Another One Bites the Dust: SWG Edition!

[sam, an eggplant]

I like to think I would take a principled stand too, but I wouldn't do it without another job lined up-- according to his CV, Gordon was unemployed for 8 months between SOE and Bioware Austin. That's brass balls right there.

I mean, if they were leaking toxic waste into elementary schools, sure. I'd walk away from that. But not a customer unfriendly videogame change.

[HaemishM]

Be able to walk away on principles could be entirely down to just how set up you are to be without a job for a significant amount of time.

[Sophismata]

I like to think I would take a principled stand too, but I wouldn't do it without another job lined up-- according to his CV, Gordon was unemployed for 8 months between SOE and Bioware Austin. That's brass balls right there.

I mean, if they were leaking toxic waste into elementary schools, sure. I'd walk away from that. But not a customer unfriendly videogame change.

That change might well have gotten him fired anyway. I think he saw the writing on the wall and took the smart, and principled route out.

[sam, an eggplant]

The smart way out would have been to hang on to his job for as long as possible while he lined up the next one. People have to pay their mortgages and their kids' orthodontists, they can't afford to take principled stands.

He may well have had freelancing/contract work to fill that 8 month gap, anyway. Just not on his CV.

[Ironwood]

Again, sometimes you can't afford NOT to.

Sure, money is neat and we all have bills, but you can't get your soul back.

Also, hanging on 'until' sometimes means you are, in fact, party to the illegal and ethical decisions made after the fact and therefore legally liable.

I'm told.

[Threash]

On the other hand, it's just a video game. Unless they were running actual scams I wouldn't consider disagreeing with their plans for the game an "ethical" issue at all.

[sam, an eggplant]

You guys are taking wildly different tacks.

Obviously you immediately quit if you would be implicated in something illegal. There's a huge distance between illegal and unethical.

Walton's story is he believed the NGE was unethical because it would essentially destroy the game and as exec producer he had a duty to make it successful. He believed it strongly enough to force them to fire him. And he was right.

Imagine you're the executive chef at a fancy restaurant. The owner comes in complaining about food costs and tells you to sell butterfish as Chilean sea bass. You know people will notice, and as the executive chef you are ultimately held responsible for the quality of the food, so you quit. Same deal.

[Threash]

Imagine you're the executive chef at a fancy restaurant. The owner comes in complaining about food costs and tells you to sell butterfish as Chilean sea bass. You know people will notice, and as the executive chef you are ultimately held responsible for the quality of the food, so you quit. Same deal.

Yeah, but that would be an actual scam rather than just a change in the direction of the restaurant.

[sam, an eggplant]

OK, imagine he told you to use crisco rather than extra virgin olive oil, then.

[Ironwood]

There's a huge distance between illegal and unethical.

It's a distance quickly covered.

[sam, an eggplant]

It's not, because they aren't on the same scale. Illegal doesn't mean "more unethical".

We break laws all the time, doing things like jaywalking across the street, downloading a TV show our DVR messed up, smoking weed, throwing out the previous occupant's junk mail, not paying the "use tax" on our taxes, and driving 74 in a 65MPH zone. These things are all illegal but not unethical.

We (hopefully) don't do unethical things ever. Unethical things hurt people or break promises. Many actions are unethical but not illegal.

And some, of course, are both.

[Surlyboi]

in the world of finance, unethical is quite frequently also illegal.

[sam, an eggplant]

He was producing a videogame, not managing a mutual fund for fidelity.

[Raph]

I wasn't going to post on this, but seeing the subsequent discussion makes me feel like I need to.

Gordon is one of the most ethical people in the games business. There's a reason why his name keeps popping up on projects and why he is so well-respected. There are many more stories beyond the one being discussed here.

[taolurker]

It definitely wouldn't be considered illegal exactly because of the EULA and how the game is subject to constant change, evolution, and destruction at any time. The characters aren't even yours, you're just given access to them, and a game world.

I'll tell you what made the choice for SWG, and it wasn't ethics it was moneyhats and misconceptions about a failing game, bad press, and how much marketing bad gaming decisions can have. The powers that be saw the "action" combat as getting the subscriptions and interest that previously should've been built into the SW IP, but it also wasn't making money or worth a minor injection of that as a separate system and architecture.

[Paelos]

The smart way out would have been to hang on to his job for as long as possible while he lined up the next one. People have to pay their mortgages and their kids' orthodontists, they can't afford to take principled stands.

No offense, but the clients I knew who took that kind of out were never ethical to begin with. They used that kind of thinking to continually rationalize the fact that they were lying scammers. Just because your bad money goes to your family doesn't make it right, ever.

It's easy to say, "Well I'm helping MY people/employees/family so fuck the people dumb enough to buy into this." That doesn't make it the right thing to do. Not even close.

EDIT: And even more than that, you usually don't HAVE to do that. The decision more often than not boils down to greed and laziness.

[Surlyboi]

He was producing a videogame, not managing a mutual fund for fidelity.

But that's not what Ironwood was referring to when he replied to your blanket statement. I get where you're coming from, but I also get where he's coming from. So if you'd like to amend that "There's a huge distance between illegal and unethical." to something like, "There's a huge distance between illegal and unethical in the gaming industry." we'd all get along.

[sam, an eggplant]

No, there's a huge difference everywhere, in every industry. They are not synonymous. Their venn diagrams sometimes intersect, that's all.

Paelos, it would take some seriously unethical doings to get me to toss my family to the wolves. My duty as steward of a videogame wouldn't do it. But I guess everybody has a different breaking point.

[Threash]

I wasn't going to post on this, but seeing the subsequent discussion makes me feel like I need to.

Gordon is one of the most ethical people in the games business. There's a reason why his name keeps popping up on projects and why he is so well-respected. There are many more stories beyond the one being discussed here.

Not saying he isn't, just saying "I disagree with the direction you want to take this videogame in" isn't exactly taking a moral stand, it's just...disagreeing with your boss.

[Morat20]

I dunno. I can see the ethics in looking at an upcoming change and thinking "Well, a lot of our customers are going to feel we fucked them. We're about to piss paying customers WAY the fuck off" -- and with the fact that the NGE was timed right after an expansion walked out the door, it feels more than a bit dirty.

Like "let's pump the chumps for one last payout, before we flip them the bird and look for different customers".

[Paelos]

No, there's a huge difference everywhere, in every industry. They are not synonymous. Their venn diagrams sometimes intersect, that's all.

Paelos, it would take some seriously unethical doings to get me to toss my family to the wolves. My duty as steward of a videogame wouldn't do it. But I guess everybody has a different breaking point.

That's my point, often powerful people jump immediately to the idea that if they quit they are throwing their family to the wolves. The reality is usually far from that. The reality is usually a few months of savings while finding a job, and these people aren't hourly rate workers living paycheck to paycheck.

[Triforcer]

Put me in Sam's camp on this one.  Unless they were selling cc information to the Russians (or trying to destroy the game as some sort of Byzantine tax dodge) there is nothing unethical going on with the NGE.

You have to remember that the people pushing the NGE thought it would work.  At that point, we are talking about good faith differences in opinion.  And remember that every MMO patch, ever, in the history of time and space, has "ruined the game" and "betrayed the community" if you believe forum posts.  Saying "I resigned because of NGE" is no different than saying "I resigned because they increased cleric heal aggro" in EQ in 1999.  If God listed every issue in the universe from most to least ethically weighted, "nerfing riflemen" would be second to last in front of "Times New Roman or Calibri font?"

[Surlyboi]

The people that thought the NGE would work were fucking idiots.

Anyone that did even the slightest bit of research into their playerbase would've said, "oh hell no." from the start. And no, there's a big difference between changing one mechanic and changing the entire core concept of a game.

full disclosure, it was the CE that brought me to f13 back in the day and I'm still pissy about the abject lack of research that went into the changes.

[Threash]

Not just that, but staying the course was already a failure.  If you are about to lose anyways your only shot is a hail mary pass, even if they fail 99% of the time.

[sam, an eggplant]

We theorized staying the course was untenable due to Lucas' license costs. We don't actually know the nitty-gritty there. If not for Lucas wanting his money and/or flexing his muscles to point the game in a wildly divergent direction, SWG should have been sustainable for many more years. It had a great population of committed players. It just wasn't WoW, and they thought it underserved the Star Wars IP.

Also, I never said that Walton didn't leave for ethical reasons-- he said he did, and I have no reason to think he's lying. His duty was to shepherd the game, and he believed the NGE would be disastrous. He was, of course, proven right.

[Lantyssa]

Ten years later and SWG still evokes pages of discussion.

[Triforcer]

Ten years later and SWG still evokes pages of discussion.

Imagine how much more we could debate if Raph had implemented Outcasting!

[Zetor]

Ten years later and SWG still evokes pages of discussion.

Imagine how much more we could debate if Raph had implemented Outcasting!

Wouldn't he have to bring back Precasting first?

[Surlyboi]

[tmp]

He was producing a videogame, not managing a mutual fund for fidelity.

This "it's just a videogame lololol" is precisely the attitude that keeps this whole industry the shit it is.

[HaemishM]

Well that and the preponderance of idiotic, socially-retarded manchildren in charge of most of it.

[Yegolev]

There's a huge distance between illegal and unethical.

Send me your resume immediately.

[Yegolev]

He was producing a videogame, not managing a mutual fund for fidelity.

This "it's just a videogame lololol" is precisely the attitude that keeps this whole industry the shit it is.

Well that and the preponderance of idiotic, socially-retarded manchildren in charge of most of it.

This is, of course, why real programmers don't work on vidya games.  Seems to be a self-feeding mechanism.

[Hutch]

Ten years later and SWG still evokes pages of discussion.

There was a brief moment where I thought SWG might take over the Crowfall thread. Alas, it fizzled out there.

[Merusk]

He was producing a videogame, not managing a mutual fund for fidelity.

This "it's just a videogame lololol" is precisely the attitude that keeps this whole industry the shit it is.

Well that and the preponderance of idiotic, socially-retarded manchildren in charge of most of it.

This is, of course, why real programmers don't work on vidya games.  Seems to be a self-feeding mechanism.

I keep wondering if at some point in the future, Tech-savvy businessmen who could run real corporations as a great business instead of as a huckster's paradise will take over a game company or two. 

This might change things, as they implement a more structured format and more rigorous protocols. Transforming their part of the industry to create giants like has happened in other creative fields while the "Artists" and "in it for the love, man" types go off to be independent flailing studios like we've seen here and other creative industries.  That or they'll realize that the reason EA and Activision were huckster's paradises is because the talent involved and the clientele just don't care.