Crom, I have never prayed to you before, have no tongue for it, No one, no even you will remember if we were good or bad. Why we fought, or why we died.
Iâm not sure if I regret buying it but if I could do it all again yeah I wouldnât have bought it yet, not until it was in a better state.
The one thing it has going for it is that blizzard wants to make it work. Even if itâs just for their own profit rather than because they want to make a good game, theyâre at least allocating dev resources to it which theyâre not doing for D2R.
I am quietly confident that the decision-makers within blizzard went all pikachu-face at the speed and rate that the whole world dropped the game like a hot potato and called them out for the unpolished turd that they served us.
You canât sell gamers a game at that price at the state it was in and not have fall-out.
Hopefully upper management have realised that pissing everyone off on that scale does nothing but damage their own brand and future profitability because a significant number of pc gamers arenât going to buy another blizzard game, at least until it has been out for years and has shown itâs worth playing.
Hopefully whoever it was that had final say over the gameâs development (and patch releases) that resulted in us being served a steaming plate of excrement has acknowledged they need to ease up on the reins and let others drive for a while.
Itâs unlikely but thatâs probably the only shot it has at becoming a better game.
Kind of depends on the context, no? I think earlier posts in here were deleted so itâs hard to chime in on the 11th hour and comment about it⌠and I guess people that try to make a joke online are more often than not setting themselves up for failureâŚ
But to make an absolute comment to say that making jokes about certain things is unacceptable, isnât exactly correct either.
I donât think heâs trying to be inconsistent with his train of thought, based on his belief - which are consistent with my own real world observations - that the vast vast majority of developers are male, and presumably the discrepancy is no where near as large between races.
Of course developers are far and away not the only people that contribute to a game, you have VFX people, audio people, story designers, so on and so on, so yeah a bit misguided.
Not necessarily women, but Iâd wager a bunch of clueless, token diversity hires.
At any rate, I wouldnât boil down Diablo 4âs âfailureâ (in quotes because in my eyes, Diablo 4 was worth my money, D2R not as much) down to diversity based hiring but from
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the controversies that surrounded Blizzard, which affected retention of good talent and knowledge, and
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the pressure from higher ups to release a game early that wasnât ready for a full, polished release.
The original context is still shown in a quote in my reply, second post of the thread. jimmy said d4 failed because they have women developers.
Offensive things said as jokes donât get a free pass though.
The inconsistency is in how he thinks each demographic will negatively influence the development of D4.
The proposition of hiring someoneâs whoâs black is apparently no negative effect to the resulting quality of the game.
The proposition of hiring someoneâs whoâs female is that itâs obviously a diversity hire and will therefore negatively affect the quality of the game along with an assumption that she must also not have sufficient qualifications for the job.
His responses to both scenarios shows his underlying feelings about each demographic, which he then pretty much went on to verbalise himself.
To say that a black developer would produce poor work and negatively affect the game⌠would be nothing but straight racism.
Noone is dumb enough to come out with a statement like that because they know theyâd be called out for being racist.
To say that a female developer would produce poor work and negatively affect the gameâŚ
despite being nothing but straight sexism, seems to be something that some people feel they can still acceptably say out loud. and joke about. and defend their right to joke about. and then try explain away as a diversity hire based on statistics of the existing demographic of developers not matching up.
My point is that weâre further along in knowing itâs socially unacceptable to spout racism (and racist âjokesâ) but sexist ones are still popular and apparently okay. and lots of men still insist on their right to be able to do it, and to have noone call them out for it.
and what correlations would you like to make with that data? any in terms of what it means for the quality of work being produced? their qualifications? suitability for the job?
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Didnât realise that was the entire joke. So yeah, even if it was a joke, it was done in very poor taste.
The inconsistency may not be born out of being intrinsically female, but that the perceived number of female programmers is notably less than the number of non-white programmers.
Well it doesnât mean that hirers should judge individual applicants with different criteria or make assumptions about their competency, based on race, gender and so on.
However, it also does mean that if you have 9 male applicants and 1 female applicant to fill a position, not knowing anything else, the probability that at least 1 of the male applicants is best suited for the job is much higher than the 1 female applicant being the best suited.
In essence, itâs not a critique of female developers, but being suspect of hiring practices of companies, if you believe statistics actually matter.
If a Diablo 2 player said they started playing ladder and have self-found 5 Ist runes and 5 Ber runes, that would be more suspect of being untruthful than if they made the claim that they self-found 8 Ist runes and 2 Ber runes.
Sadly, women are the most broadly and consistently looked-down-upon group throughout all of human history. That bell doesnât get unrung very easily.
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Yet a 4 on benefits can still monkey branch to a 6-figure guy. Not possible for men. If youâre a loser or had no chances you will die as a loser.
I have no idea what you just said.
You canât use their rarity to make guesses on how good or bad they must be as a developer. Thereâs no connection there, and thatâs the connection this thread has been discussing.
Funny, because that appears to be exactly what youâre doing in your very next sentence.
Saying that âthe probability that at least 1 male applicant is best suited for the jobâ is a contradiction to âhirers shouldnât make assumptions about their competencyâ in my personal opinion.
âbest suitedâ is singular and can only apply to one candidate out of the 10.
If youâd said the probability that the new hire was a man then Iâd have agreed with you, but thatâs different to what you said. The wording is subtle but important.
All 10 candidates might be appropriately qualified but only one will be âthe best suited for the jobâ, presumably the one they hire.
If youâre saying that âAT LEASTâ one male candidate is best suited then youâre referencing their competency. Competency that youâve already assumed the female applicant doesnât possess, else there was no reason to exclude her from a list that was greater than 1.
No connection can be made about the female applicantâs suitability for the job based off her being female.
I could just as easily try saying that men apply for jobs theyâre unqualified for at 9 times the rate women do, which accounts for the ratio in men vs women when applying for the same role. I wouldnât, because I donât believe it, but something something correlation causation.
That aside, the original discussion about statistics was not on the probability of a male candidate being hired given the ratio of male versus female candidates. Thatâs moving the goal post quite a ways.
The original statement was that if an existing coding team consisted of 90 men and 10 women⌠and two new people were hired⌠then the odds are that she was not hired for her skills. Thatâs a very different statement to the one youâre trying to make, yes?
So Iâm not sure whether youâre trying to re-word what jimmy is saying because you agree with him but think I misunderstood it⌠or whether you are trying to make a new and different a point⌠or some other possibilityâŚ
But I will never agree that a minority (female, gay, asian, black, transgender, take your pick) who got hired (and beat those 9 white men) is not the best person for the job, or unqualified for the job, or will ruin the end product, or any other negative assumption about the quality of their work⌠for no other reason than their gender/race/sexual orientation was a statistic minority in the line-up of candidates.
You canât use the probability of them getting hired to then make assumptions about how they will perform in the role. Or in future hiring processes to apply to other candidates who belong to the same demographic. Itâs just discrimination.
Thatâs the entirety of what this thread has been about and you appear to be defending it. Iâll give you the benefit of the doubt for not having seen the initial joke but everything else is still here and readable, so Iâm not giving you a pass for that.
This analogy doesnât work for me, Iâm not sure what youâre trying to say with it.
Heâs referencing a scale that rates women from 1-10 in terms of quality.
Heâs saying that a woman who is âa 4â (out of 10) can still land a guy who makes a 6 figure income. AKA an ugly woman can still land what he presumably thinks is a high quality man based on income.
But that if the situation were reversed⌠a broke man could not land a hot chick and heâll die alone instead.
I disagree with what heâs saying for multiple reasons but Iâm not sure Iâm up for that on this forum.
I know. Iâm just saying I get where heâs coming from (A) to help deliver an answer to your question, but I also donât agree with the conclusion he arrived at (B) of saying openly âbecause they hired female developersâ. The statement is open to misinterpretation and not at all helpful.
I donât think itâs healthy to view this as a contradiction. See below.
I appreciate that I made the example a tad confusing by saying âat leastâ. However, I mentioned this to include scenarios where the hirer is filling more than 1 open role for the same position.
Based on probabilities alone, youâre more likely to hire or shortlist 4 male applicants before the 1 female applicant, if there are 9 male and 1 female applicants in total and that the selection criteria is merit based.
That said, this factor should be discarded and individual applicants be judged fairly. If the female got hired after that, then so be it. Afterall, itâs possible that she is the best candidate.
I forgot to mention that Ist runes are a lot more common to drop than Ber runes in that analogy.
Which one?
Before replying to what youâve said here I just wanna check if that was a typo and was supposed to say âand that the selection criteria is not merit basedâ ? How are the applicantâs genitals related to their merit?
Yes thatâs what the previous conversation was about, as per below.
I feel like your replies are best directed at jimmy and telling him why heâs wrong, rather than at me.
As if white men donât have a tendency to hire other white men. Like we all havenât heard our bosses not hire a minority because they wouldnât be a âgood fit for the teamâ or that team culture is important etc.
A company who was literally sued by the city for sexist practises. and yet supposedly the male-to-female ratio of existing developers can be used to statistically decide that another man is best suited to the job. and that if a woman was hired, sheâs unskilled.
The one about how he seemingly treated female developers differently to non-whites. Itâs likely his understanding of the developer marketplace that lead to that sort of understanding.
The 9 males, 1 female part is purely based on market supply, before the company has a chance to review the CVâs.
If weâre getting technical, my statement could be rephrased to:
I mean if he continues to chime in on this thread, and I feel heâs open to convincing OR he responds to me, then sure. My thoughts expressed here are not just for the people involved, but for anyone else reading as well.
Not non-white developers. Black developers, and they are rarer than female developers so the answer he gave does not make sense in terms of statistical odds.
That aside, I wasnât asking because I wanted an to answer the question. I was asking so as to suss out the different responses I knew heâd give me when presented with the same scenario twice but with sex swapped out for race.
To summarise his responses:
- The existence of a female developer in a sea of male developers makes her a diversity hire who is unskilled for the job and the resulting product will suffer.
- The existence of a black developer in a sea of white developers does not necessarily make him a diversity hire who is unskilled for the job and nor will the resulting product suffer, provided they hired the best people for the job.
AKA someone being of a racial minority is afforded more benefit of the doubt than someone being of a minority in terms of their sex.
You answering it doesnât really achieve anything for me because itâs not your sexist views that Iâm trying to have you publicly admit.
I think this is a different statement to the one you were making earlier about a man being best suited for the job. And I still donât agree that merit has any relevance in the statement youâre making.
As an analogy of my own. If 10 marbles are rolled around a funnel, 9 yellow marbles and one blue, and I had to bet on which colour would drop out the bottom first, I would bet on a yellow marble being out first on probability alone. More yellows were entered.
But itâs not accurate to then try and correlate the marbleâs colour to its performance in getting out first. or saying that yellow marbles are best suited to funnel races. or that yellow marbles are faster. or that blue marbles are not fast enough. or that if a blue ever did win a race then itâs because of diversity because statistically a yellow one should have won.
All of those are statements that I believe have been made here in this thread. and those kinds of statements tend to encourage other people to boil it down as yellow marbles are just better than blue marbles, and if theyâre ever involved in another funnel race where the entrants are an opposite ratio of 9 blue marbles and one yellow⌠they will STILL think a yellow marble is better for the job/faster/going to win because a lifetime of generalisation results in a bias. Theyâll probably then still insist itâs because of odds and probability.
Nor do I think there is âmeritâ to being a yellow marble.
That doesnât really make any sense to me. Merit doesnât belong in that sentence if youâre basing probability on nothing but representation of marble colour, in my opinion. The rest of the sentence was fine up until then.
I also think tense is important here. I see âyouâre more likely to hire 4 male applicants before the 1 female applicantâ as saying a different thing to âyouâre more likely to have hired 4 male applicants before 1 female oneâ
The former is present tense, my mind reads that as you being the employer⌠youâre still in the interviewing phase and youâre about to choose the four men before the one woman. It gives a totally different picture to saying it in past tense⌠you being the employer⌠you just held interviews and you ended up with four men.
Does that make sense? If you say it as is - that youâre more likely to hire 4 men before 1 woman, it is a lot more open to being misconstrued. Iâm not sure which version is the one youâre saying though.
I suspect his account is on time-out for saying something offensive. 
Your analogy is pretty much spot on and what I was trying to represent.
Just in response to the below.
I mean, the word âmeritâ is contextual, you could argue the word âmeritâ if applied to marbles (if that is even possible) could be attributed to their shape, weight, aerodynamics and lack of friction.
But until those things are known to the observer, we have no choice other than to defer to probabilities based on colour, and hence declare that based on information that we know at this point, a yellow marble is most likely to end up reaching the bottom first.
At the same time, the fact that we donât know doesnât change the idea that weâre subsequently piping the candidates (marbles or people) through some kind of merit based system.
Perhaps youâre technically right there, but I think itâs a pretty sad state of affairs if the cultural norm is to interpret people based on what they actually say vs what could be reasonably inferred as what they really mean, or⌠the real intention behind their words based on context, tone, and how much the other person trusts in the listener/reader to not bend what they want to express into something that they did not mean.
Itâs something Iâm sad to see as it strips away the empathy that is critical to carry out meaningful discussions with other fellow human beings.
I also qualified the cited statement of mine with âBased on probabilities aloneâ.
Either way, Iâm thinking you know where I stand anyway but let me know if youâre still unsure.
Yes, exactly.
âmeritâ covers a bunch of other data points that canât be used in making a conclusion about which colour we should bet on as then itâs no longer a probability calculated off just colour.
Those properties are variables and they will influence the outcome, and then itâs no longer about just the representation of each colour, is it? So how can it be a fair statement to include it?
Just as how can it be fair to include merit in this statement and then claim the outcome is based on probabilities alone, because there are more men than women?
You havenât come to that conclusion based on the numbers of men versus women. Itâs the numbers of men versus women⌠and merit. Which is variable.
So what merits did you have in mind?
Shape/weight/aerodydnamics is to yellow vs blue marbles as _______ is to male vs female applicants?
Full transparency here - this question could probably rightfully be seen as a bait.
Yes I think itâs a pretty sad state of affairs too. Iâm not sure Iâd call it the cultural norm but itâs a lived experience for many people who donât fit the majority demographic and cop the raw end of discrimination based around that.
Iâm not a white man. You can only give people the benefit of the doubt so many times while they donât do the same in return.
Why would anyone choose to believe what could be reasonably inferred as what they really mean⌠(versus what they actually say) when the context of the discussion originated on sexist jokes, ongoing defense of the ability to make those jokes and statements about diversity hires? And when someone else even jumped in to say the exact same thing? (solidsnekâs post)
To be fair, thatâs a two-way street. and I gave them every opportunity to explain what they were really trying to say.
Iâm all for meaningful discussion with other fellow human beings, where it is deserved. Is the original tone of this thread what you consider to be meaningful discussion?
Yeah but if that is because there are more men than women who applied⌠and merit⌠then itâs not really a probability based on numbers anymore. Is it?
Yes I think I do.
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I missed this in my initial read-through but this is ultimately where I think the problem boils down to.
You canât use an outcome based on a 9-vs-1 probability to then mean anything in a merit-based system. It doesnât translate, and yet thatâs exactly what people are trying to do but thatâs just survivorship bias in my personal opinion. How could anyone legitimately consider it as merit?
as if anyone of the pc wokeys is looking out for any of the minorities except blacks.