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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

#91

Post by HideousKojima »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #37
iammjm wrote: 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/

Unfortunately, I'm not impressed at all. It looks and feels like a cartoonish bootleg of SC with AI generated Fortnite-looking artwork. What made SC interesting, like most Blizzard IP of the time, was also the well written story lines with amazing character arcs, that kept people invested, and not that it was a strategy game of space marines versus organic aliens versus energy aliens. They even made sure to give stor…

SC1 had a great story with excellent writing, especially for the time. SC2's story was schlocky garbage. The biggest example of this is the opening cutscene of 2 with Raynor in the bar.

Raynor's literal final line to Kerrigan in SC1 was "It may not be tomorow, darlin', it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I'm the man who's gonna kill you one day. I'll be seeing you." Meanwhile in the opening cutscene of 2 he's pining over an old photo of her before she became a Zerg. Mind you any romantic relationship between Raynor and Kerrigan in SC1 was only possibly hinted at, it was never explicitly established.

Also they literally never even mentioned Fenix, Raynor's best Protoss buddy, in SC2 Wings of Liberty despite Kerrigan betraying and murdering him.

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

#92

Post by crazygringo »

beernet wrote: post #85
darkwizard42 wrote: post #15

This felt inevitable, probably tons of duplicate roles eliminated as systems are integrated. Something tells me a lot of game design and eng we’re not affected.

Well, engineers have been very much at the top of every layoffs list these past 24 months. Not sure who is speaking to you.

Do you have information on this particular acquisition though?

Layoffs made post-acquisition are totally different from business climate layoffs.

A major part of acquisitions is eliminating redundant positions/teams. You don't need two HR or accounting departments, and the new combined department isn't going to be twice as big.

Whereas if they intend to keep putting out games at the same pace, there are little to no efficiencies to be found in laying off designers and engineers.

(It does sound like they've canceled one of the games though, resulting in some layoffs there, but unclear in which departments. Acquisitions often involve a change of strategy as well, so that could affect designers/engineers if they can't be absorbed by other games in development.)

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

#93

Post by solardev »

pfdietz wrote: post #63
jrockway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Activision Blizzard was always chasing revenue at the expense of everything else. They got away with riding the coattails of Blizzard for a while, but eventually everyone figured out what was going on. My "favorite" part was watching them kill Overwatch with Overwatch League. Overwatch was popular because people played it casually. Activision thought it would be great to make it a professional sport. Eventually…

If the bad decisions there were driven from the top, then the acquisition could cause a large change in behavior. No guarantees, of course.

Microsoft hasn't made any remarkable games in a long time, either. They just play it safe and release filler msterial, like most of Gamepass.

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

#94

Post by otikik »

sph wrote: post #55
oldpersonintx wrote: post #5

1900 salaried workers with good benefits laid off from Activision 19000 to be hired by Chipotle to make burritos for minimum wage By the labor stats, this is a net gain of 17100 jobs

It literally is.

Although the gaming industry doesn't have a good record, they are probably better than Chipotle.

https://jacobin.com/2021/05/chipotle-nightmare-employer-wage...

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

#95

Post by picadores »

pfdietz wrote: post #63
jrockway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Activision Blizzard was always chasing revenue at the expense of everything else. They got away with riding the coattails of Blizzard for a while, but eventually everyone figured out what was going on. My "favorite" part was watching them kill Overwatch with Overwatch League. Overwatch was popular because people played it casually. Activision thought it would be great to make it a professional sport. Eventually…

If the bad decisions there were driven from the top, then the acquisition could cause a large change in behavior. No guarantees, of course.

Like mcdonnell douglas made Boeing a great aircraft company..

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

#96

Post by blibble »

HideousKojima wrote: post #91
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm not impressed at all. It looks and feels like a cartoonish bootleg of SC with AI generated Fortnite-looking artwork. What made SC interesting, like most Blizzard IP of the time, was also the well written story lines with amazing character arcs, that kept people invested, and not that it was a strategy game of space marines versus organic aliens versus energy aliens. They even made sure to give stor…

SC1 had a great story with excellent writing, especially for the time. SC2's story was schlocky garbage. The biggest example of this is the opening cutscene of 2 with Raynor in the bar. Raynor's literal final line to Kerrigan in SC1 was "It may not be tomorow, darlin', it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I'm the man who's gonna kill you one day. I'll be seeing you." Meanwhile in the open…

> Also they literally never even mentioned Fenix, Raynor's best Protoss buddy, in SC2 Wings of Liberty despite Kerrigan betraying and murdering him.

spoiler warning!

like most characters killed in SC1 he does pop up, specifically in LOTV

(not a good one though)

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

#97

Post by Goronmon »

usrnm wrote: post #49
ramesh31 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Larian Studios has 450 employees, and BG3 completely blows any other modern RPG out of the water in terms of the sheer amount of fun content inside the game

Larian Studios has 450 employees...

Exactly, you need a massive team to live up to expectations for AAA games these days.

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

#98

Post by solardev »

oblio wrote: post #78
solardev wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just played Diablo 4 season 3 (which launched a couple days ago) for a bit, and sadly I have to agree. It's such an empty, soulless game. Reminds me of Starfield, regurgitated sameness. Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, etc. are all so much better, and made by tiny studios (though sometimes backed by Tencent, like with PoE). With the AAAs focusing only on safe sequels, maybe LLMs taking over would be a good thi…

> With the AAAs focusing only on safe sequels, maybe LLMs taking over would be a good thing, lol. I have bad news for you :-) The trend with more automation is for more sameness, not less, unfortunately.

I dunno, I've personally seen ChatGPT produce better writing and more interesting game mechanics compared to D4.

But I guess it's not that different from having young blood with good ideas overridden by profit hungry management who just want to milk the IP. I don't think it's so much AI vs human but how risk-averse the bean counters are. D4 felt stagnant an hour in...

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

#99

Post by FirmwareBurner »

blibble wrote: post #96
HideousKojima wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SC1 had a great story with excellent writing, especially for the time. SC2's story was schlocky garbage. The biggest example of this is the opening cutscene of 2 with Raynor in the bar. Raynor's literal final line to Kerrigan in SC1 was "It may not be tomorow, darlin', it may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured; I'm the man who's gonna kill you one day. I'll be seeing you." Meanwhile in the open…

> Also they literally never even mentioned Fenix, Raynor's best Protoss buddy, in SC2 Wings of Liberty despite Kerrigan betraying and murdering him. spoiler warning! like most characters killed in SC1 he does pop up, specifically in LOTV (not a good one though)

>spoiler warning!

I think when an IP is over 10 years old, you don't need to warn for spoilers anymore, Dumbledore dies in the end.

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

#100

Post by Spartan-S63 »

hbn wrote: post #82
manuel4sk wrote: post #25

Will the next Call of Duty be impacted?

If things went wrong in the process of producing a CoD game it might turn out fun

I’d argue every time they allow Sledgehammer Games to take the lead on a CoD title, it goes wrong.

MWII was a breath of fresh air amidst an over abundance of twitchy ultra-arcade shooters. It struck a balance between the arcade experience we expect, but deliberately slowing it down such that reaction time didn’t dominate gameplay.

In contrast, MWIII from SHG is a step backwards to such an extreme that along with Vanguard, I don’t think they’re qualified to be anything but a support studio for the CoD franchise.

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