None of that’s remotely close to “the vast majority of gamers are playing it.”
The only record it’s broken is number of people watching someone else play it on Twitch, which argues that a lot of people who might have been interested in playing the game have decided against purchasing it.
For the record, the game’s sold ~12 million copies internationally, which is very respectable, but the video game market in the US alone consists of roughly 215 million people.
So, not so much “the vast majority,” as “significantly less than 5%.”
I didn’t say “most people”, I said gamers. People whose primary hobby is gaming will not find it easy to abstain if they are in communities where there is constant talk about this game.
At least part of the claim is that they are less capable of judging that for the specific reason that they’re not part of the group affected and therefore are missing crucial information necessary to make that judgement.
If I say to somebody ‘you should stop trying to tell me how to run my diversified fresh-market produce operation because the only type of farming you’ve ever done is raising beef cattle for the wholesale market, and you’re trying to tell me what to do based on some articles you read that were written by people with a specific agenda I disagree with’, I’m not saying ‘you’re not an adult whose opinion is worth respecting’, I’m saying ‘you don’t know enough about this subject to give me advice on it.’ Someone who insists on giving the advice anyway is disrespecting me.
In any case: I take it as a statement of what decision will be made by the person who doesn’t accept them as an ally. If that person’s considered as an adult, then they’re entirely entitled to make that decision.
What are you suggesting – that they shouldn’t be allowed to decide who they consider to be an ally, or that they shouldn’t be allowed to say what their reasons are?
Before it came out, they were all abstaining from it.
Did their previous abstention make any of them unable to get to their jobs? unable to take care of others in their families? unable to get enough to eat? unable to remain mentally healthy? unable to communicate with others about what was going on in a war zone?
Or were they all doing just fine, or at any rate as fine as they would have been otherwise, without the game right before it came out?
Yeah, there is that . Hermione’s objections are treated mostly as a joke.
I almost didn’t read past the first book because of the denigration of fat people, and because all the bad guys were caricatures. That got better in the later books, and I did wind up reading the rest of them (taken out of the library and/or from second hand sales), and seeing a couple of the movies; all before this later commotion. But they’re certainly not without their problems.
In the same way it’s theoretically easy not to buy a bus ticket, it’s easy to not buy a video game.
But in the real world, people make decisions by weighing a complex assortment of considerations and trade offs. It is not simple yes/no thing. Buying and playing the game brings benefits to the individual that they will have to go without if they don’t buy and play the game.
People who find it easy to forgo the benefits that come with a new game are probably not the typical gamer.
In the group of people I hang out with on Discord, maybe three people bought at launch, two people have bought since, one more expressed interested, another two or three will never buy because of Rowling… but the majority of people are just in the middle. Maybe they’ll buy one day when it’s on sale, maybe they’d play it for free, maybe they just don’t care about the game at all.
The game’s been an undeniable success, both critically & financially, and any efforts to shame people out of playing have been a failure. But anyone playing it isn’t doing so because it was too hard NOT to play it. It’s just a successful game on its own merits.
We must implore the trans community to have compassion for these poor souls who simply must funnel money to a billionaire who is promoting an anti-trans agenda. While I appreciate that trans people are fighting for their right to exist, these gamers might have to endure talk about a game they aren’t playing.
Every year, tens of thousands of gamers are denied the opportunity to play games other people are talking about. It could be on a platform they don’t own, require peripherals they don’t have, or their mommy won’t let them. For less than $1 a day, you can sponsor a gamer in need, and help them play better games.
As a gamer, I’m pissed off that Bethesda still hasn’t even hinted about a release date for Starfield, which was supposed to have been released last year. I only know of this HP game because of this thread. It’s not hard to abstain from something that one does not know about. After checking it out, I will still not play it, not because of JKR, but because it doesn’t appeal to me°.
To say that a majority of gamers want to play it just shows an ignorance of how diverse tastes gamers have**. And as @Miller pointed out, even though he game has very good sales, the overwhelming majority of gamers are not buying it. Did the proposed boycott influence a number of those who didn’t buy it? Almost certainly. How many? It’s impossible to know and to claim that the boycott failed or worked is a statement without merit.
° Knowing what I know now, even if it did appeal to me, I wouldn’t by it.
** I think the only possible release that could get a sizeable chunk of gamers excited would be if Valve announced Half-Life 3. Swiftly followed by disappointment shortly after release.
I think you have some odd ideas about what the video game market looks like. It’s a lot bigger and more diverse than you seem to think, encompassing about a third of the population. 12 million sales is really good, but it’s a drop in the bucket in terms of overall sales in the market, which is a 200 billion dollar industry.
I’m saying what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
If it’s condescending and disrespectful to give unsolicited advice to an adult on how they should their life the right way, I don’t know why that would change if the person giving this advice is a member of a disadvantaged minority group talking to someone about what proper allyship looks like.
People are entitled to their opinion. They are also entitled to speak as though they are a spokesperson for their entire demographic group, as unwise as that probably is. They have to right to speak on what they value in an ally.
But others who disagree with them are also free to dismiss them and their opinions for being overbearing and presumptuous and emotionally manipulative. They are free to say “you know what, I don’t think me playing this game hurts a fly and because I trust my brain over yours, I’m going to encourage all my friends to get this game, too”. And the person who says this isn’t necessarily a jerk.
If someone told me that driving a non-electric car calls into question my respect for the environment, I couldn’t take them seriously. I’d be inclined to think they are a bit irrational, to be honest. Because to reduce all of me to the kind of car I drive is pretty damn crazy, in my book.
The point of a boycott is to force change by making something economically unviable. This game has been WB Games’ largest success with numbers rarely seen for a single player game like this. There’s a ton of merit to saying this boycott failed because it created zero incentive on WB Games to not make any other Rowling franchise products.
Yeah. Most of my younger friends are gamers. When there’s a hot new game, i hear all about it on discord. They spend a lot of their recreational time playing video games. Most of them won’t be buying this one. And that wine be hard for any of them.
If it’s selling well, it’s not because anyone feels they need to buy it, it’s because they want to buy it.
But Sterling’s opinions in their video aren’t “unsolicited”. Sterling made it quite clear, from the moment last year when they announced on Twitter their intention to cover the game release, that their coverage would be about explaining how the game supports a transphobe. Anybody who voluntarily watches that video is saying, in effect, “Sterling, please tell me your opinions about the ethics of supporting Hogwarts Legacy”.
Anybody who doesn’t want to hear those opinions is perfectly free not to watch the video. But they shouldn’t whine that voluntarily watching the video, and/or voluntarily discussing Sterling’s opinions with other people, is subjecting them to “unsolicited” opinions from Sterling on the subject.
Because a potential ally is trying to help members of the disadvantaged minority. If i tell you what car looks best on your driveway, I’m giving you unsolicited advice on a topic where you are the expert. If i tell you cracks about Jewish moneylenders are hurtful to Jews, i am giving you information you might not have had, on a topic where i probably know a lot more than you.
Don’t buy that game, doing so supports an active trans phone and funds her megaphone is information that not everyone had. Now the people who watched that video know it. (At least, they know Rowling is a transphobe. That case was made before i gave up watching it.)
Also, nothing in a YouTube video is “unsolicited advice”. No one is forcing anyone to watch any particular YouTube video.
Okay, but that does not mean the prospective ally has to accept as fact what the person from the disadvantaged group says. The ally might actually have a smarter sense of what will actually help than the other person does. It is unfair to assume that wisdom and practical insight is only held one person in the exchange.
If i tell you what car looks best on your driveway, I’m giving you unsolicited advice on a topic where you are the expert. If i tell you cracks about Jewish moneylenders are hurtful to Jews, i am giving you information you might not have had, on a topic where i probably know a lot more than you.
None of these examples are actual activism, though. Boycotts are a political activity, not comparable to using harmful speech or choosing the prettiest car. Minorities are not necessarily experts on political strategy.
Some of my neighbors have Black Lives Matter signs posted in their yards. These are well-meaning white people who want to publicly show their support for black equality. I appreciate that gesture. However, I’m perfectly fine with neighbors who don’t have these signs. I don’t infer negative things about people based on whether they have these signs.
But let’s suppose I did feel bothered by my neighbors who have abstained from BLM signage. If I made my feelings known in the attempt to get them to put up some signs, I’m pretty confident the reaction would be negative. My neighbors would judge me for judging them and then trying to guilt them into appeasing me. They would probably not be inclined to invite me and my family to their shindigs anymore. And I can’t say I’d blame them. I mean, for all I know, I would be judging people who have shown support in any other ways that are less visible but actually more meaningful.
If you need food, but are allergic to peanuts, and somebody insists on giving you food that includes peanuts as an ingredient: are they entitled to claim that they’re helping you? And are you not entitled to tell them that you can’t eat peanut butter and that they’re not actually helpful?
Are the others making the argument in places where it’s otherwise irrelevant?
And even if they are: how does that affect whether Sterling should be able to make it in a place in which it’s specifically Sterling’s opinions which are on offer, and where anyone who goes to watch it presumably does so because they want to know what those opinions are?
– There are vegans who will show up at a dinner given by people who are not vegans and lecture their hosts on what they should be eating. That has nothing to do with the behavior of people who are vegans but who don’t behave like that; and it certainly has nothing to do with the right of people who are vegans to give a vegan dinner and tell the guests not to bring any non-vegan dishes to it. ETA: And the non-vegan doesn’t get to argue with the vegan about whether honey is permissible for vegans or not; even if this is a subject of some disagreement within the vegan community.
Analogy needs work here. We are talking about a game played by other people, not food ingested by someone who is rightfully concerned about their own health.
Can you come up with an analogy that more or less matches the situation we’re discussing? Namely, 1) a political activity that people can choose to participate in depending on their own personal decision matrix 2) someone who feels they can criticize those who don’t engage in that activity without expecting any blowback.