That’s it. The last of my kids has stopped being a kid. I’m now the father of 3 adults.<\/p>\n
In addition to editing the shows, he sometimes captures gameplay footage for the videos. A week ago I was trying to figure out why his Borderlands 3<\/em> footage was blurry and I realized he was using the super-annoying 16:10 monitor I handed down to him years ago. I forgot all about that dumb thing. His native resolution was 1680 x 1050, which means all of his footage needed to be upscaled, and then<\/strong> cropped \/ squashed.<\/p>\n So I got him a proper 1080p monitor for his birthday. I don’t have anything against 16:10, except that it’s annoying to have when your job involves creating 1080p content.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’ve been dabbling in music production for a few years now<\/a>, but I’m entirely self-taught. That’s the fun way to learn, but it does leave you with awkward gaps in your knowledge. Now I’m trying to fill in those gaps. I’ve been at this long enough to see that this isn’t something I’m exceptionally skilled at. Programming and writing both came to me pretty naturally. Sure, I had to work hard to get good at them, but I seemed to clear the gap between “clueless newbie” and “producing useful work” fairly quickly. The music production stuff doesn’t come naturally to me and I seem to be stuck in this learning dead zone where I’m not getting better with practice.<\/p>\n I know people don’t follow me for music and I’m never going to make money doing this. I am reminded of the old golfing joke:<\/p>\n That’s pretty much where I’ve been with my music production hobby over the last couple of years. I’m not good at it, but it makes me happy.<\/p>\n Like I mentioned on the podcast last week<\/a>, I’m taking a one-month music production course taught by Andrew Huang<\/a> on the website Monthly<\/a>That’s a referral link, BTW. Not that it matters. Enrollment is over so I don’t think you can actually join.<\/span>.\u00a0We’re at the end of week 1 now.<\/p>\n The good<\/strong>: I really am learning a lot. \u00a0A lot of my fellow classmates seem to be in the same boat I am: Technically doing all the right stuff with regards to coming up with good chord progressions and beats, but lacking the fundamental spark that will make people put your track into their playlist.<\/p>\n The Bad:<\/strong> The Monthly website is a bit new and rough around the edges. They’re still working out how their virtual classroom should work. The intent seems to be that the students should all interact with each other to encourage and critique. That’s a good design goal. The problem is that the interface feels like an awkward Twitter knockoff and it’s pretty difficult to have a proper back-and-forth with someone. Most interactions boil down to a few dozen strangers all saying “Great track, love the vibe!” to each other in drive-by comments. Not really useful for sharing knowledge. This system needs to be less like Instagram and more like Reddit. I know Reddit isn’t a sexy website with rounded corners and tons of whitespace, but it’s really good at facilitating information exchangeCompared to the big social media platforms.<\/span>. I feel like a site focused on education should have a design where utility wins out over aesthetics.<\/p>\n The Other Bad Thing, Except This One is My Fault<\/strong>: The class is supposed to be about 7-10 hours per week. I’m putting in a little more than that because the lectures are good and I want to apply the knowledge right away. I usually have my DAW open as I watch the lectures and I often pause to experiment. That’s good, but I’ve been stealing hours from the blog to do this. I don’t think my next retrospective series will be ready by next Tuesday.<\/p>\n Ugh. This story. Here is a brief summary:<\/p>\n A week ago the pro Hearthstone player Blitzchung won a tournament. Afterward, he appeared in an interview wearing goggles and a face mask and shouted “Liberate Hong Kong!”, showing solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters. The interviewers ducked behind their desk and laughed, and then the interview was terminated. Two days later, Blitzchung was stripped of his prize money, stripped of his title, removed from the grandmaster league, and banned from Hearthstone competition for a full year. Additionally, the interviewers were also fired, even though they didn’t express any overt support for Hong Kong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This obviously touches on politics and would normally be a no-go zone on this site due to the no-politics rule<\/a>. On the other hand, a major theme of this site is bitching and moaning about the behavior of the big publishers, and this is THE big story of corporate chicanery in 2019.\u00a0Our favorite topic just intersected with our forbidden topic.<\/p>\n I think it makes sense to talk about it. I avoid politics because I don’t want the headaches and responsibility of moderating a flamewar, but I don’t think this is likely to cause a big partisan divide. The vast majority of the Anglosphere is siding with Hong Kong, and thus Blitzchung, and thus coming down in opposition to Blizzard’s heavy-handed response. I think we should be able to talk about this without everyone becoming tribalIf I’m wrong and we DO get people coming in with pro-Blizzard \/ Pro-China sentiment, then please just let them have their say rather than picking a fight. Blame me for miscalculating. We’re not going to solve this complex geopolitical problem on my blog.<\/span>.<\/p>\n I have a video on the topic tomorrow. I’m really trying to avoid current events in my videos because stories move too fast for us. I prefer to sit on a story, mull things over, look for a fresh angle, and go through many revisions before I post my thoughts. That approach works well when you’re discussing games that came out two years ago, but it doesn’t really work with the rapid churn of the 24 news cycle. By the time we get the video done, the story has evolved and people have moved on. Lots of other people<\/a> are working on covering same-day news, and I should probably stick to covering topics that have solidified. On the other hand, I really wanted to weigh in here.<\/p>\n I don’t know. We’ll see if this one comes back to bite me.<\/p>\n Let me tackle a related Diecast mailbag question:<\/p>\n Blizzard recently banned a pro Hearthstone player for saying a “Liberate Hong Kong” slogan during a post-game interview. The move is widely being seen as bowing to Chinese censors and the internet is very upset, but Blizzard are in an awkward spot. Even without pressure from China, they have a desire to keep politics out of the game because allowing players to say anything is a recipe for conflict. Just imagine if players started using their interviews to shout out controversial stances on the political parties from your country.<\/p>\n I agree that they’re in a tough spot. They have fans on both sides of the China vs. HK divide and they need to walk a fine line. I don’t have a problem with their no-politics stance.<\/p>\n If a westerner was being interviewed regarding a recent win and they suddenly shouted a slogan from the American right or left, then I think it’s totally reasonable to expect Blizzard to do something. They could chastise the player in public and encourage them (in private) to issue a sort of “sorry for bringing up politics during gaming funtimes” quasi-apology that tries to make peace without recanting their beliefs”Sorry if you were offended” is the classic template for this sort of unpology.<\/span>. If they’re not willing to help smooth things over, then maybe suspend them from the league for a couple of weeks and let them know that future deliberate infractions could result in a ban. If this becomes a regular problem, then Blizzard could crank up the punishments until people stop doing it.<\/p>\n I think it’s totally reasonable to want the games to be a neutral space. This is particularly true when there is active daily violence going on between the two sides. This isn’t an academic debate; people really are hurting each other over this and you could argue that telling participants to leave their conflicts at home is just a basic step of safety and security. If the Hearthstone league had been around in 1862, then Blizzard would have needed to insist that the players from the Union and the Confederacy leave their differences at the door in order to avoid violence.<\/p>\n The problem is that their first instinct was ridiculously knee-jerk and over the top. They stripped Blitzchung of his prize money, removed him from the Grandmaster league, and<\/strong> banned him for a year? That’s not how western companies act in response to these sorts of infractions. That’s how China<\/strong> acts and thinks. This weird thinking even extends to Blizzard’s social media presence. Here in the west they issued an announcement in English that sounded like what you’d expect. The Tweet boiled down to “We don’t want politics in our community”. Okay, fair enough. But then on their Chinese feed they said something very different:<\/p>\n “Defend the honor of our countryI’ve seen two different translations of this, and one used “our country” instead of “China”. I have no idea which is more correct. Translation is a tricky and inexact business.<\/span> at all costs”? Not only is this message obviously siding with the Chinese government, but it’s overtly bellicose about it. This two-faced approach to social media also reflects a very PRCThat is, the government of China, not the people of China.<\/span> way of thinking. The idea of issuing two contradictory statements in different languages is laughable in the west, because we all know that you can’t get away with this sort of nonsense. People will<\/strong> notice. This behavior reflects the mindset of your typical PRC censor who is used to pretending like the internet doesn’t exist outside of the Great Firewall.<\/p>\n And then there’s Blizzard’s awkward unpology<\/a>, which apparently doesn’t sound anything like Blizzard president J. Allen Brack<\/a>. Once again, it sounds like the PRC. (My own pet theory is that the PRC censors are effectively embedded in the company. Still, I think it’s fair to hold Activision-Blizzard accountable for the behavior of Blizzard, and also fair to hold Blizzard accountable for the behavior of the censors that control their social media presence in China. If the PRC is putting words in Blizzard’s mouth, then it’s up to Blizzard to say so in the west.)<\/p>\n So to answer the question: I don’t have a problem with Blizzard wanting to remain neutral. They don’t need to take a side. My problem is that it looks like they have<\/strong> picked a side.<\/p>\n Back in January I wrote an article<\/a> about Activision-Blizzard (parent company) vs. Blizzard (subsidiary) and in that article I had an aside that has aged very poorly:<\/p>\n The difference is that Blizzard\u2019s faults are the result of misjudgement rather than contempt for the consumer. Blizzard is so beloved that it has\u00a0a convention<\/a>, which welcomed 40,000 enthusiastic fans\u00a0last year<\/a>. If Activision ever tried to host a convention, the only attendees would be protestors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nMusic School<\/h3>\n
<\/div>The Blizzard Thing<\/h3>\n
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