“Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.” - Terry Pratchett
This might have been a column about all of Blizzcon but really what’s to talk about? I like to hold out hope each year they’ll finally get around to announcing Warcraft 4 or a keyboard that dispenses chocolate milk or something else cool but alas. You already know going in that there’s a new Hearthstone set, new HotS heroes and skins, new SC2 co-op hero and skins, new Overwatch hero and skins, new WoW skins (every year it’s more Heroes and Skins, what is this, late 2000’s television?) and the Diablo fans get to eat shit. This year they announced Warcraft 3 Remastered to the great shock of bloody no-one since if they’re already doing Classic WoW and BW:Remastered then obviously War 3’s getting redone (still holding out hope for a Lost Vikings remaster, fingers crossed!). The only bright spark was Diablo: Immortal or to put it more accurately: Diablo: Dead on Arrival. And what’s really to be said about that? I mean, shit, a Diablo game with no blood or gore in it? That’s like taking the giant floppy tits out of Dead or Alive!
Actually the discussion surrounding D:I is kind of interesting, or at the least extremely funny. See, whenever a gaming company does a whoopsy there emerges two camps: the dev defenders and the gamer mob. Generally the former look for any and all opportunities to call out the latter as a petulant, entitled, horde of shrieking, easily offended howler monkeys and frequently the mob obliges them. And I often side with the dev defenders. Game development seems like a fucking shitty job. Crap pay, long hours, crunch time, tremendous stress, projects often going bad all to make a product that through some tiny detail or two, no fault of most of the dev team, leads to it being roundly savaged by a pack of arseholes who would never appreciate good work if they saw it. Granted, a lot of dev defenders happen to write for gaming outlets and probably have a lot more riding on positive relationships with game companies than you or me and there’s a shitload of condescension that often goes into being cross at gamers.
Which has led to something of an ambivalence surrounding D:I. I’m extremely sympathetic to Wyatt Cheng and the rest of the Blizzard dev team. They don’t deserve to have buckets of vitriol sent their way, or to have that thing happen where one guy pushes you and someone’s hunched over behind you so you fall completely on your arse. If anyone does it’s whatever executive thought signing off on this was a good idea and I reckon there’s decent odds they’ve donned a false moustache and a fake passport and have made it to Argentina already. Those poor devs probably had an inkling this wasn’t going to go down too well and whilst I doubt they reckoned it’d be this bad, well, to put it mildly it’s definitely not great either. But I’m certainly not against being critical of Blizzard; Blizzcon is an event where you pay to go and get advertised at (among other things, I know) and while that seems like a pretty terrible service, if you’re left underwhelmed it’s not your fault. When the band pissses their pants on stage is it really the audience’s fault for booing? Live by the hype, die by the hype I say! Gaming companies should know by now- after CnC: Rivals and Dungeon Keeper Mobile- that if a popular PC franchise hasn’t had anything new for a while then announcing its continuing on as a phone game is going to go down about as well as dead baby jokes on the maternity ward.
Ultimately though, it’s just so damned funny. Seriously, for the past few days r/Diablo has been the funniest site on the wide, wide world of web. Look at these threads! Petition to cancel Diablo: Immortal (yeah, good luck with that), this is the greatest scam in all video games (a mighty boast for a product that has made literally 0 sales), Blizzard has big plans for the mobile space (not necessarily a bad thing, Hearthstone’s led a new wave of digital card games and probably helped secure WCS funding. And it’s kinda fun at times) 300k+ dislikes on the Youtube trailer (since the larger a mob is, the more righteous it is. That’s just mathematical science, it’s the sixth postulate). Hell even the dev defenders have had some pretty shitty takes (my favourite one being an attempt to conflate disgust at PC -> mobile as some sort of sexist attitude. I mean, elitist definitely, there’s no such thing as the Mobile Gaming Master Race is there? But not sexist, come on now).
And the great tragedy of it all is if the game turns out to be actually good. The third position in all this is the detached cynic whose disgust at games that are hyped up but no-one’s actually played should, on principle, extend to giving even games that look bad from a distance a fair shake. I’d like to say I’m one of them but my phone’s a rusted faulty slab of garbage so, you know, damn. I mean, it really does just look like Diablo though and I can already play games like that for free on my computer. Like Path of Exile. Or insert torrented game here!
I suspect Blizzard will be just fine, these large publishers generally are. They do have a good track record of responding to meme-y criticisms of their work. Tracer’s bum a bit too prominent? Yeah, agreed, we’ll fix that right away, can’t have an Englishwoman behave even mildly sexy it’s far too culturally inaccurate. You think you want WoW: Classic but you don’t. Actually you do, let’s work on that post haste. Falstad Wildhammer got overlooked? Not too hard he’s a dwarf after all, haha. but you’re right Red Shirt Guy better patch him in. No LAN mode for Starcraft 2? Eight years on and the technology still isn’t there yet (though we did get resume from replay after Marineking stole that GSTL game from Parting so there’s that). They’re not perfect but I’d safely wager there’s renewed interest internally in an actual proper bit of content for the Diablo fans (honestly quite surprised they haven’t milked Diablo 3 for cash more aggressively. It sold like over 20 million copies, what’s going on over there lads?).
So is the moral to this story that the squeaky wheel gets the grease or that online fanbases are a fickle and chaotic bunch? Both, probably, which is a mildly disappointing for me since a consistently pissed off online fanbase is wonderful in its way (unless their fandom is Fascism in which case they probably just start killing people sadly). But I feel the lesson here is more of a reminder that PC gamers are an elitist bunch at heart and if they’re not being catered to directly than they will be upset. I seem to recall back when Hearthstone was announced it was met with more than a bit of cynicism but back in 2013 it’s hardly as if Warcraft fans lacked for content (and the War 3 fans had already moved onto SC2 or just accepted War 4 is never fucking happening). I suppose that’s all then, good night.
Oh yeah and well done to Serral, the next Zerg Bonjwa.
I think a big part of the penchant for vitriol is this very internet-y desire to belong to an anonymous meme mob. If you've been anywhere close to social media (Reddit, for example), it's impossible to miss "Don't you guys have phones?"-memes. I'm reasonably sure most of the people making a huge deal out of this A) would have preferred a PC/console Diablo game but also B) don't care as much about D:I as you might think by the volume of aggressive comments everywhere on the web. Like Sir Terry pointed out, people really like a spectacle -- especially if they can feel like they're part of it.
On November 06 2018 17:10 BEARDiaguz wrote: If anyone does it’s whatever executive thought signing off on this was a good idea and I reckon there’s decent odds they’ve donned a false moustache and a fake passport and have made it to Argentina already.
Haha good read. It's true, the spectacle is everything and this has certainly turned into one. It actually makes me curious about this game that I otherwise wouldn't care about. And like you say blizzard is surely going to come out fine even if it's by appealing to the lowest common denominator. I am sympathetic to the fanboys on this one though. Blizzard used to be a company that churned out masterpiece after masterpiece. It's sad to see this current company parading around with the old venerable name of blizzard. There wouldn't be teamliquid without the old blizzard... I can understand people holding the company to a high standard and feeling betrayed by cash grabs.
Blizzard will come out fine by appropriately reacting to criticism. I don't see it as changing their priorities to appeal to the lowest common denominator since I'm not overly fond of that sort of thinking since it implies Blizzard doesn't make the games they want to make and for the most part I believe they do. I've met Blizzard people, they're optimistic and energetic and happy in a way I find inherently untrustworthy though I suspect they believe it (they have flown me around the world and plied me with booze so I can't stay mad at them).
It's true that Blizzard has changed but like, entertainment and the monetization of games has changed. The audience changes and Blizzard change with them. They're adaptable and clever. They know what people like and they don't have to work too hard to tell them what to like. When they started making games, gaming was a significantly less mainstream activity than it is today so treating it like an indie studio treats making games now was what you had to do. So, I dunno, I still respect Blizzard as a PC focused developer because God knows there's few enough of those as it is but I am biased as hell considering they've flown me around the world and plied me with booze.
Heh are you a game journalist or something? I ask because your writing is very good. If you'd rather not answer that's fine. Maybe I'm too hard on blizzard. I'm a very out of touch person so my opinions tend to be skewed. The standards I have for blizzard could just be nostalgia for bygone days that never can be recreated. Perhaps that is the salt in the wound for constantly reviving the names of these old franchises. If blizzard had announced a mobile game but didn't call it Diablo then I think people would be more trusting of their good faith.
On November 07 2018 16:10 BEARDiaguz wrote: Blizzard will come out fine by appropriately reacting to criticism. I don't see it as changing their priorities to appeal to the lowest common denominator since I'm not overly fond of that sort of thinking since it implies Blizzard doesn't make the games they want to make and for the most part I believe they do. I've met Blizzard people, they're optimistic and energetic and happy in a way I find inherently untrustworthy though I suspect they believe it (they have flown me around the world and plied me with booze so I can't stay mad at them).
It's true that Blizzard has changed but like, entertainment and the monetization of games has changed. The audience changes and Blizzard change with them. They're adaptable and clever. They know what people like and they don't have to work too hard to tell them what to like. When they started making games, gaming was a significantly less mainstream activity than it is today so treating it like an indie studio treats making games now was what you had to do. So, I dunno, I still respect Blizzard as a PC focused developer because God knows there's few enough of those as it is but I am biased as hell considering they've flown me around the world and plied me with booze.
I'd say Blizzard is known for changing in ways that makes more and more fun PC games. They started as big time gamers that loved playing games, and ended up a bit more into the developer catacombs that are more removed from the types of games their customers enjoy playing. I've got no problems with their adaptation of the new monetization models (hats & skins) and even the ventures into RMAH in D3.
It's the hinting at big news in Diablo to make a big PR move at their convention, just to bring on the backlash in a big way, that is tough to square with how Blizzard has been in the past. They had ample time to float out a "this time at Blizzcon, we're branching off into uncovered ground in the Diablo franchise." The sheepish "you have phones, don't you" line is a nice encapsulation of the problem. Blizzard does not want to flirt with the whole that is blaming your customers/blaming entitled gamers for not liking the games you announce (as is trendy in the kind of gaming press that also posts the sexism angle on Diablo Immortal).
The more I think about this, the more I lean towards Blizzard announcing it before Blizzcon, and as some kind of between-development-cycle release.
The main thing is Blizzard framed it badly. By putting a mobile game as big centre piece announcement, theyève set themselves up for an unforced fail. Mark Kern, formerly a Diablo 2 producer figured this was something they shouldève seen a mile away.
I mean, thereès a very obvious path forward to announce this sort of thing: Skyrim mobile game and... canèt remember it right now. But basically, you frame it as- hereès something to tide you over, but what we are really working on is X. Or else you fire up the trailer in between other things. You get the word out, but donèt make it look like as a PC gaming company to a PC gaming crowd that you are making a big pivot to the mobile market as the next evolution of the company. That feels like a bait and switch for PC gamers.
In short, the same game, framed as filler rather than a main course, and youère likely to have a pretty benign reaction. But the way they set themselves up, this was always going to have a negative reaction.
The more I think about this, the more I lean towards Blizzard announcing it before Blizzcon, and as some kind of between-development-cycle release.
Basically this, and this whole thing never would have developed.
On November 08 2018 08:45 Falling wrote: The main thing is Blizzard framed it badly. By putting a mobile game as big centre piece announcement, theyève set themselves up for an unforced fail. Mark Kern, formerly a Diablo 2 producer figured this was something they shouldève seen a mile away.
I mean, thereès a very obvious path forward to announce this sort of thing: Skyrim mobile game and... canèt remember it right now. But basically, you frame it as- hereès something to tide you over, but what we are really working on is X. Or else you fire up the trailer in between other things. You get the word out, but donèt make it look like as a PC gaming company to a PC gaming crowd that you are making a big pivot to the mobile market as the next evolution of the company. That feels like a bait and switch for PC gamers.
In short, the same game, framed as filler rather than a main course, and youère likely to have a pretty benign reaction. But the way they set themselves up, this was always going to have a negative reaction.
The more I think about this, the more I lean towards Blizzard announcing it before Blizzcon, and as some kind of between-development-cycle release.
Basically this, and this whole thing never would have developed.
100%
This is Blizzard Entertainment. The company that has endlessly and not so subtly bragged about how good its games are ('we don't care about how long it takes, we care about making the best game,' how many times have you read and heard that over the last ~15 years) - and justifiably so more than not - makes this its big fancy annual convention centerpiece. The company that has been almost exclusively about PC games the vast majority of its existence.
It looks very incongruous. Add on to that disappointment and hostility from different groups of PC gamers over Diablo III and other things, many of them youthful little shits like BW and D2 gamers were back in 2000. That hasn't changed. Even if they're in their 20s now instead of mid-teens sadface. What has is their ability to act really really really pissed off in a way that's visible to multitudes of people. And there's no real consequences for it. Whether it's relentless resentment and sarcasm all the way through straight-up throwing a tantrum. Who cares? Be an obnoxious raged up little shit, you'll get dem upvotes.
Blizzard delays too much in talking about projects its working on. Okay so Diablo 4 is in pre-pre-pre-development. Whatever. Make a cinematic and play it. Some drawings. A couple details. Send out stronger signals. If the game takes forever that's not a big deal to Blizzard, never was remember? Stay awhile and listen to some random producer-director-something say it for the 10 millionth time. But give people more than this kind of thin gruel:
"For our diehard PC fans, we will say though, we still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. So we haven't forgotten about them," Adham said. "The future is bright. Stay tuned."
Thanks Mr. Adham, I think these "pat everybody on the head" style quotes are very much the wrong way to go about things.
On November 08 2018 08:45 Falling wrote: The main thing is Blizzard framed it badly. By putting a mobile game as big centre piece announcement, theyève set themselves up for an unforced fail. Mark Kern, formerly a Diablo 2 producer figured this was something they shouldève seen a mile away.
I mean, thereès a very obvious path forward to announce this sort of thing: Skyrim mobile game and... canèt remember it right now. But basically, you frame it as- hereès something to tide you over, but what we are really working on is X. Or else you fire up the trailer in between other things. You get the word out, but donèt make it look like as a PC gaming company to a PC gaming crowd that you are making a big pivot to the mobile market as the next evolution of the company. That feels like a bait and switch for PC gamers.
In short, the same game, framed as filler rather than a main course, and youère likely to have a pretty benign reaction. But the way they set themselves up, this was always going to have a negative reaction.
The GBA release of lost vikings wasn’t an improved version? Serious question im not sure on it.
The hate is unfounded since its a lame reskin done by a 3rd party.Core blizz team is hard at work on the new games still.Just don’t buy the shitty mobile game and theyll get the message.
On November 09 2018 19:22 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: The GBA release of lost vikings wasn’t an improved version? Serious question im not sure on it.
The hate is unfounded since its a lame reskin done by a 3rd party.Core blizz team is hard at work on the new games still.Just don’t buy the shitty mobile game and theyll get the message.
Mobile gaming is literally cancer for gaming, and that's why most people loathe the idea of blizzard trying to cash into it.
#1 most of the games are f2p which translates into p2w. Then there is constant bombardment of daily/hourly quests and weekly events and clan events and special events, etc. etc. Every mobile game has constant alerts (which if you turn off you are basically not playing the game to win).
Then there is all this sunk cost fallacy involved with spending ungodly amounts of time or money playing a game.
Throw a little Skinner's box, and a few other psychological tricks to meta game manipulate people into playing their game. It becomes a chore and a grind. And what do you get when you reach the top? Little to nothing. The game becomes easy and boring.
And beyond all that crap, its on a fucking phone with shitty touch screen and a couple of buttons maybe. Controllers, joysticks, mouses and keyboards are far superior. Not to mention the processor power and monitor size we have at our desktops, or even our $4000 laptops.
nope, instead we gotta carry around extra batteries and get infinity data plans and get texts and phone calls and app alerts while we try and play a game. NES>>>>>>Gameboy. Fuck mobile games.
It seems like when someone makes a game, a movie, a tv show, an album, and people buy it and like it, instead of being satisfied with that purchase, some people aren't satisfied until the creator makes another of the same type and quality but different content so that they can buy it again. And if it's good again, then again they're not satisfied until they get yet another.
So there's just a type of consumer who is absolutely intent on being dissatisfied: either immediately because they don't like the thing they just got or eventually because someone who made something good for them couldn't continue to make stuff that was good for them forever.
I think it's especially hard for older games who fell in love with gaming when it was niche. They had already had trouble finding anything in life to identify with and then they found gaming and stuck with it despite it being a looked-down-upon hobby. Now gaming is changing away from what they like and so again they find themselves in crisis.
These people need to learn to appreciate what they have at the moment and to not expect someone else to take care of their needs perpetually. We all wish that all of the most talented and highest budgeted creators were making content that fit our own preferences. But people are gonna make what they're motivated to make, whether that motivation is financial or artistic. When their interest in something has run its course and they want something fresh, they need to branch out. They shouldn't yell at creators who already served them well once just because they're not spoon-feeding them more. There's a whole world out there. Valve and Blizzard etc not making games they like anymore should not lead them to despair.
On November 11 2018 22:46 NonY wrote: It seems like when someone makes a game, a movie, a tv show, an album, and people buy it and like it, instead of being satisfied with that purchase, some people aren't satisfied until the creator makes another of the same type and quality but different content so that they can buy it again. And if it's good again, then again they're not satisfied until they get yet another.
So there's just a type of consumer who is absolutely intent on being dissatisfied: either immediately because they don't like the thing they just got or eventually because someone who made something good for them couldn't continue to make stuff that was good for them forever.
I think it's especially hard for older games who fell in love with gaming when it was niche. They had already had trouble finding anything in life to identify with and then they found gaming and stuck with it despite it being a looked-down-upon hobby. Now gaming is changing away from what they like and so again they find themselves in crisis.
These people need to learn to appreciate what they have at the moment and to not expect someone else to take care of their needs perpetually. We all wish that all of the most talented and highest budgeted creators were making content that fit our own preferences. But people are gonna make what they're motivated to make, whether that motivation is financial or artistic. When their interest in something has run its course and they want something fresh, they need to branch out. They shouldn't yell at creators who already served them well once just because they're not spoon-feeding them more. There's a whole world out there. Valve and Blizzard etc not making games they like anymore should not lead them to despair.
On the flip side, there is an industry exploiting that exact dynamic. See the endless comic book movies, Star Wars, Final Fantasy 879534, etc. And it's often not the original creator at all but merely the company that owns (sometimes purchased expensively) the IP. That expectation/dissatisfaction cycle keeps the dollars rolling in, enough so that the expectation can be fueled and multiplied by expensive marketing campaigns.
I think you're missing the point. Most people aren't mad at the developpers themselves, but at the head of the Blizzard-Activision company that makes the choices and gives the orders.
Here, the orders were : collab with NetEase, a chinese mobile game company, and with them make a re-skin of one of their mobile a-rpg, and obviously this is gonna be filled with micro-transactions as all of NetEase games are on the chinese market. The blizz developpers didn't do much actual work on this D:I game. It was mostly done by NetEase (the game looks exactly the same as some of their other A-RPGS), the blizz devs only helped to re-skin it with diablo content. In other words, the orders were to collab with NetEase to make a money-grab game using the Diablo IP. And the developpers obeyed.
The only choice developpers have here is either to obey the orders, or to resign. Everybody is aware they're not making the stategy choices of the company.
You're leaving the most important contender of the issue out if you over-simplify it as being : game devs VS angry PC gamers VS Devs defenders
The only actual developpers that got bashed are the ones that came up on stage to present & defend this obvious money-grab product, and mostly got bashed based on their way to communicate with the crowd ("do you guys not have phones?"), not for the developping itself. I.E. they got bashed for the marketing part.
EPT
