Push back or step down

General Discussion
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Aaron Keller (Game Director),

Push back on the suits above you, who only want money from it’s player base. Who don’t care about making amazing, creative and innovating worlds and characters and fresh game styles.
I refuse to believe that someone followed their dream to become a game developer and applied to what used to be one of the most prestige game companies, just to make hacky mobile games for computers and consoles and then also use horrific pricing tactics (F2P cash grab) against their own player base. This couldn’t have been the dream.

Blizzard once used to have developers who clearly loved their work and it came through in their designs. They took risks to lead the industry and make games that were unique and exciting, not conformed to what other companies were doing. Just to follow a model and blend in to mediocrity .
We know the company can make insane amounts of money without sacrificing it’s own players. It did it for decades.

You guys have the real numbers of what’s going on with OW2. Even though it will be spun out to the public and share holders under the best possible light and using every trick to hide what is actually happening as your player base is already dropping in large chunks.
(there is a reason that with all of Blizzard games combined has still lost HALF of it’s player base in the last couple of years)
So push back or step down so someone with a spine can push back and try to get back to making great games that are still fun decades later, rather than trying to make cheap games, designed to rake in as much money as possible before it quickly dies.

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I don’t think anyone really takes a job because it’s their “passion” and they “love giving to the community” anymore, unless they’re an indie dev. It’s all just for money. All the people that work at Blizzard are probably totally ok with what’s happening because they continue to be paid. It’s just a job to them. They do what they’re told and in turn get money in their bank account.

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Probably right.

I believe most people do the job not because of the passion, but because it’s a job. It pays you money that you need.
But most people aren’t doing anything close to what they love to do.

I would think that if you got into the video game industry, made it to one of the biggest gaming companies, that you would have a passion for it and worked hard to get there. It’s not working at some desk job that you hate going to every day (or maybe it is, I don’t know).

I guess if I worked at my absolute dream job and found that everything I worked for and all of my creative ideas were just going to be put aside just to try and make as much money as possible, I’d be pretty disappointed and quit. Like what a total bummer.

That was what was different about old Blizzard. That’s what put them at the top of the industry in the first place. They made amazing games and still made large amounts of money doing it.
Like, I get that it’s a business, but I guess it’s just sad to see that the passion is gone and the want and need to make exciting and amazing videos games has been replaced with “how many more dollars can we squeeze from each of our players and how can we cut costs, even if it’s at the expense of the game itself”.

All well I guess.
It is what it is.

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I don’t think the suits make decisions on what gets put into the game and what does not get put into the game, it just does not make sense. why would they even have a game designer if the suits were doing that job.

I’m pretty sure lead designer has more push than you know

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if people do that then the products that they make turn out like sht. and those are also the people that btch and moan about their job day in and day out.

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They have the numbers, that’s why the shop prices are the way they are. They know it’ll work because they have tons of data to support it.

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As you say, needs more push back. More commentaries/updates, more insights into their rationale, etc. I suspect he’s cornered between the corporate types above and some terrible hires / team4 potatoes below.

One thing I think is for certain, is he has a surplus of financial resources and creative measures at his disposal. Typically directors blame lack of budget, but this can’t possibly be the case. They’re supposedly billions of company, staffing of ~200 for Team4, best and brightest talent, years of dev time, etc. Infighting and scandals or not, you have what most program directors only dream of. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to really deliver, or move out of the way for someone else who can/will.

I never like over-simplifying the issues to one or two people. And I never like blaming the end-user community for issues with the system. But they need to make some internal change-ups ASAP, because they’re condemning the team4 reputation, the franchise, the brand, etc.

A season or two left before it may as well shutsdown until 2024 if/when they build a great PvE experience.

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I could be wrong, but from what I read in an article awhile back, Papa Jeff (Jeff Kaplan) had to constantly fight off Blizzard suits about decision on both OW and OW2.
It’s been awhile since I read the article, so I don’t have the details off hand, but it came down to that Jeff was more concerned about taking their time to make sure they were putting out a high quality game that their players would love and that the suits were constantly on him to just push out the game and wanted to change how to monetize it (go to F2P).
Jeff was against all of those things. He was sure that the company would still make a ton of money if they didn’t try to use cheap tactics to gouge their players and didn’t want to rush out unfinished games.

Up until around this point, Blizzard had always taken their time on video games, taking years and even decades to put out a video game, but their video games stood out because of this. They were known for not only having unique and amazing games, but they were highly polished and never released too early with a million game breaking bugs.
Seems that the Blizzard suits are now trying to follow the style of most gaming companies. The style of “push out unfinished, broken games too early, so they can start getting money now”.

And look what happened right after Jeff left.
They pushed out an unfinished game (in multiple ways). The game still doesn’t have PVE, which is the whole entire reason that it was supposed to be “Overwatch 2” and not just an update to Overwatch.
It also launched with a crazy amount of bugs (I’m not even talking about the server issues they had at launch). Had to remove multiple characters (Bastion, Torbs, Mei) and maps (Junkertown) due to bugs and still had plenty of game breaking bugs anyways (it’s almost as if no one ever play tested it, either because even the devs don’t want to play OW2 or because it was rushed out so fast that it completely skipped the play test process).
It literally has less features than it’s predecessor. They basically relaunched OW1, but took things out of the game. The fact that they even dare call this a “sequel” is disgusting and at this point was just a marketing ploy.

They also immediately changed the monetization method for the game. Rather than a flat price with the ability to spend more money in game if you wanted, they changed it to F2P (I don’t care what anyone says, F2P only benefits the developers and almost never the player… there is a reason it’s a popular choice right now, because it makes the company way more money. Not that I’m against them getting paid for their work, but when they put characters behind a pay wall in a comparative game, then make those characters OP on purpose to make the more exciting and make people want to play them, then it’s skewed to a “pay to win” style of game).

My opinion (take it with a grain of salt, because there is just a lot that we don’t know), Jeff either left or was removed from his position. It seemed extremely sudden and seemed like there must have been many issues (with lots of rumors of why he left).
After he left, Aaron Keller who was the assistant game director was probably approached by Blizzard suits and they said “this is how we want to do things. Are you wanting to direct the game in this direction or are we going to need to find someone else who will do it?” and thus the resistance that Jeff Kaplan gave to the suits was gone. They no longer had someone in their way to try and squeeze more money out of the player base.
Aaron Keller could keep having a good job with amazing pay and be a puppet or he could have pushed back and said “this was not the vision and you are destroying a video game franchise for your greed”.
And if this is what happened… I get it. Aaron wants a job and it probably pays insanely, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s spineless and gave up the dream for some money.

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It doesn’t have to be that binary. You can fall anywhere along the spectrum of money vs passion. If Keller follows the same path as Kaplan, he’ll end up with the same result. And the replacement is going to know damn well to be more obedient. In the end the money wins, if the game isn’t making money, then they need to make changes to make money. If the game ‘sucks’ but the numbers show they’re making money, then it’ll be business as usual. That’s it.

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Exactly. It’s not just a corporate issue.
Fanbois keep finding scapegoats for Aaron and his team.
Enough already. They had years to get this ready and the entire experience is trash.

The buck stops with him. Where has he been? What has done?
Explain why your team is not keeping up?

And then do the right thing - leave the business of game development to someone else.
No place for awfuls when you’re getting paid so much.

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It’s almost like I was calling it shot for f*<#ing shot.
Well, you get to sit in this Aaron Keller, you spineless coward. Really hope you are looking around and watching someone else’s awesome legacy slowly fall to ruins due to being weak and inept.

What a pathetic game dev team…