Friday, October 11, 2019

Re: Blizzard and Hong Kong

I've loved Blizzard for as long as I've been old enough to play games. I got my first taste of real-time strategy from Starcraft; MMOs from World of Warcraft. I love Overwatch to death. That's why it's breaking my heart to see them do something so scummy, and, in a word, evil.

When it comes to gaming, I'm not an alarmist or an elitist. I don't particularly care if a game has microtransactions, or if a sequel is radically different from its predecessor. I hate talking about games, because the gaming world is full of snobs and elitists that will call you out for every last thing, from liking the wrong game to playing on the wrong platform. YouTube gamer Markiplier aborted an Undertale let's-play because fans criticized him for giving a character the "wrong" voice while reading their lines. It's stupid, but that's gamers in a nutshell.

However, Blizzard and Hong Kong is one subject where the gaming community at large is almost unanimously correct.

For those of you who don't know, Hong Kong has been experiencing a protest movement almost all year. You can read about it here. The citizens of Hong Kong are fighting for their sovereignty from mainland China, sparked by a proposed extradition bill that would allow people wanted by China in Hong Kong and Taiwan to be captured and extradited to the mainland by local authorities. Thus, there was potential for non-Chinese citizens to come under Chinese authority. Since then, the protests have only escalated, with Chinese mainlanders allegedly being disguised as Hong Kong police, anti-protestor actions by triad gangs, and an 18-year-old protestor fatally shot by police on October 1st.

That's the gist of it, excluding the fact that China is an authoritarian police state, which holds ethnic and religious minorities in concentration camps and actively censors information from outside China, among allegations (and mounting evidence) of executed prisoners having their organs extracted and sold on.

Back to Blizzard. Blizzard makes an online card game called Hearthstone and hosts tournaments with real cash prizes at stake. Chung Ng Wai, Blitzchung, was a competitive Hearthstone player. On October 5th, Blitzchung was banned from playing competitive Hearthstone and his prize money withheld after he made a pro-Hong Kong statement during a post-game interview. The two casters conducting the interview, Blizzard employees, were fired. Blizzard, the company, has received a lot of criticism, from a small employee walkout and calls for boycotts to statements by American lawmakers.

Corporations do this every day. Apple, whom I hold no love for, removed an app used by Hong Kong protestors from their iOS app store. I despise iPhones and their closed ecosystem of proprietary accessories. I don't give a damn about Apple.

But Blizzard was my friend.

Or, they used to be.

I still have a Tracer action figure on my bedroom wall and an Overwatch art print opposite. Proudly displayed on my dresser, a Warcraft 3 "battle chest" box. I gave the Starcraft 2 demo passes inside to anybody who would take them because I was excited about the classic game finally getting a sequel. D.Va stands on my Xbox One, among Warhammer 40k minis and Halo figurines, somewhat blocking the cooling fan. Overwatch was my favorite game on Xbox, until financial concerns caused me to end my Live subscription.

I asked for Warcraft 3 for a birthday. Once it was installed, I blazed through it and its expansion in a week. I lost days worth of sleep to World of Warcraft. I bought Starcraft for my older brother, but fell in love with it myself despite its steep difficulty curve. I used to read my Diablo 2 strategy guide religiously. I don't actually care much for Diablo 2; I just read the guide for fun. Until this controversy came to my attention, my greatest material desire was shot glasses with Overwatch "sprays"--stylized symbols--on them.

I'm not going to make a public display of destroying my games and merch, as some on the Internet have done. That's stupid and nobody would care. I also won't pretend that I don't love their products. Even as I write this sentence, I hear music and sound effects from Overwatch in my head, and The Frozen Throne is still in my disc drive. I loved it so much that I had to take it with me for my months-long hospital stay earlier this year.

Games are art. That is a fact, that is not up for debate, and if you disagree then I want you to stop reading this article and come back when you have some common sense.

There is a saying: "Love the art, not the artist." It means to distance the painter from the painting, the musician from the music, the author from the book. Someone you disagree with, even a reprehensible person, is capable of making something truly special and meaningful and worth sharing. Unfortunately, the world is not made of art and artists.

I doubt the voice actors of Thrall or Jim Raynor care about Chinese interests. The friends I made in Overwatch and my opponents in Hearthstone aren't Blizzard employees. The people who animate the cutscenes in Blizzard games, with their loving attention to detail, probably could not have seen this day coming. They're not to blame for the situation in China and the action of CEOs that don't care about games, that don't care about art, and that wounds me. It hurts my feelings on a personal level, where I thought corporations like Blizzard could never reach.

I don't think I've said it enough. I love these games. They dominated my perceptions of fantasy and sci-fi and inspired my own abortive attempts at art and game design. It was an emotional investment, like your favorite sad song or a book that changed your life. There's a reason why, of all the classic games I own, three of the four on proud display in my bedroom are Blizzard classics. It's why, when I needed comfort during my hospital stay and space was limited in our tiny car, I took Warcraft 3 with me: a game from my childhood, downloading game demos on a dial-up modem and inadvertently stumbling upon a masterpiece that I was too young to appreciate.

Blizzard already has my money. I bought Diablo, Starcraft, etc. at full price from retail stores. Same for all of my merchandise. But from now on, these games that I used to love unconditionally will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know if I'll ever play them again, or at least any time soon. Those fond memories are now tainted through no fault of the games or their authors, but for the heartless cogs of corporate America and the times we live in.

I'm not an activist, and this isn't me "weighing in" like some worthless Twitter pundit.

This is a letter from a fan with a broken heart.

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