yep, it's real bad. sucks to watch a company you spent 15 years building a relationship with, whose history you've documented and raised up as a beacon in some ways just turn into this overnight. Like someone said somewhere else, I miss they days when they were just extorting money from people. Suffice it to say, I can't work with them anymore. The killing of the journalist is a pretty bad one but let's not forget the basically ongoing genocide in yemen. there's no way I could work on anything that has even a chance of enriching this guy. with US taxes and all the murdering our military does I have no choice other than becoming a citizen of another country. in this case here I have a choice.

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Posted by exodus on November 30, 2020 at 23:11:43 EST in reply to Mohammed Bin Salman is buying SNK. from Paleface.

yep, it's real bad. sucks to watch a company you spent 15 years building a relationship with, whose history you've documented and raised up as a beacon in some ways just turn into this overnight. Like someone said somewhere else, I miss they days when they were just extorting money from people. Suffice it to say, I can't work with them anymore. The killing of the journalist is a pretty bad one but let's not forget the basically ongoing genocide in yemen. there's no way I could work on anything that has even a chance of enriching this guy. with US taxes and all the murdering our military does I have no choice other than becoming a citizen of another country. in this case here I have a choice.

n/t

I would think any developers still at SNK worth their starch, or just halfway decent human beings, would be headed for the exit as well, regardless of how company-loyal Japanese work culture has traditionally been; when a murderous dictator buys your company, all bets have got to be off even in Japan, don't they? And MBS wouldn't be stupid enough to think he'd get the company with old developers--or even a good chunk of their nich audience--intact, would he? So did he just buy it for the properties, or the name?

(Paleface)

(21:01:34 12/01/20 EST)

you really overestimate... something, here. the integrity of human beings? I dunno. I doubt they'll lose a single person. SNK just got a lot of its old devs back and is starting to make traction. Frankly it'll probably be easier than ever for them to make new properties, revive old ones, etc, because their boss won't be as conservative about what games to make anymore. For people who don't care about ethics et cetera it'll be the glory days of SNK again.

(exodus)

(14:46:21 12/02/20 EST)

I wouldn't be surprised if they bring old shyster trump supporting ben herman back to lead a US division at this point.

(exodus)

(14:47:46 12/02/20 EST)

(Paleface)

(16:55:50 12/02/20 EST)

A guy I used to work with quit my company to go do basically the same thing for Aramco. He makes 2x and the place is fully funded and clean as a whistle. This was a few years ago, before the Khashoggi situation, but when that happened I thought about what it would be like going to work while your boss is on TV around the world for ordering a gruesome hit on someone...basically for writing stories about him. I have no interest in being anywhere near anything like that. I’ve had headhunters trying to get me to work in the UAE or for Raytheon or whatever...they throw a lot of money at the people they need and it works because of the “get paid, damn the consequences” attitude of so many of the guys in industry. I’m the one guy that just wants to go home and hang out with the family all day. I myself have worked for Aramco! I probably told this story before... It was around 2000 or 2001 when I was doing digital graphics stuff for a museum company. The project was the Saudi-Aramco museum which was, I think, in Saudi Arabia. (I just made the signs...). There was a common graphical theme that ran through many of the signs where you’d see these towers...I don’t know what to call them. They look like a Russian church, with those little onion points on top. When all the towers looked exactly like dicks, partially at the end. Someone wasn’t good with illustrator and all the towers looks liked giant dicks...how do you bring this up with a client who is a committee or 70 year old men who think everything is a sin? Most of my company was female, so that would make it more difficult. One day the new versions of everything had normal looking towers and no dicks. I had to wonder how that happened though...did someone on our end fix it unprompted or did someone at Aramco who had looked at their own disc recently notice it? Was it a protest? From where? Anyway, I didn’t really understand who Aramco was during this time but I think now it’s a lot harder to feign ignorance.

(SignOfZeta)

(11:14:07 12/03/20 EST)

iOS autocorrected every one of those “dicks” with “discs”, I didn’t fix them all, seems to work either way...

(SignOfZeta)

(12:43:53 12/03/20 EST)

I already find myself already ceasing to put #snk on Twitter posts I make about their old fighting games. They haven't made anything I've wanted to play in ages, and I stopped following their Twitter channel when it because clear it was just cheesecake for their mobile game, but man, now they're just dead to me. I have no problem playing their old stuff but only because my head seems to have completely disassociated it from current SNK.

(Paleface)

(01:25:29 12/04/20 EST)

You must know that enriching and supporting people like Mohammed bin Salman is the result of almost every single economic interaction in your life. That's just the way society is organized today. Working for this company instead of that one or buying that product instead of this one doesn't change anything about who derives profit from you. Are you actually so upset that he's doing it with his real name instead of through the usual anonymous international banking and investment corp? I guess that does put a bit more stress on the implicit bargain we make by living in modern society doesn't it?

(Convenience and Opa Opa)

(16:51:12 12/02/20 EST)

obviously I'm aware of that, but like I said, if I can make a choice, I would rather do it than not. Some other considerations that factor in, for example: I did take money from google to make a game. But I was certain it wouldn't make its money back, so I was taking that money from them and distributing it to my team rather than contributing back to the source. of course they can write off any losses, but it's slightly better than actively giving them money. Choice is largely an illusion under our current systems but why not practice exercising the better choices available in anticipation of a better system existing some day, or as an example to future generations who might live under such a system. Also if I weren't leaning toward this side with my choices I could very definitely a be rich libertarian money hoarder like so any other bay area people. Though I can't eject myself from the economic interactions that prop up all these people I can at least choose not to support them *this directly.* It's not much but it's better than zero. Like obviously me recycling, reusing bags, and walking instead of driving doesn't do much in the grand scheme when most of our pollution problems stem from an extremely small number of companies, but that doesn't mean strewing my trash around and driving a humvee when I want to go two blocks wouldn't negatively impact the environment more than what I'm doing.

(exodus)

(17:04:37 12/02/20 EST)

I don't see what makes the choice of Royalty Investment Partners, Llc. better than the Muhammed bin Salman Charitable Foundation. Is there something other than a bargain you've made for your silence in the name of convenience that makes them different? If the difference really is only that the public attachment of his name makes it hard for you to turn the other way, then the problem with taking a stand over the choice is that it implicitly strengthens the current system and the people who profit from it by giving the impression that you think one of the two choices is acceptable. This strenthens the bargain, both in your own conscience and for other people. As a result any path to this "better system" you vaguely imagine becomes more and more untenable. You should thoroughly and equally condemn all choices made within this system. Focus all of your attention on your own hipocrisy rather than deflecting it with imaginary ethical decisions.

(The Little Death and Total Obliteration)

(17:51:54 12/02/20 EST)

There’s nothing imaginary about feeling like shit for taking a paycheck from a company known to be controlled by one of the worst dudes living on planet Earth, which is the situation exodus would be in if he didn’t abandon whatever project I’m sure he’s been thinking about since the Samurai collection finished up. Your emotional distance from the situation is perhaps easier given your physical distance from the situation. Would you take $20 to mow his lawn if you just saw him push a button that launched a missile into a hospital? Maybe you would because, after all, it wouldn’t bring the hospital back. Not everyone is so enlightened though. Frankly this situation is very shitty but also very simple. I wouldn’t like walking away from them, as a customer or a consultant, but it wouldn’t be a difficult choice at all.

(SignOfZeta)

(12:59:46 12/03/20 EST)

No, you haven't been paying attention to what I said. I don't think anyone should accept working for Muhammed bin Salman. Working for him would be absolutely terrible and a moral trap, BUT SO IS WORKING FOR ANY CORPORATION. My comment was not just in response to exodus, either. It was also in response to other comments here, like yours, about not buying from SNK anymore. Buying stuff from Muhammad bin Salman would be absolutely terrible and a moral trap, BUT SO IS BUYING STUFF FROM ANY CORPORATION. This is not just because of some @CapitalismIsEvil bullshit, it's because all of your economic interactions literally benefit Muhammad bin Salman and other people exactly him, regardless of whether their names are attached to the companies. You know this just as well as I do and the only reason you don't make the exact same connection is that you've internalized the terms of a bargain with your conscience in which you agree not to think about the how your actions support these people and their system. I make that bargain, too, but I cannot accept its terms.

(Cuckness Unto Death and Opa Opa)

(14:26:44 12/03/20 EST)

I think exodus and Zeta won't appreciate your distinction until they've delved deep into the Motörhead discography and steeped themselves in many hours of Lemmy interviews on Youtube. It'll be a long process. There was a thread probably 15 years ago where the same argument played out over the morality of shopping at Target vs. Walmart. You can guess exactly how the ideologies diverged on that one.

(substance J)

(14:24:19 12/05/20 EST)

I don’t think that was a similar argument...but you are right, I fail to recognize the distinction and it’s mainly because man cannot live on the word of God alone. I see little that is actionable in all his theory.

(SignOfZeta)

(16:55:27 12/07/20 EST)

What you consider "actionable" depends so much on how you view your actions and your ethical relationship to the world. If you think you're a pretty great person, with forceful convictions that you stick to, then you're probably not going to be willing to sacrifice much of your convenience to do better. Afterall, you're already doing so much. On the other hand, when you see more clearly the compromises you make to your ideals every single day and feel all the guilt of that failure, then you'll find yourself more and more willing to take actions. You can't understand this in advance, so your judgements now about what is actionable are just not relevant. It has to start with an honest assessment of yourself. There's nothing abstract or theoretical about this. It's devestatingly practical.

(Lieas and Alibies and Opa Opa)

(19:10:10 12/07/20 EST)

I think I don't really understand what you're talking about because I am directly inconveniencing myself (monetarily) by not working with SNK anymore. Of course the ultimate rejection would be to live outside the system entirely but that's not a practical possibility when you have ailing parents with no incomes and are born into a society et cetera. you can get all the way down to the metal and say I should go off to farm by myself and affect/take care of nobody else but that doesn't feel like a real argument to me. You seemed to be saying that my sacrifice of convenience was meaningless, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at with this last bit.

(exodus)

(16:45:21 12/16/20 EST)

what he's saying is, if you don't like the way a guy is pimpin', you won't change anything by going to the cops. You gotta become a pimp and run a better game. If you aren't prepared for that, don't fuck.

(a-star)

(13:13:32 01/09/21 EST)

there's definitely a difference between shopping at target and walmart but it's not as big as shopping at walmart and growing your own food, and I think that's where I'm diverging most from what sweater fish is trying to say here (as I understand it), because I think the distinction between target and walmart is easy enough to make, and that through myriad small decisions you can have a slightly less worse impact on humanity than if you either choose the slightly greater of the evils or if you make no choice at all.

(exodus)

(16:47:21 12/16/20 EST)

This is why I only work on mobile games financed by The Human Fund ("Money For People" TM).

(substance J)

(14:25:17 12/05/20 EST)

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