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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

#91

Post by BlueTemplar »

orwin wrote: post #37
justrealist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but is run by Harvard MBA types who aren’t gamers This is going to piss people off, but that's because people who sink huge portions of their spare time and energy into video games do not become CEOs. "Getting high on your own supply" doesn't set you up for professional exceptionalism.

I'm pretty sure the Gullemot brothers still play their own games, heard that Yves played some rainbow 6 siege or something, and while I hate Ubisoft games quality and only ever bought one, he seems way more professional than whoever the Blizzard CEO is.

Rayman Legends is amazing. Such a shame that their stores / launchers / DRM have been among the worst for years...

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

#92

Post by SirMaster »

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…

What I don't understand then is this.

If the Harvard MBA types are so detrimental to a gaming company, why don't we see any or many widely successful gaming companies who are run by dev types rather than MBA types?

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

#93

Post by dchftcs »

justrealist wrote: post #6
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…

> but is run by Harvard MBA types who aren’t gamers This is going to piss people off, but that's because people who sink huge portions of their spare time and energy into video games do not become CEOs. "Getting high on your own supply" doesn't set you up for professional exceptionalism.

Sales and marketing CEOs pretend they work 24x7, but they spend much of their weekends on leisure activities such as golfing, travel, playing with their children, having expensive dinners with board members and politicians and so on. If you're committed it's really not hard to replace that leisure time with gaming.

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

#94

Post by falcolas »

Macha wrote: post #36
Thaxll wrote: post #20

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

This is not just a pedantic argument, Blizzard CEO on its own will lead to a significant number of people assuming a different person, Mike Ybarra, Blizzard's President.

Making a distinction between "Activision" and "Blizzard" is a distraction. It's "Activision Blizzard". Has been legally for 15 years, and in practice for at least 5 years now.

It doesn't matter if it's Ybarra or Kotik speaking now - they're playing by the same book on the same field.

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

#95

Post by ifyoubuildit »

darth_avocado wrote: post #38
nvy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kotick didn't go to Harvard, doesn't have an MBA, and in fact dropped out of university. It's not about MBA vs not. He's just shit.

I said “Harvard MBA types” not “Harvard MBAs” since you’re nitpicking

The "harvard mba types" brings a certain kind of distaste to my mouth. Using it to describe someone who is in fact nothing of the sort feels a little too sloppy.

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

#96

Post by Macha »

quadcore wrote: post #53
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For good or ill. Morhaime was also head of the company when a lot of the harassment went down.

When this happened and it happened late in the history of the company, they were hoarded by Activision's people already. Morhaime kept the company from the usual bosos for as long as he could, but he had sold shares in the early days so it was only a matter of time before his dream haven would fall to evil.

No, I'm sorry. People want to assume the people that made the games they like aren't responsible for the harrassment, and the people who made changes to the games they didn't like are responsible, but there's plenty of the classic blizzard people who have been involved in the abuse, yet at the same time I haven't heard anything bad about the behaviour of the likes of Ion, lead designer for BFA/Shadowlands, or the "Do you not have phones?" guy, as poorly received as their game design decisions have been.

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

#97

Post by bigbillheck »

justrealist wrote: post #6
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…

> but is run by Harvard MBA types who aren’t gamers This is going to piss people off, but that's because people who sink huge portions of their spare time and energy into video games do not become CEOs. "Getting high on your own supply" doesn't set you up for professional exceptionalism.

Did you see Elon Musk's Elden Ring build?

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

#98

Post by bee_rider »

streakfix wrote: post #59
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is steering sensitivity, car speed, ball speed, car mass, car power, boost strength, shooting power, jump height. All those variables have been finalized. What I'm saying is that balance patches are a band aid over the core problem.

What’s Rocket League like nowadays? I only played when it first came out. The impression I got though was that it was more like Counterstrike or something: mechanically simple with lots of depth, designed to be more like a sport than a game.

Overwatch is pretty casual. It is tuned for spectacle, and the abilities work out such that most reasonably non-bad players get a steady trickle of moments where they get to be the “star” for a scene.

It isn’t really a core problem, just a different type of game.

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

#99

Post by Macha »

falcolas wrote: post #94
Macha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not just a pedantic argument, Blizzard CEO on its own will lead to a significant number of people assuming a different person, Mike Ybarra, Blizzard's President.

Making a distinction between "Activision" and "Blizzard" is a distraction. It's "Activision Blizzard". Has been legally for 15 years, and in practice for at least 5 years now. It doesn't matter if it's Ybarra or Kotik speaking now - they're playing by the same book on the same field.

> It's "Activision Blizzard". Has been legally for 15 years, and in practice for at least 5 years now.

So call it Activision Blizzard? The difference between Ybarra and Kotick speaking is both one of recency and personal culpability (Ybarra was hired as the cleanup lead, so a reversal on the stance that it happened would be notable in its own right), and of abuses that have gone in other non-Blizzard Activision studios (I seem to recall some controversies about Raven software also?).

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

#100

Post by JohnFen »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #14
monopolyofpain wrote: post #9

CEOs should realize that firing and paying a settlement to bad apples is cheaper than letting them pollute the atmosphere

Bad attitudes are way more contagious than a lot of people realize. Just having one person with a bad attitude and resentment to their employer can spread to 5-10 people if they're influential enough.

But if there's no actual basis for the person to have a bad attitude, the coworkers are more likely to resent, shun, and/or ridicule them than to adopt a similar attitude.
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