Blizzard to remove the veil of anonymity
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-07-06 10:48 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
I carefully re-read that post a few times, and I've concluded that "at this time" is, in this case, harmless.
The sentence is, roughly:
We've decided at this time that the official forums will not require your real name.
Now, if they'd written:
We've decided that at this time the official forums will not require your real name.
I'd be more worried. As is, that's just corporatese -- you have to tag announcements with "at this time" so people feel like they're getting a fresh new announcement. The thing announced is not thus qualified, only the fact of the announcement. There's another sentence later on that hasn't got the qualifier at all, and it seems like they've probably decided to comply with the laws of about half the countries they do business in, their ESRB rating, and the overwhelming majority of their users. 
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You don't have to be 'ashamed' of anything to understand that certain segments of the professional world think poorly of WoW players and that if you play WoW it can have adverse effects on your prospects in that world.|
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Not to take this off topic too much, but if there's a 'but' coming after a statement like that, then you are ashamed to a certain degree.
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I don't particularly care if anyone knows I play CoH, but if playing CoH could impact my professional life adversely I would absolutely keep it under wraps. Not from shame or embarrassment, but from clinical, logical self interest.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Good luck with that.
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Originally Posted by seebs
I carefully re-read that post a few times, and I've concluded that "at this time" is, in this case, harmless.
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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Oz, I am so on your side with this. I have family in the corporate world and believe me, from what I'm told with situations like this, it is only a temporary situation.|
Originally Posted by SuperOz
Well, I note with appropriate cynicism that they're not implementing RealID 'at this time'.
I'd bet good money that they're not giving up on the deals they've synched up with Facebook and whomever else they got lined up to do the 'online gaming community' stuff. You don't go to that extent, make an announcement like that and then just go 'oh, all that money we spent and all those deals we made? We'll just scrap those.' Sure, it might happen sometimes, but it really has to be in the company's best interests to do so (BP, I'm looking at you). They won't back off from this, like have others have already commented. Cryptic felt the backlash of the players over paid expansions, but I again would bet good money the sharks will be circling again to say 'well, now it's been a year and now you should pay for a paid expansion'. Watch this space, I say. S. |
I don't think anyone realizes that there have been contracts signed already as a company would not make such an announcement without lining its ducks up in a row. Furthermore, Blizzard would not have pushed for implementing such a system if they felt that they could not profit from such a venture. Vivindi, Blizzard's parent corporation, is a huge mega-corporation and the Blizzard division is a large source of Vivindi's revenue. I'm with you 100% that users will see the implementation of Real I.D. in some shape or form not too far down the line.
There is money to be made with such a system and it is highly doubtful that such a large corporation like Blizzard would just shelve any and all proposed plans when at first they were of the attitude, "Do what we say or don't play." They've successfully managed to fool the player base that believes this is the end of Real I.D.
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What's even more interesting is the board makeup: http://www.vivendi.com/vivendi/ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD,954|
Originally Posted by Invisobill
Oz, I am so on your side with this. I have family in the corporate world and believe me, from what I'm told with situations like this, it is only a temporary situation.
I don't think anyone realizes that there have been contracts signed already as a company would not make such an announcement without lining its ducks up in a row. Furthermore, Blizzard would not have pushed for implementing such a system if they felt that they could not profit from such a venture. Vivindi, Blizzard's parent corporation, is a huge mega-corporation and the Blizzard division is a large source of Vivindi's revenue. I'm with you 100% that users will see the implementation of Real I.D. in some shape or form not too far down the line. There is money to be made with such a system and it is highly doubtful that such a large corporation like Blizzard would just shelve any and all proposed plans when at first they were of the attitude, "Do what we say or don't play." They've successfully managed to fool the player base that believes this is the end of Real I.D. |
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| The Board of Directors of Activision Blizzard consists of eleven members: six directors designated by Vivendi, two Activision management directors and three independent directors from Activisions board of director: Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman of the Management Board of Vivendi and Chairman of Activision Blizzard ; Brian Kelly, Co-Chairman of Activision Blizzard. |
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Have you been paying attention to how Activision-Blizzard is set up? |
Originally Posted by UnSub
Blizzard can certainly have a social network, but Real ID is wrongheaded in its implementation. Some people here have looked to blame the Activision side -they more than likely want to start earning ad revenue like Facebook - but it is Blizzard who implemented it. Someone there was responsible for delivering it and who should have spent more than 5 minutes picking a social network to copy.
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Everything I've heard from multiple sources now indicates that Blizzard employees were virtually all against this. That doesn't mean any of them wanted to lose their jobs by engaging in passive resistance, rather than actively objecting up the chain.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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I see this assumption a lot, but I'm not seeing it empirically play out. |
Originally Posted by Invisobill
There is money to be made with such a system and it is highly doubtful that such a large corporation like Blizzard would just shelve any and all proposed plans when at first they were of the attitude, "Do what we say or don't play." They've successfully managed to fool the player base that believes this is the end of Real I.D.
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Also, other applications of RealID may be okay with the playerbase as long as no one is forced to link their real name to their WoW activities.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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quite likely.|
Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Also, other applications of RealID may be okay with the playerbase as long as no one is forced to link their real name to their WoW activities.
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the average gamer will willingly trade away much in pursuit of their fix.
It shouldn't take Vivendi/Activision/Blizzard long to figure a way to shop their players profiles to 'corporate partners' without rubbing their noses in it to the point that they openly rebel.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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3. This also means you are condoning this system. If you are truly against what is being done, the right thing to do is exercise the self discipline to opt out completely. Otherwise, they are still getting paid and being rewarded for being jackholes.
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Originally Posted by seebs
The two big problems:
1. Doesn't do you much good if you have existing accounts. 2. If your account gets compromised, you can't do anything to get it back. More generally, any time the natural result of a policy is "you must lie about who you are", something is wrong with that policy. |
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It is sad, but true. That comment can be applied to many facets of modern every day life; trading privacy and freedoms for convenience and protection, but that's a whole other animal to discuss.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
quite likely.
the average gamer will willingly trade away much in pursuit of their fix. It shouldn't take Vivendi/Activision/Blizzard long to figure a way to shop their players profiles to 'corporate partners' without rubbing their noses in it to the point that they openly rebel. |
If you read about the future of targeted demographic advertising, which many companies are already doing (you see it on youtube if you haven't deleted your history), you'll begin to realize that the future in ad revenue is hyper targeted advertising to the individual user. That means that game developers, websites, retailers and the like will be collecting as much information on an individual user, some personal and private, to improve their profit margins. Vivindi, by extension of Blizzard, is looking to cash in on selling user information such as habits, class playing preference, login frequency, users on friends list, etc., to demographic/advertising companies. Human beings are in a sad state of affairs when they've become absolutely nothing but a unit of monetary value, which we as C.O.H players already are to a degree.
I'm very happy about the dissent over the Real I.D. system, but I honestly think what's going to happen is that Blizzard will wait until Starcraft II and Cataclysm are released and then implement a modified form of Real I.D. In the end Vivindi wins.
You should all have no doubt that Vivindi and Real I.D. were already in talks about modifying the Real I.D. system on the first day of the press release. I also have no doubt that Vivindi and Real I.D. already created a back up plan well in advance in the event that they would be met with resistance from their player base. In one way or another, Real I.D. is coming to those willing to become nothing more than impressed surveyors, not knowing exactly what information is being gathered. Keep in mind the shady practices of Facebook that have been reported on. Lord knows what social networks like Facebook are doing with personal information that hasn't been reported or leaked to the press.
If it's modified to "real name is not displayed unless you want to display it", I'm fine with that. A consistent user tag is an AWESOME thing to have, and would much improve the game.
It may well be that, before the big todo, they simply didn't appreciate just how many problems they'd have with real names. It's quite possible that the group of people discussing this didn't include any of the obviously-affected people, and that it wasn't until Bashiok used a real name on the forums that most of them got any insight into what real names are good for.
It is not unheard of for people who are sure they have a great idea to actually get convinced that they were wrong. Nasty notes from a couple of national governments, for instance, might help a lot.
It may be that they naively assumed that the impact would be that parents wouldn't let their kids use the forums, so it'd give us adults-only forums without really saying so, but if so, that was stupid -- the account would be in the adult's name anyway.
Well, I'm still seeing tons of "I'm done with Blizzard, I won't be buying Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 from them" out there....
Most of it is probably just nerdrage blowing smoke (unfortunately) though.
Personally, my opinions on moving forward are:
It's going to be purely dependent on:
1) How bad/restrictive/invasive is the DRM
2) How tightly tied into BattleNet it is
3) How much gameplay I lose by NOT using BattleNet (because I WON'T)
6000+ levels gained and 8 level 50's
Hello, my name is Soulwind and I have Alt-Itis.
Well, I note with appropriate cynicism that they're not implementing RealID 'at this time'.
I'd bet good money that they're not giving up on the deals they've synched up with Facebook and whomever else they got lined up to do the 'online gaming community' stuff. You don't go to that extent, make an announcement like that and then just go 'oh, all that money we spent and all those deals we made? We'll just scrap those.' Sure, it might happen sometimes, but it really has to be in the company's best interests to do so (BP, I'm looking at you).
They won't back off from this, like have others have already commented. Cryptic felt the backlash of the players over paid expansions, but I again would bet good money the sharks will be circling again to say 'well, now it's been a year and now you should pay for a paid expansion'.
Watch this space, I say.
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse