Personalities in the Gaming Industry and Politics

[Darrin Drader]

Let me get this straight you feel that an employer has the right to dictate what a person says or does after hours?

That is dangerous ground. With what you are saying an employer would have the right to fire anyone who did something that might offend someone when they are not working. Say you go to a poltical rally or a protest march and someone reconizes you and gets offended and tells your boss that because of it they will no longer do business with your company so your boss fires you or tells you you can no longer exercise your freedom of speech if you want to work.

Yeah, sorry, but I'm not buying that line of thought either. I could go off on the amount of control the corporations already have on society, but that would be political and not a good subject to broach, so instead, I will say that a company should respect the talented individuals it employs, not try to control them.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Let me get this straight you feel that an employer has the right to dictate what a person says or does after hours?

While I fervently wish this were not the case, emerging jurisprudence is going exactly that way. There have been at least a couple of high-profile cases in which employees were forced to shut down their blogs or severely curtail their freedom of expression, and the employers are coming up victorious. And it's not limited to the Internet, though so far non-blogging cases been limited to situations in which the employees' activities are high-profile and their corporate affiliation is known.

Pretty freakin' scary, if you ask me. (Of course, I also find it pretty freakin' scary that courts have found that an employee has no expectation of privacy when using company email, but ... ) I'd be willing to bet that there are many posters on this thread, however, who would argue that there's nothing wrong with employers doing this.

 

[pogre]

Look, it is not about corporate control at all. It is about not alienating a potential customer base. That's it.

Which, is what the original question was -

Actually what I'm interested in is whether or not people who write games, or are in the eyes of a given community, should associate themselves with politics.

- this is a reason they shouldn't.

 

[John Morrow]

But if you're talking instead, as I am, about being more willing and better equipped to consider and evaluate one's own opinions and opposing opinions, I just don't know what to say to you at this point. The proposition began as something close to a tautology, and in my illustrations and clarifications I've pushed it even closer.

I finally figured out the analogy I was looking for to explain what I consider to be the problem with your (Jeff Wilder's) claim that education makes one better equipped to consider or evaluate one's own opinions and opposing opinions -- the Laffer curve.

The Laffer curve was developed by economist Arthur Laffer to illustrate the relationship between tax rates and revenue collected. In theory, the higher you raise your tax rate, the more revenue you collect. But in practice, that's not how it works. Why? Because the tax rate has effects on the economy, the behavior of taxpayers, and the cost of enforcement. As you raise taxes beyond a certain point, the detrimental effects of the increased rate of taxation on the economy, the behavior of taxpayers, and the cost of compliance start to reduce the tax base and taxes collected until the detrimental effects actually exceed the positive effects. As a result, the optimal rate of taxation to maximize revenue is not 100% but somewhat lower (how low is debatable).

I think that with respect to open mindedness, education often works like the Laffer curve. While an increase in education does better equip people understand and evaluate their own ideas and the ideas of others, it also often has detrimental effects that eventually outweight those positive effects such that at a certain point, more education actually seems to produce a less open mind. I think you are considering only the positive effects of education (both formal and informal) and not the negative effects nor some of the problems that can negate the benefits of being highly education entirely. Being open minded isn't simply about knowledge and logic.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I finally figured out the analogy I was looking for to explain what I consider to be the problem with your (Jeff Wilder's) claim that education makes one better equipped to consider or evaluate one's own opinions and opposing opinions -- the Laffer curve.

While I understand your analogy ("Voodoo ... voodoo economics ... ") and the illustrations you used earlier from academia, I've simply never seen it work like that.

Just to summarize, so that you understand that I understand, your argument is that at a certain point an individual's education ossifies his ability to absorb new information and use it to reevaluate his views. Rather than look at new information and wonder, "Now how might that change what I've always believed?" he instead looks at new information and either (1) dismisses the new information as "flukey" or otherwise invalid or (2) wonders, "Now how can I make this new information fit what I've always believed?"

Is that a fair summary?

I dunno. Maybe I'm simply lucky (or equipped with exceptional taste), in that the highly educated people I know do not do this, and maybe I'm giving the highly educated people on the "Other Side" way too much credit, but my experience (and belief) is that such individuals nearly always know when they're seeing information that doesn't jibe with the viewpoints they present to the world.

Understand, my definition of open-minded doesn't require that people express a change of opinion upon learning new and contradictory information ... it only requires that they be willing and able to evaluate the information. Whether or not they then openly express a change of opinion has more to do with ethics and honesty (and, frankly, self-esteem and other psychological factors) than it has to do with open-mindedness.

Imagine a guy who, given all available information, is simply never wrong in the conclusions he draws from that information. (Yes, I know, such people don't really exist, although we think we do.) This guy may very well, and very validly, never change his opinion on a given subject, assuming that any new evidence continues to support his opinion. Yet although he never changes his opinion, he is nevertheless extraordinarily open-minded. He considers and evaluates all new information.

Now note that nowhere in the above paragraph does it state what viewpoints the guy expresses.

 

[trancejeremy]

Actually, I think too many put credit to their idea's, simply because of their popular status.

What I think they should realize, is that there opinion is no more VALID then anyone elses. Both sides of the arguement can be intelligent folks, who just don't share the view.

Actors and Singers seem to forget that, finding their opposite viewers to be just stupid.

Yeah, that was partly my point. But my larger point was, I think most people really don't want to hear the political (or religious) beliefs of others, at least when they aren't asking for it/looking for it. ) (Be it from celebrities or people they know).

Because unless that person happens to have the same beliefs, it's just going to generate ill will ('cause it's a touchy subject). And if they have the same beliefs, then what's the point?

 

[trancejeremy]

Look, it is not about corporate control at all. It is about not alienating a potential customer base. That's it.

Exactly - freedom goes both ways. Sure, someone is allowed to express their views of something. But then others are allowed to express their views of those views by taking action - boycotting the company that employs that person, or not buying products made by that person.

You just have the freedom to say what you want - you don't have freedom from repercussions from what you say. If what someone says affects their employer's business, then they are an interested party.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Because unless that person happens to have the same beliefs, it's just going to generate ill will ('cause it's a touchy subject). And if they have the same beliefs, then what's the point?

(This is a general point, because I'm not someone who particularly cares what celebrities have to say because of their celebrity, anymore than I generally care what anyone has to say. There are celebrities whose ability to reason and articulate their position I respect, whether I disagree with them or not, just as there are non-celebrities whose ability to reason and articulate their position I respect, whether I disagree with them or not.)

It is possible to learn from someone with views similar to one's own, you know. Such education doesn't tend to produce the dramatic shifts of understanding possible when learning from someone with whom one disagrees, but that doesn't make the learning less valuable.

As an undergrad, there were certain political viewpoints I held without fully understanding why I held them, and certainly without being able to logically support them at a high level. (They basically arose from an ability to imagine myself in the position of someone else, and from there from a strong sense of fairness.) Occasionally in classes a professor of the same leanings would share something that would hit me so hard that I'd be sure the other student could hear the "BONNNNNG." (Rawls' veil of ignorance, mentioned earlier in this thread, was one such occasion.)

And, of course, I also learned things that contradicted my feelings about a particular subject, and was thus forced to rearrange my opinions.

Both of these occurrences continue for me on a fairly regular basis.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, it's true, I'm a horribly sheltered Philistine unable to appreciate the beautiful, beautiful specimen of human complexity that is the average Home Depot staffer.

Well, show me how the Home Depot staffer is any less of a complex and multifaceted human being than a local politican, and I'll cede that bearing their use only as a Home Depot staffer is in line with who they really are.

People have opinions, and they like to voice them and have others hear them. The most polite will be very reserved about it, but politeness is very reductive of individuality.

 

[S'mon]

While I think many people here believe that to one degree or another, I do think there are practical limits to how extreme those opinions can be before people do hold the artist responsible for their views. If a game designer were seriously denying the Holocaust, praising Stalin's methods, advocating the legalization of pedophilia, advocating taking the right to vote away from women, praising the practice of slavery, etc. I think that many people would be saying very different things here.

There is a privately written role-playing game that can be found on the web written by white supremacists that deals with fighting a racial "holy war" against minorities. I have no doubt that no matter how good that author's "art" is, they'd have a hard time getting a job in the industry and a lot of people would boycott their work if they did. And the reason would be wholly because of their offensive personal opinions.

And, personally, I have no problem with that.

I didn't mean you shouldn't boycott their products or refuse to employ them. I do mean that you as the state authority shouldn't censor their website and/or punish them unless they're inciting actual crimes (like murder). If you're a board moderator you shouldn't normally censor links to their website either, but I can see a case for removing links to holocaust-denial or pro-pedophilia websites given that those may be criminal in themselves (certainly in eg France or Germany holocaust-denial is prosecutable), the other two also if they're also illegal somewhere. I can see a case for removing a political link from a board if it is causing the kind of political debate that is banned on the website.

BTW I'm 32 and my political views did change quite strongly over the 2000-04 period.