A short history of Activision Blizzard or how... - Page 31

On June 01 2010 05:13 MasterFwiffo wrote:


That is such a BS image. It takes me all of 30 seconds to start a movie on DVD. He's bitching about pressing play on the remote? Seriously?

On June 03 2010 22:08 Fyrewolf wrote:
Pirating Starcarft is not the answer. Honestly, NOBODY here knows the final form of SC2 and BNET 2.0 are going to be because THEY AREN'T EVEN FINISHED YET. This is a BETA for a reason. And it's about to shut down so they can revamp BNET.

While BNET is lacking in many features I consider to be essential, that doesn't mean somehow that Blizzard has turned into the worst company ever. If you don't want to buy SC2 right now, fine. Buy it after a few patches (I rarely buy anything before the 3rd gen product). Even Brood War wasn't really balanced til patch 1.08. You don't open someone's coloring book and complain that they don't have all the colors filled in. This is still a work in progress, and I'm sure we'll see many new features as early as after the beta opens up again. And that's not the end. They still have 2 whole expansions to make, during which they can certainly implement even more stuff into Bnet.

Considering Blizzard's reputation of supporting their games and the fact that SC2 is already amazing (Bnet is the problem), Pirating SC2 would be like kicking a little puppy. They're going to be working on Starcraft 2 for the next 5 years at the very least. That's plenty of time to fill in the rest of the coloring book. DON'T PIRATE STARCRAFT 2.

On June 03 2010 22:08 Fyrewolf wrote:
Pirating Starcarft is not the answer. Honestly, NOBODY here knows the final form of SC2 and BNET 2.0 are going to be because THEY AREN'T EVEN FINISHED YET. This is a BETA for a reason. And it's about to shut down so they can revamp BNET.

While BNET is lacking in many features I consider to be essential, that doesn't mean somehow that Blizzard has turned into the worst company ever. If you don't want to buy SC2 right now, fine. Buy it after a few patches (I rarely buy anything before the 3rd gen product). Even Brood War wasn't really balanced til patch 1.08. You don't open someone's coloring book and complain that they don't have all the colors filled in. This is still a work in progress, and I'm sure we'll see many new features as early as after the beta opens up again. And that's not the end. They still have 2 whole expansions to make, during which they can certainly implement even more stuff into Bnet.

Considering Blizzard's reputation of supporting their games and the fact that SC2 is already amazing (Bnet is the problem), Pirating SC2 would be like kicking a little puppy. They're going to be working on Starcraft 2 for the next 5 years at the very least. That's plenty of time to fill in the rest of the coloring book. DON'T PIRATE STARCRAFT 2.

On June 03 2010 22:08 Fyrewolf wrote:
Honestly, NOBODY here knows the final form of SC2 and BNET 2.0 are going to be because THEY AREN'T EVEN FINISHED YET.

On June 04 2010 02:27 Plethora wrote:
To continue on the tangent someone else started, the greed thing is absolutely a problem and I find that I am in a position to see it laid out before me pretty cut and dry.

I am the general manager of a movie theater. I run one theater in a giant chain, and as such I do not make decisions about booking films or ticket prices. As many of you are no doubt aware 3D movies are all the rage these days and its getting to the point where they are being pushed down people's throats whether they like it or not.

I can only use my theater as an example, but in the recent past we had a kids movie called "How to train your Dragon", which in my theater, we were showing in two theaters, one was in 3D complete with $4.50 per ticket extra charge, and one was not. Once the movie had finished its run I happened to look at the total numbers for the film. We sold more tickets to the standard 2D version than we did to the 3D one, but as you can guess the 3D one made significantly more money.

And the lesson the Home Office for my theater takes from this? MORE 3D PROJECTORS! We don't care if we are completely screwing over the people who don't care about 3D and/or can't afford to take several kids to a 3D movie. I mean the price for a family of 4 (2 adults 2 kids) is $35 for the regular old 2D or $53 for 3D... we aren't talking pennies here.

To bring this back around... the greed is everywhere, it sucks that I have to spend all day staring it in the face at work and then come home and stare it in the face some more regarding what is supposed to be my entertainment!

On June 04 2010 06:21 Rabiator wrote:

Thank you for yet another example on why the capitalist system we have at the moment does not work. The reason is quite simple: Managers are only obligated to make big profits and not to the improvement of society and humanity.

Sadly we NEED TO have "improvement of humanity" as the no. 1 rule for everything we do or else humanity will eat itself by raping this planet and then raping each other for resources. We need to improve as human beings and develop A LOT more altruism instead of egoism. Its either that or getting rid of all laws against physical violence, because mental violence / mental rape is dealt to every thinking customer by those illogical decisions we are facing now from Blizzard and there is no law against those.

Oh and btw. "improvement of humanity" does NOT mean new technology, but purely becoming better human beings.

On May 31 2010 14:20 Captain Peabody wrote:


Your welcome. And thanks for taking the time to respond in a non-flamey fashion. It's much appreciated.



They have "that tainted feeling" about them? Really?

The reason Blizzard makes good games is due to their company atmosphere, design philosophy, and development schedules. If you admit their games are just as good as they were, then you're de facto admitting that none of these things have changed that significantly.

But sure, the fact that a company you like is associated in some way with a company and a person you hate is bound to leave a bad taste in your mouth. But if you're basing your whole outlook on the former company on that feeling, then that's problematic.



But, see, the problem is, you again have no actual detailed image or timeline as you do now...only a general image that can be easily changed and obscured by nostalgia. Blizzard has always made great games...but the thing is, even you admitted they're still making very good (great is debatable) games, and they're following the same design tenets they were then, with even longer development schedules than before. You may not like WoW, but there's no denying it even at release showed Blizzard's attention to detail, quality, and polish; and these are the things that have sustained it since.

And since WoW's success, their company policy in regards to release dates and development schedules simply has not changed. Their company policy in regards to quality standards has not changed. Indeed, the main thing WoW's success has done is give them a secure financial base from which to implement that policy and philosophy...



The thing is, for the development schedule of SC2, we've had a front-row seat through almost every stage of development. We've seen the game shift, change, we've seen the hard decisions being made, we've gotten angry about those decisions, heard directly from the people who made them, and seen the game take shape. And development of a game is frankly a very messy process; it which involves release dates, quarterly forecasts, discussions of money and profits, and the basic question of how to make enough money off the game to make it financially worthwhile.

And it was the same when SC1 was being made. But the thing is, we just didn't see that side of development with SC1. The developers of SC1 had to deal with finances and questions of how much time and money to spend on the game, questions of if they were ever going to make a profit off of it, questions on how to make ends meet; indeed, they had to deal with it much more then, in a new software company struggling to make ends meet, then in the present with the comfortable flow of cash from WoW. But we didn't see it. We didn't see the charts and graphs and quarterly forecasts...but they most certainly did.

Your perception of them as a "company of gamers making games for other gamers" is nice and true, but it's colored by nostalgia. They were gamers, they made games for other gamers, but they were still part of a corporation run by businessmen. Blizzard has always had to deal with "meddling from above" in the corporate ladder; in their lifespan, they've been owned by a total of five different corporations; they've faced mergers, sales, and financial difficulties.

The thing is, you're acting like the current situation, being owned by a financially-minded corporation with an eye towards the bottom line, is something unprecedented; it's not. Blizzard has for most of its life dealt with exactly that situation. And if you compare Bobby Kotick's statements about his plans for Blizzard with what's actually happened, I think you'll find they're dealing with it now.
Blizzard isn't some innocent rabbit unaware of financial pressures and the temptation to cut quality in order to make a profit until it suddenly married Darth Vader; it's a hardened veteran that's earned its space to do what it does quite often through sheer stubbornness. And it's not going to give that up for Kotick or anyone.

And Blizzard development teams are still the same as they were then, gamers making games for gamers. If you've read an interview with Dustin Browder, or talked to the guy, you know what I mean. The guy is passionate about the game, he's passionate about making it great, as everyone who's met him can attest; and he's basically a colossal nerd and gamer. And if you've read any interviews with other members of the dev team, then you'll know that this attitude is near universal. Little has changed in the Blizzard dev teams. You can dispute their development philosophies, but you can't deny their passion.

But, forget all that: in the excerpt you quote in your post, you have provided us with a specific frame of reference. And if anything, it only shows how little Blizzard has changed over these years.

When SC2 was first announced, it looked like this:

+ Show Spoiler +

In response to fan complaints, Blizzard almost completely overhauled the look of the game. Color saturation was reduced, "grittiness" was added back, Protoss team colors overhauled; the game looks totally different now than it did then.

A complete overhaul of the engine was not necessary at this point, for the main reason that roughly 2-4 years (minus the WoW break) had been spent on developing the engine. If Blizzard was run by industry men, they could have simply re-used the WC3 engine, or used another engine on the market, but they took the time necessary to turn out a totally new, well-crafted, and flexible engine that allowed them to do everything they needed to do with it. [Also note that a 3D engine is a lot more complex to put together than a 2D engine; no one could ever put together a 3D engine like SC2s or overhaul it in anything like 2 months.]

Then, they spent three years developing the game while giving the community a great deal of access to that development, with Blizzcons, Battle Reports, etc. Three years. If you've read any of the articles from past live events where the game was played, you'll know that SC2 has been in a playable state for most of that time. Heck, it's been in a polished playable state, a state more polished and balanced than most of the RTS games that come out, for most of that time. If Blizzard was run by industry men, they would have shipped the game years ago. But instead, they changed it around, messed with it, added and removed units, until they thought it was good enough.

Blizzard started the campaign, and decided that, instead of simply creating another linear campaign, they were going to create something bigger, better, more exciting, something revolutionary. And it became so big, and so deep, that they realized it would take years to complete just one of the three. If Blizzard was run by industry men, they would have balked at it, and made a simple campaign rather than delay the game. But they didn't.

And as if that wasn't enough, once they had built the campaign, set everything up that needed to be set up, they set a rough release date, working tirelessly towards that. But in the end, they decided that the game simply wasn't ready, that the campaign wasn't cool enough, Battle.net not good enough; and they delayed it for another year. If Blizzard was run by industry men, they would have released it in 2009 regardless of what state the game was in (which had to have been pretty good).

For Beta, Blizzard has made large changes to just about every race. New abilities have been added and some removed, changes made to the AI, etc. And the dev team is quite literally working around the clock to get it out there; they're basically living in the office right now. They're in "crunch mode." And they're on Battle.net, too, playing games against people. David Kim, the balance designer, plays in the top levels of the game; CowGoMoo, a QA person, also is in the top echelons.

So tell me; looking at this, besides the change in technology and time (a three year dev cycle as opposed to 5-7 years), tell me the huge, massive difference in the picture you see here.

Again, you act like Blizzard has never actually had to think about money and finances before now, as if Mike Morhaime never had to deal with a CEO who wanted to make more money off their properties.

And the monetization of certain features actually is to the benefit of the game and the consumer in some cases. Take something like character re-customization; WoW is based around a persistent character, and if people were able to change that too easily, that would have deletrious effects on the integrity of the game...but at the same time, it is a feature that many people want, and as long as its used sparingly it doesn't hurt the game. By requiring payment for it, Blizzard gives the people who really want it this feature what they want, and by making it cost money, they keep it rare enough that only the dedicated players who really care about this kind of thing (read: not all that many people) will use it. The same holds true for server transfers (Blizzard wants you to play with the same group of people in general).

And, frankly, these kinds of small features simply didn't exist in past generations of games...so there's no direct comparison even with something like a mount store. In the end, though, it's still cosmetic, and it makes Blizzard money. It's not morally praiseworthy, but it's also not deleterious to the game.

Everyone and their brother at Blizzard has called them expansion sets, referred to them as such, etc. They have also said that they will be priced according to their content. Blizzard wouldn't give away prices this far in advance anyway. The logical and natural deduction is that they will be priced thusly.

Saying they're greedy because no one can prove that they won't over-charge is simply a bad argument.



Okay, let's talk about expansions. Expansions exist almost totally for financial reasons; they exist to allow a company to make up some of the development costs by using the already-created resources to create new content and sell it.

The reason BW exists is in order to make up for the losses incurred over the long development time for SC1. Blizzard also licensed two other expansion packs at the same time, for the same reasons; they were frankly pretty bad, and are little know today.

And let me also be clear about something else: SC2 is not going to make Blizzard a profit. They have worked on this game for upwards of seven years. For about five years, they have been paying a full development team, and making not a penny off of it; they have hired professional voice actors and voice actors, paid writers and composers and a full orchestra. The amount of money spent on this project is astronomical. Even if SC2 sells as well as they're hoping, the project is going to be heavily in the red when all is said and done.

And it's probably been the same way for a lot of Blizzard's games. It almost certainly was that way for SC1. SC1 made a profit only with the help of the BW expansion and ten years of sales.

But by the time Blizzard got to SC2, they were prepared for it, and they knew the development cycle was going to be long; heck, by the time they got to work in earnest, it had already been long, and their plans were extremely ambitious and time-consuming. And so, as numerous interviews attest, they had calculated long before the idea of splitting the campaigns that it would take two expansions for them to make a profit off of the project. And it will; SC2 will probably not make a cent of profit for Blizzard until the second expansion pack is out.

But Blizzard in SC1 also was committed to making sure that the expansion simply wasn't a cheap money grab; that the people get their money's worth when they bought the expansion, with enough content to make it worth their while. And Blizzard is committed to the same thing with SC2. In interviews, Dustin Browder has affirmed that they want to make sure that everyone gets their money's worth as well; with this in mind, they're going to be creating two totally unique campaigns of 30 missions with totally different mechanics and with a totally different experience than the Terran campaign. And they're going to be adding multiplayer units, abilities, etc.

The expansions are going to be packed full of content, and there's even question (by Browder in interviews especially) if they're going to be able to get them out fast enough to make it worth their while. BW came out the same year as the original SC. SC2's expansions are going to take significantly more time, and they're going to have as much content as a full game.

This is hardly greed, and if anything it is less greedy than Blizzard in the past.



Don't make me laugh. SC2's campaign is many times more complex in terms of design than SCs. The BW campaign could be designed in the map editor in a month without any trouble; the SC2 campaign contains oodles of mechanics, units, abilities, art, tilesets, etc not found in the multiplayer. It took Blizzard years to develop, and they're going to be starting again from almost the ground up for each of the expansions, building an almost totally different system

Again, if this be greed, I'd hate to see charity.



Sure, it's a tradeoff. In exchange for not getting an experience of newness that often, you get a much deeper and longer experience. You obviously feel one way about it; but that's only your opinion, and many people would disagree with you on it. It remains to be seen whether it's a trade-off that's worth it...but regardless, it's a design decision, not one based on money or greed.



Many informed people in the community disagree with you. In the end, I am confident it is good for the community. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

And, just to make it clear, an optional feature is good if it adds value and does not negatively affect the game or take away a core feature from people who choose not to use it. I think I made it clear in my last post, but whatever.



If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. If seeing the Facebook logo makes you angry, then frankly that's your business, and your problem.



Well, sure, I know you were trying to make a point, and I agree you don't have to include everything in the world. But hopefully, I've shown in this post that the evidence you leave out speaks against your point, as my last post attempted to show that the evidence you include does not really necessitate your conclusion.

Because that's the thing about most of the evidence you present in the OP. It could be taken the way you say...or it could just as easily not be. At best, you've created a plausible narrative that could or could not be true; at worst, you've created a blatant falsehood. But because you have not included so much evidence, the narrative you give simply cannot conclusively prove your thesis. And the evidence you have not included goes a long way towards disproving it.

Blizzard just announced that StarCraft II's single player campaign would be split into three separate products. The scope of the single-player experience was so huge they decided to deliver three different products. The first product will focus on the Terrans, with the Zerg next and finally the Protoss. The story will stretch across three titles.
Wings of Liberty - Terrans
Heart of the Swarm - Zerg
Legacy of the Void - Protoss
Each campaign is treated as a fully fleshed out game, with each title ending the same way. The change will allow for more characters, more missions, and more complete experiences overall.