Rich Chinese fans will continue to watch the NBA, while they build a local separate market and ban the NBA for the masses…
I totally agree with you that game fans will be disgruntled but that transitioning to any actual pressure on PRC gov’t is highly unlikely. Is it worth complaining about access to western media at the risk of being restricted from access to credit, train travel, arrested, disappeared?
I believe in the power of desire to change countries (blue jeans and rock music and whatnot) but the deck is stacked in the PRC’s favor over this. If it was rapidly rising food prices or an increased inability to buy/rent living accommodation though that could boil over (both of these are occurring currently see China’s “goodwill” soybean and pork purchases).
Also PRC will never let an opportunity to denigrate the west and shadow box it as a way to stoke nationalist sentiments.
Interesting way of using Blizzard against itself…
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As I said on Twitter, we outside of China have all the power. Spam the chat and make every global platform impossible for the Chinese government to abide.
Force Blizzard to choose China or the rest of the world. One “side” is getting banned one way or another.
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This is not investment advice of any sort.
I have officially divested myself of all of my Blizzard holdings.
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Tencent has a huge investment in Blizzard. No amount of chat spam is going to change their position. Welcome to capitalism.
I get the feeling he was tired of Hearthstone anyway. He’s been playing other games, but still good on him. He was making a nice chunk of change doing Hearthstone casting, which is a pretty sweet job. Not easy to give up regardless of the state of the game
China will have to suppress all chats, forums, discussions, and streams about Blizzard games from the US if every platform constantly spams pro-HK messages. Blizzard won’t budge on their own, but China might cut themselves off.
How will OWL go if HK is front and center in the media from the US-held games? What will happen if OWL players in the US start protesting?
What if a game is disrupted by this?
Blizzcon is going to be fun. I expect a lot of protests and disruptions, which will seriously complicate Chinese coverage of the event.
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Dude’s been a pro player in multiple games and made a big name for himself, he can definitely afford to jump ship on this one and good on him for being upfront about it. I think the only way he could have been better is if he kept the job just so he could shout Free Hong Kong right when the tournament starts but I won’t blame him for not taking such a big leap.
“Don’t you guys have fiduciary duties to totalitarian governments?”
I’ve already seen people going out of their way to support the HK protesters in Overwatch games. Alltalk and voice.
As in, about 1/3 of the games I’m playing have someone doing it.
I’m sure like me, that he supports the people of Hong Kong, but as white dudes from the US, it’s not our fight. When it’s not your fight, you support from behind, but you do not lead from the front. Attending a protest, quitting your job, these are actions of supporting from behind. Opening your mouth on a video broadcast, that’s too much leading from the front.
The best example to follow is Peter Norman.
White dude stood on the podium, wore the badge, supported Smith and Carlos, but it’s not his place to salute.
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I saw someone post tencent owned 5% of Blizzard (to give a more specific number). I didn’t bother to confirm.
Might have been me posting the 5% number.
PCGamer has a breakdown article on Tencent’s stakeholding in American game companies:
Yeah, it’s about that much.
Tencent (via a subsidiary) is also the company that made the Call of Duty mobile game. They are the kings of mobile “ports.”
Mobile makes up over 50% of the gaming marketplace and china makes up over 50% of the mobile market so …MATH-scribbling… Chinese mobile market alone is 25% of the total global marketplace.
Tencent alone accounts for half of the Chinese Mobile market. So one large company alone captures 12.5% of the total gaming market and thus their ability to outright buy a company like Riot.
- I have not actually checked in on the veracity of any of these figures, just off the cuff googling
This is what I warned about on the show.
The AAA studios in the US are screwed without a pivot to the Chinese mobile market. If they had to choose between AAA PC/Console games in the US, and mobile games in China, they’d ditch us and jump ship in a heartbeat.
Our market is not a healthy one. There’s nowhere to grow, there are too many games, prices are too low, costs are too high. It’s kind of a bubble.
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To put a fine point on it, Zelda 2 was a AAA console game of its era. It retailed for $70 in 1987.
Accounting for inflation, a AAA console game today should cost at least $160. But it doesn’t: it still costs ~$70.
This is the root of why everyone making games is so screwed.