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On February 10 2011 07:06 CidO wrote:
Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready"
Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive.
If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen.
Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive.
Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule.
What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go.
Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing.
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On February 10 2011 07:14 awu25 wrote:
they obviously don't want some part of their company releasing one game every 5 years
if you don't set any deadlines then workers won't be motivated to get things done
i rather have a game released earlier and tweaked along the way then have it released later and have it tweaked anyway
I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this.
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On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote:
I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this.
I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline.
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On February 10 2011 07:22 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:16 xBillehx wrote:
News about D3 and the upcoming beta will be in the next conference call. <3
4.5m sales worldwide is pretty sick. Half the bw sales in only 1 year. So awesome  . Anyone know when the next call is?
The next call will be when the 2011 Q1 results are out, so at most 2-3 months. The last few years' Q1 calls have been around the first week of May.
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On February 10 2011 07:27 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote:
I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this.
I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline.
Now if people would only understand that, and not try and make excuses about why Blizzard is "Sold out" _-_
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On February 10 2011 07:23 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:06 CidO wrote:
Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready" Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive. If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen. Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive. Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule. What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go. Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing.
Shame that people prefer to think that Activision is the devil. Most of SC2 content must've been done a year or more ago, there were no significant content patches ever since the beta came out and Blizzard demonstrated most of the new campaign units at press events.
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On February 10 2011 07:13 Mereel wrote:
so its 4,5 million sales for starcraft 2 worldwide...wow
finally we got some numbers on how well it sold
great numbers
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On February 10 2011 07:42 SmoKim wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:13 Mereel wrote:
so its 4,5 million sales for starcraft 2 worldwide...wow finally we got some numbers on how well it sold great numbers
Yeah, I was half expecting SC2 to look disappointing next to WoW's numbers, especially it being so far from "mainstream" genres, like shooters, but I guess people weren't dumb for once
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On February 10 2011 07:27 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote:
I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this.
I have a couple friends who have been at Blizzard for a long time, well before the merger. Both say that they take deadlines VERY seriously, and always have. Refusal to announce a release date and talk about releasing games "when they're ready" have always been about retaining management's flexibility to alter deadlines to take the time to fix or sideline a poorly-conceived game, and never about not having a deadline.
Thanks for the clarity and I agree. Just a little unsettling to see a parent company having a say in the deadlines when they have no idea what is involved in the process. I would much rather prefer deadlines be established and enforced by blizzard and only blizzard.
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On February 10 2011 07:45 mufin wrote:
Just a little unsettling to see a parent company having a say in the deadlines when they have no idea what is involved in the process.
Remember that Activision, including our friend Bobby, has been in the video game business for about 30 years, or nearly as long as it's existed. Blizzard's process isn't that different from everyone else's, they just have a commitment to quality and highly profitable games to back it up.
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On February 10 2011 07:00 mufin wrote:
"Blizzard must release a minimum of 2 titles by the end of 2012"
jesus, whatever happened to "when its ready" =/
Bobby Kotick happened.
Sorry, but it's true.
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On February 10 2011 07:23 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:06 CidO wrote:
Bobby Kotick happened to "when its ready" Blizzard's undergone a lot of changes that aren't about Bobby Kotick. They've grown enormously in size, which makes the cost of ongoing operations quite expensive. If a company's saying in an investor conference call that they "must" release some number of products in a given timeframe, it's more likely a statement about how long they can sustain the costs without additional revenues, and less about the parent company issuing an order that A, B, and C are to happen. Anyway, Blizzard's implementation of the "when it's ready" idea works like this: A completely new or speculative project gets staffed at a very low level for a very long time while they experiment with the implementation to get the basic gameplay to the point they want. Then, at a certain point, they dive into art and content development, and once that happens the team gets huge and the deadlines get hard. It works this way because large teams are very expensive. Expansions, like a WoW expansion or HotS, don't require nearly as much of that experimentation with gameplay, because their process is dominated by content development and the teams are large and stable. That dictates sticking to a much stricter schedule. What this means in practice is that a WoW expansion or HotS really can't slip by much, a game like Diablo 3 might wind up getting reworked if it's having issues, and the unannounced MMO could be a year or more later than their plans depending on how things go. Thing is, most of their artists are not freelancers, so if those games get pushed back, it means another WoW or SC2 expansion needs to get moved up to keep the large, expensive team working on something that'll make some money. So, saying they must have two unspecified releases in 2012 doesn't invalidate the "when it's ready" idea, but it does mean that something must be ready in that timeframe to keep the pipeline full and the revenue flowing.
Agreed with the Blizzard development process. If you go read some of the developer interviews after SC2's release (especially Dustin Browder's), you'll find that SC2's development cycle was basically in an experimental state from the release of Warcraft 3 until shortly before 2007. It was not until most of Blizzard was done working on releasing vanilla WoW that SC2 got a real development team, though this came at the cost of a hard deadline date that would inevitably be delayed by a bit.
With such a relatively short deadline to finish what was essentially a loose framework of a very ambitious SC2, it's no surprise that the campaign was split up and the Zerg race was worked on last. Looking back, it seems that SC2's development felt oddly rushed, especially compared to the quality of Blizzard's other products. Fortunately, we still have 2 expansions to rectify this.
Also, I do believe that the Blizzard-Activision merger has nothing to do with Blizzard's current development habits. The merger only occurred in 2008, so it would have very little effect on the early developments of many of its games.
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Any scrap of news regarding D3 and HotS is good news for me! Thanks for all the updates
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On February 10 2011 07:22 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:16 xBillehx wrote:
News about D3 and the upcoming beta will be in the next conference call. <3
4.5m sales worldwide is pretty sick. Half the bw sales in only 1 year. So awesome . Anyone know when the next call is?
in a quarter
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Is there a transcript of this conference call anywhere?
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On February 10 2011 06:51 heishe wrote:
I'm listening right now, and right off the bat I'm again listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger (who I remember from the cast where Morhaime revealed that SC2 Beta was to start in February), who - again - is talking about something called "gap" in sentences in which he uses the word "gap" about a million times.
I'm not on the call, but you're probably hearing him say "GAAP" which stands for generally accepted accounting practices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_Accepted_Accounting_Principles
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Stock went down 8% aftermarket.
In my view, canning Guitar Hero franchise and True Crime is actually good for the company, since GH sucked basically after the 3rd one, and true crime on xbox were pretty bad games.
Kinda disappointed that there were no significant Blizzard lineup hints/confirmations. Diablo 3 in later 2011 or early 2012 is 50/50.
I guess we all have to waiting till May or E3 for signs of an open beta for D3 and HotS.
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On February 10 2011 07:23 mufin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:14 awu25 wrote:
they obviously don't want some part of their company releasing one game every 5 years
if you don't set any deadlines then workers won't be motivated to get things done
i rather have a game released earlier and tweaked along the way then have it released later and have it tweaked anyway I think Blizzard prefers to be motivated by their passion to make awesome games over a group of shareholders with a whip. A passion for something often creates a higher quality product then what money can buy. Teamliquid is a great example of this.
Passion or no, a good hard deadline can help create innovative solutions. Michelangelo's paintings on the Sistine Chapel were done under significant pressure. And he wasn't even primarily a painter.
A little pressure can go a long way. A lot of pressure can cause problems, but proper application of pressure can be very beneficial. Many good things in games are emergent properties; things that come as an unintended side-effect produced from various circumstances. The more time a game is in development, the less chance of getting these emergent properties. The game will be exactly what the developer wants, rather than what the players can make of it.
To me, what "when its ready" should mean is that they will keep playing with game design until they really understand it well. Then build a functioning game around it. That last part is the part that you can put a deadline on.
And we're not exactly talking about a Herculean effort here. Activision isn't asking for their first-born or to make a burnt offering to Baal or something. 2 games in 2 years, when they're almost finished with one of them. This should not be a terribly difficult goal to achieve.
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Pretty easy to follow up. There's the World of WarCraft expansion that will always pop up every 1-2 years and there's Diablo 3. Let's not forget about Heart of the Swarm.
Blizzard has gotten big enough to release more games than it has before.
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I very much doubt it's a WoW expansion. They've been promising 1 WoW expansion per year and have been falling flat on that since. They are usually 1.5-2 years imbetween and it just came out a few months ago (after SC2). I'd expect D3 most likely and maybe HOTS. Didn't Blizzard say it'd be about a year for HOTS? So HOTS is due around August 2011. Though they've said they want to improve battle.net 2.0 before then (tournament patch etc.), but I doubt it and it'll likely just be packaged along with HOTS. Then again they likely have seperate teams working on that.
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EPT
