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Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

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Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#41

Post by streakfix »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #27
interlinked wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is the point of balance updates?

Keeps the game fresh. If the game changes it gives people a reason to want to play again to figure out new combinations. Otherwise the meta gets set and it never changes and that gets old quickly.

Not necessarily. For instance rocket league was released in 2015 and hasn't gotten any such update since 2017. If the base is solid the players can spend their time mastering what they are given and over time it grows on you. Imagine chess buffing up the pawn and nerfing the bishop.

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#42

Post by meibo »

fpesce wrote: post #13

Remarkable, isn't it? Blizzard's knack for consistently managing to misalign their PR strategy with big launch events like Diablo IV is almost as intricate as their game design. There's an unexpected plot twist even George R.R. Martin would be envious of. It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs. One might argue that the co…

> It's almost as if they've transposed their in-game narratives into their corporate affairs, with similar plot tension and dramatic arcs.

Funny you say that, a writer at Blizzard just got fired for writing a satirical "greedy CEO" character, after a high-level executive played that part of the game: https://twitter.com/covingtown/status/1663998815458951168

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#44

Post by slt2021 »

LaundroMat wrote: post #29
ortusdux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Harvard MBA Types Steve Jobs: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running…

That last line is what a true marketeer should want, and by extension, good marketeers are good product people because they understand what the market needs and wants.

nowadays marketing evolved into SEO-hacker type performance marketer who looks at metrics and can optimize product&marketing mix to optimize metric.

since there is no metric for good product, only sales or funnel size - product will be shaped in a way to increase sales/TAM/funnel size - from here you get messaging as vague as it gets (like nonsense from WeWork: "create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living" - to increase audience size/TAM to maximum)

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#45

Post by rollcat »

tmpz22 wrote: post #8
darth_avocado wrote: post #3

I was a huge Overwatch fan. Seeing them stop development on it and announcing Overwatch 2 as a whole new game was what made me leave the game. The promise of Overwatch 2 was a story mode, a skills system, more maps and more heroes. Now after years of development and selling the game with future promises to millions of fans, all they have is cancelling PvE and skills system, and one or two heroes and maps. This is not…

* Announce Overwatch 2 * Stop all updates for 3 years - including balance updates * Announce this is necessary for PvE rewrite * Release Overwatch 2 without PvE with f2p Battlepass monetization model - change to 5v5 instead of 6v6 * Shut down all Overwatch 1 servers with the release of OW2 * Announce PvE is cancelled

> Stop all updates for 3 years - including balance updates

Cries in StarCraft 2

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#46

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

streakfix wrote: post #41
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeps the game fresh. If the game changes it gives people a reason to want to play again to figure out new combinations. Otherwise the meta gets set and it never changes and that gets old quickly.

Not necessarily. For instance rocket league was released in 2015 and hasn't gotten any such update since 2017. If the base is solid the players can spend their time mastering what they are given and over time it grows on you. Imagine chess buffing up the pawn and nerfing the bishop.

Fair enough, though I'd suggest that rocket league has many fewer gauges to fiddle with than Overwatch. It's always symmetrical fields and 5 different car types, right?

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#47

Post by tapoxi »

darth_avocado wrote: post #3

I was a huge Overwatch fan. Seeing them stop development on it and announcing Overwatch 2 as a whole new game was what made me leave the game. The promise of Overwatch 2 was a story mode, a skills system, more maps and more heroes. Now after years of development and selling the game with future promises to millions of fans, all they have is cancelling PvE and skills system, and one or two heroes and maps. This is not…

The director came out and said it wasn't an MBA-types problem, but their attachment to their original vision of Overwatch.

Remember that Overwatch came from Project Titan, the megaproject designed to be the MMO successor to World of Warcraft. When their design goals failed, they shipped a modified PVP portion as Overwatch, and they intended to ship the MMO in pieces, with the story mode and skills system as massive components.

Overwatch 2 was them trying Titan again, and failing.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/overwatch/23952480/director-...

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#48

Post by FredPret »

Not sure if a less surprising statement can be expected from a CEO.

Wake me up when "CEO loves unions, claims to harass employees for fun and profit"

BTW, I'm not commenting about this specific CEO or Blizzard, merely pointing out that the headline is semantically empty.

Re: Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

#50

Post by mikestew »

Thaxll wrote: post #20

The title should be changed, it's Activision Blizzard not Blizzard CEO.

Make it fit within 80 chars, and I'll see if I can still edit the title. But your suggestion won't fit, and I'm too lazy to have another go.
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