PC gamer interview: Blizzard 'has completely changed,'

[huth]

With that in mind, basically realized that every single game development studio essentially has a completely different team every 10-15 years. So very often the team that brought the "big hit" isn't around for later sequels, and maybe that's why IP's always seem to decline in quality.

I think the bigger problem is that a "big hit" will lead to higher expectations for follow-ups. Eventually you will be functionally incapable of meeting them, no matter what you do.


If anything, things indicate Blizz has above-average developer retention.

[letssee]

guys whats left of old blizzard devs are all on overwatch, but even that is not enough cuz of the overwall way blizzard is today.

[Tiwack]

Leaders should grow a spine and sanction them for what they're doing to the people and in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang-region. No western-market for you if you can't live up to the basic tennets of liberty and humanity and would rather be blinded by your own greedy imperialism. It's not blizzards fault as much as it's inactive representatives busy shoring up votes and only taking care of themselves.

[Orby]

It's a known fact that the vast majority of the devs who brought us WoW, are no longer with the company, and their replacements are just random hires and not the passionate folks that used to make up Blizzard.

I believe that there are people there that are passionate about the stuff they create, World design team and the graphic side especially. WoW looks more gorgeous than ever, the sound design is still wonderful. Of course there are probably some people there who probably see its just a job to 'cash in them cheques'. Those people are in every job. I am that guy in my workplace, I am constantly in that that 'think of the money' mode. I actually hate working where I do lol.

[froschhure]

nothing new for me, but i love to see how other persons are realizing this too!

its a good step into the right direction gamerwise and i would love to recommend you a project where i think some of those blizard founders are actually working volunteery (i have no proofs but my sharp mind).

Sadly i cannot link or say anything about that project, because i get scrapbotted - so if you are interested /pm me i'll give you details.

Unfortunatly (B)lizzard shifted their interest into a younger and heavily larger market than ours.

It is pretty much ironic, what they did to the game and its soul (here community based on game mechanics) and its a sad state that we cant protect ourselfs from disruptive behaviour companies cause to our game.

How come the founders of that game and those who developed it by very little steps, now have 0 impact on what is happening gamewise?
is it because they sold their licence? is it because the company founded those developers (money) to create something for them? who created WOW and how it was created? Who had the very first idea, the concept? Where are you?? and how come you don't care about your project any longer? -.-



And its not just WOW that suffers, Overwatch is suffering and gets rippd off also, i wont even start with or what HOTS is...

[Schmilblick]

And this true Blizzard fan is not gonna let the new system win even if it means boycotting them regularly.

No junky will boycott his drug dealer, just look at EA.

[sam86]

Wait, what? I've worked at a company (1500+ people) for 15 years and after only 10 years there were just 2 people there longer than me, the founder and his mate, the HR director. I've never seen a company that has the same team for 30 years.

i work in an institute since 11 years and we surely didn't replace 99% of staff in it, and we aren't even 1 of million as successful as blizz is

Brevik seems to epitomize the angry butthurt ex-game developer who hates the company which helped found his fortune. Every time I see him speaking about "old Blizzard" it reminds me of somebody regailing tales of a lost lover.

At least he didn't buy a $3 million bus with Chinese venture capital like the other popular ex-Blizzard dev Mark Kern.

ehm.. what ? what u mean by bus thing ?

I've had this conversation with others....but if you follow any form of software development as a career field, the current climate is pretty heavy on the idea that if you want a promotion you have to "move out and up." What's rare today is staying at any one company for longer than 5 years, most people are changing every 2-3 years unless they helped found the company and are heavily vested.

maybe that is very recent, i work since 12 years now and i only changed starting work, or maybe that is something in non egyptian countries where not working != instant f8cked up life

It's a known fact that they are random hires? Blizzard has no criteria whatsoever about who they hire? Do they screen people for lack of passion before they take them on the team?

Kotaku already criticized that, yes they actually hire ppl who just want to get job done, in an article where they talked about how they fired 10% of their staff in same year they had breaking profit records and increase their - already most overpayed ceo - salary by 15%
they basically fire 2 ppl and hire 1 guy to do 2 ppl job, to save money on salary and hire new intel is cheaper than promoting older one, the article itself u have to dig to find it but it was very recent, pre this blizzcon only

[Thelin]

link
An interview just 2 days ago that interested me, specially that part "We didn't talk about Chinese government and what they might want. The only thing we ever talked about was what we wanted to do and what the fans would like."
It shows what blizz was vs what it is now the best
Also the other important point is that only 2 left from the original 180 workers of the entire starting team (which isn't normal that 99% of the team that build a company leave in merely 30 years) and the interviewer claims he is still in good relation with one of them
I think that is best thing to show why we loved blizz and why it keep disappointing us now, because it is a 1% of what it used to be

uhh, what? Turn over is definitely normal and very common, I'm sure many of those 180 original people took the money they made to start their own companies, invested, moved onto higher positions elsewhere,etc. The interview is somewhat misleading because of course things will change when you're a private small company versus a juggernaut that has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Your priorities can't simply be to make everybody happy, you have to do what's best to drive share holder value otherwise your company loses investment and has to shrink. Everyone thinks its a simple black & white issue but its not. Hell they even acknowledge it with the blitzchung drama that blizzard was screwed no matter what they did.

[azka]

Breaking News: Multi-billion dollar global corporation with thousands of employees is different to small company with barely a couple of hundred.

Also: Water is wet!

Thank you!

[Cyram]

Also the other important point is that only 2 left from the original 180 workers of the entire starting team (which isn't normal that 99% of the team that build a company leave in merely 30 years) and the interviewer claims he is still in good relation with one of them

That right there tells me you have no idea how the corporate world (or even being part of the work force) functions.
... and, yeah, a company has changed in the past 20 years. Shocking.

[Dhrizzle]

Brevik seems to epitomize the angry butthurt ex-game developer who hates the company which helped found his fortune. Every time I see him speaking about "old Blizzard" it reminds me of somebody regailing tales of a lost lover.

At least he didn't buy a $3 million bus with Chinese venture capital like the other popular ex-Blizzard dev Mark Kern.

If you read the article Brevik isn't really dumping on Blizz, he says it's a natural thing for a company to change when it's that successful and thinks the situation with China was a no-win for Blizzard, they could either piss off fans with the ban or let it slide and open their events for all sorts of political statements.

[ReVnX]

That right there tells me you have no idea how the corporate world (or even being part of the work force) functions.
... and, yeah, a company has changed in the past 20 years. Shocking.

That is entirely dependant on the country. In Spain is not that uncommon for a person to remain in the same company for 15-30 years or even their entire career.

I have also seen the opposite in UK regarding IT, people are just continuosly changing companies. Dunno about the rest of the world though.
OP might find this kind of "mobility" weird if their country is not used to it.

[mojusk]

how dare they change within 30 years!

[predasmoke3]

Wait, what? I've worked at a company (1500+ people) for 15 years and after only 10 years there were just 2 people there longer than me, the founder and his mate, the HR director. I've never seen a company that has the same team for 30 years.

so as a monkey wrench, what do you do at this company? make non-related counterpoints and act like they hold ground?

[RoKPaNda]

David Brevik complaining about modern Blizzard? He hasn't been doing that every single time he's been interviewed or gotten drunk on stream for the last 10 years or anything.

What company do you know that has the same people 30 years later? Especially in this industry? Certainly not any that he has worked for.

Yep, pretty much that!
These aren't the people who got us hooked on quality video games.

And yet at this point all their modern games are pretty old and people are still playing and watching them. Pretty sure we just grew up.

[Beazy]

Every person who wrote code to create your fav blizzard games, moved on, years ago.

The people who stayed at work until 3am working on their "baby", the ones who scrapped entire concepts because they didnt live up to Blizz quality, are gone and have been gone, and you nubs should have known they were gone when you played WoD, Legion, and BfA, and thought to yourself "What the fuck is this garbage?".

Blizzard is a fucking joke now. They are one fuck up away from being the child of EA.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

so as a monkey wrench, what do you do at this company? make non-related counterpoints and act like they hold ground?

How is this counter-argument non-related?

Original argument posits it is extremely rare for a company to have a high % turnover of staff after three decades.
Counter-argument provides example of exactly this.

It's directly related.

[CrawlFromThePit]

The real problem is sitting there and crying about it. There's plenty of things that happen in life that don't go the way you want them to, this one is not the first or the last. Just like every other things of that nature, brush it off and move on, forget it and find something else. Don't dwell on it like someone who gave up their life, even if you probably did.

[Sorshen]

Brevik seems to epitomize the angry butthurt ex-game developer who hates the company which helped found his fortune. Every time I see him speaking about "old Blizzard" it reminds me of somebody regailing tales of a lost lover.

At least he didn't buy a $3 million bus with Chinese venture capital like the other popular ex-Blizzard dev Mark Kern.

It's almost like you didn't read the article...

Also, Brevik created one of the best game series ever, Blizzard just bastardized his creation and then sold 30m+ copies to people that were expecting Brevik's vision. Don't get me started on D:Immortal.

[Nosgoth]

Yup.

Average tenure in a company is often quoted to be less than 5 years, meaning that 20% of your staff leave every year. Over a 30 year period that would leave an organisation with 0.1% of its original staff.

The fact that they've retained a "mere" 1% of their original staff suggests an average tenure of 7 years. Although I would note something else here: 30 years of tenure is VERY long in any job, especially if you only start that job in your 30s. A lot of people have stopped working for Blizzard literally because they've retired.

Anyhow I guess it all depends on what agenda the OP is trying to prove. Organisational culture is an interesting thing, and it can remain intact even after all the original staff are long gone. Or it can change in spite of retaining the orignal staff. Either way, the fact that almost everyone who started the company has, 30 years later, moved on proves very little in and of itself

You can't compare a company like this with some pencil factory. Companies are different. People work in the video game industry out of passion and they go to Blizzard because they love Blizzard games. For many this is a dream job.