So the DICE Awards, the video game industry’s Oscar equivalent held last night. A number of games took home trophies, including those from Hazelight Studios It takes two, which won its second Game of the Year award – but that wasn’t the biggest news of the night. No, people were waiting to find out what kind of mess could happen on stage. Earlier in the day before the event unfolded, Kind of funny Co-founder and industry hypeman Gregory Mueller tweeted that he would use his airtime in front of the industry’s top developers to “Mac[ing] enemies”. Well, he said something that got applause from the crowd at the end.
Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard opened the night with a monologue about “world turmoil and uncertainty,” particularly given the horrific events in Ukraine. He talked about Wordl
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After jokes Cyberpunk 2077, Metroid horror and NFTs
Mueller tells igamesnews via email that while he was willing to debate with the show’s producers and writers about including such a blunt critique in their speech, not only did he not have to, but was also commended for being so candid .
“As we got closer to the DICE Awards, I knew I wanted the monologue to say something real about NFTs and the abuse that’s rampant in the industry,” Miller said. “I’d seen Geoff get a backlash from the Game Awards for not naming names, so I was willing to fight to get stuff like that in.
“As for the audience, I don’t think they expected us to play that hard,” Miller continued. “There were the usual laughs and groans, but there was stunned silence as well. Everyone who reached out to me afterwards said they loved it and stuck to the message — no one told me I was wrong.”
igamesnews has reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
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Miller is not wrong. The maligned CEO was in the headlines for months for a variety of reasons, but one of the worst was a Wall Street Journal report about Kotick threatening to kill an assistant via voicemail. He is always been an assholeseemingly Downplaying the seriousness of Activision Blizzard’s sexual harassment issues while touting a takeover of Microsoft just days after the harassment report has been submitted. He was supposedly responsible to prevent those who have committed sexual acts dDiscrimination and harassment for getting fired while being shitty towards women himself. He’s the definition of “scumbag,” an example of the worst parts of the industry.
It’s great to see high profile figures not only demanding better things from the gaming industry, but rightly challenging those who perpetuate harmful work environments. Things won’t change until there are enough voices actively fighting for it. The only way to stop abuse is to fight back.