I don’t disagree that we need tier sets back, but store items are not to blame. It just means they allocated the art budget differently. My guess is cinematics.
i promise you the people who design armor are not the same ones working on cinematics two totally different art forms/skills. one is design other is animation
I didn’t say that. I said they allocated more money in the budget towards cinematics than they did towards gear models. They had to cut somewhere to make all those extra cinematics.
to be fair didn’t hear of any art layoffs last year or such, the same designers that have been there in past are still there. and those people aren’t probably working on the cinematics that much.
Looks like Acti-Blizz is ranked 463 out of 500 companies by Fortune Magazine.
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That’s why they have them working on store items, lol.
but they could be working on tier sets, that’s my point.
They laid people off after having a record year in 2018 .
And I don’t disagree. It just requires that part of the budget is allocated to tier sets. The artists can’t decide to do that on their own.
At this point they are probably working on art for later patches like the future tier sets while the programmers are fixing bugs and tuning for the expansions release.
There are probably some that have been given a general idea on the next expansion and are working on renderings for it .
Now a lot of us understand that it may be an entirely different group in the art department that does stuff for the store. We would just like to see some of that stuff in game as rewards.
Like I said not a big fan of the transmog but it does have some features people would like.
Things like ear holes for elves and 3 d animation with the wings.
Whether it is made for the game or the store the artist is still going to make their salary because that is the terms they a Blizz agreed on .
THis transmog is just a way for Bobby to go to the investors with an additional source of revenue and go I do good
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I can guarantee you that the money raised from such cash grabs aren’t going to the artists. Please don’t defend Blizzard’s increasing use of their art team for the cash shop; they aren’t increasing their art team for this and I’d be shocked if they were giving them raises either; they’re directly taking away resources from the art players are paying a sub fee to experience.
As for people’s criticisms against Blizzard, it’s sounding an awful lot like you’re projecting your own negative experiences & hurt on Blizz’s artists. The art team has been historically the most consistently praised department in WoW beyond the routine complaints of personal preference regarding tier sets and the like.
They don’t.
They do what they’re required to do, and once that task is complete, then they can work on other things. Either a thing that is on the timetable as part of a major project, or as part of a side project. They have to keep working to justify the money spent on employing them between projects. What they work on between projects is their choice.
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Just because the artists don’t decide what to work on doesn’t mean it “has” to be in a “budget”. You are still making your small games out to be the same as Blizz.
The shop is very profitable - if you think this is a side hustle to keep artists busy and not something the company is dedicated to? You’re wrong. There are likely yearly goals for shop items since they have been so successful.
Companies the size of Blizzard don’t decide the budget on such a small scale. They give each dept a budget. That dept is likely required to come up with their own projects related to a variety of goals for that dept. They have to justify their existence if that is the point you were trying to make.
And if these people are salary? They likely aren’t keeping a time sheet due to labor laws. They use to have people keep time sheets that were salary at my company (also Fortune 500) until they were threatened with a lawsuit. Now we just do our work.
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Uhh, yes it does have to be in the budget. Game budgets are split into two categories. Development and marketing. On the development side, the budget for a game pays for:
- Developer salaries and benefits (health, dental, vision, profit sharing, etc)
- Development tools (development computers, console development kits (if applicable), servers, network administration tools, tablets, etc)
- Software licences (both for middleware and tools like Perforce, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, Maya, 3D Studio Max, etc.)
- Facilities (Office space, power, internet, HR, security, office supplies, desks, chairs, tables, meeting equipment, etc)
- External Licences (such as paying Ferrari, for example, to use their brand name in a racing game, or making a game set in a licensed property)
- Outsourcing (external studios contracted to provide assets/content)
- Console certification (if applicable)
- Distribution costs (platform, duplication, distribution of the product to retailers, etc)
Whereas on the marketing side the budget pays for:
-
Marketing team salaries and benefits
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Producing marketing content (print ads, web ads, promotional trailers and other videos, developer interviews, previews, website content)
-
Ad buys (distributing the above content to the consumers)
-
Tradeshows and Conventions like E3 and Gamescom (Convention space, demo equipment, transportation, booth construction, booth materials, setup, people for manning the booth)
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Market research (What can we expect in terms of revenue?)
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Community Management (forums, social media, reddit, fansite relationships, etc.)
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Fan/press events
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Cross-promotion (special cosmetic in-game content, other product tie-ins like Mountain Dew, etc.)
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Merchandising and licensing
A developer is only given as much as they need to make the game, no more, no less. Meaning that if it’s not in the budget, it’s not getting done. If you don’t carefully manage your budget and blow out the development cost, depending on who your publisher is, your project may be suspended or cancelled. It’s worse if you’re crowd-funded, because then unless you can get publisher backing, you must stall the project and potentially start to consider refunds because in a lot of cases fans will not give you more money on top of what they’ve already given you, especially if they learn you’re wasting money on stuff that isn’t budgeted.
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Pretty much this.
i’m an artist and a game designer, the money from the transmogs and mounts don’t go to them, they have a salary because they are employed by bliz. Unless they are a freelance artist then they are only taken on for certain projects by bliz.
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It just seems like they spend more time making store mounts that cost 20 bucks then they do on mounts in game…theyŕe always reskins
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The person I was responding to was specifically talking about project budgets and that’s what I responding to.
If my work had to fall under a specific PROJECT budget? Then I would be working for free since I have no project budget and neither does anyone in my group.
Our pay is decided by upper management who look at the payroll budget and decide how much each position should be paid. The people deciding much of what you listed are business or HR people, not a bunch of gamers. They are educated the same way the HR and accountants are at my company and other company. This is NOT special at all no matter how desperately you two want to cling to it.
My company has R&D and marketing too. They have budgets, but the individual projects are budgets within a budget. Project budgets do not decide pay - payroll budgets decide pay.
We can drill down as much as you two want to try and make yourselves “right”, but if you have to go to this much effort to explain yourselves? Then you are arguing just to argue, especially with so many professionals in here who work both in and out of the gaming industry.
You cherry picked one line to argue with and couldn’t argue about my salary points or anything - that also tells me you don’t have much.
It’s a good thing Blizz isn’t and that this therefore has absolutely nothing to do with the cash shop and how the artists are paid. It also means it is not relevant to the conversation and is just needed for you to continue arguing just to argue.
This. If a project budget affects someone having work to do? Then they were likely only hired for that project as a consultant or a contractor. Once the project is over they will likely be gone or hired to another project if their work is appreciated.
I’m sure you will cherry pick other comments by myself and others, but your echo chamber is too powerful for me so I’m done.
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All projects have budgets. Sorry, but they do. You may not be aware that the budget exists, it may be only privy to those higher in the corporate ladder to you, but it does. Even when I worked as a bus cleaner, I was working under a budget, and if I wanted new tools or new cleaning supplies, I had to get approval for them and I only got approval if the budget allowed. I couldn’t just go out and buy them and expect reimbursement.
No company gives employees a blank check. Your wages/salary. Your benefits. It’s all covered by the budget. Even Fortune 500 companies have an operating budget that has to be managed.
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Seeing I got the set for free I was checking it out last night. LOL I told my wife, “the people that worked on this set must have had a blast!!” I did end up using the wings on my warrior and I wanted to post on her but the forums wouldn’t let me.