With all due respect to Metzen and the work he has put into the franchise, I’m not really sure his optimism is warranted. People are unhappy because the game isn’t enjoyable for them - they’re unhappy because of the decisions of the Activision Blizzard higher ups resulted in 10% of their workforce being fired, despite record-breaking profit, because the following year was gonna be ‘kinda hard’ and, instead of finding any other solutions, (like not giving their cfo a 15 million bonus) they chose the quickest solution.
Yes, I’m aware these people will be receiving a fair deal of help finding new jobs. That’s great, but that doesn’t change the fact that they let them go instead of trying to find another solution. Even if there -was- no other solution, the end result is still nobodies fault but Blizzards, because they dug that hole themselves.
I’m sorry for not being willing to support Activison, the company that is merged with Blizzard now and may as well own them, because their CEO is the kind of person who boldly states that he deliberately inspires fear amongst his workforce for their jobs and livelihoods, constantly reminding them of an economic depression that keeps them dependent, constantly working harder and harder until they burn out, for that almighty dollar.
“We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”
"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
Bobby Kotick, folks.
People have every right to be unhappy. We all know it’s not the fault of the developers who are in charge of coding and making the game. They’re not responsible for decisions their higher ups make. That does not mean, however, that our unhappiness is any less justified or that we shouldn’t show it. If that were the case, we may as well let any company do whatever they please, regardless of the harm it does to things we may care about.