On April 06 2021 09:32 Archeon wrote: I fully understand that people would rather watch reveals as part of a marketing show. That doesn't change that that's not at all what the law wielded against reporters was made for and that a large part of a journalist's job is to tell stories and rumor's in the industry they are reporting about. Journalism nowadays is mostly and in the entertainment biz almost entirely entertainment, so these people are simply doing their job and Atvi is misusing it's influence to shut them up.
The article Atvi tried to get taken down wasn't even showing material, they just said that there was a leak regarding maps for the new mode that was already announced and then linked the video. So this in no way hindered Atvi from doing promotions, all the things written in the article were completely spoiler free.
On a side note Bl3 and the recent Cyberpunk are excellent examples that hype is a double edged sword, so there is a point to be made about a more independent source talking about games.
that is an interesting way to look at it.
On April 06 2021 09:32 Archeon wrote: On a side note Bl3 and the recent Cyberpunk are excellent examples that hype is a double edged sword, so there is a point to be made about a more independent source talking about games.
and i'm not talking about revealing fraud. if a giant corp is engaged in fraud... have at it. Revealing major plot twists that were supposed to be kept secret is a slimey move.
Revealing that a new game stutters like crazy when you have less than 16 GB of memory while the publisher LIES about that fact... is 100% solid journalism.
Had someone revealed the song "Put It On the Line" before it was shown publicly.. .it would've been a slimebucket move. Had someone revealed the exact performance issues Borderlands3 faced at launch along with exactly why those performance issues were occurring.. .that'd be solid journalism.
I don't even know why we're having BL3 in this discussion...
I am a BL fan. I did not buy, nor play BL3 and I'm not interested in it even a little (I didn't even watch people playing the game). No idea where all the hype is coming from.
BL3 is being brought up as an example of a game that had a well laid out 6 month marketing arc that went largely unspoiled. The UFC's Brock Lesnar botched reveal is being brought up as an example of a marketing arc that got leaked.
On April 06 2021 09:32 Archeon wrote: I fully understand that people would rather watch reveals as part of a marketing show. That doesn't change that that's not at all what the law wielded against reporters was made for and that a large part of a journalist's job is to tell stories and rumor's in the industry they are reporting about. Journalism nowadays is mostly and in the entertainment biz almost entirely entertainment, so these people are simply doing their job and Atvi is misusing it's influence to shut them up.
The article Atvi tried to get taken down wasn't even showing material, they just said that there was a leak regarding maps for the new mode that was already announced and then linked the video. So this in no way hindered Atvi from doing promotions, all the things written in the article were completely spoiler free.
On a side note Bl3 and the recent Cyberpunk are excellent examples that hype is a double edged sword, so there is a point to be made about a more independent source talking about games.
that is an interesting way to look at it.
That's the reality of the times we live in. If you do investigative journalism and bring up critical things corpos or nations want to hide you get made to shut up, either by protracted battles in US courts over "copyright" or like f.e. in the Kashoggi case by getting actually murdered. People like Assange or Snowden who published large scale corruption get branded traitors and fought against with media campaigns and oppressive laws (I'm sorry, nothing about the espionage act and patriot act are in line with a democratic constitution). And the development of the internet as an alternative and highly entertaining news source has massively undercut paper's resources, which as a result almost entirely jumped on the train of trying to cater a target group by producing more outrageous intentionally ambiguous headlines quoting social media, badly researched internet "articles" or people out of context.
On April 06 2021 09:32 Archeon wrote: On a side note Bl3 and the recent Cyberpunk are excellent examples that hype is a double edged sword, so there is a point to be made about a more independent source talking about games.
and i'm not talking about revealing fraud. if a giant corp is engaged in fraud... have at it. Revealing major plot twists that were supposed to be kept secret is a slimey move.
Revealing that a new game stutters like crazy when you have less than 16 GB of memory while the publisher LIES about that fact... is 100% solid journalism.
Had someone revealed the song "Put It On the Line" before it was shown publicly.. .it would've been a slimebucket move. Had someone revealed the exact performance issues Borderlands3 faced at launch along with exactly why those performance issues were occurring.. .that'd be solid journalism.
I don't see the spoiler of revealing a reveal song. I didn't follow the presentation at the time and while the video you linked is fun and I like the Heavy, imo this is basically just a throwback to the borderland 2 trailer, there's nothing surprising in it.
And again if you read spoilers in an article that tells you about a leak in it's headline it's your fault and not the writer's. Not reading it is btw a much better way to disincentivize such things, after all they live from interest in their articles. So there is a way for the consumer to show that they don't want this and I don't see at all how this justifies Atvi sending DMCAs. This isn't a copyright infringement because nothing gets copied.
On a side note the journalist's job is also to describe what the game contains, so technically this is totally normal. The only difference is that the company doesn't have full control over what gets when to the public.
On April 06 2021 09:32 Archeon wrote: I fully understand that people would rather watch reveals as part of a marketing show. That doesn't change that that's not at all what the law wielded against reporters was made for and that a large part of a journalist's job is to tell stories and rumor's in the industry they are reporting about. Journalism nowadays is mostly and in the entertainment biz almost entirely entertainment, so these people are simply doing their job and Atvi is misusing it's influence to shut them up.
The article Atvi tried to get taken down wasn't even showing material, they just said that there was a leak regarding maps for the new mode that was already announced and then linked the video. So this in no way hindered Atvi from doing promotions, all the things written in the article were completely spoiler free.
On a side note Bl3 and the recent Cyberpunk are excellent examples that hype is a double edged sword, so there is a point to be made about a more independent source talking about games.
that is an interesting way to look at it.
That's the reality of the times we live in. If you do investigative journalism and bring up critical things corpos or nations want to hide you get made to shut up, either by ....
for me it has nothing to do with "the times". i hold a principled stance that pretty much echoes Joe Rogan's perspective.
if you are revealing war crimes or fraud that is solid investigative journalism. if you are leaking that Brock Lesnar is coming back to the UFC 3 hours before the UFC is going to announce it... with a super cool epic promo .. that's slimey.
if you reveal that Borderlands3 stutters and chops out when you have less than 16GB of RAM and this is a fact hidden by Gearbox. That is solid investigative journalism. If you reveal major plot twists in the story of Borderlands3 two days before the game comes out.. that is slimey.
I'm glad Ariel Helwani got crushed for his BS in June 2016. It was slimebucket move by him and it was not "investigative journalism".
TL;DR : AAA titles require giant teams and have massive budgets. The big money draws in the best talent and the work schedule grinds them into sawdust.
personally, i much prefer to work in small teams. Giant massive projects with giant teams have never given me much job satisfaction.
TL;DR : AAA titles require giant teams and have massive budgets. The big money draws in the best talent and the work schedule grinds them into sawdust.
personally, i much prefer to work in small teams. Giant massive projects with giant teams have never given me much job satisfaction.
Eh, big project requires good management. COnsidering the gaming industry AAA standard nowadays seems to be - overtime, overtime, more overtime, even more overtime. - delays. Yes, even good managers manage to fail at the time management But so often? - skipping proper testing. Like c'mon guys, do you realize there are companies that would test your infrustructure so the always online games can actually have better start? It's not like Blizzard, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and probably many others cannot afford a proper stress test, it's not like they cannot afford proper testing engineers - Bethesda! - nobody can deliver more than I can promise
I dare to say they have a management issue. And crushing best talents into sawdust is a management problem, there supposed to be breaks in line to stop this from happening. Burnout is a serious issue and at least here SW developers are amongst the top. So it's not like this job needs more reasons for this.
It seems gaming companies still need to learn how to manage big projects. Which seems logical, 20 years ago nobody would have thought about this and plenty of people in the business have to remember this.
Apparently Epic games store has lost over $300m on the exclusives and free games and it'll take them until 2027 to recoup. They seem to not mind those losses as Fortnite is making them $700m from mtx on IOS alone.
Apparently Epic games store has lost over $300m on the exclusives and free games and it'll take them until 2027 to recoup. They seem to not mind those losses as Fortnite is making them $700m from mtx on IOS alone.
Imagine them losing over 300 USD on exclusives while they could invest a fraction of this into making the store better so they can fight the Steam with services,q uality and customer happiness.
Apparently Epic games store has lost over $300m on the exclusives and free games and it'll take them until 2027 to recoup. They seem to not mind those losses as Fortnite is making them $700m from mtx on IOS alone.
Imagine them losing over 300 USD on exclusives while they could invest a fraction of this into making the store better so they can fight the Steam with services,q uality and customer happiness.
Just having a store as good (or better) then Steam won't allow you to compete on its own. Your fighting against convenience which is very hard, everyone already has a ton of their games on Steam, people would always be hesitant to switch. Hence why they are 'bribing' the customer onto their platform with exclusives and free games.
Apparently Epic games store has lost over $300m on the exclusives and free games and it'll take them until 2027 to recoup. They seem to not mind those losses as Fortnite is making them $700m from mtx on IOS alone.
Imagine them losing over 300 USD on exclusives while they could invest a fraction of this into making the store better so they can fight the Steam with services,q uality and customer happiness.
Just having a store as good (or better) then Steam won't allow you to compete on its own. Your fighting against convenience which is very hard, everyone already has a ton of their games on Steam, people would always be hesitant to switch. Hence why they are 'bribing' the customer onto their platform with exclusives and free games.
Not that that excuses their lack of features.
Yeah, but investing few millions wouldn't make a difference, right? So the neverending argument of - you don't have X, Y and Z and Steam does would have to end then It would be like removing ammunition from the haters, I wonder why they don't do that.
A fair chunk of the haters didn’t exactly need any ammunition whatsoever.
That said Epic are skimping on a lot of basic functionality and innovations, or at least making their store inhabit a different niche to Steam, which is disappointing. Getting complacent with all that Fortnite money
TL;DR : AAA titles require giant teams and have massive budgets. The big money draws in the best talent and the work schedule grinds them into sawdust.
personally, i much prefer to work in small teams. Giant massive projects with giant teams have never given me much job satisfaction.
Eh, big project requires good management. COnsidering the gaming industry AAA standard nowadays seems to be - overtime, overtime, more overtime, even more overtime. - delays. Yes, even good managers manage to fail at the time management But so often? - skipping proper testing. Like c'mon guys, do you realize there are companies that would test your infrustructure so the always online games can actually have better start? It's not like Blizzard, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and probably many others cannot afford a proper stress test, it's not like they cannot afford proper testing engineers - Bethesda! - nobody can deliver more than I can promise
I dare to say they have a management issue. And crushing best talents into sawdust is a management problem, there supposed to be breaks in line to stop this from happening. Burnout is a serious issue and at least here SW developers are amongst the top. So it's not like this job needs more reasons for this.
It seems gaming companies still need to learn how to manage big projects. Which seems logical, 20 years ago nobody would have thought about this and plenty of people in the business have to remember this.
Almost all the Blizzard developers left for small team projects. I think its impossible to get the level of job satisfaction in a large scale, long project that you can get from a project with 5-8 team members.
I think ATVI does a good job at an impossible task: making large scale projects rewarding for the front line workers.
This guy started with Blizzard right around the time of the Blizzard//Activision merger. It sounds like he had 13 good years. To me, he seems honest and straightforward in the interview.
At 11:35 he mentions how Blizzard//ATVI managed its massive growth spurt. I think they did a good job. I don't think Blizzard could've managed their huge growth without Activision managing and guiding that process.
Wow, David Kim left Blizzard last Thursday and Jeff Kaplan's leaving less than a week later...the old Blizzard is no more... I'm hearing the voice of the adjutant in my head saying: "downgrade complete!" T.T
I wonder what Blizzard's next steps are going to be. From the current stuff on the agenda I'm only really excited for D2 remaster and apart from that Blizz doesn't seem to have anything in store for me (I don't really care about D4, if we get D2 remaster I will care even less about it). How long can they milk WoW and Hearthstone? With WoW they've recently lost like 40% of the playerbase and I don't think there's much road forward for Hearthstone - the thing with card games is that you can only go so far before you have to reset everything or impose restrictions (legacy format, tournament format etc.) as you get too much power creep and simply too many different cards to choose from.
The only Blizz game I'm still playing is SC2. Don't care about mobile titles, don't care about remakes.
Can't really see myself getting excited for OW2. For me the only thing I'm looking forward to is D4 and I'll probably just do the campaign with one or two classes and be done since I don't like this season and ladder stuff anyway. I remember playing almost exclusively Blizz games in the past and was hyped for everything they did. Those days are long gone now ...
I'm impressed by how long Blizzard held onto their high level employees given the wholesale changes that have gone on throughout the company since the merger. Chris Kaleiki outlines some of those massive changes in the vid i posted.
I would be surprised if Pardo is putting as much work and energy into his profession as he did from age 21 to 35. Pardo probably has lots of family to hang with and a giant pile of money. meh. The guy probably has competing priorities that take away from his game making work.
It has been interesting watching Bungie, and Blizzard's top people after leaving Activision's management umbrella.
On April 21 2021 16:54 Manit0u wrote: I wonder what Blizzard's next steps are going to be. From the current stuff on the agenda I'm only really excited for D2 remaster and apart from that Blizz doesn't seem to have anything in store for me (I don't really care about D4, if we get D2 remaster I will care even less about it). How long can they milk WoW and Hearthstone? With WoW they've recently lost like 40% of the playerbase and I don't think there's much road forward for Hearthstone - the thing with card games is that you can only go so far before you have to reset everything or impose restrictions (legacy format, tournament format etc.) as you get too much power creep and simply too many different cards to choose from.
Hearthstone has been doing versions of tournament format since 2 years after release as the default mode. Most game modes only have 1/3 of all cards in them or even less.
I wonder how will they handle D4 though. There's D2 remaster coming out (so less reason for people to play D4 if they can play their beloved version with superb graphics), new stuff for PoE which is already huge and other promising ARPGs are on the horizon (like Last Epoch which to me seems to be in a perfect spot between D2 and PoE). Not sure about Wolcen but I wasn't all that hyped for it so I'm not really paying much attention to how it's progressing.
EPT
But so often?
It would be like removing ammunition from the haters, I wonder why they don't do that.
