Then there’s a whole lot of “exceptions” out there, that not only enjoy engaging with their community — but do so on a nearly daily (but absolutely weekly) basis.
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Imagine you get off your shift at Taco bell, and just want to go home because its near a new menu release and you had to do a bunch of extra stuff at work,
But instead of going home you need to go on to social media to defend the idea of the crunchwrap to the people who for some reason don’t like it but keep eating it?
Its just such an insane thing to think that a dev should interact with anyone other than their bosses about their job. They make about 0 decisions, maybe half of one sometimes. The go in grab a task from a board and do it, thats really it.
People have to seem this phantasy idea that a dev team is a bunch of guys that got together who really wanted to make a cool thing for everyone and they have ownership of it and ideas and input when your average dev has no say in anything, probably is underpaid, probably works more than full time so their boss can take more vacation time off.
If a community manager is what you want thats a whole different thing that is someone whoe job it is is to convey the future and current state of a product to the shareholders (IE the consumer in this case), devs talk to them about what they are working on and why and they talk to the decision makers about feedback they are getting. If what you are asking is does OW have a very quiet community interaction team/don’t include the public enough in their decisions about their game? Sure. But those arent devs, I mean not even remotely close.
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They just need to give us another roadmap to be perfectly honest. The other one has been accomplished and we are heading into a new year. It would just make sense to share some of the vague details such as “ooh, another DPS next year” or “wow, a swimsuit theme” and maybe a little bit of “look forward to a new game mode!”
Agreed the company as a team is a bit too secrtetive and withholding on the surface. Maybe its for a reason like people stealing their ideas but I doubt it, that sort of espionage happens more behind the scenes, I think they just don’t have the budget or manpower to do it anymore, but I wish they would.
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They absolutely have the budget to do so. Do you think those collaborations with these various IPs like: MHA (My Hero Academia), OPM (One Punch Man), and Porsche are cheap? And with the ridiculous pricing that OW has for its cosmetics, they are absolutely rolling in cash. Have you taken a look at the earnings Activision/Blizzard has been raking in the past few months? It’s ridiculous.
The truth is, they just don’t care. Or! They dislike the community (as other forum members have said). And it shows. The community is looked at as more or less cattle, rather than people who are investing in your product for entertain purposes. And it’s sad. Just look at how conditioned folks are when it comes to expectations of the devs interacting with them. That’s a tragedy in and of itself.
And side note. Did you know that there was almost an Overwatch Netflix show, as well as other opportunities available for OW at one point? But, they choose to sue Netflix and decline. Claiming how it wasn’t needed, amongst other things. And now fast forward to where the franchise (OW) is at now.
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…they sued netflix and subsequently cancelled their shows for executive poaching.
I guess what I mean by don’t have the budget for it is they don’t see A reason to spend money on it vs the other things they spend money on.
Do I think the collabs are cheap? Absolutely they are practically free money. They do things kind advertise the new transformers movie by letting the transformers guys put skins in your game. I mean some of them are straight up for profit.
And again I think you just also don’t know what a dev is? You keep acting like a dev isn’t a grunt that completes tasks for a company. They literally do not make any of the decisions.
I’ve been a “dev” for 6 years, any job I ever took if they wanted me to also be a consumer liaison (a whole extra 6 figure job) on top of being a dev id leave in a second. And every other “dev” would too.
They don’t interact that often because there’s no need to. I also don’t blame them for not wanting to be in a public spotlight of one of the most toxic communities in gaming.
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And they have the power to fix it, but what has been done to do so? As in what genuine effort has been applied to tone down the high amounts of: Harassment, rudeness, and overall toxicity in this game? Pretty much nothing. Which also says a lot. The fact that they even allowed things to get to this point is a problem.
But, they can easily turn it around by dealing with the community themselves. And directly addressing the numerous problems regarding how awful this community has become. But, do they? No.
I believe they stopped posting here because the forum became too toxic and polarized for any long term civil discourse. The DEVs now post on X instead.
It became toxic exactly because the devs stopped giving 2 hoofs about the community.
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And that’s a damn shame. The creators of product have essentially been bullied to the point where as they don’t even want to post on the official forums of their product? That is both pathetic and sad. I have seen a lot of things going on regarding gaming, but Overwatch still takes the cake for: The most toxic, disappointing, cheater-infested, and missed opportunities I have ever experienced and observed.
Please keep in mind that I have also observed: CoD MW2 (talking PS3/XBOX 360 era) in its peak of toxicity, LoL toxicity, WoW toxicity, etc. Nothing comes close to what transpires in OW2. And that’s no exaggeration. There are people who haven’t even installed and or played OW2 (nor the original), and frequently express their disgust in the game quality and the community. A Google search regarding OW2 can prove this, as all over The Internet there is a pretty much an abundance of overwhelmingly negative feedback.
It’s pretty typical of Blizzard, actually.
Look at Overwatch’s history.
It used to be fun - even watching the last developer update with them trying to do some weird animations seemed so forced.
The company is no longer the same. They lack any sort of positive force to direct them and just have people screaming on the horn for them to make more content, whatever content…
Kaplan had a vision that drove the core of the Overwatch team - once you lose your navigator, it’s just many hands pointing in many directions.
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It was Blizz’s CEO Bobby Kotick that drove Jeff Kaplan out of the OW franchise by canceling PVE, then asking him to lie about its termination. Bobby personally enabled an ultra-toxic corporate environment that eventually led to a hefty government fine for various HR related violations.
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Bobby was hired by someone, yeah?
The issue is the fact that these environments have existed and to a good degree, still exist to this day.
Bobby was definitely one of the spokes in the wheel; though it begs the question. If these HR complaints had existed, all of these employee issues - why does it take so long for things to change?
I feel like these companies are starting to realize the fallout of their practices due to the advent of social media. This is becoming more apparent as these documentaries so quickly created and the ability for devs to speak openly becomes more common(also remember, there are probably contracts up the butt you gotta be leery of before saying anything to the public).
Personally, I feel we have completely turned from the concept of a ‘quality product’ to the idea of the fastest product out that nets a profit should just be loosely updated to keep the cash river flowing.
It was the Me-Too movement that brought attention to the toxic and sexist Blizz regime. There were a lot of tenured industry names caught in the shake up that went well beyond the gaming industry.
I did not know about that.
Now I wanna go down that dark rabbit hole and find out what exactly happened…
Yeah, punish the fans! That’ll teach Netflix not to poach talent!!
Oh, no wait….
Huh? Suing them teaches them not to poach talent. In fact, both fox and viacom have also sued netflix for doing this. You think those companies still do business with netflix?
…I’m sure if some other streaming service wanted to pick up the shows, they would make them.