I really don’t understand why everyone still asking themselves “what happened to blizzard” and acting surprised by the garbage they constantly keep putting out. They are a massive publicly traded company and the SOLE purpose of the people in executive positions is to maximize shareholder value. Most executives in the tech space have pay plans where very little of their actual compensation comes from salaries. Most of them are paid primarily through stock options which incentivizes them to milk as much money out of their customers as possible, in order to drive up the stock and make more money. This is why blizzard is not innovating or trying new things, it’s too risky. The people who are in charge TODAY are solely concerned with the current performance of the company and as a result are trying to milk us through nostalgia and recycle old content which has proven successful in the past. They are just recycling content that other innovators in the past designed, as they know we will all buy into it with the hope of something great.
And yes you can make the argument that this approach is short sighted as yes they will make tons of money today off old systems and old IPs being recycled, but they will lose the confidence of the players over time, BUT the current executive teams in these companies dont care about what happens in the future as they wont be around to see it. Once they spend a few years at the helm, cash out all their stock and rake in their millions, they move on and let the future problem of the company tanking be dealt with by someone else.
There is 0 talent at these companies either as they don’t pay enough to attract top tier talent as again, thats a slice out of the cake from shareholders and executives. The focus is not making good games, its maximizing profits TODAY. The sooner we all realize this and stop giving them money the quicker a new developer can come in and fill the void and maybe get back to basics and focus on making a good game.
BTW this is not a hate thread, I’m simply trying to shed light on the reality of this “gaming” company so y’all stop being gaslit into believing something good/better is coming. This is not a gaming company anymore, it’s a corporate machine that bought the rights to a variety of innovative IPs that were built on the backs of truly excellent creative minds and recycling them to suck in as much money for investors and executives on the backs of nostalgia.
I agree. However, unfortunately there are excellent creative people at Blizzard even now. They are the concept artists. It’s sad that such amazing and talented people are wasting it all on this company.
That’s not at all the point. Nothing wrong with a game studio wanting to make money. In the end people have to be paid and there are a lot of costs that go into development. The point is Blizzards approach which is commensurate of corporate America is little risk with maximum payouts. Where as smaller studios who don’t have to answer to investors are wiling to try and innovate. Some take a lot of Ls but occasionally an IP sticks and becomes incredible. And that path also leads to high reward. Path of exile is prime example, just like the original Diablo team, it consisted of a few guys who came up with an idea crowdfunded, and innovated and created something great. It stuck and now they are doing amazing financially and all those guys deserve to be millionaires.
The ironic thing being it’s not maximum payout. It’s only predictable payout. It’s strange what vermin is attracted to these things. These are probably the sort of people who buy first edition Pokemon games or some nonsense as investments. Worms.
if you were to include things like “i think” or “in my opinion” in your wall of text, you would be a whole lot further ahead.
Unless you are the chosen one who has discovered the ultimate truth about blizzard, apart from that we have had this topic and such an analysis here about 4343 times…
You just have to look at their revenue. Only about 30% of Activision’s revenue comes from actual game sales. The rest comes from subscriptions and microtransactions.
Now when it comes to Microtransactions, from previous studies covering video games in general, 0.15% of the game audience is responsible for 50% of the MTX revenue. 2% is responsible for about 80% of the MTX revenue.
That’s the problem with the whole “vote with your wallet” argument. Because it doesn’t matter. Your vote most likely just doesn’t count, and it’s the same with the majority of the audience. Even if you all got together and actually held your ground (rather than stuff like the infamous Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Boycott), it really doesn’t matter.
The bottom line is gaming has changed. And you either need to accept this, or accept that you’re no longer the audience for video games.
