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Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

kotaku.com

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Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#81

Post by manicdee »

anothergoogler wrote: post #68
bdz wrote: post #12

And Kotaku once again spins the wheel against the players >The explosion of outrage has many on social media discussing the extent to which video game culture enables entitlement. It’s not surprising, after all, that there’s been some pushback on the idea of a mobile Diablo game. What’s shocking here is the sheer amount of molten vitriol that’s pouring in over what seems to be a pretty cut-and-dry situation: A proper…

Talk about bad writing! I guess you need to write things like "molten vitriol" to get your point across when every sentence is hyberbolic. Some journalists need to learn that turning it to 11 isn't a legitimate approach outside of tabloids. Maybe Kotaku is a tabloid though.

Go read the comments on the Diablo Immortal gameplay trailer on YouTube. Tell me that's not molten vitriol.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#82

Post by thomasz »

jakebasile wrote: post #78
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a hobby like any other such as repairing old cars, painting, craft beer, etc. And yet you don't see people who follow those hobbies throwing an absolute fit like gamers are now doing continuously.

A big part of that is comparative population size, and the general "connectedness" of the fanbases. All online communities are trending worse and worse, and gaming is not unaffected.

I double dare anybody to show me an even remotely comparable example of people getting so angry about fishing gear or woodworking tools.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#83

Post by manicdee »

malvosenior wrote: post #22
pcwalton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"GamerGate" was "a thing" because of disgusting, and deeply held, misogyny within the gaming community. The reason why every legitimate press outlet covered "GamerGate" from the standpoint of a harassment campaign against women is because that is precisely what it was.

As I said: "In the end, people who don't have time to research the topic themselves, believe the narrative they're told thus empowering the journalists to continue to attack their audience."

Perhaps you need to research the topic yourself.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#84

Post by manicdee »

d0m wrote: post #13

Fans aren't angry about the diablo mobile game. They're angry because they were expecting a Diablo4 announcement and blizzard announced a diablo mobile game.. this is very different. IMHO the problem was in the way it was communicated, not with the game itself. It would have been very different if blizzard said: A) We've hired amazing people and we're working super hard on the next big Diablo title on PC, and here's…

Is it Blizzard's fault that people are downvoting and posting abusive comments on the Diablo Immortal gameplay trailer? Or is that campaign of harassment perhaps the fault of the players who felt betrayed that a much loved hack & slash game was being introduced to a new market?

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#85

Post by malvosenior »

manicdee wrote: post #83
malvosenior wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said: "In the end, people who don't have time to research the topic themselves, believe the narrative they're told thus empowering the journalists to continue to attack their audience."

Perhaps you need to research the topic yourself.

I've been following it for a long time. Just as in this situation, the journalists created Gamergate by attacking their audience in a coordinated fashion.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#86

Post by pier25 »

gmueckl wrote: post #52
pier25 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Instead of saying "don't you have phones?" they should have said "We are working on a new Diablo PC title but we aren't ready to talk about it yet". Would have been a very different reaction.

But imagine yourself up on stage in front of thousands of people, with 2 or 3 seconds to come up with an answer while you are not allowed to mention any unannounced games. What would you have said? This is hard and many of us would not have done much better than this on the spot. The only "better" answer that I can think of would be a vague, general hint that Blozzard is working on more titles than those that are ann…

> imagine yourself up on stage in front of thousands of people, with 2 or 3 seconds to come up with an answer

I know, that's why you usually prepare a series of answers for QAs.

And sure, some things you can't prepare for, but a PC question from fans of a PC game is inevitable.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#87

Post by pcwalton »

thomasz wrote: post #80
ggregoire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I continue to be completely mystified with the concept of outrage about video games. What about the concept of outrage about programming languages, frameworks, web browsers, operating systems, laptops, phones, open source? I guess 99.9% of the population would be mystified with the outrages that we can see on Hacker News. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221527 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741357…

The comments in these links are downright tame compared to r/diablo right now, while the stakes are way higher. The decisions of tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple have real, tangible impacts on our careers. Diablo is just a goddamn video game.

> The decisions of tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple have real, tangible impacts on our careers.

Not only that, they have an impact on democracy. The importance of FB, AMZN, AAPL, GOOG, and MSFT to society has never been higher. The relevance of ATVI to anything important is, to a first approximation, zero.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#88

Post by jakebasile »

thomasz wrote: post #80
ggregoire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I continue to be completely mystified with the concept of outrage about video games. What about the concept of outrage about programming languages, frameworks, web browsers, operating systems, laptops, phones, open source? I guess 99.9% of the population would be mystified with the outrages that we can see on Hacker News. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221527 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741357…

The comments in these links are downright tame compared to r/diablo right now, while the stakes are way higher. The decisions of tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple have real, tangible impacts on our careers. Diablo is just a goddamn video game.

The decisions of game giants like Activision, EA, and Ubisoft have real, tangible impacts on my life. They obviously do not have such an impact on yours. Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot care about and how deeply I should care about it?

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#89

Post by jakebasile »

pcwalton wrote: post #87
thomasz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments in these links are downright tame compared to r/diablo right now, while the stakes are way higher. The decisions of tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple have real, tangible impacts on our careers. Diablo is just a goddamn video game.

> The decisions of tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple have real, tangible impacts on our careers. Not only that, they have an impact on democracy. The importance of FB, AMZN, AAPL, GOOG, and MSFT to society has never been higher. The relevance of ATVI to anything important is, to a first approximation, zero.

Again, you're essentially saying that because games aren't something you care about that it's wrong for anyone to care deeply about them.

Re: Blizzard Says It Wasn't Expecting Fans to Be This Angry About Diablo Immortal

#90

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #66
_2d30 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So while I agree the Twitter post about toxic masculinity is both a HUGELY weird leap and a further sign of the times, Kotaku's take on the situation seems (at least the quoted bit, I didn't read the whole article) a perfectly reasonable and even the "proper" take on the situation. Perhaps barring the "video game culture enables entitlement" bit. It's a shame watching the quite literal rage that has come about from a…

It truly is the bratty self-centered rage that's incredible to witness. "Hey, we're working on the game you want. In the mean time here's another game for different users." "Noooooo! I've been betrayed! This is the ultimate insult!!!!" And as much as people don't want to admit it, gamergate was the same thing. I've spent a lot of time gaming in my past, but there's something unhealthy floating around here. If you saw…

What's your expectation? Blizzard released their games (the Blizzard-specific ones) only for PC for ages. Only recently, they released them on console too. Bet what? ALL their fans are pc gamers. All the 10m people that bought diablo 3 on day one are pc gamers.

You know what pc gamers don't like? Pay2win. And any business model that usually runs on mobile that is not buy once (or monthly subscription), because in any other situation, the game is focused on pulling more money for you.

That’s why people feel betrayed by a mobile game. They created their average customer to be of a specific niche, then they create something that is completely out of that niche. What's your expectation there? Did you ever try to show a ballet instead of a soccer game at the stadium? I bet the problem would be much worse.

And to be fair, I don't care at all (and I stopped being a Blizzard fan long long time ago), I just find ridiculous that people can't understand why the fans are angry.

They created the fans, then created a game that is completely against their fanbase.

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