Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 161 posts

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

#121

Post by acoard »

polishdude20 wrote: post #117
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…

Isn't there some rule of thumb or "law" that the software an organization writes is a direct mirror of the structure of the organization?

Conway's Law:

> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. [0]

But I think OP is implying the opposite, sort of a reverse-Conway. That the narrative of their product affected the structure of the company.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

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

#122

Post by scruple »

alex_lav wrote: post #111
scruple wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broodwar, SC:R, and D2R seems to be telling a different story. Hell, WoW is close to 20 years old at this point.

So their old games. What of OW(2), D3/D4, whatever mobile abomination they made for Diablo, Hearthstone or HoTS will be played for that long? Any? I would wager D2 is played more than D3 by a mile. OW1 was already killed. OW2 is dying. I'm not even sure the OW franchise will be around in four years, letalone 15.

Huh? This thread is about their old games that are still being played.

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

#123

Post by yifanl »

surgical_fire wrote: post #106
braymundo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diablo IV is shaping up to be very successful, though.

I wonder why. I don't really care about the scandals, but man, Blizzard games have been shit for a long, long time. Gone are the days of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3.

I mean, their track record is fine.

Starcraft 2: The age of Blizzard RTS is over now, but it was the best RTS ever made and the devs left a final patch with a massively expanded community tooling.

Overwatch: Was absurdly successful and then decided to shoot themselves in the foot canning development, but the weakness there was hardly the game itself.

Hearthstone: I do not respect the design choices the game makes, but I admit it's practically defined Digital Card Games as a genre ever since it's come out.

World of Warcraft: Questionable storytelling aside, I've only heard good things about this from my MMO playing friends. I have never had the time to play an MMO myself, but I'll defer to them on this.

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

#124

Post by BlueTemplar »

Thaxll wrote: post #21
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll probably be successful but not still-played-in-25-years successful.

Well all of their game are being played 15+ years later on, there is no reason why it won't be the case with d4.

Online-only requirement. Such a shame and wasted long-term potential for D2R, D3 and likely especially D4. Compare with Diablo 2 legacy where mods like Median XL are still going strong !

(I guess that they are stuck in a bad place with their games being so popular that they attract a lot of unwelcome attention, but IMHO still not worth it for a game that is much more cooperative than competitive.)

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

#125

Post by zanellato19 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #81
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…

But ActiBlizz doesn't have any monopolies ? (Unlike, say, Steam, or Microsoft.) If their games are bad, quickly enough nobody will buy them any more (regardless of how much they invested in marketing).

IP goes such a long way, though. To overtake ActiBlizz on MMO's, for example, you would have to build something 10x better than WoW. And any Diablo game is going to sell a shit ton, even if it isn't good.

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #103
falcolas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's not forget the Cosby room - a room dedicated to rape and sexual assault of female employees by ActiBlizz leadership. You might argue that "those" folks are gone, yet apparently their culture has not really changed.

The height of naming irony, given this was Blizzcon 2013 and the Cosby allegations came out in 2014.

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by JohnFen »

surgical_fire wrote: post #110
Macha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing is that the vast majority people just don't care about the culture of harassment in the company. And honestly, I don't see why they should, as it does not affect them as consumers. Making shit products is something that affects consumers, and they will complain about that.

> And honestly, I don't see why they should, as it does not affect them as consumers.

They should care, because buying their products is telling the company that they approve of its behavior (whatever that behavior is).

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

#128

Post by bee_rider »

surgical_fire wrote: post #115
Macha wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing if they don't care about the abuse, but they should be honest (including with themselves) on that. It's another to reassign the abuse to people they have different reasons to dislike.

That's a fair take. A lot of things I love were made my people that I find personally despicable. If I have to weight how much I like the creators and companies behind everything I consume, that will be recipe for a very tiresome and frustrating life. This is not to give a pass to Blizzard. The scandals there are pretty bad. But it's up to the employees (and perhaps to the judicial system) to do something about it.

Some of the employees were the perpetrators, some were the victims, and some decided putting food on the table was more important than making the moral stand.

Management will do as much about this as the market incentivizes them to.

Ultimately the ability to produce incentives is in the hands of consumers most directly, and through the judicial system, (so, pretty indirectly) voters.

I dunno. I like classic rock and movies. So I probably consume some art created by assholes. But it isn’t something I’m proud of.

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

#129

Post by bee_rider »

29athrowaway wrote: post #43

Kotick was listed in Epstein's flight logs.

This has basically become an empty statement at this point, unfortunately. Epstein made a habit of flying around public figures. Presumably this was intentional.

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

#130

Post by alex_lav »

scruple wrote: post #122
alex_lav wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So their old games. What of OW(2), D3/D4, whatever mobile abomination they made for Diablo, Hearthstone or HoTS will be played for that long? Any? I would wager D2 is played more than D3 by a mile. OW1 was already killed. OW2 is dying. I'm not even sure the OW franchise will be around in four years, letalone 15.

Huh? This thread is about their old games that are still being played .

Yes, and someone pointed out that their new games aren’t of the same caliber as their old games, as in, their new games won’t be played in 15 years. My comment is that you didn’t list any new game as having the same staying power.
Post reply on HN