The disappointing part is where they are now compared to where they used to be.
Most of the developers and publishers that catch hate can still put out good games. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. I could name games from them that were good in the last 10 years. A lot of the hate comes from other stuff they do.
but Blizzard’s games used to be legendary. They used to either define a genre or be competitors to the ones that did.
These days their games aren’t bad. I wouldn’t play them if I thought they were, but they’re not at the level they used to be.
Imagine a world where people didn’t consider every company that wants to make a dollar evil. Imagine a world where people understand how corporations function and thst the corporation is always going to make decisions that’s best for the corporation.
What’s ironic is most people do the same thing with their lives they make decisions based around what’s the best thing for them and their kids not what’s best for their neighbors. Face it you do the same dang thing.
Blizzard does many charitable things. But that’s not good enough. But a company wanting to make money? How dare they right?
Diablo 3 is a fantastic game. It should be criminal that Blizzard cancelled the 2nd xpac before the 1st was even released because they had given up on D3 and then RoS exploded into the 17th best selling game of all time.
I personally think the reason why Activision got so involved recently is because of the insanely bad decisions going on at Blizzard. Just last year it was said they had scrapped two multi-year projects. It was also mentioned back in 2018 that they were originally going to have D4 be a dark souls like game until they scrapped that idea and reworked it from the ground up as a proper Diablo sequel. It is one of the reasons why it is taking so long to be released.
It’s hard to be artistically great and also have mass appeal.
In an era where games can sell 12 million copies, game development houses will look more and more like big movie studios (and put out games similar to summer blockbusters).
Because someone that thinks the nth Transformers is an awesome movie will think that an artistically great game is either too hard, too boring, or both.
The “A Dark Quiet Death” episode of Mythic Quest captured this pretty well, but there are parallels in all sorts of areas where art and entertainment overlap.
A majority of game companies couldent care about Esports, the Esport mentality is mainly an issue with blizzard because they want to mix casuals with Esports. Streaming is basically just live broadcasted youtube videos. There is more money in gaming because there are more people gaming 10 years ago saying “I’m a gamer” would warrant ridicule where now it’s something everybody dose.
Honestly even in it’s current state I’d still only put Diablo 3 at about a 6/10. I know it’s sold really well, but the game just isn’t all that amazing to me.
Though while I think Diablo 4 should be a proper sequel, I would have been interested in playing a soulslike spin off game.
True, though we do still have fantastic games being made that sell quite well.
It’s just disappointing that Blizzard isn’t what they used to be anymore, even if understandable that they’ve shifted that way.
The gaming industry is no different than Hollywood. They cant make original, compelling and immersive product anymore. They have resorted to remaster this and redo that and lets make a spiderman movie every couple years and ride on the coat tails of nostalgia.
I don’t doubt there wasn’t an altruistic intention in the beginning, but end of the day they didn’t make video games JUST for the love of making video games.
You make them because you want to add something to the world, but also because you want to turn a buck.
It is a short, shallow game, with bad combat, bad upgrade system, few weapon choices, and not very many different types of baddies. It had some funny dialog moments, but all in all I was definitely not a fan.
Length of the game depends on who you join. I joined the board the first time and it only lasted for 20 hours. Going with the Dr. and doing the side quests, and exploring the planets leads up to 30 something hours, with DLC it should go up in length.
Upgrade system was different from what fallout or typical rpgs and combat took a bit for me to like. But after I started getting into modding my weapons it got a lot better, certain weapon types for different enemies. It was definitely a more “explore the world, than do these jobs” type of game.
I think it depends on how you play your games though.
Oh, not from the AAA offices there isnt. Valve is STILL riding on the coat tales of older content. They havent released a new IP in years. Blizzard, needed classic to breathe new life into that company. All of the remastered Resident Evil games. Skyrim has been remastered over and over, modded and made into VR, why? Cause Fallout 76 was trash. Battlefield 4 has more active players than BF1 and BF5 is dying, if not dead…
Depends on one’s definition of fantastic. I thought Red Dead Redemption 2 (31 million sales), say, was a snooze fest, but I have real mountains and real sunrises to go look at.
I think as development houses target larger and larger releases, there is a tendency towards the mediocre. It is inescapable, and if one wants something underneath the polish, they’ll eventually have to simply settle for less polish.
I think it’s less before/after Activision and more old development team vs. this new team led by Ion. Completely differing design philosophies brought us here.
