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Episode 2 of the Seestra Gaming Podcast full Shownotes!



Date: August 4th 2021

Episode:2


Welcome to Seestra Gaming!

This is the Gaming podcast for those who are hardcore about not being hardcore!

I am : Eva @Eva_chats and this is : Harrainna @Harainna


You can reach the show by email at SeestraGaming@gmail.com


You can tweet the show @SeestraGaming


You can find the show notes and our twitch channel at www.SeestraGaming.com




News Topic:

  • Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Timeline provided by IGN which made it ALOT easier to gather all that has happened this week!

  • We will take turns reading each days update from the start of the lawsuit till now to catch you up!



Harainna

  1. July 20, 2021 –

    1. Activision Blizzard Sued by California over Allegations of ‘Frat Boy Culture’ and Sexual Harassment

Eva

  1. July 21, 2021 –

    1. A day after the lawsuit made headlines, Activision Blizzard released an official statement in response, claiming that the “DFEH includes distorted, and in many cases false, descriptions of Blizzard’s past.” It claimed it has been “extremely cooperative with the DFEH throughout their investigation,” but that they “refused to inform us what issues they perceived.”

HARAINNA

  1. July 22, 2021 –

    1. Blizzard president J. Allen Brack emailed staff at the company to address the lawsuit, calling the reported behavior “completely unacceptable” and promising to discuss issues with employees to help move the company forward.

EVA

  1. July 22, 2021 –

    1. Activision Blizzard executive and former Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush sent a very different type of letter to the internal Blizzard staff which sounded much different from the one send by J. Allen Brack.

    2. She claimed the lawsuit “presented a distorted and untrue picture of our company, including factually incorrect, old, and out of context stories – some from more than a decade ago.”

    3. One of IGN’s sources shared that Townsend’s letter was one of the key factors in spurring Activision Blizzard employees to action.

HARAINNA

  1. July 24, 2021 – Former Blizzard Executives Apologise for Failing Employees

    1. Blizzard co-founder and ex-CEO Mike Morhaime shared his thoughts on the allegations levied against his former company and said, “to the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you.” He continued by saying that “it feels like everything I thought I stood for has been washed away.”

EVA

  1. July 25, 2021 –

    1. World of Warcraft senior system designer Jeff Hamilton took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the “terrible” statement by Activision Blizzard in response to the lawsuit. He believes that all these allegations need to be “taken seriously and in good faith” and that those found guilty “deserve both removal from the company and criminal investigation.”

    2. He also confirmed that “almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody - not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders. Activision’s response to this is currently taking a group of world-class developers and making them so mad and traumatized they’re rendered unable to keep making a great game.

HARAINNA

  1. July 27, 2021 –

    1. The World of Warcraft team made their first official statement since the lawsuit was made public, saying that it will remove inappropriate references from both WoW and WoW Classic.

    2. While the team didn’t go into specifics, WoW does have references to some developers and team members who were named in the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing lawsuit, including Alex Afrasiabi.

EVA

  1. July 27, 2021 –

    1. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick released a statement that called the company’s initial statement “tone deaf,” and promised “swift action” and said there’s no place anywhere for “discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind.”

    2. In the short term, Kotick said the company would be investigating every claim of harassment while offering listening sessions and evaluating managers. He also pledged to add resources to ensure that Activision Blizzard’s hiring practices are more diverse.

    3. As reported by Kotaku, Activision Blizzard would go on to retain the services of the law firm Wilmer Hale to help “review policies and procedures to help promote a more respectful and inclusive workplace.” This was the same law firm that is helping Amazon keep its workers from unionizing.

HARAINNA

  1. On July 28-

    1. Activision Blizzard employees issued a response to Kotick’s message, saying that while they are pleased that the tone of leadership communications has changed, Kotick’s message failed to address multiple concerns expressed by those at the company.

  2. July 27-28, 2021 – Activision Blizzard Employees Stage a Walkout and List Demands

    1. The employees also shared their list of demands, which are as follows

      1. An end to mandatory arbitration clauses in all employee contracts

      2. The adoption of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and promotion policies designed to improve representation among employees at all levels, agreed upon by employees in a company-wide Diversity, Equity & Inclusion organization.

      3. Publication of data on relative compensation (including equity grants and profit sharing), promotion rates, and salary ranges for employees of all genders and ethnicities at the company.

    2. Blizzard confirmed it would offer paid time off for those employees who wished to be part of this walkout.

EVA

  1. July 28, 2021

    1. Nearly 500 Ubisoft employees signed an open letter asserting solidarity with Activision Blizzard as they were performing a walkout. The letter also criticized Ubisoft’s handling of last year’s sexual misconduct revelations.

  2. July 29, 2021 –

    1. Activision Blizzard confirmed that former Blizzard senior creative director Alex Afrasiabi, who was named in the DFEH lawsuit, was fired in 2020 for “misconduct in his treatment of other employees.”

HARAINNA

  1. July 31, 2021 –

    1. Security Researcher Reveals Blizzard Recruiters Harassed Her at a Job Fair

    2. Mitchell asked about a penetration testing (or pentesting) position, which is an industry term for a security audit, and one of the Blizzard employees asked her if she was lost, while another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend. The third asked if she even knew what pentesting was.

  2. August 3, 2021 –

    1. Following the Activision Blizzard lawsuit, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack confirmed he was “leaving the company to pursue new opportunities.”

    2. Announced by Blizzard, Brack will be replaced by “co-leader” Jen ONeal and Mike Ybarra. Oneal joined Blizzard in January 2021 after leading Vicarious Visions and Ybarra joined Blizzard in 2019 after leaving Xbox as an executive.

EVA

  1. August 3, 2021 -

    1. A coalition of workers from across multiple Activision Blizzard development studios have sent a joint letter to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and his executive leadership team that criticizes the company's decision to hire law firm WilmerHale.

    2. The ABK Workers Alliance says it rejects the hiring of WilmerHale as it claims there is a conflicting interest due to its "pre-existing relationships with Activision Blizzard and its executives," WilmerHale's history of "discouraging workers' rights and collective actions," and Stephanie Avakians's history of "protecting the wealthy and powerful."


You can show your support by tweeting out

“I reject the WilmerHale review of Activision Blizzard. #ABetterABK “

HARAINNA

Kotaku has been knocking their reporting about this situation out of the park imo. They

  • What Really Happened At That BlizzCon Panel, According To The Woman In The Video

  • They tracked down the girl that we talked about on our last episode that had asked at a blizzcon panel about the devs making the female characters in wow to look less like they came out of the victoria's secret catalog and was then mocked by Alex Afrasiabi and some on the panel in front of everyone.

  • It is said that she is not on social media much and had no clue she was the face of discussions about Blizzard’s questionable past with women until a friend messaged her on Facebook.

  • Xantia is quoted in the article saying

    • “It’s really weird seeing this whole thing getting press coverage for a question that I asked 11 years ago,” Xantia, who preferred to go by her World of Warcraft handle to protect her privacy, told Kotaku in a phone interview. “It was just surreal.”

    • Xantia is also quoted saying “It’s hard to have your voice heard when there are that many guys setting the tone,”

Activision Blizzard Inc. shares rose in the extended session Tuesday after the videogame publisher’s results topped Wall Street estimates and executives focused on how the company will ensure productivity amid workplace-harassment allegations.


At the top of a conference call with analysts, Activision Blizzard ATVI, +2.12% Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said he wanted “to start by making clear to everyone that there is no place at our company where discrimination, harassment, or unequal treatment of any kind will be tolerated. Nowhere.”



Our Individual Thoughts on the topic:







Harainna: We will continue to try to keep an eye on the Blizzard Lawsuit Developments.

I'm very happy to see people taking control over their happiness, safety, mental health , and workplace through this and I am very happy to see the amount of support many are showing on social media for each other and those directly involved.



Guildwars 2 announced their next Expansion

  • that is End of Dragons

  • is the third expansion for the award-winning and critically acclaimed MMORPG Guild Wars 2. The dragon cycle that has sustained and blighted Tyria for ages is collapsing. Mortal hearts and choices will define this moment in history—and echo in the future forever.





  • I bought the final fantasy expansion that releases In November

  • Players are flooding into the game

  • FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Starter Edition

    • The perfect choice for newcomers looking to experience the exciting adventures found in A Realm Reborn and Heavensward.

    • The Starter Edition includes A Realm Reborn and the first expansion pack, Heavensward. See below for details.

    • PlayStation®5 | PlayStation®4 | Windows® | Mac

    • Physical and Digital Download - $19.99

  • FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Complete Edition

    • This package includes the base game and all expansions (Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers)

    • Standard Edition

    • PlayStation®5 | PlayStation®4 | Windows® | Mac

    • Physical and Digital Download - $59.99

  • FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers

    • * This is the latest FINAL FANTASY XIV expansion pack and is intended for existing users.

    • * Registration of this product also grants users access to FINAL FANTASY XIV: Stormblood. See below for details.

    • Standard Edition

    • PlayStation®5 | PlayStation®4 | Windows® | Mac

    • Physical and Digital Download - $39.99

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers

Steam

New and Early Releases

  • Starbase is a hybrid voxel/vertex-based space MMO with a fully destructible and infinitely expanding universe, with a focus on building and designing spaceships and stations, exploration, resource gathering, crafting, trading, and combat.

  • The Ascent

    • The Ascent is a solo and co-op Action-shooter RPG, set on Veles, a packed cyberpunk world.

      • Welcome to The Ascent Group arcology, a corporate-run metropolis stretching high into the sky and filled with creatures from all over the galaxy. You play as a worker, enslaved by the company that owns you and everyone else in your district. One day, you are suddenly caught in a vortex of catastrophic events: The Ascent Group shuts down for unknown reasons and the survival of your district is threatened. You must take up arms and embark on a new mission to find out what started it all.

    • You belong to the corporation. Can you survive without it?

New world delayed

Haribo gummy bear review.


What We are doing in game


Eva

  • I GOT SIMS COTTAGE: so naturally I'm raising chickens, getting spit on by llamas, singing to the birds, and falling in love with The town Fitness trainer, who hates to work out.

    • Haven’t gone into free build yet, wanted to experience the game play first, so i can see what my sim will need, Lifestyle wise and if i will need to Motherlode it out, with a nice Caching of free money to build my cottage mansion, or maybe do the grind like i am now WITH NO cheats and just selling my paintings and garden produce. Okay, I use one cheat… Make Happy.

    • The New town is very friendly, the country folk randomly show up to see if you need help with things around the house.

    • I like that I can now grow and CAN my veggies, and the gardens have REALLY improved. If you make friends with the birds in the trunk, and the wild rabbits, they will also help you tend your garden.

    • I love that I can make my own ponds and put swans, ducks, alligators, and some other surprises into the pond. You can put swarms of dragonflies into your yards and gardens,so much more decorations inside and out!

    • And if you get sad when your chicken's life expires like i do, you can go to settings and turn their aging off. However, if you happen to hatch out new chicks, you will have to turn that on for them to grow, and sadly… my Delly Llama died within an hour of that. It was sad… on the UDDER side, that let me then buy a cow… Since I could only have one large animal in my shed.


The CON: I have to buy groceries on the phone or computer. If I don't have it, I can't cook it. Which is where gardens help. But! I'd rather have the option to just cook what i want and pay like the other expacs.


Personal mistakes: I forgot I had the bathroom door locked, and my dog got stuck in there. Then the adoption place came to repo my dog :( Thankfully I saved the game before that! :)

Trick: Foxes will come to “swipe” things from around your yard, or stalk your chickens. If you get them to befriend you, you can then ask them to stop. One growled at me, so I fenced him in until he became my friend. Also if you have chickens locked in a fence, i think they are safe. So far...



  • Overwatch summer skins have been out,it’s the last week. Working currently on the weekly bonus Hanzo Skin. I’ve had 200 boxes saved up, so I just opened a bunch to get the coins to buy them all. Win! The event ends August 10, so you still have time if you love Overwatch and haven’t gotten to get the skins yet!



  • Lilys Garden-Playstore for free. Puzzle solving game with gardens to renovate

  • 30, 1hr, 2hr of unlimited lives. You can buy boosters, but it is not necessary.

  • Staying up later than planned. It’s nice to have a brain game to just mellow out no matter where I am. Most of the time it’s while i’m curled up in my heated blanket supposed to be sleeping.

  • I’m at level 1904… Who needs sleep lol



  • New World was fun. I got really into the game but then I realized that I was having more fun with proximity chat and crawling on my stomach through town being silly than the actual game. I loved the graphics, the scenery, but something seems to be missing. I have just as much fun in Valheim as I did in New world.


Harainna

  • Well we played New world and had a lot of fun killing skeletons and bores once we figured out how to join up!

  • PROS

    • Loved the fluid use of weapons

      • Being able to just pick a weapon off of the ground and start using it was awesome

      • We quickly fell in love with the life staff then realized there was also a fire staff and then we found a huge hammer and then we decided to pretend that the hammer was our mount since there's no mounts in game yet and galloped our way back to base lol

      • I love that we can climb up mountain walls

      • The starting cinematic was awesome

      • The tutorial was short and sweet .

      • And my favorite part of all is the way your bags are organized. Everything is already organized into categories.

      • The towns and details are well done, the music is great.

      • Had a blast crawling through the town in prone position while waiting for Eva in town. She joined me I turned my camera view around only to see that we had inadvertently started a parade of prone players leading out of town lol




  • CONS

    • Having to pay to do their beta. Thankfully you can get a quick refund through steam.

    • Grouping up with your friends right from the start is a nightmare.

    • Which is dumb how awfull it is to do so.

    • The first few nights we played and streamed our game play was smooth but the server pings were wonky and inconsistent.

    • Both of us are on the east coast and my east coast ping was great while evas was wonky and showed west coast was better for here when we are like 10 minutes apart

    • The game got soooooo laggy on our last

    • This game doesn't seem like it isn't what I would have expected from a company as large as amazon.

    • The ai in game is not developed very well. The creatures all act the same and are very predictable.

    • Running everywhere gets old, the compass at the top of your screen is just like elder scrolls online

    • People can easily steal your recent kills by hopping on your kill and skinning it before you because the mob ai sucks and when you go to access it you have to click on it just right for it to allow the skinning to start.

In the end:

  • Refunded new world after is was brought to my attention that the base game has heavy Conquistador colonization vibes due to the you know...name NEW WORLD and the end game gear are exact

    • Tweeted out why

    • Requested a refund for New World MMO.On Steam it mentions nothing of it taking place in the Atlantic Ocean & the fact we will be taking over the "New World"dressed as the conquistadors who ravaged already established native cultures in the 16-18th centuries.Too many similarities!

    • Some helpful articles that point this out:

    • Its like, why make a game based around this premise? There's a million ways to design gear and write lore & they chose this!? Face vomitingPouting face

    • Seems pretty intentional!

  • The twitter algorithm took my tweet and tossed it into twitter gaming which brought me a bunch of angry dudes on the internet lol

  • and pissed off french dudebros on twitter because I tweeted I asked for a refund.

  • Amazon Game Studio's next project is the MMO New World. Originally planned for a 2020 release, it was pushed back to Spring 2021 to improve the quality of the game. Bloomberg's report explains that the project was originally going to be a survival game where players would take on the role of colonists in a fictional version of 1600s America.

    • The problem, however, was that the enemies players originally were going to face "looked a lot like indigenous people." When developers pointed out to Frazzini's deputy, Patrick Gilmore, that the setting and villains could be considered racist, he "expressed disbelief."

    • Amazon did eventually hire a tribal consultant who did find that the portrayal was offensive, and the Native American imagery has since been removed.


Over all:

  • This game does not play as good as it should imo.

  • Amazon spends nearly $500 million a year operating the game division and this game plays so rough.

    • instead of using industry-leading game engines like Unreal Engine or Unity, the studio opted to license technology from Crytek to create a homemade engine known as Lumberyard.

  • They hired a book dept manager to the Amazon game studios.

    • Mike Frazzini was brought in to start Amazon Game Studios eight years ago without ever making a game. This leads me to think that it will not be supported in the future.

    • Since then, Frazzini and Amazon Game Studios have released only two games, and have seen multiple cancelled projects

    • Frazzini began his role as head of the games division by bringing in some of the best game development talent in the world, including Portal's Kim Swift, Far Cry 2's Clint Hocking, Madden's Richard Hilleman, and Everquest's John Smedley. Today, only Smedley remains.

  • Another big issue with working at Amazon Game Studios is said to be linked to the "bro culture" that has been cultivated there, in which women were often not given the same opportunities as men. Beyond that, "four female game developers said that their worst experiences of sexism in the industry were at Amazon."

  • These are only a few points about this game and its studio by IGN, the article explains much more. It definitely isnt worth its asking price IMO. https://www.ign.com/articles/amazon-game-studios-report-details-struggles-bro-culture-mismanagement-and-cancelled-projects

  • New World Doesnt do anything mind blowing , it doesnt nail anything better than already existing games can do imo.

    • So I decided to refund it based on principle, the more I dug and learned about the history fo the game and the sketchy Amazon Dev studios, unstable and underbaked feel of the game play, I feel I would have sought a refund just based on the quality of the game alone.


  • Fired up Guildwars

    • Instantly reminded that this buy once to play mmo is so beautiful and well done that I am not sure why more people dont talk about it much!


  • Bought Ffxiv Expansion

    • I rolled a Lalafel on Cactuar

    • STUNNING Gaming

    • Friendly community

    • Made me feel like we were being robbed by playing WOW. The subscription fee is the same but you get the feel that the devs of FFxiv online really care about their game and community.

    • THe attention to detail in the game is amazing. The character creations isnt too heavy or too slacking.

    • I remember playing Warcrafts Shadowlands pre patch where we could have a few new options for our characters in the barber chair and felt really underwhelmed.

      • Why limit us to a few hair dos? I think its about time we were given sliders for all warcraft characters by now.

      • We should have had player housing by now.

    • The Quests really feel like you are part of the story instead of just doing busy work. There was this one quest where one of the npcs friend seemed really down and depressed so they hired me to go try different emotes to cheer them up and I thought that was pretty cool :)



  • Registered online to be able to be picked to try out the Ashes of Creation Alpha or Beta.

    • Ashes of Creation is an upcoming MMORPG by Intrepid Studios. Set in a backdrop of high fantasy, players will venture into a vast new world to explore and tame the wilderness. Ashes of Creation’s foundational node system means nearly the entirety of the world is built by player choice and actions! No two player experiences will feel the same - every server ebbs and flows with its own unique story and character all based on player choice.

    • Ashes of Creation is currently in Pre-Alpha. You must have an Alpha One

    • Key to access the current game during designated playtest times.


In closing

You can reach the show by email at SeestraGaming@gmail.com


You can tweet the show @SeestraGaming


You can find the show notes and our twitch channel at www.SeestraGaming.com


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