So what’s the point you’re trying to make then?
Honestly that’s not a jab at you either
Won’t bother with the rest of your post as all you were doing was trying to sound intellectual in order to defend calling for someone to lose their job and not even doing a good job at it.
But I’ll address the above quote quote I didn’t quite word it well and you also seemed to have deliberately misrepresented what it.
When I said I don’t care… What I should have said was it doesn’t matter to me if you dislike the direction of the game and blame him for it or not. It also doesn’t matter if you think he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Your opinion on him as a person has no relance to me when calling for him to be fired because you’re upset that your nostalgia didn’t come to life in this new iteration of the game it is childish at best and absolutely toxic.
To be fair, I would never hire someone who doesn’t take ownership of their service/product and share in company vision.
Now, there is strategic business intelligence in the sense that you do get ideas from your competitors and would “play other games.” I also think that what you do in your free time is yours alone, but there are things in our HR training that forbids stuff that affects a company’s reputation as a reason for termination.
I would actually have treated Rob as a DADT, don’t ask and don’t tell - relative to his free/personal time. However, I expect him to leave breathe blood sweat and tears the companies products otherwise.
It’s only good business and good hiring decisions to have people vested in your product in their professional and private lives if they do overlap.
In a gaming company, if you don’t play your own product at a “decent” level, you need to ask if you have the right people on the job. You may need to pay people to play the product at a “decent” level - this is what you do with internal quality, no?
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Reading the interview and how he explains whjy he hates the quote “its ready when its ready” gives me the impression rod doesen’T understand what he is talking about.
His example with the flower is a total joke.
He says the “its done when its done” philosophy does not offer a clear goal. Like the game development would be aimless. But there was allways an goal Rod. It was just not a certain “Date” it was a certain “State”. A state the game has to be in to be released. Like feature complete for example.
He cleary suggest to set a clear date and release the game no matter what state the game has. No wonder this game is so broken and everything is a mess.
Complete opposite of GGG once again which deleayed PoE2 several times and even pulled the brake super close before release.
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Iuno, i can only partly agree i think. I mean, they arent a small indie company anymore, its a business. When i work for 8 hours per day on diablo 4 you can be sure as hell that i want to get my mind off it when im done with my working hours.
Now what i can agree on is if such stuff should be shared. I personally dont mind it, but i can also understand companies that strictly forbid that.
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Right, and that’s why it’s a dadt for me. what he does in his private time is his, but if I know about him playing another game consistently without good reason, he’s just the wrong fit - I would can him.
If i was a CEO of a soap company and I went to Rob’s house for a party and he had another company’s soap, to be honest, I would probably let him go in about 6 months…lol.
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Sorry guys, I know Blizz was a game company but it became publicly traded a while back. There are a lot of stake holders expecting to make tons of profits off this game and that will drive the business model for years to come. Rod may not be the best guy for the franchise, but he’s perfect for the shareholders. And don’t forget that other people hired him. People who thought he was the best person to further their goals. Making good games is not their primary goal. The sooner you accept it, the clearer things will be.
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yea i can absolutely see that some companies want to be run this way.
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It’s a matter of company culture and vision.
Neverending is absolutely right.
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No, I get that.
I think I summarized a typical business attitude. If we simplify the world 
by assuming (as I do) that all business involves scamming people (the main job of PR/Marketing)… then usually everything falls into bucket 1 or bucket 2. (Also, I’m not a shareholder & I don’t take the pov of one… but one of my assumptions is that Blizzard as a company is still driven in part by “legacy”. And they don’t have to believe in it themselves for it to still be true in a business sense.)
Lots of variables, lots of subjective definitions, and unfortunately from the pov of customers… lots of guesswork about interactions that go on inside the dev studio.
We’re given a surprisingly candid insight in this article, into what sounds like explicit interactions inside the dev studio. I’ll ascribe it to Rod “malignant tunnel” Ferguson’s patchy PR filter.
I’m not as convinced as other ‘customers’ by the talent/instinct of the core dev team… For example, I’ve heard people in Blizzard’s orbit say stuff like “I get the sense that Colin and Adam (Jackson) don’t really have much freedom to execute on their vision” & that they have “big brains” & lots of cool ideas. I’m neutral or suspicious: it sounds like PR, seeping out from the ‘other side’ of the interaction. I can only rely on what the product is, and whether or not it behaves like a beta. 
But once in a while comes explicit evidence that cuts through the PR/spin/guesswork… such as Rod’s interview. Also, it’s compatible with various hypotheses. I think we can all juggle a few in our heads (everyone should, at all times, or they’re being irrational). One of them sounds like the previous paragraph.
Also, no one personality has to be ‘the one’. Rod, for example, could merely be channeling instructions from higher-ups. It’s not very important either way. It’s two more hypotheses, instead of one.
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This is all I read. 1st & last sentence, good speedreading tactic, to get a sense if there’s any meat in between.
Vegan.
We could go back and forth all night saying nothing to each other. So let’s rephrase things.
My stance is he shouldn’t be fired because some people on a forum are not happy with the game. You seem to disagree with that stance.
What grounds do you have for him losing his job?
Curious as to your stance.
That mantra is what made Blizzard the company they WERE. It’s the attitude of people like Rod that have turned them into thr company they ARE.
Already invited to lay out what that profession is & what products/services they sell to paying customers… lmk if you spot anything.
As to the Blizzard “legacy” thing… after a couple generations, a business can learn to sell the idea through PR, rather than through palpable belief in the idea.
Almost everything is perception, including people’s gaming experience. It’s a bit scary. It’s only going to get more chaotic & undefined, until the AI takes over & we take our place in the battery pods, where we belong.
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But people have been saying blizzard were dead and not the company they used to be long before he joined blizzard. D4 was already deep into development when he joined in 2020.
They hired him because they knew what his philosophy was based on his track record with gears of war and other games so it wouldn’t have been a shock to blizzard leadership. They brought in what they wanted so again it’s not on him for the shift in culture change. Leadership could have hired someone more inline with their legacy philosophy had they wanted it.
It may sound like I’m trying to defend him. I’m really not. What I’m doing is pointing out that people look for a scapegoat and don’t really look any deeper than just knowing his name.
It’s fine. Open/close your wallets accordingly and that’s all there is to it.
Indeed. People on forums crying for him to be fired is pointless. But shareholders is another matter.
You’re probably not a sports guys but you would be surprised that this is all the time in the sports world, fans of any sport if things aren’t going well, calling out on their boards"fire xxx" whether the coach or GM or assistant ect.
I dont see this as any different.
Promote Joe Piepiora to Rod’s position, or however u spell his last name.
He’s the only person who has ever shown a shred of interest in doing actual work.
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Shrug, if he’s job was to get stuff out on time, get D4 out for the investors and revenue for the merger, he did a good job.
If it was to continue on this track with VOH, he hit everything timely.
Remember the null hypothesis here is hard to argue because D4 and VOH I’m sure was widely successful from a financial standpoint. The null hypothesis is would Blizzard have made more money with a different approach?
Impossible to know, if D4 never out of the gates on time, or if VOH was delayed by several months, would we have seen profits tank?
That’s the balance right?