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Sony, Facebook, KojiPro cancel GDC appearances due to coronavirus (Up2: Microsoft, Amazon, and Epic are also out) [See Staff Post]
- Thread starter Biosnake
- Start date
I don't like your opinion either. Usually when one has a strong opinion like that, they feel that way because of evidence. Speculation without any form of evidence is foolhardy and uncharitable.
We are talking about a corporation here, not a schoolboy wanting to play hooky. If Sony didn't see value in attending conventions and such because they don't see the value in them, they can say just that instead of using a viral outbreak as excuse. They could literally just say " we don't see the value in this event" or "it doesn't fit our plans" etc and it wouldn't be an issue for them. In fact that is exactly what they did with E3.
Attending multinational conference is vastly different than living and working in a metropolis. I can't believe you call it security theater. If you believe this many MNCs and governmental orgs are willingly sacrificing productivity to...what maintain a facade?
The last few days really tanked my respect for the discourse here. Very disappointing.
There is bunch of people comparing the risk of contracting a disease to transportation accidents, citing that the latter has a higher probability in the case of corvid-19. THIS COMPARISON IS FLAWED.
When you have a plane crash or car crash only the people involved in the incident are affected. With infections on the other hand, especially one with a long incubation period and high contagion rate, anyone infected at an event are bringing the infection with them and spreading it to all their friends, families and coworkers. It would be as if when a plane crash happens, the people in the plane die and all the people they are in close relation with also drop dead despite not being in the plane.
I'm guessing sony's fear is having a group of employees from all their branches going to a public international event and then possibly taking the virus and bringing it back to everyone's respective offices.
Citing how the US health care system is very prepared to handle infections also doesn't apply as the disease doesn't progress overnight. By the time people infected start showing symptoms, the event is long over and they are back in their home country/city and have been to the office several times already.
When you have a plane crash or car crash only the people involved in the incident are affected. With infections on the other hand, especially one with a long incubation period and high contagion rate, anyone infected at an event are bringing the infection with them and spreading it to all their friends, families and coworkers. It would be as if when a plane crash happens, the people in the plane die and all the people they are in close relation with also drop dead despite not being in the plane.
I'm guessing sony's fear is having a group of employees from all their branches going to a public international event and then possibly taking the virus and bringing it back to everyone's respective offices.
Citing how the US health care system is very prepared to handle infections also doesn't apply as the disease doesn't progress overnight. By the time people infected start showing symptoms, the event is long over and they are back in their home country/city and have been to the office several times already.
you cracked the code man, they haven't got anything to show for the PS5, they probably even bio engineered coronavirus and released it on China to buy them time to actually make the console.
If ever you need a tangible example just how fucking delusional the video game community can be... Send them to this thread.
*** Opinions should be supported by facts and evidence in any intelligent discussion ***
"it's just my opinion bro" is the ultimate copout. People have gotten it in their heads that all opinions are somehow equally valid, because "everyone is entitled to their own opinion." But an opinion is not the same thing as a mere preference, like which flavor of ice cream is your favorite. Opinions can be wrong. They can be untrue. Everyone is not entitled to their own facts.
Hell, forget the discussion.You should want to know why you believe what you believe. Don't you? You should have reasons (i.e., evidence) for holding an opinion as true.
I hate to say it but I swear to god, threads like these make it crystal clear why Trump and Brexit and Gamergate are happening, why people talk about our global society living in a new post-truth or anti-evidence era. Everybody thinks that whatever truth they feel is right is equally valid as the facts that the evidence actually supports, and if you disagree, well that's just their opinion, and who are you to say anything about it.
So what about Facebook? Intel? AMD? Nvidia? Lots more. All of them are pulling out of events. This is insane.
Suprisinly this is the only place on the internet (not even Twitter has that many madhat comments at all) where I see it this bad.
Exactly, it's called risk and crisis management. Sony will be launching a flagship product soon, they can't risk any elements being out of the picture for extended periods of time when the time comes.
They will buy the vaccine exclusivity rights. It's the only way Jim can ensure the fastest transition ever.
The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. I think you're missing some more info, but I'm glad you took a half-assed comparison somebody likely pulled out of his ass on social media.
I know you're banned and a few people have responded, but to clarify, a major difference is that coronavirus, unlike the flu which is well documented, researched, understood and has some remedial solutions available for it, the coronavirus is instead an entirely new pathogen that little is known about.
When a new virus as contagious as coronavirus appears, it's a much bigger deal because there are so many unknowns, not just in terms of treatments, but also in terms of understanding the cycles, patterns, causes and impacts around the virus, and that uncertainty is dangerous. The mortality rates could in theory suddenly accelerate or decelerate, new health impacts could be discovered, the rate of spread could quickly change and so on and so forth.
The virus can mutate too. Before we have a treatment everything is an unknown.
I am talking about gdc interviews and presentations. I enjoyed the ones about god of war or spidey. We aint getting anything like that this year, are we? Thats my point.
From the corona thread,
www.reuters.com
looks like Japan is shutting things down to try to mediate the spread, guess Sony has made it their global policy to be consistent
Coronavirus patient re-hospitalized in China's Chengdu after testing positive again
A coronavirus patient initially discharged after recovering in southwestern Sichuan province's Chengdu city has been readmitted after testing positive during a quarantine period at home, the city's public health clinical center said on Friday.
www.reuters.com
looks like Japan is shutting things down to try to mediate the spread, guess Sony has made it their global policy to be consistent
From the corona thread,
Coronavirus patient re-hospitalized in China's Chengdu after testing positive again
A coronavirus patient initially discharged after recovering in southwestern Sichuan province's Chengdu city has been readmitted after testing positive during a quarantine period at home, the city's public health clinical center said on Friday.
looks like Japan is shutting things down to try to mediate the spread, guess Sony has made it their global policy to be consistent
On the gaming side too, Square Enix announced recently that the FFXIV team flying in from Japan are no longer flying in because of the virus, they're having the booth still run by NA staff, but are downsizing their operations and cancelling events planned.
An Update Regarding PAX East 2020 Activities | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone
An Update Regarding PAX East 2020 Activities
na.finalfantasyxiv.com
So I think we'll see more from Japanese based companies either reducing presence or cancelling appearances at shows
These are totally the right decisions and i cannot believe that people are arguing otherwise. Sony can just do a nintendo direct style stream and get the information out there. I cannot believe that people are complaining that Sony are doing this to avoid giving out information when Corona is a real health threat.
I don't think they view it as maintaining a facade, though. The fear is sincere; the reaction is just unnecessarily extreme.
They stand to lose a lot more money if the virus infects their people and actually delays the PS5 or any of their games. It's absolutely worth it for Sony to skip out of these events. It might not be great for their current marketing efforts, but any loss from that is probably significantly less than loss from a potential internal outbreak and delay. I'm sure Sony has run the numbers on that, otherwise they'd be going.
I know that, but it's also people's opinion that there are lizard people or grey aliens or whatever walking among us, or that global warming is a myth. You don't think it bad at all to put conspiracy stuff out there?
This year will be my second year at GDC (and hopefully the year I can get my foot in the door in the industry), and reading through this thread, it's clear that most people don't... really know what GDC is.
GDC is effectively 2 parts: talks and show floor. Talks start in their own mini conference for the first two days, and continue on Wed-Fri, while the show floor opens Wed-Fri. Talks are what you would expect from any conference. A large number of them are now free from either the GDC Vault or their YouTube channel. Metal chairs are lined up in a row, and a stage and podium are set up at the front of the room while a presenter goes through a slideshow and talks. Sony pulling out means that any planned talks from Sony first party studios will be cancelled. Talks pretty much never announce stuff, the only exception being the Valve "State of Steam" talk which usually announces new backend tools for developers.
The show floor is an absolutely massive underground room in which hundreds of companies showcase their tech or game. Last year the 5 largest booths in order were: Epic, Microsoft, Sony, Unity, Google. While these booths were the size (and look) of your standard E3 area (big screens, showy presentation, etc) they were not the norm, with the majority of booths being a card table and a TV showing their product. Booths often have 1 on 1 sessions showing new tech with the intent on making your company switch to it, or are primarily advertising for new tech (there were LOTS of face capture and VR motion tracking companies last year with the hope that enterprise VR companies would chose them for toolsets). Sony and Facebook's presence at the GDC show floor is primarily developer relations, and likely with private closed door meetings on pitches/etc. One has to assume some high level meetings are having to be re-scheduled between big publishers and Sony/Facebook right now, that were planned to have taken place during GDC. While Facebook did unveil two new headsets last year, this is not the norm. Facebook has their own conference to announce new VR developments, and will continue to use it as such.
There is a touch of concern in the back of my mind about coronavirus going into GDC as it is an international conference, and while the disease is mostly quarantined to China, there are small pockets of outbreak here or there, just about everyone brings hand sanitizer. It's the #1 item on all the "surviving GDC for the first time" articles out there. The conference halls have all sorts of hand sanitizer stations set up. My main concern is alt.control.GDC stuff, in which experimental game controllers are created, such as last year's "Hellcouch", a game where you must strategically sit on a real life couch. While standard controllers and VR headsets are often sanitized and cleaned, last year I stuck my hand in a puppet and played WarioWare like games with it while also putting on a puppet show... how exactly do you clean that...
GDC is effectively 2 parts: talks and show floor. Talks start in their own mini conference for the first two days, and continue on Wed-Fri, while the show floor opens Wed-Fri. Talks are what you would expect from any conference. A large number of them are now free from either the GDC Vault or their YouTube channel. Metal chairs are lined up in a row, and a stage and podium are set up at the front of the room while a presenter goes through a slideshow and talks. Sony pulling out means that any planned talks from Sony first party studios will be cancelled. Talks pretty much never announce stuff, the only exception being the Valve "State of Steam" talk which usually announces new backend tools for developers.
The show floor is an absolutely massive underground room in which hundreds of companies showcase their tech or game. Last year the 5 largest booths in order were: Epic, Microsoft, Sony, Unity, Google. While these booths were the size (and look) of your standard E3 area (big screens, showy presentation, etc) they were not the norm, with the majority of booths being a card table and a TV showing their product. Booths often have 1 on 1 sessions showing new tech with the intent on making your company switch to it, or are primarily advertising for new tech (there were LOTS of face capture and VR motion tracking companies last year with the hope that enterprise VR companies would chose them for toolsets). Sony and Facebook's presence at the GDC show floor is primarily developer relations, and likely with private closed door meetings on pitches/etc. One has to assume some high level meetings are having to be re-scheduled between big publishers and Sony/Facebook right now, that were planned to have taken place during GDC. While Facebook did unveil two new headsets last year, this is not the norm. Facebook has their own conference to announce new VR developments, and will continue to use it as such.
There is a touch of concern in the back of my mind about coronavirus going into GDC as it is an international conference, and while the disease is mostly quarantined to China, there are small pockets of outbreak here or there, just about everyone brings hand sanitizer. It's the #1 item on all the "surviving GDC for the first time" articles out there. The conference halls have all sorts of hand sanitizer stations set up. My main concern is alt.control.GDC stuff, in which experimental game controllers are created, such as last year's "Hellcouch", a game where you must strategically sit on a real life couch. While standard controllers and VR headsets are often sanitized and cleaned, last year I stuck my hand in a puppet and played WarioWare like games with it while also putting on a puppet show... how exactly do you clean that...
Yep. GDC is a developer conference aimed at developers. Most game demos are from indies. The whole of Microsoft's booth was about Azure, the Adaptive Controller, etc. Epic's was about UE4, and supporting a few indies.
So if I'm getting this right, they're cancelling do to the fact there have been 8 corona virus cases in the state of california, and are afraid of an outbreak happening at GDC?
No, they are concerned an event that people from all over the world attend is a unnecessary risk.
Have you read the thread? No? Read the thread. Yes? I'm confused why you would ask this question.
After Sony and then a bunch of other companies started cancelling.
I don't get it. It's not like Sony are promising anything for these events?
If they have any info they want to share, they will, if not, even with the events, you won't get your PS5 infos.
I guess we don't get second hand impressions for TLoU II, which comes out in May.
If they have any info they want to share, they will, if not, even with the events, you won't get your PS5 infos.
I guess we don't get second hand impressions for TLoU II, which comes out in May.
You are in full control of your own events.
Very easy to restrict who is there, how they get there and so on. You don't have that with a conference or event organised by someone else.
If you still wanted to put on a show, you could still do it but behind closed doors - no audience. You still give the public the theatrics but with basically none of the risk. OK there's no clapping, but you can work around that in your delivery approach.
User Warned: Hostility Over Multiple Posts
OK, so anyone coming from China being a possibile virus carrier is the concern here. I thought there was a 14 day quarantine period for people coming from China, but I guess that's not accounting for all regions.
Here's my advice: don't be a passive agressive prick on a message board. It's better for your health.
China is not the only country that is affected by the virus.
Maybe go take a look at this thread - https://www.resetera.com/threads/co...ares-global-emergency-see-threadmarks.165901/
South Korea for one, had cases doubled and now has over 200 cases. Japan also has about 100.
What I typed was condescending. Pretty sure there was nothing passive about it. Here's a quotation from the master of deduction to illuminate your ignorance here: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." You lacked basic facts and formed an assumption based on your own personal feelings. And then when people confronted you on it you called one them a passive aggressive prick. I'm sure what I typed was irritating but you should try to understand that coming into this thread and making a disingenuous comment is at least equally as irritating. And that's what you did.
There have new cases in Italy too, and 3 towns seen to be quarantined to some extent. Just because someone was in contact with an asymptomatic carrier that had been in China or seems
Only one person is needed to spread the virus.
So every day this , for some, exaggerated approach send the most reasonable thing to do.
Only one person is needed to spread the virus.
So every day this , for some, exaggerated approach send the most reasonable thing to do.
There are confirmed infected people being flown back to the US as we speak due to our "brilliant" presidential cabinet. These people are going to spread it to every airport they touch.