Which customers should they listen to about what exactly?
The ones that want flying? Or the ones that dont?
The ones that want high elves? Or the ones that dont?
The ones that want LFR to go away? Or the ones that dont?
The ones that like TF? Or the ones that dont?
Remember that cuts at Activision-Blizzard may or may not mean cuts at Blizzard Entertainment.
Cuts at Blizzard Entertainment may or may not mean cuts from the World of Warcraft team.
Cuts from the World of Warcraft team, if they did happen could be desaturase, or could create a leaner more efficient origination and strengthen the franchise long term.
No, Iâm not the optimistic type generally, but I also stop short of panicking (a bit of hyperbole saying panic when we are not the employees but the customers and the subject is a game) at rumors and âwhat ifsâ.
Everything is just idol speculation at this point, nothing has actually happened yet.
Iâm surprised the article made no mention of the possibility of buyouts like Blizzard Ent did in Ireland. That mostly affected customer service workers. It could be due to EU nations generally having stronger worker-oriented labor laws than the U.S. which has more corporate-friendly labor laws. If devs get cut, you know that the ActiBlizz bean counters arenât just doing some window dressing.
My guess is that the cuts involve customer service workers/non-devs from Blizzard but there will be meat axe cuts on Activision Publishing side because they have several lackluster games. And they donât need all that Destiny support.
This guy gets it! As I said,this isnât a malicious attack on the playerbase but itâs nor big secret that a god number of em are fickle when it comes to what they feel makes the game ideal and as Iâve stated tend to automatically hate the feature theyâve requested the minute it gets implemented as though they have no idea what exactly it is they want. For my usual examples-people thought leveling was too easy and some wanted to be able to do earlier quests finishing those zones without feeling rushed whilst getting adequate XP,Blizzard delivered on both and now its âI donât WANT to SLOG through old contentâ or âWhy canât I one shot everything and be a demigod?!â rather than the original feedback of âI donât WANT to be the hero/legendary and should feel character growth/everything is TOO EASYâ the minute Blizzard brings the player down to earth the way Odin Nerfed Thor in the first movie, changed their mind and want one shotting/demigod status and the instant gratification they griped about in the past back. They gripe about QoL features then suddenly want them back once taken away not wanting to admit they were hoist by their own petard. WHO should Blizzard listen to exactly,itâs hard to listen when thereâs so much conflicting noise going on on HOW the game should be an to reiterate WHAT makes it ideal and WHAT âmeaningfulâ content actually IS! [which FYI tends to be typed by the raids raids and more raids/Raid or Die camp]
Back to basics.
In theory the owners of a corporation hire a board of directors to represent them overseeing the enterprise.
The board hires executives to run the day to day business.
Those executives hire other workers as needed to actually create the product.
The only purpose of the whole thing is to make money for the owners.
Thatâs the theory.
The reality is a bit more complicated.
The needs and desires of the customers do not conflict with what is best for the owners, ever.
The needs and desires of the customers and the profitability to the owners do not always align with the ambitions of the executives and the board of directors in the actual world. The workers come out last.
And yes this is a gross over simplification, but then this is just a game forum, not an economics debate.
And:
Oh, BlizzardâŚ
I agree. It is a mystery to me why he still has a job.
That is most of their problem though;
Before all this stock loss, Blizzard boasted about its core mantra
âBy gamers for gamersâ.
Now itâs âwhatever is currently making money, we will make our own version to compete.â
And the company is swirling around like a turd in a toilet making its way down that deep dark hole to never be seen again.
They need to stop focusing on revenue, and start making games that are just fun, and will naturally succeed again. If the game is fun it will make money.
Someone will always do the same job for cheaper. They taught us that the first business class. Might be the case here fire some then hire for less and the work still will be the same.
Maybe they should stop hiring people that can make the games, and instead start hiring visionaries that can dream up the next fun thing that will be a hit.
Iâm fairly certain they have enough programmers/ artists/ writers/ designers to make anything the visionary comes up with.
Amen brother, amenâŚ
Unfortunately, companies seem to forget who got them there in the first place - us, the gamers. Without us all those stockholders wouldnât even look at them.
If they keep alienating gamers with shoddy, MTX infested games then all they are going to have are a bunch of angry stockholders and a pile of bad games lol.
Oh well. I hope the stockholders enjoy their mobile games made by the âbest developersâ and teaching their kids how to tap âBuy Nowâ because I wonât be playing them. ![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
It may not be all doom and gloom. It could mean Activision/Blizzard is cutting costs so they can focus resources on developing new games. Some of their most popular titles are nearing retirement age.
If theyâre looking to do that, a good start would be finding a CFO that will work for less than $15,000,000.
I think we could take a guess⌠Activision smells blood and is tearing their host apart.
Hereâs why the media reports it that way: Itâs been happening in their own industry for years now.
I used to work for a multimedia company. We had broadcast, online and print divisions. The cluster where I worked (one of hundreds) went from 330-ish employees down to about 80 in less than a decade. Thereâs a reason why the masks have really come off following Trumpâs election; the rank-and-file in the media are fast turning anti-capitalist as a group, a large part of it due to their own (understandable) work biases.
Anyway, hereâs whatâs going to happen at ATVI because it also happened to usâŚ
Anything you can centralize, will be centralized. We had print operations across the Southeast that all had their circulation call centers shifted to a location in South Carolina. Then we moved all graphic design to ⌠Indonesia? I forget.
Anyone in middle management who isnât absolutely critical to day-to-day operations â especially if they make a salary above the midpoint average for the unit â is gone. Unfortunately these tend to include a lot of people who arenât squeaky wheels and tend to be the glue behind the operation, but if you canât do a cost-benefit analysis and measure their impact, theyâre out the door.
Wage freeze on the newbies (but not a hiring freeze, because one of the tactics that will be deployed is delaying/cancelling raises, which is going to trigger an exodus of your more talented people voluntarily and youâll have to replace them).
There may be a few suits cut at the top, but the ones that remain wonât see the loss of the first dollar.
All-out idiocy in regards to internal price controls. For instance, we had a basket near the copier that contained paper only printed on one side, and if we were copying documents for internal use, someone had to load the copier with that stuff. We could only use blank paper for external clients/etc.
Morale is going to tank if it hasnât already. Gallows humor will take over the office. Also the quality of future product is going to suffer. No one at a conglomerate cuts their way to better products; this is a survival/investor appeasement technique only.
(p.s., if youâre wondering what happened to me at my company, I left voluntarily after I was told I would have to cut staff from an award-winning division that was already running lean. I had a career change lined up already. I managed to buy my team about 2 years before they cut the next person, and then they eliminated the entire team a year after that.)
They should listen to any of them. It doesnât matter who at this point. For too long theyâve been making the game how they think we would enjoy it. Itâs been failing. So to open up to the community, no matter who, would only improve the game because it shows that they actually are listening and care about the customer base to some extent.
Blizz is going through this thread and cleaning house of opinions they donât like. Crazy that you bring your game to such a poor state then ban people who speak on it.
This is on you and your greed. You drove the players away by cutting costs, removing the polish that WoW was known for and pushing out an incomplete and buggy product just to get a quick buck.
Ah. Yes the old union call. For The Workers!
Unfortunately âThe Workersâ, in this specific instance, are likely as much of the root cause of the downturn as the executives. The Workers were all read in to the company handbook. They all signed off on it and they all were supposedly hired not only for their abilities (technical business or otherwise) but for their fit into the organization. âThe Workersâ have as much contribution to the corporate culture and any deviation or drift from the core principles in the charter as the executives do. âThe Workersâ are as responsible for the outcome of bad policy setting as anyone else within the company as they agreed to the bad policies. They didnât object. They didnât raise their hands and say uh boss that is going to cause customer unrest which will lead to investor skittishness which will lead to layoffs.
Until we the customer stop forgiving individual segments like âThe Workerâ for the poor results of the company that produces the products we wish to consume and try to lay the blame on a perceived smaller but more influential group like the developers or the executives this will continue. We will lose the products we loved because there will be no one left to produce them that agrees (in aggregate) with making the product we are accustomed to.
So yes its sad that people may lose their livelihoodâs. Iâve been there. Nearly lost my house because of it. But ya know what I did? I got off my behind stopped feeling sorry for myself and went out and found a new job (at a higher rate of pay no less) and with a fair amount of hard work and paying attention to details, I am now in the process of pulling myself out of that hole I was in and doing a bang up job of it. âThe Workersâ can do likewise, and perhaps on reflection âThe Workersâ will realize that they had as much to contribute as anyone else but chose to stand by and do and say nothing. Perhaps the next time will be different because âThe Workersâ decide to man up and speak up when something needs said.
Maybe WoW will be like Fortnite⌠Free to play and pay for skins, weapons, etc.