Blizzard Entertainment has made some of my favorite games of all time, but today we will be taking a look at the steady change and current state of the company.
It's not just video games either, that's with every corporation in America right now. Profits for shareholders are all that matters anymore for most companies.
Have you seen D4 dev streams? They scream "diversity and inclusion". While you're right in some aspect, most of the blizzard releases have been dogshit.
I'm 41 now and part of me can't come to terms that Blizzard isn't the Blizzard I knew anymore. As you said, there was a time when any Blizzard game launched there was an excellent chance that game would be great. Great video and hits the nail on the head of how I feel.
im 35.. it's hard to remember when blizzard wasn't in a perpetual state of customer exploitation and putting out horrible and outdated game design. reminder that diablo 2 was released 24 years ago
Blizzard hasn't been Blizzard since the Activision merger. The name is slapped on the games still just like Dell slaps Alienwear on their "gaming" computers.
As someone whose been gaming for over four decades and grew up with the gaming industry as it grew... Things are definitely different now than they were just 10 years ago, and not in positive ways, unfortunately. This push for recurrent revenue streams aka Live Services, has been one of the most negative trends of all time to hit games, aside form Loot Boxes. A lot of single player game sequels were forced to become LS games thanks to the execs who don't even like, nor play video games, and only view them as a means to make money. Thankfully, LS games are starting to die out, but like most trends, it takes years for the balance to return. And it's always because consumers have to vote with their wallets, so the suits get the message, finally. It's this dysfunctional cycle I'm just sick and tired of, more than any other thing with AAA, games. We can never get those moments from our childhood back when games were truly great because those eras are gone. They've been replaced with profit maximization and games made by corporate committees who, as stated, don't even like, nor play video games most of the time.
@@viberaider6852from what I heard back when we got the news it was planned to have all 3 factions. And that it was shaping out well if I remember correctly.
I have to laugh on this one ! Been there ! Its like Covered Wagon really take on the fortress of monetize the game invasion???That's how i kinda stepped into this new movie!
@@Dat_Jonx Maybe, but 1 thing is for sure these companies are shadows of their former glory. Witch is sad really. I have to say tho for me Ubi's shit has been kind of personal. It's not fun seeing your fav franchises you grew up with get killed off by these ppl...
That opinion is still so dumb imo, that would mean that every company dies at one point and is basically an insult to every dev after them like they are completely useless and cant do what people did before them, Developer is a job like every other. The ovious thing is that "veterans" already know what they do, but thats the same with every job.
@@Orcaaaan Video games are not created by corporations, they are created by people hired by corporations. If you don't hang on to people for long enough for them to get really good at something then you're going to get worse product. Devs are not interchangeable cogs in a machine, and if you keep swapping them out you will have endless amateur hour because once they do figure it out they leave for better pay and less abuse somewhere else. Every company doesn't die when people leave, but they do if those people take all their institutional knowledge with them and there wasn't enough time to actually get new hires up to snuff under their guidance. The key thing here is that you're right, Developer is a job like every other, and even fast food you can tell a big difference in the output of someone who knows what they're doing vs someone 2 weeks in. We do not value people's skills as much as we value corporate branding, which is a real problem.
Young people have a narrow band of what classifies as a good game. What with whats out there now, lot of games are basically one arm bandits or social engineering platforms.
A WoW player here. For the first time in 10years, i am actually excited about WoW. SoD is very nice and I also enjoy dragonflight a lot, as well as the wuld roadmap. For me, this is exactly the blizzard I want
IMO, Overwatch still has enough following to stream it and do well. D4 probably isn't really streamable anymore other than the first week of a new season.
I mean yeah, lol. This channel has been Blizzard-centric for much of its existence (13.5 years). It began as entirely SC2 commentary. Then I covered loads of D3. After that it was a mix of Hearthstone, HotS, and other random games. Followed by a solid year of Overwatch only. It’s really only been the past 5-6 years that my channel has been mostly variety. So yeah, suffice it to say, I remember :)
@@ForceGamingYT I remember comming time and time again for that sweet SC2 gameplay commentary. New games rewies, lets play etc.. D3 was huge and the start of HotS.. then slowly getting involved in more of my life, job etc. but still keeping an eye out for you and your channel. Really love your content and will ask humbly to continue to do what you do and love!
I am surprised that i barely hear about this. Before MS took over, there is no way that anyone from Activision would lead Blizzard, that would never be accepted and cause chaos. But somehow now it can. Which i think is because Blizzard is not Blizzard anymore.
I hoped that Microsoft buying act/blizz was a good thing.. but then i saw that xbox is involved with sweet baby inc.... sad sad.. no longer a xbox customer.
@@Ririreamy What do you mean? Activision has been the blame of Blizzard's fall since the WoW token was introduced and that was really the signal for the deathknell of the company as a whole. Activision has been slowly taking over Blizzard since it was acquired back in 2008. Blizzard hasnt been Blizzard for a very long time but people love to snort their crystallized copium and keep swiping their cards.
The pattern is simple to observe in hindsight. Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, and WoW we're all pre Bobby. When Bobby got his greedy mits in the pie in 2008 in was downhill from there. Most of the key leads on all those games left. Blizzard was left as a company in name alone.
A bit too much copium here, "Blizzard still make great games guys! They feel great to play! It's just that the last few haven't been amazing" Come on Force, be a little more harsh. Overwatch came out almost a decade ago, D4 was a travesty.
I played Overwatch 1 almost every day for it's entire duration. The old school Blizzard created my truly #1 favorite thing of all time and then they murdered it for a cash shop. The only way I will ever forgive and forget is if they give me back Overwatch 1. Until then they can pound sand.
As someone who had an unhealthy obsession with ONLY playing blizzard games for most of my teenage years, and going to 8 Blizzcons: The last good Blizzard release was OW1... which was 2016... It's been so long since I've seen anything interesting, that I can't get myself to care about what happens with them any more.
idk what you are talking about... D4 was super fun and yes they did drop the ball on the current season, but people forget about the campaign and all the hours they spent playing the game and of course the seasons. WoW its just insane. Force literally made a video a few weeks ago about all the good things coming to WoW.
Yep, D4 was the last straw for me. It was just so incredibly boring, I couldn't even finish the campaign. The Blizzard that used to pump out genre defining game after genre defining game is long dead.
There's two major things that happened, the projects became entirely controlled by investor interest for "maximum profits" and because of that pressure, all the original lead devs that worked on the early titles left years ago to work for other studios or found their own when they realized all their ideas were being controlled by the corporate executives. Overwatch 1 was probably their last project that was created that wasn't a complete cash grab. "Focusing on our strengths" just means pumping out more and more cash grab sequals and remakes forever with increased levels of degenerate microtransactions. Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal is what we got from that kind of business model, souless live service games designed to sale as many digital goods as possible and be good games 2nd.
Its simple. Corporate controlled game development focused on shareholders not quality pushes talent to leave. They fill jobs with inexperienced designers and tell them what to make and when its released, whether done or not. Therefore, you get uninspired assemply line shallow garbage with every possible way to nickel and dime you and scam you into believing you are playing a good game.
Maybe if companies stopped investing time and resources on devising strategies and mechanics on how to monetize the absolute f..k out of their games and just focused on the GAME aspect they would actually save money in the process, then more people would buy the game because it wouldn't feel like a half-baked scam.... Think about that...
@@Potato_Prophet you forgot that stupid mount sold so well because Wow was really good game with 10 million players back then. Not quite possible anymore.
Companies prioritize short term profits over long term investments by a wide margin. Although the long term investment could very much be far more lucrative in the end, they don't quickly raise stock prices (which is what shareholders desire) and carry much more risk. Short term profits are a lower risk, have a higher guarantee on return and usually raise share prices quickly.
i bought the basic license and im upset....imagine who bought the most expensive pack....omg. Never pre-order anything or buy the most expensive thing...try the most cheap.
@@Tonedriver honestly, I had a really good time with the campaign. And just like Diablo 2 and 3 got massively improved with patches and expansions, this one will also eventually be a great revisit.
I can tell you the exact moment Blizzard began falling apart: 2008 when they merged with Activision. Bobby Kotick is a joke and the only reason Microsoft would agree to the deal is if Kotick would be out. Welp, he's out but unfortunately I think it's too late.
I imagine as a company becomes more corporate, senior management will be thinking these games as projects with a return on investment (ROI) lens. So investment are all the manhours of devs, animators, storytellers, art teams times x number years. Then you do a discount cash flow on that with expected revenue, so game purchases, micro transactions, battle passes, expansions etc... From that calculation, you basically get a ROI % which is a very common way execs make decisions on which projects to continue or 'kill'. I reckon that's what they do with games hence why I agree on your comments saying that monetisation feels like it is considered very early in the conversation probably all the way from the business case to kick-off development. Then as the development progresses, updates are usually required to the business case updating the execs on the ROI metric above (among other things). During periods of downturn, which we're in now, decisions are usually made to stop projects inflight. Basically highest ROIs survive, lowest die. I.e. mobile games with low investment, high return will unfortunately continue to be a thing over AAA games. Until the economics of AAA games changes, I see AAA games slowly dying off or at least be less polished starting off as an earlier launch can improve the ROI despite the lower quality. In agile there's MVP concepts, I think we're seeing this play out.
I'm so happy to be working for a fully indie, healthy developer. I feel for the people who've been stuck in AAA red tape. It's not gonna get better, I don't think. You can see the trends. The industry got way too big for its own good. Now they're "leveling everything out." That being said, rejoice, because game dev is one of those fields that strongly embraced work from home. Specially indie devs, often based in places where they don't have CVs backed up. Look around, and outside of your city, or province even. You could be surprised!
The Overwatch reboot tanked so hard, Diablo 4 tanked hard too. Heroes of the storm would've done way better if they didn't release it in the MOBA rush years. Too many MOBAs got released and it just fell to obscurity. I hope Microsoft can get things on track again and hopefully some of the people that got fired can be hired back again. I would really love to see a good game from Blizzard as a game studio, under the new banner they could hopefully do it. I would love a Starcraft 3, we really need a good RTS game again because it has been too long.
D4 did not tank...public opinion is rough on D4 because of it being popular to hate it. But it is a fantastic game tbh. Is it the best arpg ever made? Maybe not but I have fun with it and so do plenty of others. Best thing about games is multiple can exist concurrently and doesn't have to be the "best".
@@mirage1857 I really wanted to like D4, as a long time fan. It just isn't as good as D3 or even D2. End game is still to this day very boring, Mechanics are a bit bland. That is the over al opinion by fans of Diablo, I am not even talking about the haters. It is just not fun to play after completing everything and that is fairly quick, way before hitting level cap. (Thanks to the level scaling mechanic, they should have never done that)
@@j4ck3t Gonna agree with you full stop on this one, having also played since childhood starting on D2. It certainly has tanked hard in that it should have been the greatest ARPG there is and we should all still be playing it religiously if it lived up to the standard set by previous titles. It fell short in pretty much every measurement from my perspective. People only talk about it now to either say its a huge flop or hey its not so bad... Thats a tank for blizzard, one of the most successful game companies of all time.
Its actually a fucking moral crime that they are "holding back" for a 100 euro game like D4, because they need actual juicy content for the expansion. wtf was the 100 euro for then? a entrance ticket to get fucked on repeat?
I have a good friend who worked at WotC (later Hasbro) for around 15 years going back to around 1995, quite early days of MtG. The company changed from a games company run by gamers to a corporate entity whose decisions were made by MBAs. We've all heard the same for all these large gaming companies. And aside from hearing it, it's just OBVIOUS. When Marvel declared bankruptcy in the 90s, it was because that company's management was CEO/MBA types who were not comics fans. You can also see some of this in a fictionalized universe clearly based on reality: the tv show Mythic Quest.
Think as gamers we have to start following the developers, the poeple behind the games .. not companies. For so long games were made by studios and people were faceless .. But today we know who makes great games. We know who proved themselves making the great games. WoW used to be Metzen baby, then Hazikostas .. and it's the last game of Blizzard that keeps going with the spirit of old. Ben Brode behind Hearthstone, who then cooked Marvel Snap. Ghost Crawler helped to explode the League of Legends universe even while was not directly behind any of the games or movie. I wish we could know more of them, like authors of the books .. but this industry is not that simple. But for sure we have to care to know those people know, more than ever before.
As a kid who grew up playing Warcraft on an old beige Macintosh computer and playing damn near every single iteration of every single IP since then.. Blizz has been a corpse of its former self for a long time. I just don't trust them to put out anything of lasting quality anymore. Which sucks so bad because their artists are, and have always been, some of the most inspirational for me. The people on the front lines for design and illustration and the details that make up the characters/levels/spells/etc. Those are the heroes for me these days. The bigwigs on top focused so heavily on leeching cash out of us at every turn sucked all the soul out of what Blizzard used to be. And mismanaged their own fucking company to the point of excusing abuse.. Blizz is different now, and not for the better. Nostalgia doesn't get them any more passes. It shouldn't have gotten them any in the first place, but I was weak and I fucking thought they'd turn around. They won't. And if they ever do? It'll be too late for this old fan.
@@thenightingale7405 a way to do that is probably not have employees harassed... That might be a good start. If you don't want to go to work, how much quality work will you actually do?
As a long time WoW player up until SL, the only entertainment I get from Blizzard is the weekly drama coming out of that company. I just like watching them squirm at this point. And it is free.
Employees complaining on twitter when they should have been complaining to their bosses who ruined the game and cost them their jobs. It's sad losing good artists, its sadder that they let this happen to themselves.
One of the most real videos you've done on my memory. Absolutely agree with everything said. FInd way to monetize and then build the game around it is definitely how they been making games lately. Also did you notice how the games you set up as an example (MGS, Zelda, Elden Ring - are all japanese companies? I see myself only giving money to them as of late. Plus BG3 :)
You know what's sad? It's the fact the I myself and maybe many others are actually OK paying higher price for a good quality game - for example $70, $80 or maybe even $90 if that would mean that we get the best "box" game experience that actually isn't designed around the in-game shops and other BS. But reality is that the games eventually will force us to pay those amounts of $70+ but games will be designed the same way the are designed now - with predatory monetization and the whole gaming experience that tries to push you offers and other sales. I really feel that there's no end to this until the monetization gets sooooo insanely out of touch that people will stop buying anything (ofcourse there will be some group of people who will spend money on crap in game shop anyway but I am talking about big majority). Because current reality is that game devs will keep doing it as long as people buy stuff - and there are WAAAAY too many people that aren't bothered about how they spend their money even if their budget isn't the most fitting for the game. AND EVEN if this "out of control" situation ever happens and people will actually stop paying for BS - the best option we will get is the current system as it was the last functioning thing we had. There's absolutely no hope for us to get the older experience of big companies crafting games for fun and gaming sake. It's all up to indie studios to fulfill our dreams in that regards.
I was just saying this the other day. Games were 60$ back in SNES days, maybe the NES even, and they were complete games. I'd gladly pay 70-100$ a game if it was truly complete, there was an offline mode, and preferably physical media like the switch has. I'm tired of buying a game with the promise it'll get better.
Hopefully regarding Diablo 4, Last Epoch will release very soon, a company with a total different mindset, closer to what Blizzard was in the 90's, followed by PoE 2, also a company with a superb mindset. You can just tell when you hear the people in charge talking about the games they make, the passion, the thoughts behind all decisions. It makes sense to support those kind of guys.
Modern gaming has been so sad to watch evolve. Some of the biggest franchises (Overwatch, Halo, Diablo, CoD etc) are all cash cow shells of what they once were. So many loyal fans, myself included, keep coming back to these games with a sliver of hope that their time and wallets will be respected but sadly it's just getting worse and worse. It's gone from how can we make the best game to make the most money, to how can we make the most money with the least amount of effort and expenses.
Force, as always, i really appreciate your takes on game news. You always seem to have fair views that try to look at news situations as a whole. Appreciate you!
Something to take from this is indie companies win once again, and they are a far better way to approach the gaming industry then Triple A studios.... as of recent atleast
It's amazing how companies like Blizzard, Bethesda, and even Bioware completely fell from grace. Each had their own niche which set them apart from the vast majority of other companies, and each completely wandered away from what it was that made them so great and beloved in the first place.
I've been the canary in the coal mine here for 20 years now. Since TBC World of Warcraft. Many might be taken aback by that stance, but the decline was evident even back then. When you take an entire genre and dumb it down, for reasons of accessibility and convenience, to the point the game can be played with little to no conscious effort or thought, you aren't making good games anymore. Vanilla WoW was already a much more accessible mmo to begin with. It had a structure similar to EverQuest, but throughout its evolution the devs would only ever implement activities that catered toward a casual audience. This had the effect of driving away non-casual gamers. You end up left with a hyper casual community that really likes WoW but likes little else since WoW was specifically designed to cater to them. Thus begins the era of the clones aka, "When shit really started going downhill". Other studios embraced the idea of being the "WoWkiller" but they did so by trying to iterate instead of innovate, and it just wasn't fun. Huge budgets got blown on copycat games that had no hope of usurping WoW in the first place. They weren't bad games, but they weren't good enough to incentivize people to leave WoW, at least not for very long.
Thistledown player here! AC1 and AC2 had regular and decent volume of new content with each patch. EQ was similar but also had regular xpacs to expand dungeons, zones etc. Yet it seems that 'new' MMO's need 6 months to do balancing patches, let alone new dungeons or content. So whilst I feel for the people impacted, this and other industries has companies imploding through creation of BS roles that have to be paid for but add zero to the end product. And someone has to pay....... if it were your money, you would want some return. Everyone blames the corporations, but there is a choice. Don't give them money and influence their decisions.
Haven't touched D4 since the first season simply because I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Blizzard can release anything but a fully polished game with stimulating gameplay that doesn't nod you off to sleep after 30 hours. The amount of mistakes and stupid ideas in that game alone has really turned me off from ever giving Blizzard money again. Probably have a combined 2000+ hours between HoTS, SC2, D2-D4 and OW. But the company feels dead to me now.
Anyone that didn't expect all those layoffs, and the survival game getting the axe, was kidding themselves. It was always considered that Call of Duty was the main focus of the deal, so everything else was largely fat to be cut. The problem with how so many games are these days is due to the shift from only making money by selling access to the game, to mainly/only making money by selling things related to the game. When selling access to a game, regardless of if the game is provided as a product, or a service, the standard goal is to make the best game you can, to convince people to spend money to gain access. While when making money by selling things associated with the game, the things being sold are things that were removed from the game (ex: outfits, mounts, pets, etc...), or things to make the experience more enjoyable, as it was purposely made less enjoyable, to convince people to spend money to make their experience more enjoyable. I also want to restate that live service gaming is not the issue. When service based games only made money by selling access, they were still made with the goal of making the best game they can, to convince people to spend that money. No, the problem is the shift to a micro transaction based profit model, where the basic idea becomes to make the game bad on purpose to convince people willing to spend money to improve their experience to do so, while trying not to make the game so bad, that those same people don't just quit instead.
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers! You've done incredibly, Force! I gave up on Blizzard many years ago. The microtransactions in WoW. The way they betrayed the D3 team, Hearthstone (their best game in a LONG time at launch) becoming a whale hunting expedition in just a few seasons, Overwatch selling loot boxes, their re-prioritization to (briefly Chinese) mobile games. I have some faint hope that Microsoft will slowly turn them around, but it's only faint and I'm 0% invested in it. D4 was exactly what I predicted. A "worth the ticket price, but only just barely" game that left me absolutely whelmed and largely frustrated. I'm skeptical they even can turn it around at this point. I went in saying "this may be the last Blizzard game I play", and I'll be surprised if it isn't.
"No matter what, do not attempt a credit card charge back, or we will permanently close your battlenet account. YOU, are some of the most resilient consumers on the planet. And with this event we just wanna see how much abuse you can take to calibrate our pricing going forward."
Theres a dirty restaurant in my town that serves bad food with bad customer service. They were a good restaurant in the 90s but not now. Some new owners bought the restaurant and are saying they want to make it better again. But how DARE they fire the old employees who made the restaurant bad. I wanted my cake eaten, in my hand and a second free piece in a to-go box.
The art and programming still feel best in class, it’s their design team that just sticks out as being among the worst in the industry. Every design decision ranges from bad to boarderline predatory
It was me, I’m sorry. When I was 15, some 25 years ago, I made a wish that unfortunately came true. I wished for games to become more popular and seriously treated by general audiences. I wished for gaming adverts all over the city scapes and general press etc. Games are now serious businesses so my wish came true. I had no idea what I was wishing for.
I believe a part of the blame for this kind of development lies in the fact that successful game studios are often acquired not for their prowess, but due to the name recognition linked to that prowess, to try and milk the products and brands for as much as possible. It's a sad realisation, but the power lies with the consumers, and if the consumers keep buying based on the label and not the content, things won't change. The only way to discourage the Shanghaing of beloved franchises is to immediately stop supporting brands or ip's the moment they are bought out. It's a painful realisation, but it boils down to removing the incentive to exploit a good name and the sellout culture.
D4 is like a perfect example of what's wrong with the AAA-industry and Blizzard. Such cookie cutter game, made by people who aren't even fans of the genre. The narcissism of these fucking designers and producers are just insane to me. Coming in here trying to make something in a genre they don't get or play. The industry is just full of people like this and to me its just done unless they get some directors with some actual passion, knowledge and experience about the games they're making again. And by that I don't mean beating Uncharted or God Of War on normal or fucking playing WoW occasionally and then thinking you can design the next great ARPG. They should be as passionate about games as Tarantino is about movies. "Yeah, I saw a few with Clint Eastwood. Yeah, I can totally make a western movie. Sure". That's the audacity of these people. EDIT: D4 plays fine, yes, and the production values are great even(while a bit boring). But ultimately its just a super cookie cutter-feeling game with zero depth made by people who don't even seem to get why people play ARPGs. It's like a well produced yet shitty Hollywoord movie. Yes, it has some qualities, but in the end its just an ugly pig with lipstick.
Grew up a fan since Rock n Roll Racing, 3 Vikings, and Warcraft on DOS. It really looked like the revival to greatness would springboard off of Legion and it's just hilariously insane how they would never make the right move or decision after that.
Right? I quit WoW when Cataclysm released. I only returned when Legion came out, and i absolutely loved it. It brought back a lot of childlike wonder for me. I would be taking pictures and looking at art and everything. Fully invested. It went downhill so fast after Legion that it is honestly baffling. Was literally just right one moment, then completely awful the next. Poked War for Azeroth a little bit, but it was just... not the same. It felt soulless. Didn't play WoW since. Season of Discovery is shaping up good at least. Not something i'd return for, though. Kind of done with MMOs in general atm.
As someone who has experience with these large cooperation's and their employees, its plagued by people who are adapted to that environment which essentially means people who are deceptive, conniving, selfish and simply good at giving you the confidence that they are well suited for the job at task. Using cooperate talk, business lingo, having recommendations, a good CV, giving you the confidence in that they know what they are doing... this is what they are good at. Getting the job, is the job cuz once your in, its hard to take you out. You can spend years doing absolutely nothing. They just fired the lore guy from overwatch? wtf was that guy doing for the past year? 150k$ for 2 character back stories? Blizzard is fucked and will continue to be fucked as long as these companies continue to hire "qualified" managers and treat them like they know what they are doing. A lot of these companies traumatize their employees with unfair treatment, unfair pay and they lie to you. This is what you learn and this is what you become. This is what experience in these large companies look like and it starts at the top and you cant change the guy at the top because they are the masters at fucking you. sorry for anyone who isn't aware of this buy, its not about being a hard worker or doing your job well in these companies. Climbing the ladder requires a different set of skills. Management is about how good you are at playing others, its fundamentally fucked.
The bitter truth i have to remind myself of these days is that, gamers are just a small percentage of the people who make and consume games. Its just weird because back in the 90s and early 2000s it was kinda lame to play games and you would NEVER tell people in public you played games like wow or anything like that.... but then big business noticed how much of a big business games are and can be. Leading to a day where core gamers are still a niche and are even outnumbered by regular people working regular jobs at their respective gaming companies and every day lives.
The biggest thing that was overlooked in this video was the fact that the "feel" of their games comes from prior employees coding. "What is going on with Blizzard" They fucked around and now they are finding out. Craziest thing is that D4 didn't lose every single person and that it somehow is avoiding the trash.
Imagine being a programmer, that loves the game he works on, and one they the boss tells you to program battle pass and p2w items that will kill the game you love.. It must hurt so much
It seems game companies that go public are doomed when their founders start to retire/leave. They get replaced by the top performers in corporate metrics.
I SO feel you. "Been around for 30 years..." Yup, me too, born in 1980. Diablo still my most loved thing in gaming, but the general downward direction att blizz and as you said in the whoie gaming biz, is disheartening.
This is happening in industries all across corporate America. Over the last few years corporate America isn’t hiring the best people to do the jobs. They’re checking off DEI boxes, so you get games that aren’t made by the most creative people. It’s why all forms of entertainment are struggling. Just look at Hollywood.
75% of ActiBlizz could be laid off and nothing of value would be lost. Unfortunately, in that case they would surely infect other studios with their aggressive mediocrity (to be incredibly generous), so it's definitely preferable that they stay quarantined at Blizz.
it's depressing. For these reasons I discard 99% of new games coming out I would otherwise be interested in. The last 10 years I went back to games I already played, but I know are good. I much rather play a good old game I already own than a crappy cash grab new game with a heart of ice or no heart at all. It's the only argument these developers listen to. Money. They'll blame it on the consumers first of course, but eventually they will realize they're to blame. This won't happen any time soon though, I'm afraid things will need to get a lot worse still.
One thing i have to heavily disagree on, is that Diablo 4 feels good to play. The core game-play loop is left-clicking 4 times which does virtually no damage so you can right click ones to do some damage. This of course changes in late game, but a few hours in, that is all you feel. And then a level up gives you something like +3% damage while all the enemies scale as well and you made no progress again. You never feel powerful. I think D4 is the first game where you actually can see the lack of passion. Although it looks great, i cannot imagine someone in the company play-testing the game and having fun.
At least D2: Resurrected launch free of this mess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As a huge fan of the original who still owns the game on CD-ROM, I can say it's something I never thought I'd see but I'm glad they made it. I still play a fair bit of Overwatch because I find it to be a very difficult shooter to excel at and difficulty is something that gets me hooked onto games probably just as much as good gameplay. Either way it's really quite unfortunate seeing Blizzard go through the blender again and again and each iteration of the company is just trying to pick up the pieces of its former self.
Blizzard games before had this pretige aura around them, i didnt play their games that much well only being Diablo but i knew back then that Blizzard back then ment business and quality what everyone wanted to strive for But Most of their games nowadays are fun at first but moment people want to invest their times, thats when monetazation goes from 0 to 15 like over board, people need just know that Blizzard is just name worn by Activision that drove off creative people out of desicion tables and just nostalgia baited alot of people Like it took WoW players many, MANY years to finally come to their senses that defending bad business models is not good thing and they could have stoped this ever happening to WoW years ago but buyer's remorse is really hard hitting phenomenon Now it is too late for them
I never got hooked on Hearthstone simply because if you wanted to be competitive you had to buy tons of card packs, the most fun aspect were the tournaments where you just picked a random deck, but that wasn't enough to keep my attention when i had to play for a HUGE amount of time in regular mode with crap cards to earn enough gold to run that mode. I still stand by my opinion that D4 is just a reskinned darker D3, not much work to make small changes to an already existing game and re-selling it as the next installment of the franchise.
Blizzard did right from the start with game design, content and player treatment but very quickly stopped producing quality and just got lazy. They started selling a name to the fan base in place of putting time and money into a quality product. I was a long time WOW player who stopped playing any thing blizzard because I got tired of being sold garbage with a big brand name attached and being treated like shit.
... When one person opens their stash everyone opens their stash? What? I would fucking love to hear a coder actually dissect that, because from an external point of view, you'd have to deliberately create a problem that ridiculous. Also, Diablo 4 - they're 3 seasons into the fucking thing and they STILL don't have a group finder. What.
Inadvertently you have very succinctly summed up the triple-A studios in a nutshell! Certainly a sad state of affairs! However, on the upside, it has somewhat paved the way for "indie" studios to deliver innovative and rewarding experiences!
You can pinpoint the shift to 2017 when Mike Morhaime buckled under Bobby Kotick's pressure and allowed an Activision stooge to become Blizzard's CFO with the mandate to cut down on unnecessary spending and make Blizzard more profitable. People who saw the shift incoming started leaving, more left after Morhaime quit Blizzard in 2018 including a lot of prominent members of the "Old Guard", then employees got fired, games received new mandates, and things started to become uneasy. And we know specifically from an ex-Overwatch producer that Overwatch 2's development issues (and current state) were directly caused by the constant interference by Bobby Kotick in the development.
Most of the layoffs were probably on Blizzard/Activison side, but these 1900 layoffs also includes layoffs at Xbox and Zenimax/Bethesda. One of them who I know of was Devann McCarthy, who was the main community manager for Fallout 76.
The games industry is in tatters. Due for a major correction. Why would ANYONE want to work in game? Zero job security, lower pay than comparable positions, zero employee development or support. I have a degree in the field and you couldn’t get me to touch it with a ten foot pole.
The tech industry is not alone in having to tighten their belts. EVERY industry is laying people off. I’m personally in the aviation industry and I’ll be losing my job in Jun. Thank goodness we have people like Janet Yellin and Uncle Joe assuring us all that everything in the US is going swimmingly. Le sigh, if reassurance could just keep food on the table
Hey at least those responsible for all the economic turmoil will be duly punished /s This country needs wake up and get a helluva lot more anti-government
This what happens when investors control the game designs and choices and not the developers
Watch the dev play their own game. They’re just as bad
It's not just video games either, that's with every corporation in America right now. Profits for shareholders are all that matters anymore for most companies.
The natural end result of capitalism. The golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules
investors didn't make developers do a lot of the stupid shit they've done in blizzard games recently.
Have you seen D4 dev streams? They scream "diversity and inclusion". While you're right in some aspect, most of the blizzard releases have been dogshit.
I'm 41 now and part of me can't come to terms that Blizzard isn't the Blizzard I knew anymore. As you said, there was a time when any Blizzard game launched there was an excellent chance that game would be great. Great video and hits the nail on the head of how I feel.
Same. It's sad to witness. May something better emerge out of it, hopefully.
im 35.. it's hard to remember when blizzard wasn't in a perpetual state of customer exploitation and putting out horrible and outdated game design.
reminder that diablo 2 was released 24 years ago
as a 38 year old Vanilla WOW player, this hits.
same
Blizzard hasn't been Blizzard since the Activision merger. The name is slapped on the games still just like Dell slaps Alienwear on their "gaming" computers.
When you add finance to art, you get fart.
This is a gross fallacy.
TRUE, turns out rich out of touch people don't actually make anything good.
@@triniscouthow tho lol. it is kinda true. when you care more about the money making part you get an mvp, and a feature-rich mtx shop.
when you add suits and hipsters to the development team you get shart.
@@triniscout cope
As someone whose been gaming for over four decades and grew up with the gaming industry as it grew... Things are definitely different now than they were just 10 years ago, and not in positive ways, unfortunately. This push for recurrent revenue streams aka Live Services, has been one of the most negative trends of all time to hit games, aside form Loot Boxes. A lot of single player game sequels were forced to become LS games thanks to the execs who don't even like, nor play video games, and only view them as a means to make money. Thankfully, LS games are starting to die out, but like most trends, it takes years for the balance to return. And it's always because consumers have to vote with their wallets, so the suits get the message, finally. It's this dysfunctional cycle I'm just sick and tired of, more than any other thing with AAA, games. We can never get those moments from our childhood back when games were truly great because those eras are gone. They've been replaced with profit maximization and games made by corporate committees who, as stated, don't even like, nor play video games most of the time.
JAB: cancels starcraft development, says its time for a new chapter; cancels a starcraft battlefield game, does fuck all for starcraft. Gets fired.
Made millions. Somehow.
And as always, who loses? The player.
Damn a SC battlefield game would have been amazing
@@viberaider6852from what I heard back when we got the news it was planned to have all 3 factions.
And that it was shaping out well if I remember correctly.
Yo man i would definitely buy a Star Craft battlefield game hell I would buy a battlefield lord of the rings battlefield themed game to!
I'm old. I remember when Westwood Studios was the hottest game studio.
C&C ftw
Dune 2 was the best
That was the bomb too@@TheNellie1978
Funny, I was gonna say Sierra
Codemasters
Its wild how the Blizzard name has gone from the pixar of gaming to falling below EA.
I have to laugh on this one ! Been there ! Its like Covered Wagon really take on the fortress of monetize the game invasion???That's how i kinda stepped into this new movie!
Nah EA and Ubilol are still worse, altho it's not far off.
@@RLHvanDijkI'd say OW2 monetization somehow worse than in Ubi's and EA's cases, lol.
@@Dat_Jonx Maybe, but 1 thing is for sure these companies are shadows of their former glory. Witch is sad really.
I have to say tho for me Ubi's shit has been kind of personal. It's not fun seeing your fav franchises you grew up with get killed off by these ppl...
@@RLHvanDijk well actavision was always right behind them so it tracks
The talent all left. Blizzard is a shell of what it once was and some of the fans haven't realized it yet.
fans gotta simp. and boy did they simp hard for bobby.
That opinion is still so dumb imo, that would mean that every company dies at one point and is basically an insult to every dev after them like they are completely useless and cant do what people did before them, Developer is a job like every other. The ovious thing is that "veterans" already know what they do, but thats the same with every job.
@@Orcaaaan Video games are not created by corporations, they are created by people hired by corporations. If you don't hang on to people for long enough for them to get really good at something then you're going to get worse product. Devs are not interchangeable cogs in a machine, and if you keep swapping them out you will have endless amateur hour because once they do figure it out they leave for better pay and less abuse somewhere else.
Every company doesn't die when people leave, but they do if those people take all their institutional knowledge with them and there wasn't enough time to actually get new hires up to snuff under their guidance.
The key thing here is that you're right, Developer is a job like every other, and even fast food you can tell a big difference in the output of someone who knows what they're doing vs someone 2 weeks in. We do not value people's skills as much as we value corporate branding, which is a real problem.
Young people have a narrow band of what classifies as a good game. What with whats out there now, lot of games are basically one arm bandits or social engineering platforms.
A WoW player here. For the first time in 10years, i am actually excited about WoW. SoD is very nice and I also enjoy dragonflight a lot, as well as the wuld roadmap. For me, this is exactly the blizzard I want
Remember when you devoted an entire channel to a Blizzard game?
Memories!
IMO, Overwatch still has enough following to stream it and do well. D4 probably isn't really streamable anymore other than the first week of a new season.
That was before the full transformation from Blizzard Entertainment ❄ into DeActivison-bLizard 🦎
I mean yeah, lol. This channel has been Blizzard-centric for much of its existence (13.5 years).
It began as entirely SC2 commentary. Then I covered loads of D3. After that it was a mix of Hearthstone, HotS, and other random games. Followed by a solid year of Overwatch only.
It’s really only been the past 5-6 years that my channel has been mostly variety.
So yeah, suffice it to say, I remember :)
@@ForceGamingYTyeah I don’t know, story isn’t checking out boss. I mean, who really knows… the guy who did it all or random commenters online.
@@ForceGamingYT I remember comming time and time again for that sweet SC2 gameplay commentary. New games rewies, lets play etc.. D3 was huge and the start of HotS.. then slowly getting involved in more of my life, job etc. but still keeping an eye out for you and your channel.
Really love your content and will ask humbly to continue to do what you do and love!
Blizzard is full Activision now.
I am surprised that i barely hear about this. Before MS took over, there is no way that anyone from Activision would lead Blizzard, that would never be accepted and cause chaos. But somehow now it can. Which i think is because Blizzard is not Blizzard anymore.
Aictivision
MicrActiVision
I hoped that Microsoft buying act/blizz was a good thing.. but then i saw that xbox is involved with sweet baby inc.... sad sad.. no longer a xbox customer.
@@Ririreamy What do you mean? Activision has been the blame of Blizzard's fall since the WoW token was introduced and that was really the signal for the deathknell of the company as a whole. Activision has been slowly taking over Blizzard since it was acquired back in 2008. Blizzard hasnt been Blizzard for a very long time but people love to snort their crystallized copium and keep swiping their cards.
The pattern is simple to observe in hindsight. Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, and WoW we're all pre Bobby. When Bobby got his greedy mits in the pie in 2008 in was downhill from there.
Most of the key leads on all those games left.
Blizzard was left as a company in name alone.
A bit too much copium here, "Blizzard still make great games guys! They feel great to play! It's just that the last few haven't been amazing" Come on Force, be a little more harsh. Overwatch came out almost a decade ago, D4 was a travesty.
I played Overwatch 1 almost every day for it's entire duration. The old school Blizzard created my truly #1 favorite thing of all time and then they murdered it for a cash shop. The only way I will ever forgive and forget is if they give me back Overwatch 1. Until then they can pound sand.
Thats what happens when you prioritize milking your fanbase at the expense of the game quality
As someone who had an unhealthy obsession with ONLY playing blizzard games for most of my teenage years, and going to 8 Blizzcons:
The last good Blizzard release was OW1... which was 2016... It's been so long since I've seen anything interesting, that I can't get myself to care about what happens with them any more.
Same here bro..
It's only been 7 years lol even OW1 lost its luster after a couple weeks. They didn't support that game at all.
idk what you are talking about... D4 was super fun and yes they did drop the ball on the current season, but people forget about the campaign and all the hours they spent playing the game and of course the seasons. WoW its just insane. Force literally made a video a few weeks ago about all the good things coming to WoW.
@@Atroll995 name checks out
Yep, D4 was the last straw for me. It was just so incredibly boring, I couldn't even finish the campaign. The Blizzard that used to pump out genre defining game after genre defining game is long dead.
There's two major things that happened, the projects became entirely controlled by investor interest for "maximum profits" and because of that pressure, all the original lead devs that worked on the early titles left years ago to work for other studios or found their own when they realized all their ideas were being controlled by the corporate executives. Overwatch 1 was probably their last project that was created that wasn't a complete cash grab. "Focusing on our strengths" just means pumping out more and more cash grab sequals and remakes forever with increased levels of degenerate microtransactions. Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal is what we got from that kind of business model, souless live service games designed to sale as many digital goods as possible and be good games 2nd.
Its simple. Corporate controlled game development focused on shareholders not quality pushes talent to leave. They fill jobs with inexperienced designers and tell them what to make and when its released, whether done or not.
Therefore, you get uninspired assemply line shallow garbage with every possible way to nickel and dime you and scam you into believing you are playing a good game.
90%+ of games now fail with the majority being indie.
Welcome to capitalism, baby!
Maybe if companies stopped investing time and resources on devising strategies and mechanics on how to monetize the absolute f..k out of their games and just focused on the GAME aspect they would actually save money in the process, then more people would buy the game because it wouldn't feel like a half-baked scam.... Think about that...
we are living in a system where everything is done solely for profit and its only gonna get worse so brace yourself
Thinking about it... the first store mount in WoW out-earned SC2. Hm. As long as gamers pay for this, it's going to stay.
@@Potato_Prophet you forgot that stupid mount sold so well because Wow was really good game with 10 million players back then. Not quite possible anymore.
Nah they aint patient enough for long term profit.
Companies prioritize short term profits over long term investments by a wide margin. Although the long term investment could very much be far more lucrative in the end, they don't quickly raise stock prices (which is what shareholders desire) and carry much more risk. Short term profits are a lower risk, have a higher guarantee on return and usually raise share prices quickly.
Im still upset I spent $100 on diablo 4
don't worry Diablo 5 will fix all the problems for another $100.
Imagine buying a special edition of the game WITHOUT the game itself. Grats
i bought the basic license and im upset....imagine who bought the most expensive pack....omg. Never pre-order anything or buy the most expensive thing...try the most cheap.
I'm not, and I don't even really play it much.
@@Tonedriver honestly, I had a really good time with the campaign. And just like Diablo 2 and 3 got massively improved with patches and expansions, this one will also eventually be a great revisit.
I can tell you the exact moment Blizzard began falling apart: 2008 when they merged with Activision. Bobby Kotick is a joke and the only reason Microsoft would agree to the deal is if Kotick would be out. Welp, he's out but unfortunately I think it's too late.
10th time I think I see this video in like 3 years tbh
and you click on every one of them which is why you will keep seeing it. That's how UA-cam works.
Total missmanagement
How do you blame management when the coders can't even code a game right?
@@taks1993 are you saying management has nothing to do with talent aquisition? Or putting the best talent they have in the right places?
@@superdupe8 you got a point there, they did put those people in those positions i stand corrected
that was not missmanagment. they did it on purpose. they slaughtered Blizzard the last month before the MS takeover.
I imagine as a company becomes more corporate, senior management will be thinking these games as projects with a return on investment (ROI) lens.
So investment are all the manhours of devs, animators, storytellers, art teams times x number years. Then you do a discount cash flow on that with expected revenue, so game purchases, micro transactions, battle passes, expansions etc... From that calculation, you basically get a ROI % which is a very common way execs make decisions on which projects to continue or 'kill'.
I reckon that's what they do with games hence why I agree on your comments saying that monetisation feels like it is considered very early in the conversation probably all the way from the business case to kick-off development.
Then as the development progresses, updates are usually required to the business case updating the execs on the ROI metric above (among other things). During periods of downturn, which we're in now, decisions are usually made to stop projects inflight.
Basically highest ROIs survive, lowest die. I.e. mobile games with low investment, high return will unfortunately continue to be a thing over AAA games. Until the economics of AAA games changes, I see AAA games slowly dying off or at least be less polished starting off as an earlier launch can improve the ROI despite the lower quality. In agile there's MVP concepts, I think we're seeing this play out.
I'm so happy to be working for a fully indie, healthy developer. I feel for the people who've been stuck in AAA red tape. It's not gonna get better, I don't think. You can see the trends. The industry got way too big for its own good. Now they're "leveling everything out." That being said, rejoice, because game dev is one of those fields that strongly embraced work from home. Specially indie devs, often based in places where they don't have CVs backed up. Look around, and outside of your city, or province even. You could be surprised!
Indie is the way to go. I'm stuck with The Long Dark and man, it's one of the best survival games I have ever played
The Overwatch reboot tanked so hard, Diablo 4 tanked hard too. Heroes of the storm would've done way better if they didn't release it in the MOBA rush years. Too many MOBAs got released and it just fell to obscurity.
I hope Microsoft can get things on track again and hopefully some of the people that got fired can be hired back again. I would really love to see a good game from Blizzard as a game studio, under the new banner they could hopefully do it. I would love a Starcraft 3, we really need a good RTS game again because it has been too long.
D4 did not tank...public opinion is rough on D4 because of it being popular to hate it. But it is a fantastic game tbh. Is it the best arpg ever made? Maybe not but I have fun with it and so do plenty of others. Best thing about games is multiple can exist concurrently and doesn't have to be the "best".
@@mirage1857 I really wanted to like D4, as a long time fan. It just isn't as good as D3 or even D2. End game is still to this day very boring, Mechanics are a bit bland. That is the over al opinion by fans of Diablo, I am not even talking about the haters. It is just not fun to play after completing everything and that is fairly quick, way before hitting level cap. (Thanks to the level scaling mechanic, they should have never done that)
heroes of the storm could have been saved and been a populated game, if the just added map editor and custom maps...
There is a good RTS on the market right now. It's called Age of Empires
@@j4ck3t Gonna agree with you full stop on this one, having also played since childhood starting on D2. It certainly has tanked hard in that it should have been the greatest ARPG there is and we should all still be playing it religiously if it lived up to the standard set by previous titles. It fell short in pretty much every measurement from my perspective.
People only talk about it now to either say its a huge flop or hey its not so bad... Thats a tank for blizzard, one of the most successful game companies of all time.
Its actually a fucking moral crime that they are "holding back" for a 100 euro game like D4, because they need actual juicy content for the expansion.
wtf was the 100 euro for then? a entrance ticket to get fucked on repeat?
They dont care, as long as idiots keep paying. After Blizzard stole ow1, I vowed to never give them any more money.
I have a good friend who worked at WotC (later Hasbro) for around 15 years going back to around 1995, quite early days of MtG. The company changed from a games company run by gamers to a corporate entity whose decisions were made by MBAs. We've all heard the same for all these large gaming companies. And aside from hearing it, it's just OBVIOUS.
When Marvel declared bankruptcy in the 90s, it was because that company's management was CEO/MBA types who were not comics fans.
You can also see some of this in a fictionalized universe clearly based on reality: the tv show Mythic Quest.
I miss D1 and D2 days. 😢
You miss Blizzard North, you don't miss Blizzard
GREED. what they did to Overwatch is unforgivable...battlepass crap to effin DIABLO! is almost as gross.
Think as gamers we have to start following the developers, the poeple behind the games .. not companies.
For so long games were made by studios and people were faceless .. But today we know who makes great games.
We know who proved themselves making the great games.
WoW used to be Metzen baby, then Hazikostas .. and it's the last game of Blizzard that keeps going with the spirit of old.
Ben Brode behind Hearthstone, who then cooked Marvel Snap.
Ghost Crawler helped to explode the League of Legends universe even while was not directly behind any of the games or movie.
I wish we could know more of them, like authors of the books .. but this industry is not that simple.
But for sure we have to care to know those people know, more than ever before.
As a kid who grew up playing Warcraft on an old beige Macintosh computer and playing damn near every single iteration of every single IP since then.. Blizz has been a corpse of its former self for a long time. I just don't trust them to put out anything of lasting quality anymore. Which sucks so bad because their artists are, and have always been, some of the most inspirational for me. The people on the front lines for design and illustration and the details that make up the characters/levels/spells/etc. Those are the heroes for me these days. The bigwigs on top focused so heavily on leeching cash out of us at every turn sucked all the soul out of what Blizzard used to be. And mismanaged their own fucking company to the point of excusing abuse.. Blizz is different now, and not for the better. Nostalgia doesn't get them any more passes. It shouldn't have gotten them any in the first place, but I was weak and I fucking thought they'd turn around. They won't. And if they ever do? It'll be too late for this old fan.
100%. I will laff long and loud at dupes buying the "new and improved" expansion.
During my childhood, Blizzard couldn’t get it wrong. As an adult, they can’t get it right. period
Wonder if there is any update about the 2year harassment investigation... I feel like it got swept under the rug fast
They settled and got money.
The D4 team literally lost their leadership midway through development as a result.
@@MChaseC5 that doesn't mean much... The investigation was on way more than 1 person
Never cared about this. I'm only concerned with their games and if they can find a way to turn it around.
@@thenightingale7405 a way to do that is probably not have employees harassed... That might be a good start.
If you don't want to go to work, how much quality work will you actually do?
... They kinda deserve it. Blizzard is not the one we grew up with its a rotten sespool for years.
As a long time WoW player up until SL, the only entertainment I get from Blizzard is the weekly drama coming out of that company. I just like watching them squirm at this point. And it is free.
Employees complaining on twitter when they should have been complaining to their bosses who ruined the game and cost them their jobs. It's sad losing good artists, its sadder that they let this happen to themselves.
One of the most real videos you've done on my memory. Absolutely agree with everything said. FInd way to monetize and then build the game around it is definitely how they been making games lately. Also did you notice how the games you set up as an example (MGS, Zelda, Elden Ring - are all japanese companies? I see myself only giving money to them as of late. Plus BG3 :)
And I own a Toyota. It's about dedication to service, and relying on your skills, innovation, and hard work, not past reputation or luck.
@@gameburn178 100% Mazda (made in Japan) owner here :D
You know what's sad? It's the fact the I myself and maybe many others are actually OK paying higher price for a good quality game - for example $70, $80 or maybe even $90 if that would mean that we get the best "box" game experience that actually isn't designed around the in-game shops and other BS. But reality is that the games eventually will force us to pay those amounts of $70+ but games will be designed the same way the are designed now - with predatory monetization and the whole gaming experience that tries to push you offers and other sales.
I really feel that there's no end to this until the monetization gets sooooo insanely out of touch that people will stop buying anything (ofcourse there will be some group of people who will spend money on crap in game shop anyway but I am talking about big majority). Because current reality is that game devs will keep doing it as long as people buy stuff - and there are WAAAAY too many people that aren't bothered about how they spend their money even if their budget isn't the most fitting for the game. AND EVEN if this "out of control" situation ever happens and people will actually stop paying for BS - the best option we will get is the current system as it was the last functioning thing we had. There's absolutely no hope for us to get the older experience of big companies crafting games for fun and gaming sake. It's all up to indie studios to fulfill our dreams in that regards.
You are part of the problem
People vote with their wallets.
I was just saying this the other day. Games were 60$ back in SNES days, maybe the NES even, and they were complete games. I'd gladly pay 70-100$ a game if it was truly complete, there was an offline mode, and preferably physical media like the switch has. I'm tired of buying a game with the promise it'll get better.
Hopefully regarding Diablo 4, Last Epoch will release very soon, a company with a total different mindset, closer to what Blizzard was in the 90's, followed by PoE 2, also a company with a superb mindset. You can just tell when you hear the people in charge talking about the games they make, the passion, the thoughts behind all decisions. It makes sense to support those kind of guys.
One word where it all went wrong imo: "Activision"
I feel like Enshrouded is about as close as we'll get to a Blizzard-style survival game. Been enjoying that a lot.
Such a great game.
Blizzard survival game would be nothing like Enshrouded
Hollow game.
Hollow game* I wanted to like it so bad too.@@sethalos
Modern gaming has been so sad to watch evolve. Some of the biggest franchises (Overwatch, Halo, Diablo, CoD etc) are all cash cow shells of what they once were. So many loyal fans, myself included, keep coming back to these games with a sliver of hope that their time and wallets will be respected but sadly it's just getting worse and worse. It's gone from how can we make the best game to make the most money, to how can we make the most money with the least amount of effort and expenses.
2023 was one of the best years for gaming in years, regardless of whatever has been happening with these stale corporate franchises lately.
It's natural for a company to lose a little soul when the original founders quit, but they REALLY fucked it up beyond anything expected
Force, as always, i really appreciate your takes on game news. You always seem to have fair views that try to look at news situations as a whole. Appreciate you!
Asheron's Call mention detected!!
Every giant falls.
Yeah, we players really showed Blizz making D4 their best selling title ever and giving them millions every month on Diablo Immortal...
When their priority became farming their fanbase to please Shareholders. That’s when the company started to die. Shareholders behave like pythons. 🐍
Blizzard doing what Blizzard do best. Being Blizzard.
Something to take from this is indie companies win once again, and they are a far better way to approach the gaming industry then Triple A studios.... as of recent atleast
It's amazing how companies like Blizzard, Bethesda, and even Bioware completely fell from grace. Each had their own niche which set them apart from the vast majority of other companies, and each completely wandered away from what it was that made them so great and beloved in the first place.
I've been the canary in the coal mine here for 20 years now. Since TBC World of Warcraft. Many might be taken aback by that stance, but the decline was evident even back then. When you take an entire genre and dumb it down, for reasons of accessibility and convenience, to the point the game can be played with little to no conscious effort or thought, you aren't making good games anymore.
Vanilla WoW was already a much more accessible mmo to begin with. It had a structure similar to EverQuest, but throughout its evolution the devs would only ever implement activities that catered toward a casual audience. This had the effect of driving away non-casual gamers. You end up left with a hyper casual community that really likes WoW but likes little else since WoW was specifically designed to cater to them.
Thus begins the era of the clones aka, "When shit really started going downhill". Other studios embraced the idea of being the "WoWkiller" but they did so by trying to iterate instead of innovate, and it just wasn't fun. Huge budgets got blown on copycat games that had no hope of usurping WoW in the first place. They weren't bad games, but they weren't good enough to incentivize people to leave WoW, at least not for very long.
The fact you mentioned Asheron's Call shows you are an OG gamer.
Greatest mmo of all time. Including AC2 of course.
@@Xolition Agreed!
Leafcull for many a years here.
Asheron's Call is still the mmo I compare every other mmo to.
Thistledown player here! AC1 and AC2 had regular and decent volume of new content with each patch. EQ was similar but also had regular xpacs to expand dungeons, zones etc. Yet it seems that 'new' MMO's need 6 months to do balancing patches, let alone new dungeons or content.
So whilst I feel for the people impacted, this and other industries has companies imploding through creation of BS roles that have to be paid for but add zero to the end product. And someone has to pay....... if it were your money, you would want some return. Everyone blames the corporations, but there is a choice. Don't give them money and influence their decisions.
Blizzard never really came back from the milk fridge incident.
Haven't touched D4 since the first season simply because I cannot understand how a company with as many resources as Blizzard can release anything but a fully polished game with stimulating gameplay that doesn't nod you off to sleep after 30 hours. The amount of mistakes and stupid ideas in that game alone has really turned me off from ever giving Blizzard money again. Probably have a combined 2000+ hours between HoTS, SC2, D2-D4 and OW. But the company feels dead to me now.
The success with Blizzard is in their innovations (new IP) in the genre, they're not great at making continuous IP games.
Anyone that didn't expect all those layoffs, and the survival game getting the axe, was kidding themselves. It was always considered that Call of Duty was the main focus of the deal, so everything else was largely fat to be cut.
The problem with how so many games are these days is due to the shift from only making money by selling access to the game, to mainly/only making money by selling things related to the game. When selling access to a game, regardless of if the game is provided as a product, or a service, the standard goal is to make the best game you can, to convince people to spend money to gain access. While when making money by selling things associated with the game, the things being sold are things that were removed from the game (ex: outfits, mounts, pets, etc...), or things to make the experience more enjoyable, as it was purposely made less enjoyable, to convince people to spend money to make their experience more enjoyable.
I also want to restate that live service gaming is not the issue. When service based games only made money by selling access, they were still made with the goal of making the best game they can, to convince people to spend that money. No, the problem is the shift to a micro transaction based profit model, where the basic idea becomes to make the game bad on purpose to convince people willing to spend money to improve their experience to do so, while trying not to make the game so bad, that those same people don't just quit instead.
Basically balance access with micro txns to fuck over the gamer/consumer. Got it.
Its been many years since a quality release.
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers! You've done incredibly, Force!
I gave up on Blizzard many years ago. The microtransactions in WoW. The way they betrayed the D3 team, Hearthstone (their best game in a LONG time at launch) becoming a whale hunting expedition in just a few seasons, Overwatch selling loot boxes, their re-prioritization to (briefly Chinese) mobile games. I have some faint hope that Microsoft will slowly turn them around, but it's only faint and I'm 0% invested in it. D4 was exactly what I predicted. A "worth the ticket price, but only just barely" game that left me absolutely whelmed and largely frustrated. I'm skeptical they even can turn it around at this point. I went in saying "this may be the last Blizzard game I play", and I'll be surprised if it isn't.
"No matter what, do not attempt a credit card charge back, or we will permanently close your battlenet account.
YOU, are some of the most resilient consumers on the planet.
And with this event we just wanna see how much abuse you can take to calibrate our pricing going forward."
ID RATHER DRINK DOG WATER THEN EVER TOUCH ANOTHER BLIZZ GAME. RIP BLIZZ NORTH
GEEGEE
Theres a dirty restaurant in my town that serves bad food with bad customer service. They were a good restaurant in the 90s but not now. Some new owners bought the restaurant and are saying they want to make it better again. But how DARE they fire the old employees who made the restaurant bad. I wanted my cake eaten, in my hand and a second free piece in a to-go box.
This is the best analogi ive heard in a while. 👏👏
True, I am just disappointed Microsoft didn’t clean house more.
The art and programming still feel best in class, it’s their design team that just sticks out as being among the worst in the industry. Every design decision ranges from bad to boarderline predatory
It was me, I’m sorry. When I was 15, some 25 years ago, I made a wish that unfortunately came true. I wished for games to become more popular and seriously treated by general audiences. I wished for gaming adverts all over the city scapes and general press etc. Games are now serious businesses so my wish came true. I had no idea what I was wishing for.
deserve
Turkey Bacon?
I believe a part of the blame for this kind of development lies in the fact that successful game studios are often acquired not for their prowess, but due to the name recognition linked to that prowess, to try and milk the products and brands for as much as possible.
It's a sad realisation, but the power lies with the consumers, and if the consumers keep buying based on the label and not the content, things won't change.
The only way to discourage the Shanghaing of beloved franchises is to immediately stop supporting brands or ip's the moment they are bought out.
It's a painful realisation, but it boils down to removing the incentive to exploit a good name and the sellout culture.
D4 is like a perfect example of what's wrong with the AAA-industry and Blizzard. Such cookie cutter game, made by people who aren't even fans of the genre. The narcissism of these fucking designers and producers are just insane to me. Coming in here trying to make something in a genre they don't get or play. The industry is just full of people like this and to me its just done unless they get some directors with some actual passion, knowledge and experience about the games they're making again. And by that I don't mean beating Uncharted or God Of War on normal or fucking playing WoW occasionally and then thinking you can design the next great ARPG. They should be as passionate about games as Tarantino is about movies.
"Yeah, I saw a few with Clint Eastwood. Yeah, I can totally make a western movie. Sure". That's the audacity of these people.
EDIT: D4 plays fine, yes, and the production values are great even(while a bit boring). But ultimately its just a super cookie cutter-feeling game with zero depth made by people who don't even seem to get why people play ARPGs. It's like a well produced yet shitty Hollywoord movie. Yes, it has some qualities, but in the end its just an ugly pig with lipstick.
Grew up a fan since Rock n Roll Racing, 3 Vikings, and Warcraft on DOS. It really looked like the revival to greatness would springboard off of Legion and it's just hilariously insane how they would never make the right move or decision after that.
Right? I quit WoW when Cataclysm released. I only returned when Legion came out, and i absolutely loved it. It brought back a lot of childlike wonder for me.
I would be taking pictures and looking at art and everything. Fully invested.
It went downhill so fast after Legion that it is honestly baffling. Was literally just right one moment, then completely awful the next.
Poked War for Azeroth a little bit, but it was just... not the same. It felt soulless. Didn't play WoW since.
Season of Discovery is shaping up good at least. Not something i'd return for, though. Kind of done with MMOs in general atm.
rip
As someone who has experience with these large cooperation's and their employees, its plagued by people who are adapted to that environment which essentially means people who are deceptive, conniving, selfish and simply good at giving you the confidence that they are well suited for the job at task. Using cooperate talk, business lingo, having recommendations, a good CV, giving you the confidence in that they know what they are doing... this is what they are good at. Getting the job, is the job cuz once your in, its hard to take you out. You can spend years doing absolutely nothing. They just fired the lore guy from overwatch? wtf was that guy doing for the past year? 150k$ for 2 character back stories? Blizzard is fucked and will continue to be fucked as long as these companies continue to hire "qualified" managers and treat them like they know what they are doing. A lot of these companies traumatize their employees with unfair treatment, unfair pay and they lie to you. This is what you learn and this is what you become. This is what experience in these large companies look like and it starts at the top and you cant change the guy at the top because they are the masters at fucking you. sorry for anyone who isn't aware of this buy, its not about being a hard worker or doing your job well in these companies. Climbing the ladder requires a different set of skills. Management is about how good you are at playing others, its fundamentally fucked.
The bitter truth i have to remind myself of these days is that, gamers are just a small percentage of the people who make and consume games.
Its just weird because back in the 90s and early 2000s it was kinda lame to play games and you would NEVER tell people in public you played games like wow or anything like that.... but then big business noticed how much of a big business games are and can be. Leading to a day where core gamers are still a niche and are even outnumbered by regular people working regular jobs at their respective gaming companies and every day lives.
The biggest thing that was overlooked in this video was the fact that the "feel" of their games comes from prior employees coding.
"What is going on with Blizzard"
They fucked around and now they are finding out.
Craziest thing is that D4 didn't lose every single person and that it somehow is avoiding the trash.
SWTOR > WoW
TF2 > Overwatch
CnC > StarCraft
Path > Diablo
Facts!
Imagine being a programmer, that loves the game he works on, and one they the boss tells you to program battle pass and p2w items that will kill the game you love.. It must hurt so much
It seems game companies that go public are doomed when their founders start to retire/leave. They get replaced by the top performers in corporate metrics.
I SO feel you. "Been around for 30 years..." Yup, me too, born in 1980. Diablo still my most loved thing in gaming, but the general downward direction att blizz and as you said in the whoie gaming biz, is disheartening.
This is happening in industries all across corporate America. Over the last few years corporate America isn’t hiring the best people to do the jobs. They’re checking off DEI boxes, so you get games that aren’t made by the most creative people. It’s why all forms of entertainment are struggling. Just look at Hollywood.
I started my blizzard journey with Rock and Roll Racing.... and it ended with a whimper, not a bang.
75% of ActiBlizz could be laid off and nothing of value would be lost. Unfortunately, in that case they would surely infect other studios with their aggressive mediocrity (to be incredibly generous), so it's definitely preferable that they stay quarantined at Blizz.
The cancellation of the survival game was definitely from the lack of their ability to monetize it further.
it's depressing. For these reasons I discard 99% of new games coming out I would otherwise be interested in.
The last 10 years I went back to games I already played, but I know are good.
I much rather play a good old game I already own than a crappy cash grab new game with a heart of ice or no heart at all.
It's the only argument these developers listen to. Money. They'll blame it on the consumers first of course, but eventually they will realize they're to blame.
This won't happen any time soon though, I'm afraid things will need to get a lot worse still.
One thing i have to heavily disagree on, is that Diablo 4 feels good to play. The core game-play loop is left-clicking 4 times which does virtually no damage so you can right click ones to do some damage. This of course changes in late game, but a few hours in, that is all you feel. And then a level up gives you something like +3% damage while all the enemies scale as well and you made no progress again. You never feel powerful.
I think D4 is the first game where you actually can see the lack of passion. Although it looks great, i cannot imagine someone in the company play-testing the game and having fun.
At least D2: Resurrected launch free of this mess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a huge fan of the original who still owns the game on CD-ROM, I can say it's something I never thought I'd see but I'm glad they made it. I still play a fair bit of Overwatch because I find it to be a very difficult shooter to excel at and difficulty is something that gets me hooked onto games probably just as much as good gameplay.
Either way it's really quite unfortunate seeing Blizzard go through the blender again and again and each iteration of the company is just trying to pick up the pieces of its former self.
Blizzard games before had this pretige aura around them, i didnt play their games that much well only being Diablo but i knew back then that Blizzard back then ment business and quality what everyone wanted to strive for
But
Most of their games nowadays are fun at first but moment people want to invest their times, thats when monetazation goes from 0 to 15 like over board, people need just know that Blizzard is just name worn by Activision that drove off creative people out of desicion tables and just nostalgia baited alot of people
Like it took WoW players many, MANY years to finally come to their senses that defending bad business models is not good thing and they could have stoped this ever happening to WoW years ago but buyer's remorse is really hard hitting phenomenon
Now it is too late for them
I never got hooked on Hearthstone simply because if you wanted to be competitive you had to buy tons of card packs, the most fun aspect were the tournaments where you just picked a random deck, but that wasn't enough to keep my attention when i had to play for a HUGE amount of time in regular mode with crap cards to earn enough gold to run that mode.
I still stand by my opinion that D4 is just a reskinned darker D3, not much work to make small changes to an already existing game and re-selling it as the next installment of the franchise.
Corporate greed seems to kill everything we love
Blizzard did right from the start with game design, content and player treatment but very quickly stopped producing quality and just got lazy. They started selling a name to the fan base in place of putting time and money into a quality product. I was a long time WOW player who stopped playing any thing blizzard because I got tired of being sold garbage with a big brand name attached and being treated like shit.
You can't fire anyone on the StarCraft team if no one is on the StarCraft team.
Big brain move.
Thanks for the update Force, great video!
... When one person opens their stash everyone opens their stash? What? I would fucking love to hear a coder actually dissect that, because from an external point of view, you'd have to deliberately create a problem that ridiculous.
Also, Diablo 4 - they're 3 seasons into the fucking thing and they STILL don't have a group finder. What.
Respect for bringing up Asheron's Call. Best game.
Darktide. Lugians. Spell tapers. Split pea.
Blizz going down hill makes me super sad. Been a big fan of them for decades.
They were making $150m/month at wow's peak and they didnt use any of that money to develop a successor. What a fucking crime.
Killed the goose....
Inadvertently you have very succinctly summed up the triple-A studios in a nutshell! Certainly a sad state of affairs! However, on the upside, it has somewhat paved the way for "indie" studios to deliver innovative and rewarding experiences!
You can pinpoint the shift to 2017 when Mike Morhaime buckled under Bobby Kotick's pressure and allowed an Activision stooge to become Blizzard's CFO with the mandate to cut down on unnecessary spending and make Blizzard more profitable. People who saw the shift incoming started leaving, more left after Morhaime quit Blizzard in 2018 including a lot of prominent members of the "Old Guard", then employees got fired, games received new mandates, and things started to become uneasy. And we know specifically from an ex-Overwatch producer that Overwatch 2's development issues (and current state) were directly caused by the constant interference by Bobby Kotick in the development.
Most of the layoffs were probably on Blizzard/Activison side, but these 1900 layoffs also includes layoffs at Xbox and Zenimax/Bethesda. One of them who I know of was Devann McCarthy, who was the main community manager for Fallout 76.
The Unquenchable Thirst for Rising Profits is perfect for a metalcore song title
The games industry is in tatters. Due for a major correction. Why would ANYONE want to work in game? Zero job security, lower pay than comparable positions, zero employee development or support. I have a degree in the field and you couldn’t get me to touch it with a ten foot pole.
The tech industry is not alone in having to tighten their belts. EVERY industry is laying people off. I’m personally in the aviation industry and I’ll be losing my job in Jun. Thank goodness we have people like Janet Yellin and Uncle Joe assuring us all that everything in the US is going swimmingly. Le sigh, if reassurance could just keep food on the table
Hey at least those responsible for all the economic turmoil will be duly punished /s
This country needs wake up and get a helluva lot more anti-government