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Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

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Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#191

Post by bigyikes »

Cyberdog wrote: post #178
zpeti wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just trying to play devils advocate, im not sure it’s possible to do it differently. You simply can’t replicate true founder attitudes and mentality and choices with a management with stock options and fiduciary responsibility. Steve Jobs seemed to be very concerned about this and spent a lot of time trying to create an innovative organisation independent of him. What have we got since him? A smart watch and ever inc…

> A smart watch and ever increasing apple taxes on the App Store. And incremental improvements to the iPhone. And Swift, and Apple Silicon, and FaceID, and HomePod (which hasn't been a massive success but is at least an attempt at something new), and a return to the Cheese Grater Pro, and massive improvements to Maps, and the perpetual autonomous driving rumors. What am I forgetting? Oh, Apple actually halved App Sto…

And you can’t talk about the Apple Watch without talking about the other half of its wearables: Airpods, which are near-universally lauded and undoubtedly innovative.

And who was talking about wearables before Apple entered the game? Only nerds, pretty much. There is something to be said about Apple repeatedly setting trends in our society. Many will chalk it up to “Apple worship” or whatever, but I think the real answer is that Apple is one of the only tech companies who can innovate in the cultural space.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#192

Post by toss1 »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

> Does anyone know why this happens?

Unless it is continuously and actively minimized with explicit countermeasures, large organizations tend to degrade into filtering sociopaths into top positions.

The tendency to prioritize financialization over product also doesn't help.

As you mention, once both the founders are gone and the organization is large, watch out...

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#193

Post by secondaryacct »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

Human rights in Hong Kong let's not exaggerate. Except in american news, our human rights are still okay, thank you very much...

Maybe press freedom is a bit damaged, political expression more difficult, but we still have 1 millionaire in 7 people, are immensely prosperous, and let's not even compare to the average Chinese.

Human rights in Hong Kong, psh, we probably have more protection than the US...

And what does it have to do with a video game company in the first place, people are insane :D

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#195

Post by jesboat »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #140
WitCanStain wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think worker-owned businesses can mitigate this? After all, one of their pluses is supposed to be that the workers can choose to prioritise things other than profit.

Worker owned business can't even compete. Name one such company that is in the top 5 in any product category.

Ocean Spray.

Wikipedia describes it as

> Ocean Spray is an American agricultural cooperative of growers of cranberries and grapefruit headquartered in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. It currently has over 700 member growers (in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Florida, British Columbia and other parts of Canada, as well as Chile). The cooperative employs about 2,000 people, with sales of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2013 and accounts for 70% of North American cranberry production.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#196

Post by christophilus »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #8

I'm not under an illusion that it does any good, but I swore off all Blizzard products after the Blitzchung incident. It doesn't feel right giving money to a company that would side with the CCP over human rights in Hong Kong. I'd previously played Hearthstone and Overwatch, and I'd been a Blizzard fan since the original Warcraft. That happy company is dead, and something ugly is animating its corpse. I think company…

My theory is this: founders want to build something. They are creators. Their motivation is building something new / cool / useful. The second generation of leadership is motivated by power / money. They don’t create. They climb ladders built by creators. The difference in motivation is not subtle. The outcomes are generally positive in the first case and sociopathic in the second.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#197

Post by ChoGGi »

ReptileMan wrote: post #114
pharmakom wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard writing and storytelling has always been crap. I think expectations were just lower back then.

I disagree. Both Starcraft and Diablo I had good writing. For me the decline came with Warcraft 3. Both the visuals and story of this game were shit. And after that WoW became juggernaut and for some reason Blizzard decided that only pre teen david Eddings fans are their audience and never bothered to check the real demographics afterwards. Such a juvenile writing could only be achieved deliberately.

I'm of the same opinion; Warcraft 3 didn't feel like a Blizzard game, and nothing has since.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#198

Post by _nalply »

prepend wrote: post #185
zpeti wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just trying to play devils advocate, im not sure it’s possible to do it differently. You simply can’t replicate true founder attitudes and mentality and choices with a management with stock options and fiduciary responsibility. Steve Jobs seemed to be very concerned about this and spent a lot of time trying to create an innovative organisation independent of him. What have we got since him? A smart watch and ever inc…

> ever increasing apple taxes on the App Store. This rate was 30% since launch, right? How is it ever increasing? Apple recently reduced the fee for developers making less than $1M/year[0] [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/18/apple-will-cut-app-store-fee...

GP probably meant that people pay more and more for apps. They buy more apps or more expensive apps or more people buy apps. In other words, even with rate staying the same Apple has ever increasing revenue from the App Store.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#199

Post by gjsman-1000 »

ben_w wrote: post #149
temp8964 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foxconn has lots of factories in lots of different places. Does it matter to specify which factory / place has the problem?

Perhaps, but unlikely. I can’t find how many people worked at Foxconn at the time, but right now it’s employing more than the population of any of the smallest eight US states. Wikipedia’s list of suicide rates by state is from a different year than the population, but it looks like those states are about 5 times the population-adjusted rate that Foxconn had. Wikipedia also says that China’s national suicide rate is…

Steve Jobs was actually asked in an interview about Foxconn, and while he said suicides are horrible, they aren’t out of line with the general population statistically. Even though that was widely considered unfeeling.

Re: Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years

#200

Post by voakbasda »

vhold wrote: post #194

There should be some mention of their fight against the EFF. https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

This lawsuit should generate more hate from all computer users, not just gamers. They screwed over not only their own users, but they hurt everyone on the planet. The ruling that they bought directly undermines the ability to develop interoperating software. Of any kind. For anything. Want your right to repair? Blizzard directly took some of that from you, and for that I hope they burn in hell.
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