. "Someone else will do it", right?
Would a real, organized boycott actually accomplish anything? That is another issue entirely, but I think we can all agree that apathy doesn't motivate change. If you don't like Blizzard's policy, speak up. If you instead say, "Oh, Blizzard doesn't care; we won't change anything", you're just being counter-productive. Such talk is self-fulfilling if enough people believe it. I say, "Why sit and be right; when you can try, and do what you feel
is right?"
Remember, Blizzard doesn't want to just make money -- they want to
keep making money. Two more expansions are on their way. They invested time and money into a robust map editor, and built in features that they said, at BlizzCon '09, they "hope will attract people like flash game developers from places like Kongregate." Obviously, Blizzard wants to capitalize on custom maps and create a new source of revenue. If a mapmaking policy receives enough flak from mapmakers, and those developers boycotted -- not by refraining from purchasing SC2, but by refusing to make awesome maps -- Blizzard will have a vested interest to listen. Alternatively, you could campaign against it through other means, such as using satire about it in your maps to subtly bring attention to the issue. You could make maps that demonstrate how Blizzard is ultimately powerless to censor (though this by itself is juvenile, and must instead be done carefully, tastefully, and reinforced with a statement on the ills of censorship being greater than the sum of offense).
Bear in mind that Blizzard is a company, and is subject to laws and regulations that do not apply to individuals. If Blizzard is in the business of promoting custom content, even selling it, they risk guilt (and lawsuit) by association. (Hot Coffee anyone?) Starcraft 2 is rated T for Teen in the United States. There have been recent laws passed against M-rated games being sold to minors. Ratings include language content, such as with music. If anything, Blizzard is protecting their ass with these blanket censorship policies. Does that make it right, though? Does it stifle creativity? To expand on that, why would a flash developer, who is otherwise completely free, want to place themselves prone under the edicts of this company? These are the sort of questions Blizzard must be forced to face.
If a stipulation that "Online content is not rated" can be made to exempt a company from responsibility of all the jerk-offs in multiplayer -- multiplayer that the company otherwise promotes -- why then can't maps also have the same disclaimer? If Blizzard wants to sell a custom-made map,
then they can apply such rigorous standards (if the author is willing, which if not the map cannot be sold, simple as that). Given enough pressure, Blizzard lawyers can surely find a way.
You might be wondering, then: Is this an issue worthy of a boycott? Again, another topic; one I will save for another post.
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Post has been edited 14 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2010, 7:36 am by Hercanic.
= <3
