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Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

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Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#21
post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

> I need Starcraft 3 badly :) I do too, but I don't think Blizzard are going to be the ones to make it[1]. [1] https://playstormgate.com

Hey Microsoft, no StarCraft 3 please. This will be a huge distraction and will surely cause an AI Winter.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#23

It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming?

>It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming?

The difference between AAA and the rest is not so much in quality these days, but sheer quantity. Quantity of NPCs, artwork, music, items, skills, vehicles, levels, etc. etc. And it takes a small army of artists/designers/PMs to do all of that stuff, not to even mention the actual dev team.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#27

It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming?

>It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming? The difference between AAA and the rest is not so much in quality these days, but sheer quantity . Quantity of NPCs, artwork, music, items, skills, vehicles, levels, etc. etc. And it takes a small army of artists/designers/PMs to do all of that stuff, not to even mention the actual dev team.

That sort of thing seems really ripe for LLM/AI disruption?

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#28

It blows my mind that many people worked there, only 8% of Microsoft Gaming?

This same comment gets posted on nearly every layoffs thread. A lot of people work at tech companies. Despite that, it sucks for someone to lose their job.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#29
post #18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you already seen Zerospace?[1] I think it also looks great and there are some SC/SC2 pros involved in making it [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/

As a grown ass man who played Vikings/rnrr/superman/War1/War2 / War2BNE /SC1/ SC1X/{basically every released and unreleased blizzard title including alphas}, I really really wish I could see a successor game that doesn’t have pinups of women that look like they have yoga tights and crop tops for armor. It would be nice to have a game that’s a bit less thirsty.

Preach!

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#30
post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

Be careful what you wish for, the soul of Blizzard is long dead.

You can see this with Diablo 4, which is a completely soulless ARPG. With the latest season 3 launched yesterday, it's just not a fun game and it's clear that whatever processes and people they have at Activision Blizzard, they haven't got something in place that lets someone say, "Wait, shouldn't this be fun?".

While D3 had it's fair criticism at launch for a number of reasons, it still at it's core had a fun gameplay loop. With the itemisation fix in Reaper of Souls they managed to turn it around and make a really fun game. Even in the launch state it felt like it was made by people who enjoyed gaming but had made some questionable decisions especially regarding the auction house.

D4 in contrast feels more fundamentally flawed. It feels like a game made by people who have been described what makes a game fun but don't play games themselves.

It's hard to put into words what feels so off about it. You can criticise that a player goes into the same tilesets, kills the same mobs for the same rewards, but at it's core that's true of a lot of ARPGs which are fun.

You can criticise itemisation, but even that doesn't capture what's so off about the game. It just doesn't have the right dopamine releases while playing. There's little to get excited about when loot drops. You might get some "green arrows" but upgrades don't feel impactful. A few up arrows don't change how you play.

When levelling up, your character doesn't really undergo a transformation from a player struggling to kill mobs in one way to clearing screens of mobs in a different way that you've grown and progressed into. You fairly early get your skills and you kill the same mobs in the same way but now the mobs have X,000 hit-points instead of X hit-points.

I might myself get criticised for this post by people saying that fun is subjective, that this is just my opinion. But fun isn't just subjective, there's a core to computer games, and in the latest season the mechanics they added were to take some of the generally agreed least fun parts of competitors and wrap them up in something that doesn't even deliver a large reward for doing it.

Twitch isn't always a reliable metric, but when hardcore ARPG fans are visibly bored and itching to play a different game, that isn't a good look.

Season resets should be an exciting time for a clean start with a new character and exploring new play-styles. Instead, around 10 levels in, everyone realises they've already unlocked all the skills they'll use this season, that they've now essentially experienced most the content they'll see this season.

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