Quickie: You Get to Keep Your Name for Yourself

Blizzard just backed down from their plans to use real names for posting on their official forums. While I did not and still do not agree with all the people that cried foul over this – especially those who refused to even recognize any voice that was not of their opinion – I do applaud the move. Clearly this system was widely disapproved of and feared in the player base and the advancements it might have brought were too small to warrant alienating that large amount of players.

Don’t get me wrong, I doubt going through with this would have had a lasting impact on player numbers or even the number of forum posters, but there simply is no reason to go through with this against such resistance.  That all said, I am quite sad about this whole affair. I’ve seen people I greatly respect drop down to blatant demagoguery regarding this issue which not only drowns any reasonable voices to the contrary, but also hides the real arguments that might exist among a pile of junk.

Aside from the whole discussion, I’m also quite sad to see that so many people still seem to be afraid to out themselves as gamers. In some cases this fear might not be reasonable, but in others it probably is. Gaming isn’t mainstream yet, but I sure thought we were past the point were gaming makes you a bad person or even a bad employee. I wonder how much of that is actually caused by anonymity… but I suppose I shouldn’t open that whole can of worms again.