…clean up its act big time. I never played League of Legends because I’m not into MOBA’s. Yes, I heard about how toxic the community is but what’s new? What I didn’t know was just how bad Riot’s corporate culture was (I guess it was a Kotaku expose and I kind of try to ignore stuff that comes out from there).
That “bro” culture is an overall failure of leadership period where you have those types that are toxic in the gaming community, actually running some of these companies with the exact same small minded mentality. Some folks eventually grew out of that (good example is Overwatch’ Jeff Kaplan who was a toxic mouth breather during his playing days in Everquest as Legacy of Steel’s guild leader). There are other executives and leads at (or formerly at) Blizzard who also came from that same mouth breathing culture (where what goes around, comes around — as they are getting it back many times worse due to social media).
The thing is that some companies eventually learned to manage themselves better without having to put “adult supervision” (i.e. seasoned executives who at the time, would’ve come from other industries) in place. Others (like Riot) have failed to evolve.
Then once you add into the mix, investment money (once the money makers smelled huge opportunities in gaming when it came to potential future revenues) where large corporations began acquiring these studios as investment opportunities (which did mostly pay off big time), you ended up with this toxic brew of “money at all costs” executives who had zero cares for the lower level employees (except to push out titles). The entire thing went to shit once the RNG lock box concept with micro-transactions was released (along with all of the psychological mind game designs that now go into creating them).
It’s bad enough that corporations in many industries chose to mortgage the future by going to the complete other end of the spectrum with eeking every bit of profit (and revenue growth metrics which entail cutting costs; most often times at the expense of the worker bee in order to line their own pocketbooks). As someone who used to work at that senior leadership level, I got out because I didn’t agree with the exploitive nature that has permeated these major corporations. I believe their needs to be a balance where your fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, does not mean exploiting your workers at all costs. Take that sort of climate and mix in the dysfunctional game industry where you have a lot of executives at the top, who do not really care about how the widget is made (just get it done by this date and make sure it can generate a shit ton of revenue).
The day of reckoning is coming fast on this industry and if the leaders and executives of these companies do not collectively remove their cranium from their anal orifice (and breath some much needed oxygen), they will eventually find themselves being subjected to government regulation and oversight (I am personally not a proponent of government getting involved BUT the game industry has proven they’ve been unable to properly police themselves). As far as unions go, it needs to be done right (else you have the same issues with union leaders who saw an opportunity and found a message to exploit those individuals under the guise of being a representative force, where they end up extracting ever increasing union dues to line their own pockets — see the trend?).
Anyway, the ending of this video was hilarious (yeah, I know he’s a comedian) because it’s actually true, the average gaming consumer does not care about this stuff. The average person is more than willing to throw money at these companies as opposed to voting with their wallet. And no one wants to hear about this stuff when it comes to what is a form of entertainment.
