Both of the 7/13 podcasts I regularly listen to (Gamespot's The Hotspot and Giantbomb's Bombcast) covered the controversy that has arisen over Blizzard's mandate to require users to post their real first and last name with every forum post.
Needless to say, the internet exploded in anger, and fought back by posting personal details of Blizzard employees. Blizzard has since backed down, and instead chosen to make the Real-ID feature optional.
Now, generally, I prefer the Hotspot over the Bombcast for these types of stories, generally the Hotspot is more informative, while the Bombcast is just down right hilarious. But in this case, the Hotspot randomly told jokes, while Bombcast got it right.
We all know the internet, and especially forums, are the sewers of humanity. What started as a way for scientists to share papers has turned into a hate-filled arena of teenagers competing to simply spout off the worst words they can think of. Much has been made of the anonymity that allows normally law abiding, cultured citizens to turn into raving lunatics. Blizzard was likely attempting to control some of this with the real first and last names.
But it also struck another cord. Some people have been playing games such as WoW for years and built up a persona, and to suddenly go from Gravador, the noble dark elf from Lavorat, to Tom Jones, from McDonogh, Maryland, really takes a ton of fun out of the game. Seriously, these are called Role Playing games for a reason, because you are allowed to play out a role in life you may never really get the chance to. I find this a much, much less convincing argument, but this is what the Hotspot crew focused in on. If anything, the Real-ID system is HUGE here. No longer can people pretend to play females in order to have creepy sex fantasies, or manipulate horny nerds into free items. Also, let's say you want to play as a brave, helpful figure in WoW, why don't you just do that in real life?
It was Giantbomb that got it right, in my opinion. Jeff Gertsmann mentioned that many GiantBomb users do not want to link their accounts to facebook. I know I specifically avoided that one as well. Why? Employers search and monitor facebook. Facebook is almost a professional identity for many people. Some say, why be embarrassed about playing games? I personally am not, at all. I talk freely about it with my friends all the time, even those who don't play. At the same time, my school's career office specifically warns about not putting things such as "Home beer brewing" in the hobbies section of a resume. There is nothing wrong with home brewing, in fact, it generally is associated with a science and a well developed palate. To an employer, however, (at least in my very conservative field) it comes across as wasted time spent on booze. While I game only in my spare time, and actually develop my thinking and writing skills about it, to an employer it might seem like "Wow, this kid has games all over his profile, he must do nothing but sit in his parent's basement all weekend!"
Similarly, when someone does a Google search of my name, I don't want one of the results being me saying, "The DPS with the great fire axe makes this class WAY to strong for current PVP models, we need a nerf soon." It just sounds nerdy. Sure, in an interview, I would talk about it positively. "It is a weekend hobby, and something that I take seriously in an intellectual way. While some people choose to debate the west coast offense vs. a blitz heavy defense, I look at charts and numbers in a game to make choices, analyzing and predicting many different elements into a coherent strategy." But that is at the interview. If my resume lands on someone's desk, and the first 10 Google results are WoW posts, I may not get that interview. Also, my professional blog, where I may spend more time than I do posting on gaming boards, is one result. If each post shows up separately, that can easily overpower my "acceptable" writing.
The take away here is that Blizzard messed up. You can't just force this on people halfway through. Let's ease into it. Maybe start by making players provide real, verified information that is kept hidden. Or limit un-verified users to one post per day, but allow verified users unlimited.
Similarly, though, I am calling out the internet on this one. You got mad, and so therefore started posting Blizzard employee's home and other personal information on the internet. This is unacceptable. First of all, no one actually posted your information, so your retaliation is unjustified. Second, these people work on the games you love! I am sure the engineers did not come up with this idea, but you proved to them that you don't appreciate their work. Absolutely unacceptable.
Link to the article for background.
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