I know that the “Do you guys not have phones?” comment applied to Diablo, Diablo Immortals in specific, but I think it is indicative of the mindset of Acti-Blizzard’s new crop of developers (since all of the old ones jumped ship and probably work for Rob Pardo’s new game development studio - Bonfire Studios).
This Activision-approved lot of devs don’t actually care about your experience. If they do, they aren’t allowed to express it because Activision suits are breathing down their necks at all times to “expand to this market” here or “meet this release deadline so we can brag about our Q1 earnings” there.
In other words: Blizzard used to be a game DEVELOPMENT studio that only released a game once the development team was satisfied that it would bring players a good experience.
Those days are over - games are created and released, now, in order to please Activision’s management which, in turn, aims only to brag about earnings to their investors. That’s it.
Anyone who thinks WC:R was rushed to brag about a quarterly earnings doesn’t actually listen to any of their quarterly meetings.
Even with the meta critic score, bad press, bad release, etc. WC:R was talked about for about 15 seconds (and only because of the bad press).
Even a perfect launch of WC:R would not have been that newsworthy at a call discussing the massive success of CoD:Mobile.
You develop games that make money, or you go under. Welcome to the business, there is a long list of studios that no longer exist.
For some reason those Activision developers at Activision manage to put out top selling games every year. They have also made multiple remakes that received major praise (just launched another success this last week). So why is it that the “Activision Suits” are so good for development at Activision but so bad at Blizzard?
Maybe people should learn to actually blame Blizzard for their divisions mistakes.
“Successful” and “good” are not the same thing here.
A lot of what Activision sells is very successful, most isn’t very good.
That’s a pretty generalized statement.
While it is true that studios that do not make money cannot persist…
Games that are created purely for the purpose of siphoning the cash out of the average knucklehead (90% of the cod fanbase…Kidding, mostly) tend to have unforeseen ramifications such as government intervention. Which is the direction the industry currently seems to be heading and trying like hell to avoid.
Oh yes the “CoD is not good argument”. Millions of players play it and buy it every year. The elitism of “it’s not a good game” gets tiring. I mean shouldn’t you Blizzard fanboys have got tired of the same argument applied to World of Warcraft for the last 16 years. “It’s not a good game, it’s just popular and makes tons of money. WoW is for kiddies, bunch of 12 year olds with their mommies credit cards or fat men living in their moms basement. It’s not a REAL MMO, like (insert x game you favor). Just for casual babies and that’s why it sells well.”
If you want to be in the video game snob crowd, everything Blizzard has ever made is crap. Because if the average consumer enjoys it, can’t be good.
Yeah, every company would love to be overrun by popular games that makes tons of money. Very few indie studies out there that claim they make games for the art.
‘Good’ is subjective, and only privvy to individual opinion. Even if a collective decides something is ‘good’, it’s only ever going to be subjectively valued.
Success is variably subjective too but it’s more tangible in terms of being profitable.
Blizzard used to make the games that the team would want to play. With Activision they make the games that the marketing team would want to profit from. Its the definition of “good” that is essential here. For Activision its games with lots of profit, for blizzard it used to be something else.
Generally yes, sure. But the SC remaster was not a trainwreck from what I heard and vastly superior to Reforged with a graphical interface to set hotkeys for example. So it boils down to the manager in charge of Reforged being incompetent and not passionate at all, contrary to Blizzards tradition. Gigacorps in general allow for such phenomena, because too many people work there and thus some useless ****s get into positions of power.
Also lol @ people in this thread saying financially successful games are inherently good. A huge amount of gamers want to play “the newest game”, that’s just a constant game gigacorps make use of. Otherwise nobody would play Fallout 76, for example. I once badmouthed F76 with a smaller streamer on twitch, but to my surprise it turned out he actually plays the game quite often.
Activision makes the games its customers want. Activision does what it should. we don’t like it is another matter.
blizzard, on the other hand, no. blizzard does not know how to interpret its customers. Or rather if they know why they make good ads or trailers. But they don’t put it in their game.
I think at this point the marketing team should decide what the other teams do. As weird as it sounds.
BFA is another good example. Marqueting knows that wow players love their features and wanted to take pride in their features. But BFA is about hating your faction. I did not feel that being with your faction is a bad thing.
The argument is the studio that puts out the best selling games every single year for over a decade (except the one year Rock Star actually released a game, but RDRD2 probably isn’t “good” also). Only makes bad game’s. Almost every game they have put out since turning around has been well received and well reviewed. But I’m sure someone will argue that’s all paid, players are stupid, or some other excuse at why they are bad.
But somehow the same company is also responsible for ruining your vision of a perfect Blizzard, who during the same period has saw a decline. Ignoring the fact that Blizzard hasn’t been a stand-alone company without having to answer to corporate and investors since 1994. Also ignoring that Activision/Blizzard was formed 13 years ago. Pointing out once again that the last 13 years has completely turned around the Activision studio.
For a lot of you Activision has been part of Blizzard for almost half your life. If everything they have ever done is crap…maybe it’s time to move on. But Activision has no problem making games that are successful, so maybe it’s time the Blizzard studio actually gives that a try.
Oh wait, they did do classic that fans wanted and BLIZZARD hated the idea of. Wonder why…investors did love the Classic Results.
It is true, that this mindset had failed Blizzard but for another reason. Because they where so blind, they announced it on the Blizzcon thinking people would shout Bujah instead of Bu. So now they needed every person to rush out early DIV Alpha for getting forgivness of the Diablo fans and not risking to kill a Triple A game at the start and this is where things like Reforged and WoW Warfronts got sacrificed because they did not brought enough money for alianiting the Diablo Fans.
I suppose I should look here more often then once in a blue moon…
Still though, you failed to address the rest of my argument, particularly the bit regarding ramifications and grossly over simplified the first argument.
Since we’re cherry picking though.
This is simply not the case.
And grossly over generalized at that.
Starcraft, the Diablo series (1&2, 3 was alright but, only after a lot of work) the warcraft rts series, wow( everything pre panda-including cata…) and overwatch were all excellent.
Now it’s completely fair to say that several of the wow expansions were in fact bad ( looks at Pandaria, Warlords and BFA) And that has nothing to do with popularity or lack thereof.
They were just bad expansions.
which gets to the real heart of the argument here.
The steady, consistent quality of blizzard games, the very same quality it built it’s very reputation on is seemingly just gone.
By all appearances It’s been sold and traded away for profit. In an age where remasters are popping up out of the woodwork everywhere warcraft 3: Reforged has set the bar for poor quality remasters.
While you sit there criticizing me for elitism, you’re kind of missing the point.
Blizzard is in a seriously troubling state and Activision seems to be the culprit.
Side note: That credit card jab at wow would have more bite if CoD micro-transactions weren’t so blatantly egregious.
In serious trouble of breaking record profits again in 2020. I’m sure Kotick is still scared of the WC:R mob that thinks he will get fired for creating the most successful game company in the world.
First: that blizzard abandoning everything that made them truly great for the sake of profit is a good thing.
Second: that everyone here is so expendable that if we never bought a blizzard product again, they wouldn’t bat an eye.
This sort of thinking is reckless.
“Customer and quality be damned so long as we make record profits“
It’s dangerous, nevermind blizzard or activision at this point.
That is precisely the sort of short sighted rampant, greedy folly that nearly killed console gaming during the Atari era.
Those profits didn’t come from Reforged sales. If you aren’t talking about Reforged then it doesn’t matter if Activisions other titles are making hand over fist, this is a Reforged thread in the Reforged forums.
“Successful” =/= “good.” Those positive reviews ARE given by shills, who only give such positive reviews so they can keep getting review copies. And people ARE stupid.
Blizzard’s overall quality has gone down the tubes at a steady rate since they merged with Activision, and now that Activision is directly calling the shots at Blizzard that quality is 100% gone.
“Screw decent quality and passion, all that matters is profit.” Then why the hell is Blizzard failing?
Classic was a much better Blizzard game than most of the games they’ve been putting out recently, that’s why it was so successful even the second time around.
Yup the games suck, people are stupid, and the reviews are fake! You hit all 3 I knew someone would.
Thanks your your expert opinion on what makes a game good! Apparently only games with low sales and low player counts are great. WCIII:R will be on all the top 10 list soon.
I think the reason why games arent as good anymore is because so many people constantly whine and complain about the dumbest stuff and Blizzard tries to listen. Listening to all the complainers is what ruined WoW.
At the expense of the workers, the customer satisfaction that Blizzard was known for back in the day and the integrity of the very company being undermined by sweeping gigantic moral issues under the rug.
Trouble indeed. And if they don’t shape up, we all suffer. Not just us customers right now.