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On June 01 2010 13:14 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 13:11 I_Love_Bacon wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Nothing, at all, beats the freedom of choosing to create your own channel, named however you want, on whatever subject you want. It's not obsolete for the simple reason that it gives you the most freedom to organize however the hell you want to. And it will not happen most likely because Blizzard doesn't want you running tournaments without paying them some form of tax. Woohoo Crapple.net 2.0 No. They are obselete because no one has a good reason to meet random people that you have no relation or reference to. Why meet people that you have nothing in common with when you could be restricted to meeting people that you do have something in common with? Developers believe that they are better at doing this for you than you are for yourself. They are right for a large majority of their audience, which is what their system is designed around. So, who you know is who you know and you'll never meet anybody new ever again.... ever. Awesome. No. Who you know is who you've played. You'll never meet someone outside of that. This is not that different than Starcraft. The difference being that you have an initial filter of who you play with based off of your having chatted with them. How many people on your Starcraft friends list are people you've never played a game with? In Starcraft 2 they've just reversed the order. edit - i am not trying to trivialize the power of chat channels. My game has chat channels for the reasons you've listed (and more). I'm just explaining the rationale behind why developers think they are superfluous.
so if i get you correctly, your argument boils down to "they are pandering to the majority of their audience"? so essentially chat channels aren't important enough for us minority for them to implement them? because ur arguments for why they are obsolete isn't the case for pretty much anyone that is interested in meeting other skilled players.
how are u supposed to get ums games going with only players who actually know what they are doing, with their system? you can't, at all.
I mean, this is pretty much what I thought already... but that doesn't make it the right decision. I guess it comes down to how much it costs them to have chat options. Because I really never expected that would cost them that much.
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It's simple dude, people would rather use chat rooms than facebook integration. Maybe you are the only other person who likes this over chat channels, but the majority would rather have channels in battle.net itself because they are already used to it and it is far more convenient than facebook. Hey if there were chatrooms + facebook, wow that would be pretty awesome, but i don't think that blizzard will do that because that would defeat the whole purpose of having facebook in there in the first place. (Money)
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On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry.
Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two real-time strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0 (and made by one single company)
Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact.
On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 11:39 KwarK wrote:On June 01 2010 11:15 Mora wrote:
i'm not gonna have many fans here, but i can't say Blizzard has made the wrong decision.
The majority (vast majority) of people do not care about chat. It is only important for hardcore players.
For the average user, being able to poke your friends on facebook and boot up a game is *way* more important. Friends seeing each other playing sc2 on facebook will further promote more sales. It's a decision that is win/win for community/blizzard.
You people don't understand how insignificant you are. If i was an Blizzard exec and looked at these polls, i'd laugh out loud. Like, really loud.
This guys makes 2 million dollars (or more?) a year and is making decisions that are improving the sales of a product he is responsible for; and a few nerds in their basements start up a poll where a few thousand of them say they're going to give the game a 1-star rating on Amazon.
OH NOES.
Don't get me wrong; this interview makes me weep. That the company that changed my life and spurned me into becoming a video game designer has turned its back on the people who love the game the most absolutely saddens me. If i worked at Blizzard, i would be absolutely mortified by this.
We considered taking general chat out of my game as well, but i couldn't let it fly. Despite the fact that i really don't think it has much benefit to the bulk of the audience, i just can't turn my back on my roots. I wish that the people making these high-level decisions at Blizzard had similar roots - so important and fundamental that you cannot bear to be betray them.
I'm extremely lucky to work for a company that will go the extra mile (when they can) to cater to the hardcore player.
It was logging onto Brood War GBR-1 and getting to know my peers that made me come back. It was talking to them that got me on gosugamers and subsequently teamliquid. You don't need to be hardcore to appreciate chat, quite the reverse, you need chat to build the interest to become hardcore. A matchmaking system alone is not enough, playing alone is incredibly dull and you don't find your sc2 peers on facebook. Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player. HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it.
So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think?
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On June 01 2010 13:30 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 13:14 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 13:11 I_Love_Bacon wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Nothing, at all, beats the freedom of choosing to create your own channel, named however you want, on whatever subject you want. It's not obsolete for the simple reason that it gives you the most freedom to organize however the hell you want to. And it will not happen most likely because Blizzard doesn't want you running tournaments without paying them some form of tax. Woohoo Crapple.net 2.0 No. They are obselete because no one has a good reason to meet random people that you have no relation or reference to. Why meet people that you have nothing in common with when you could be restricted to meeting people that you do have something in common with? Developers believe that they are better at doing this for you than you are for yourself. They are right for a large majority of their audience, which is what their system is designed around. So, who you know is who you know and you'll never meet anybody new ever again.... ever. Awesome. No. Who you know is who you've played. You'll never meet someone outside of that. This is not that different than Starcraft. The difference being that you have an initial filter of who you play with based off of your having chatted with them. How many people on your Starcraft friends list are people you've never played a game with? In Starcraft 2 they've just reversed the order. edit - i am not trying to trivialize the power of chat channels. My game has chat channels for the reasons you've listed (and more). I'm just explaining the rationale behind why developers think they are superfluous. so if i get you correctly, your argument boils down to "they are pandering to the majority of their audience"? so essentially chat channels aren't important enough for us minority for them to implement them? because ur arguments for why they are obsolete isn't the case for pretty much anyone that is interested in meeting other skilled players. how are u supposed to get ums games going with only players who actually know what they are doing, with their system? you can't, at all. I mean, this is pretty much what I thought already... but that doesn't make it the right decision. I guess it comes down to how much it costs them to have chat options. Because I really never expected that would cost them that much.
That's just it; before this interview, i had predicted that they would have chat channels (infact, i think i defended such an opinion pretty fiercely in another thread). The reasons i've outlined in this thread is all i can really guess with: that they consider general chat so useless as to not spend the extremely negligible costs of putting it in.
Some other reasons that have crossed my mind that i'm not confident in:
* They are under the impression that general chat actually causes harm
* General Chat is actually a huge feature to implement, while the cash-cost is low, the time-cost might not be. It will take their engineers from implementing other features; their builds will need to go through tons of testing by their QA team (potentially pushing back release dates). Getting in features is not as simple as just hiring more engineers (as some people might expect).
* Proper chat moderation is pretty monolithic. Our community manager gets hundreds of emails semi-daily from users complaining about other users. We have an average concurrent userbase of, i dunno, 4000? (do not quote me). Blizzard is going to have an average concurrent user base of.... 2-3 million? Using this kind of chat restriction will reduce the amount of people needed to maintain it, and more importantly, won't use up any mind-share of people they already have.
That's all i got.
Honestly, it seems that while the industry as a whole doesn't put much stock in general chat, Blizzard holds so even lower.
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The thing that I don't really understand is why no private chat channels have been implemented. If the main concern is offensive content and spam, I can't see that having private chat channel is a problem. The community can moderate itself and if a player enters a channel that has content they disagree with they have only themselves to blame as it's easy enough to leave.
So long as there is private chat rooms, they really could completely leave out public chat almost entirely and I doubt it would have much effect on the community. The community would fill the void of public chat channels by making well known channels that are moderated by a few people, much like a forum set up.
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, it is quite a long thread.
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On June 01 2010 13:53 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0
And in the present decade, there will be two more RTSs that will blow the ones you are referring to out of the water. They will be SC2, WC4. And they will use bnet 2.0. (just to be clear: i'm referring to sales and Average Concurrent Users. Not e-sport, quality of the game, or player-satisfaction.)
Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact. Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 11:39 KwarK wrote:On June 01 2010 11:15 Mora wrote:
i'm not gonna have many fans here, but i can't say Blizzard has made the wrong decision.
The majority (vast majority) of people do not care about chat. It is only important for hardcore players.
For the average user, being able to poke your friends on facebook and boot up a game is *way* more important. Friends seeing each other playing sc2 on facebook will further promote more sales. It's a decision that is win/win for community/blizzard.
You people don't understand how insignificant you are. If i was an Blizzard exec and looked at these polls, i'd laugh out loud. Like, really loud.
This guys makes 2 million dollars (or more?) a year and is making decisions that are improving the sales of a product he is responsible for; and a few nerds in their basements start up a poll where a few thousand of them say they're going to give the game a 1-star rating on Amazon.
OH NOES.
Don't get me wrong; this interview makes me weep. That the company that changed my life and spurned me into becoming a video game designer has turned its back on the people who love the game the most absolutely saddens me. If i worked at Blizzard, i would be absolutely mortified by this.
We considered taking general chat out of my game as well, but i couldn't let it fly. Despite the fact that i really don't think it has much benefit to the bulk of the audience, i just can't turn my back on my roots. I wish that the people making these high-level decisions at Blizzard had similar roots - so important and fundamental that you cannot bear to be betray them.
I'm extremely lucky to work for a company that will go the extra mile (when they can) to cater to the hardcore player.
It was logging onto Brood War GBR-1 and getting to know my peers that made me come back. It was talking to them that got me on gosugamers and subsequently teamliquid. You don't need to be hardcore to appreciate chat, quite the reverse, you need chat to build the interest to become hardcore. A matchmaking system alone is not enough, playing alone is incredibly dull and you don't find your sc2 peers on facebook. Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player. HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it. So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think?
Look, i have two points that i am basing my opinion on: 4 years of experience in the RTS game industry, learning popular developer opinion and position; and Blizzard's actions.
If Blizzard thought that battle.net (1.0 design) was adequate for the casual user, they would have kept in features like chat over more trendy/popular ones like facebook integration. Hell, if they thought there were benefits to having both features in the game, they would have done that. But they didn't.
I am offering an explanation as to why they are behaving this way. My explanation is just my personal opinion, again, based off of my personal experience with the developer - and more importantly - corporate side of the game industry.
Am i right? Who knows. I thought they were going to put in chat, so i clearly am not experienced enough to predict the maneuverings of their company. So the question is why aren't they including chat?
Aside from the reasons i gave, do you have any insight as to why they are betraying their hardcore following so severely? As to why they are so flippant towards us (as seen in the interview?)
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Alright first of all...
Fuck Facebook integration, like really... Fuck Facebook period!
Second of all... The only achievement I want from StarCraft is knowing I can beat my best friend, or some of my other friends that play StarCraft.
I'm seriously fed up of all these people that have no idea how to play this game coming here and saying that no chat is alright... Saying that LAN is over rated... Saying that Cross server won't ruin the game. Honestly I would say that Blizz has done a bang up job of ruining the game already.
The best part for me playing StarCraft was chat channels. When ever I think of StarCraft back in the day it was when me and my best friend made a clan called L.W_ (Lone wolf) on u.s East. We would walk home from school everyday and talk about StarCraft and how we could make our Clan better, we would talk about the game like it was our life, and the fact is, it was our life. We had about 30 people in our clan, and only me and my best friend were friends before StarCraft, the rest of the people I met through StarCraft, and we ended up becoming really close friends who I either talk to now on Msn or see them IRL. Chat room was where all my fondest memories of the game took place. We constantly had rivals with a clan called lw (Lost warriors).. and often had clan wars with them, even though we ended up being really good friends with some of them, and hating some of the other people lol. we had clan trials and then when the person we liked was chosen we would let them know which channel to meet us in so we could talk to them to see if they were cool people.
No matter which way you look at it, chat channels are essential to games like StarCraft... I could sit in our chat channel for hours talking to people, coming up with the most retarded shit with them and just having fun. We would come up with game names, and then if they didn't work because someones latency was too high, we had a place to come back so we could find another person to make the game. We could talk about strategies, we could talk about the lore, we could talk about everyday life without having the stress of attacks. I used B.net before I knew of MSN... Before myspace or facebook was around... Reading that they weren't going to put chat Channels in made my heart run cold for blizzard... I feel horribly betrayed with all this horse shit they are coming up with... I'm just so utterly hurt with their choice...
All I know is:
If this interview was a fake - Shame on who ever made it, it has caused a lot of pain...
If this interview was a joke - This person was horribly ill advised and it caused more grief than it will cause relief if they do come out and say it was just a joke.
However if they do finally take their heads out of their asses and take a good look at what the CONSUMER wants, and more so... the die hard fans, the ones that really know what it means to be a StarCraft player... and more so a Blizzard advocate... Give us Chat Channels, give us LAN and give us Cross servers. Achievements is a nice gimmick if you must, but for gods sake GET RID OF FACEBOOK! They are so far gone from reality it hurts to know they are still as big as they are...
And one last thing, someone mentioned that Facebook was still really big with their games and their chat... Well, their games aren't anywhere near the same style as StarCraft so honestly... STFU if you don't know what you're talking about... Their chat is fine for talking to your friends, and their games are fine if you want to waste time while you are at work... or an old lady who has nothing to look forward to... I'm so ashamed for some of you defending blizzards choice...
GOD I"M UPSET!
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On June 01 2010 14:08 Design wrote:
The thing that I don't really understand is why no private chat channels have been implemented. If the main concern is offensive content and spam, I can't see that having private chat channel is a problem. The community can moderate itself and if a player enters a channel that has content they disagree with they have only themselves to blame as it's easy enough to leave.
So long as there is private chat rooms, they really could completely leave out public chat almost entirely and I doubt it would have much effect on the community. The community would fill the void of public chat channels by making well known channels that are moderated by a few people, much like a forum set up.
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, it is quite a long thread.
It's funny that you mention this because i have similar sentiments. Infact, I'm still at work as i'm doing some overtime on a Chat system for our game. (oh the irony!)
We're going to have public chat channels that have limited functionality compared to private channels. We want to discourage types of spam while giving freedom over to users to create their own communities how they see fit.
This, to me, seems like the best way of catering to our core players without sacrificing anything for our new users. It seems - dare i say - common sense.
But this isn't the only action that Blizzard has taken that has confused me. Their complete disengagement with korean E-sports is going to leave a big hole. My game (Company of Heroes Online) is garnering more attention than i expected from e-sport franchises.
This would all make more sense if Blizzard was making a huge move to support their e-sport scene, but i haven't seen anything like that either. Maybe something huge will come out at release? (Starcraft2 TV station? Starcraft2 stadium?)
As a developer, i'm eager to see what happens. As a player and e-sports fan, i'm frightened.
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On June 01 2010 14:13 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 13:53 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0 And in the present decade, there will be two more RTSs that will blow the ones you are referring to out of the water. They will be SC2, WC4. And they will use bnet 2.0. (just to be clear: i'm referring to sales and Average Concurrent Users. Not e-sport, quality of the game, or player-satisfaction.)
It's irrelevant cause nobody knows what bnet 2.0 is gonna be in the end, not even blizzard. Maybe it will have these crucial features we ask for, who knows?
And where's game industry, besides blizzard? Game industry doesn't have credibility when it comes to multiplayer aspect. Today they throw away dedicated servers and chat channels, cause "nobody needs them" in their opinion and tomorrow they promise to put them back. The point being, something being accepted as fact by the industry has close to zero relevance in this discussion.
Show nested quote +Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact. On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 11:39 KwarK wrote:On June 01 2010 11:15 Mora wrote:
i'm not gonna have many fans here, but i can't say Blizzard has made the wrong decision.
The majority (vast majority) of people do not care about chat. It is only important for hardcore players.
For the average user, being able to poke your friends on facebook and boot up a game is *way* more important. Friends seeing each other playing sc2 on facebook will further promote more sales. It's a decision that is win/win for community/blizzard.
You people don't understand how insignificant you are. If i was an Blizzard exec and looked at these polls, i'd laugh out loud. Like, really loud.
This guys makes 2 million dollars (or more?) a year and is making decisions that are improving the sales of a product he is responsible for; and a few nerds in their basements start up a poll where a few thousand of them say they're going to give the game a 1-star rating on Amazon.
OH NOES.
Don't get me wrong; this interview makes me weep. That the company that changed my life and spurned me into becoming a video game designer has turned its back on the people who love the game the most absolutely saddens me. If i worked at Blizzard, i would be absolutely mortified by this.
We considered taking general chat out of my game as well, but i couldn't let it fly. Despite the fact that i really don't think it has much benefit to the bulk of the audience, i just can't turn my back on my roots. I wish that the people making these high-level decisions at Blizzard had similar roots - so important and fundamental that you cannot bear to be betray them.
I'm extremely lucky to work for a company that will go the extra mile (when they can) to cater to the hardcore player.
It was logging onto Brood War GBR-1 and getting to know my peers that made me come back. It was talking to them that got me on gosugamers and subsequently teamliquid. You don't need to be hardcore to appreciate chat, quite the reverse, you need chat to build the interest to become hardcore. A matchmaking system alone is not enough, playing alone is incredibly dull and you don't find your sc2 peers on facebook. Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player. HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it. So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think? Look, i have two points that i am basing my opinion on: 4 years of experience in the RTS game industry, learning popular developer opinion and position; and Blizzard's actions. If Blizzard thought that battle.net (1.0 design) was adequate for the casual user, they would have kept in features like chat over more trendy/popular ones like facebook integration. Hell, if they thought there were benefits to having both features in the game, they would have done that. But they didn't. I am offering an explanation as to why they are behaving this way. My explanation is just my personal opinion, again, based off of my personal experience with the developer - and more importantly - corporate side of the game industry. Am i right? Who knows. I thought they were going to put in chat, so i clearly am not experienced enough to predict the maneuverings of their company. So the question is why aren't they including chat? Aside from the reasons i gave, do you have any insight as to why they are betraying their hardcore following so severely? As to why they are so flippant towards us (as seen in the interview?)
Because they are wrong in their understanding of player's needs. What's wrong with this thought? They are human, and human tend to make mistake and are prone to misconceptions and misunderstandings. Blizzard made mistake, that's all to that.
They thought chat channels were useless cause they were unusable because of spam, not realizing that it was one of the most important features of BW longevity phenomenon. And we, BW players, know better then they what made us stick to the game for so long.
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On June 01 2010 14:36 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 14:13 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 13:53 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0 And in the present decade, there will be two more RTSs that will blow the ones you are referring to out of the water. They will be SC2, WC4. And they will use bnet 2.0. (just to be clear: i'm referring to sales and Average Concurrent Users. Not e-sport, quality of the game, or player-satisfaction.) It's irrelevant cause nobody knows what bnet 2.0 is gonna be in the end, not even blizzard. Maybe it will have these crucial features we ask for, who knows? And where's game industry, besides blizzard? Game industry doesn't have credibility when it comes to multiplayer aspect. Today they throw away dedicated servers and chat channels, cause "nobody needs them" in their opinion and tomorrow they promise to put them back. The point being, something being accepted as fact by the industry has close to zero relevance in this discussion. Show nested quote +Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact. On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 11:39 KwarK wrote:On June 01 2010 11:15 Mora wrote:
i'm not gonna have many fans here, but i can't say Blizzard has made the wrong decision.
The majority (vast majority) of people do not care about chat. It is only important for hardcore players.
For the average user, being able to poke your friends on facebook and boot up a game is *way* more important. Friends seeing each other playing sc2 on facebook will further promote more sales. It's a decision that is win/win for community/blizzard.
You people don't understand how insignificant you are. If i was an Blizzard exec and looked at these polls, i'd laugh out loud. Like, really loud.
This guys makes 2 million dollars (or more?) a year and is making decisions that are improving the sales of a product he is responsible for; and a few nerds in their basements start up a poll where a few thousand of them say they're going to give the game a 1-star rating on Amazon.
OH NOES.
Don't get me wrong; this interview makes me weep. That the company that changed my life and spurned me into becoming a video game designer has turned its back on the people who love the game the most absolutely saddens me. If i worked at Blizzard, i would be absolutely mortified by this.
We considered taking general chat out of my game as well, but i couldn't let it fly. Despite the fact that i really don't think it has much benefit to the bulk of the audience, i just can't turn my back on my roots. I wish that the people making these high-level decisions at Blizzard had similar roots - so important and fundamental that you cannot bear to be betray them.
I'm extremely lucky to work for a company that will go the extra mile (when they can) to cater to the hardcore player.
It was logging onto Brood War GBR-1 and getting to know my peers that made me come back. It was talking to them that got me on gosugamers and subsequently teamliquid. You don't need to be hardcore to appreciate chat, quite the reverse, you need chat to build the interest to become hardcore. A matchmaking system alone is not enough, playing alone is incredibly dull and you don't find your sc2 peers on facebook. Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player. HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it. So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think? Look, i have two points that i am basing my opinion on: 4 years of experience in the RTS game industry, learning popular developer opinion and position; and Blizzard's actions. If Blizzard thought that battle.net (1.0 design) was adequate for the casual user, they would have kept in features like chat over more trendy/popular ones like facebook integration. Hell, if they thought there were benefits to having both features in the game, they would have done that. But they didn't. I am offering an explanation as to why they are behaving this way. My explanation is just my personal opinion, again, based off of my personal experience with the developer - and more importantly - corporate side of the game industry. Am i right? Who knows. I thought they were going to put in chat, so i clearly am not experienced enough to predict the maneuverings of their company. So the question is why aren't they including chat? Aside from the reasons i gave, do you have any insight as to why they are betraying their hardcore following so severely? As to why they are so flippant towards us (as seen in the interview?) Because they are wrong in their understanding of player's needs. What's wrong with this thought? They are human, and human tend to make mistake and are prone to misconceptions and misunderstandings. Blizzard made mistake, that's all to that. They thought chat channels were useless cause they were unusable because of spam, not realizing that it was one of the most important features of BW longevity phenomenon. And we, BW players, know better then they what made us stick to the game for so long.
Why should Blizzard value you playing their game for 11 years (or however long you've played it) with a total contribution to their purses of $60-80? If anything, wouldn't it make more sense to make a game that is going to appeal to a mass audience, not one that has super longevity?
Unless you know anything about game development, i'm going to have to argue that what we 'accept as fact' has some validity. Games are getting more popular, not less. How many GDC conferences have you attended? Game design courses taken? Statistics analysis on player psychology and need-satisfaction? Post-mortems on the industries most successful games (WoW, Starcraft, Halo, GTA, etc.)?
You're trying to tell me that the most successful game company in the world doesn't know what they're doing compared to someone who has played [one of their games] for a few years. Do you realize how ignorant this sounds?
Can you offer some credentials outside of your limited gaming experience?
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On June 01 2010 14:44 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 14:36 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 14:13 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 13:53 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0 And in the present decade, there will be two more RTSs that will blow the ones you are referring to out of the water. They will be SC2, WC4. And they will use bnet 2.0. (just to be clear: i'm referring to sales and Average Concurrent Users. Not e-sport, quality of the game, or player-satisfaction.) It's irrelevant cause nobody knows what bnet 2.0 is gonna be in the end, not even blizzard. Maybe it will have these crucial features we ask for, who knows? And where's game industry, besides blizzard? Game industry doesn't have credibility when it comes to multiplayer aspect. Today they throw away dedicated servers and chat channels, cause "nobody needs them" in their opinion and tomorrow they promise to put them back. The point being, something being accepted as fact by the industry has close to zero relevance in this discussion. Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact. On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 11:39 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
It was logging onto Brood War GBR-1 and getting to know my peers that made me come back. It was talking to them that got me on gosugamers and subsequently teamliquid. You don't need to be hardcore to appreciate chat, quite the reverse, you need chat to build the interest to become hardcore. A matchmaking system alone is not enough, playing alone is incredibly dull and you don't find your sc2 peers on facebook. Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player. HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it. So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think? Look, i have two points that i am basing my opinion on: 4 years of experience in the RTS game industry, learning popular developer opinion and position; and Blizzard's actions. If Blizzard thought that battle.net (1.0 design) was adequate for the casual user, they would have kept in features like chat over more trendy/popular ones like facebook integration. Hell, if they thought there were benefits to having both features in the game, they would have done that. But they didn't. I am offering an explanation as to why they are behaving this way. My explanation is just my personal opinion, again, based off of my personal experience with the developer - and more importantly - corporate side of the game industry. Am i right? Who knows. I thought they were going to put in chat, so i clearly am not experienced enough to predict the maneuverings of their company. So the question is why aren't they including chat? Aside from the reasons i gave, do you have any insight as to why they are betraying their hardcore following so severely? As to why they are so flippant towards us (as seen in the interview?) Because they are wrong in their understanding of player's needs. What's wrong with this thought? They are human, and human tend to make mistake and are prone to misconceptions and misunderstandings. Blizzard made mistake, that's all to that. They thought chat channels were useless cause they were unusable because of spam, not realizing that it was one of the most important features of BW longevity phenomenon. And we, BW players, know better then they what made us stick to the game for so long. Why should Blizzard value you playing their game for 11 years (or however long you've played it) with a total contribution to their purses of $60-80? Unless you know anything about game development, i'm going to have to argue that what we 'accept as fact' has some validity. Games are getting more popular, not less. How many GDC conferences have you attended? Game design courses taken? Statistics analysis on player psychology and need-satisfaction? Post-mortems on the industries most successful games (WoW, Starcraft, Halo, GTA, etc.) You're trying to tell me that the most successful game company in the world doesn't know what they're doing compared to someone who has played [one of their games] for a few years. Do you realize how ignorant this sounds?
Because that 11 years of devotion and goodwill towards the company has metastasized into the largest recurrent billing game in history, pulling in far more profit than the gross box sales of whatever RTS you spend a year developing in a single month.
Might be worth considering.
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On June 01 2010 14:22 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 14:08 Design wrote:
The thing that I don't really understand is why no private chat channels have been implemented. If the main concern is offensive content and spam, I can't see that having private chat channel is a problem. The community can moderate itself and if a player enters a channel that has content they disagree with they have only themselves to blame as it's easy enough to leave.
So long as there is private chat rooms, they really could completely leave out public chat almost entirely and I doubt it would have much effect on the community. The community would fill the void of public chat channels by making well known channels that are moderated by a few people, much like a forum set up.
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, it is quite a long thread. It's funny that you mention this because i have similar sentiments. Infact, I'm still at work as i'm doing some overtime on a Chat system for our game. (oh the irony!) We're going to have public chat channels that have limited functionality compared to private channels. We want to discourage types of spam while giving freedom over to users to create their own communities how they see fit. This, to me, seems like the best way of catering to our core players without sacrificing anything for our new users. It seems - dare i say - common sense. But this isn't the only action that Blizzard has taken that has confused me. Their complete disengagement with korean E-sports is going to leave a big hole. My game (Company of Heroes Online) is garnering more attention than i expected from e-sport franchises. This would all make more sense if Blizzard was making a huge move to support their e-sport scene, but i haven't seen anything like that either. Maybe something huge will come out at release? (Starcraft2 TV station? Starcraft2 stadium?) As a developer, i'm eager to see what happens. As a player and e-sports fan, i'm frightened.
Sounds like a good way to go. Don't see why Blizzard as an experience game developer can't think of such ideas, which really should be common sense. They should use the community as more of an asset, they don't need to hire hundreds of people to moderate. Let the people make the community, just give us the tools to do so. Every past Blizzard game community worked this way, there were certain channels you found out about through word of mouth or through websites such as this.
I don't think their group channel idea is really the answer to the problem as they haven't really given us any information of it. It doesn't sound like people can create their own groups using the system. If it was they would have said something already to quell everyone's fears, as making custom group channels is basically exactly the same as private chat channels.
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On June 01 2010 14:47 L wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 14:44 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 14:36 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 14:13 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 13:53 InRaged wrote:On June 01 2010 13:07 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:59 Lollersauce wrote:On June 01 2010 12:50 dcttr66 wrote:
there's really nothing you can say that can dispute the fact that a regular chat channel is obsolete. A good contender for dumbest statement these past few days. That dumbest statement is accepted as pretty much fact in the game industry. Honestly, game industry can go fuck themselves and their standards. In decade they made only two strategy games that lasted more than two years and have active fan base of adequate size. And both of this games are coincidently use battle.net 1.0 And in the present decade, there will be two more RTSs that will blow the ones you are referring to out of the water. They will be SC2, WC4. And they will use bnet 2.0. (just to be clear: i'm referring to sales and Average Concurrent Users. Not e-sport, quality of the game, or player-satisfaction.) It's irrelevant cause nobody knows what bnet 2.0 is gonna be in the end, not even blizzard. Maybe it will have these crucial features we ask for, who knows? And where's game industry, besides blizzard? Game industry doesn't have credibility when it comes to multiplayer aspect. Today they throw away dedicated servers and chat channels, cause "nobody needs them" in their opinion and tomorrow they promise to put them back. The point being, something being accepted as fact by the industry has close to zero relevance in this discussion. Btw, C&C4 has public chat channels and you join them immediately after launching game. That's a fact. On June 01 2010 12:59 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:41 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:36 Mora wrote:On June 01 2010 12:22 Archerofaiur wrote:On June 01 2010 12:19 Mora wrote:
[quote]
Anyone who has ever been to this website is considered a hardcore player.
HA Also anyone thinking that this is just a hardcore issue should really check the BNET forums... Do you understand what kind of numers we're dealing with? Blizzard has gone the facebook route. They've decided that trying to draw your friends in through facebook - which has a user base of over 400 million users, of which 200 million log on in any given day has more potential for consumer attraction than general chat. And they're right. Anyone who looks up Starcraft on the bnet forums is a considered a border-line hardcore player. Anyone who plays anything outside of single player and games vs AI is considered a border-line harcore player. These people do not care about chat. Their whole design screams of this kind of perspective: Their ranking/leaderboard system, lack-of-chat, achievements, segregation by region, distance from korean e-sport, facebook integration, etc. I hope they're wrong and that taking this course of action bites them in the ass. Anecdotal opinion found here on teamliquid has shown me no evidence how they'd be wrong though. Your quoting facebooks numbers and farmville and such yes. But all those people will not play SC2. If you want accurate numbers you can start by quoting user bases on any RTS. And you calling the BNET forums a hardcore site is laughable. i didn't say that the bnet forums is hardcore, i said that developers consider anyone who goes to a games forum a hardcore player. hardcore players' definition of 'hardcore' is developed through comparison between themselves and other players. Developers' definition is founded on long-term data analysis and identification of general use trends. Anyone who has a level 80 character in World of Warcraft is considered a hardcore player (by developers). This is why their end-game content went through a huge shift between the original wow and it's expansions: only 1% of their userbase ever got to experience their end-game content (Molten Core). I don't know what to tell you. The vast majority of people who buy RTS games play only the single player, and many of those don't even finish it. So you wanna tell us that Battle.net is for hardcore players only, since it's used only by people who play in multiplayer (aka hardcore players by your definition) ? With this logic you can justify removal of Battle.net itself, cause clearly vast majority of people, those who play single player only, won't care. Something wrong with this logic, don't you think? Look, i have two points that i am basing my opinion on: 4 years of experience in the RTS game industry, learning popular developer opinion and position; and Blizzard's actions. If Blizzard thought that battle.net (1.0 design) was adequate for the casual user, they would have kept in features like chat over more trendy/popular ones like facebook integration. Hell, if they thought there were benefits to having both features in the game, they would have done that. But they didn't. I am offering an explanation as to why they are behaving this way. My explanation is just my personal opinion, again, based off of my personal experience with the developer - and more importantly - corporate side of the game industry. Am i right? Who knows. I thought they were going to put in chat, so i clearly am not experienced enough to predict the maneuverings of their company. So the question is why aren't they including chat? Aside from the reasons i gave, do you have any insight as to why they are betraying their hardcore following so severely? As to why they are so flippant towards us (as seen in the interview?) Because they are wrong in their understanding of player's needs. What's wrong with this thought? They are human, and human tend to make mistake and are prone to misconceptions and misunderstandings. Blizzard made mistake, that's all to that. They thought chat channels were useless cause they were unusable because of spam, not realizing that it was one of the most important features of BW longevity phenomenon. And we, BW players, know better then they what made us stick to the game for so long. Why should Blizzard value you playing their game for 11 years (or however long you've played it) with a total contribution to their purses of $60-80? Unless you know anything about game development, i'm going to have to argue that what we 'accept as fact' has some validity. Games are getting more popular, not less. How many GDC conferences have you attended? Game design courses taken? Statistics analysis on player psychology and need-satisfaction? Post-mortems on the industries most successful games (WoW, Starcraft, Halo, GTA, etc.) You're trying to tell me that the most successful game company in the world doesn't know what they're doing compared to someone who has played [one of their games] for a few years. Do you realize how ignorant this sounds? Because that 11 years of devotion and goodwill towards the company has metastasized into the largest recurrent billing game in history, pulling in far more profit than the gross box sales of whatever RTS you spend a year developing in a single month. Might be worth considering.
You're trying to tell me that if Starcraft didn't have public chat channels that WoW would not be the highest grossing video game of all time?
Show me your math. My interest is piqued.
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Don't want to speculate, but nobody seems to be taking this into consideration:
None of the employees are talking, they have a pretty big company -- 4,600. It seems like it's something internal, and they are forced to be silent about it. In that company, there are definitely quite a few employees who would not find a lack of chatrooms acceptable.
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On June 01 2010 15:14 Jovan wrote:
Don't want to speculate, but nobody seems to be taking this into consideration:
None of the employees are talking, they have a pretty big company -- 4,600. It seems like it's something internal, and they are forced to be silent about it. In that company, there are definitely quite a few employees who would not find a lack of chatrooms acceptable.
I'm sure most company employees are required to sign a NDA. It's not like they could say anything to the public, even if it was something amazing they had in store for us.
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On June 01 2010 14:44 Mora wrote:
Why should Blizzard value you playing their game for 11 years (or however long you've played it) with a total contribution to their purses of $60-80? If anything, wouldn't it make more sense to make a game that is going to appeal to a mass audience, not one that has super longevity?
Hey, stop right there. You're trying to calm down people by saying that blizzard don't give a fuck about game's relative future and they're just for a money grab? That's way we're angry in the first place, you know? There's no need to be game developer to see that most probable reason for such a bad state of battle.net 0.2 is cause they're up to getting quick cash on a much anticipated sequel.
I'm here under assumption that they DO care about game longevity, cause if they don't there's nothing to argue about at all - they can do whatever they wish with the game and whetever arguments we may have mean jack
Unless you know anything about game development, i'm going to have to argue that what we 'accept as fact' has some validity. Games are getting more popular, not less. How many GDC conferences have you attended? Game design courses taken? Statistics analysis on player psychology and need-satisfaction? Post-mortems on the industries most successful games (WoW, Starcraft, Halo, GTA, etc.)?
You're trying to tell me that the most successful game company in the world doesn't know what they're doing compared to someone who has played [one of their games] for a few years. Do you realize how ignorant this sounds?
Battle.net isn't a game, though, but a multigame service and game design knowledge here doesn't reeeeeally apply.
And games are getting more popular because of widening spread of a computers and consoles first and foremost, not because games are getting better. That's an offtopic, though.
Do you realize how fanatical and blind faithed it sounds to assume that blizzard don't make mistakes?
Can you offer some credentials outside of your limited gaming experience?
I'd been administrating and working with a community of a private ragnarok online server that had 1.2k regular online
On June 01 2010 14:51 Mora wrote:
You're trying to tell me that if Starcraft didn't have public chat channels that WoW would not be the highest grossing video game of all time?
Show me your math. My interest is piqued.
I think he's trying to say that if b.net0.2 won't have cross-region play, lan support, chat channels, adequate ladder and couple other things which are in high demand for people, once stable b.net emulator is released there won't be a single reason to legally purchase sc2 and if game turns out to be number one e-sport title that's quiet a lot of lost revenue to consider.
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Woah after a lot of reading, starting to think that I shouldnt buy the game anymore. Plus I dont have 60 bucks to spare anyway lol.
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I just want to bring up some food for thought for the plenty of cynics out there who seem resigned that our power as consumers will be overwhelmed by the chimera that represents "casual" gamers.
In business, products are said to undergo product life cycles that proceed, as one may expect along a sequence of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Specifically on the marketing side of the introduction phase of a product's life cycle, promotion campaigns typically target consumer segments known as innovators and early adopters.
Innovators represent consumers who are gung-ho about that product class, who are knowledgeable and attentive to developments in that product class, and who normal consumers rely on to gain quick, reliable insight on their purchasing decisions. For instance, many people, when in the market for an automobile, will inquire the car buffs among their friends for advice. They may also read a few magazines and whatnot, but they really don't nerd out on all a car's possible specs and features.
Early adopters represent consumers who, obviously, are expected to invest in the product soon because that's how they roll. This could be for a number of reasons: the consumer could be a rabid fan, a devout collector or connoisseur, or merely impressed with the hype.
In understanding these consumer segments, the advantage of marketing to them during introduction becomes apparent. Innovators are crucial because they are essentially the seeds to much of the potential word of mouth surrounding your product. If I don't know jack about cars and I hear my knowledgeable friend mentioning many flaws in some models, I'll be far more wary of them. Early adopters are very efficient to market to because in most markets, retaining customers' interest is far less costly than generating interest in originally totally disinterested customers. In many businesses, business as usual can usually keep loyal customers.
Now Blizzard's situation may vary from normal marketplaces. Few companies can enjoy as little direct competition. Few companies can enjoy customers with such great price insensitivity (some of us are apparently willing to pay almost 200 dollars for what could easily be a 60 dollar experience). Few products enjoy such ubiquitous awareness in their target market simply by virtue of the product announcement.
But Blizzard's frozen throne, so to speak, shouldn't necessarily leave fans powerless. Think about it: we are the innovators and the fan base that is supposedly cheaper to maintain than expand. Sure there may be millions more that may buy the game, but who are they and how do they make purchasing decisions?
They are legion so actually trying to profile them here is beyond me, but two factors should be true. First, they are gamers. Browder may have mentioned that he wanted his grandmother to be capable of enjoying the game, but marketing it to her would be bullshit. His grandmother isn't stupid, and she won't spend the price of six movie tickets or more on an experience that won't last more than the airing time of six movies. Gaming is simply not what she does.
Some might think that Blizzard really, really wants to market to non-gamers because of this Facebook deal or some other reason. Still, think about it. Say your real life, non-gamer friend hears about your various SC2 exploits via Facebook. He won't say, damn, I gotta go buy SC2, potentially buy multiple copies, multiple expansions, or multiple copies OF multiple expansions, and then leap into a completely foreign activity that potentially involves innumerable complete strangers. An activity that overall requires significant monetary, temporal, and cognitive investments. No, he'll make friendly remarks or congratulate you, and keep devoting his time and money to whatever recreation or hobby he already enjoys.
Okay, so they are gamers. What else are they? They are not us. Sounds dumb, right? Sure, but all we can be completely certain of is that there are gamers out there who either are not aware of or do not take issue to the dilemmas we are currently grieving over. These gamers may feed Blizzard money regardless of our discontent, and some of us feel powerless because of that.
Do you see how silly that is? We are the hardcore, involved, interested, excited, learned in this little niche. Sure in practice some bitter fellows will find us condescending, but the fact is that a lot of other gamers will listen to us. If I tell my WoW friends about the glaring flaws in B.net 2.0, they may argue, they may even tell me to stop raging or some such nonsense, but the fact is that I'll have planted the seeds of doubt in any potential purchasing decision they'll make. Why? Because as long as I'm not actually incoherently raging, they'll be forced to think about my criticisms.
Basically in order to elevate these grievances to the level of an issue to be taken seriously, we need to wage a marketing counter-campaign. I'm over-simplifying this drastically, but it would involve identifying a target market (the gamers we feel may purchase SC2), creating awareness of the issue, and educating them of the reasoning behind the issue. We need to legitimately convince what may amount to the entire gaming community that there are problems with B.net 2.0.
I don't think this can be done via contrivances such as rating rigging on Amazon or anything like that. The people we need to convince aren't morons. They will not take obviously fabricated ratings seriously.
A word on word-of-mouth: if every one of us talks to even 5 other people, that's how many times our power will be magnified.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 01 2010 03:03 Magmar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 13:11 fuzzehbunneh wrote:
yet another instance of our culture's everybody is a winner attitude creeping into competition and ruining it for everyone. Consider this: You are not a korean Programer. Korean Progamer could say everybody who is not on our level and earning money with this Game is per definition a stupid loser. How would you feel? And don´t claim that you would shrug this off. Not when you hold up the flag of competition and winner gets it all. Show nested quote +
blizzard keeps trying to cater to casual gamers, and honestly this turns off the hardcore gamers when the casual gamers COULDNT CARE LESS about any of it as they are by definition CASUAL
Blizzard knows there are only a few dozen thousands of "hardcore gamers" that look like Count Dracula because they don´t see the sun very often. It would be stupid to cater to these male virgins. Better to make games that appeal to millions of people. It´s not only better for them. Computergames became relevant when companies started to make content for people who knew Sex and Sunlight. The 99,9% of the overall male and female population. Thats the horrible thing about this: WE ALLOW ONLY THE GAME FANATICS TO COMPLAIN ABOUOT B NET 2.0. And thats stupid! The casual gamers have to step up forward too or you and your kind will ruin it for everyone.
Hello.
Good bye.
On June 01 2010 02:39 Archerofaiur wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 02:35 Half wrote:
Wait what your 57? O.o. I thought you were a med school student. lol this reminds me of the time I convinced everyone that FrozenArbiter was a old man :p No for the record im not really 57.
I dunno... you look 57 to me.
Happy birthday =]
Oh and I'm sure there's people who think I'm ancient still - for the record (), I'm 21.
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blizzards attitude of late has a striking resemblance with how israels is conducting its foreign affairs^^
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EPT
