Mike Ybarra - Blizzard Trust and Culture Efforts Update

[Sucralose]

I rather their pay be based on how good of a state the game is in...

[GreenJesus]

The title says "PUTTING OUR TEAMS AND PLAYERS AT THE FOREFRONT OF EVERYTHING WE DO", yet nothing in there suggests to provide anything for the players aside from lofty promises about delivering more content - not like i heard that one before.

You wanna win back my trust?
Okay, there you go: Fix Warcraft 3: Reforged

Let's not forget that you had Blizzard spokesperson literally admit that they should've delayed the game further and taken the hit of having to refund pre orders, but they didn't want to do that, so they game was shat out in this terrible state.

But hey, i'm surprised that he passed on saying "actions speak louder than words".

This. They promised to add features they removed from Warcraft 3, but instead they abandoned the project and dismantled the team working on it. It's hard to trust Blizzard ever again after what they did to Warcraft 3 refunded. And they have no intention of ever fixing it despite their admission that they fucked it up and rushed it out because of the preorder money.

[Kumorii]

Cool...what about the games?

[Cracked]

> We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across thesemetrics (sic)

Ah, cause that always works! .. I've yet to see a positive outcome of this whenever a company starts chasing these metrics.

[Kralljin]

Ah, cause that always works! .. I've yet to see a positive outcome of this whenever a company starts chasing these metrics.

Well, it follows Goodhart's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

[MrLachyG]

The only thing about his post that I question, and be careful how you read into my statement, is this line.
"We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across these metrics."

For example I don't want the best gay African-American trans game developer, I want the best game developer whether they are Caucasian, African-American, Korean, Portuguese, Chillian, Straight, Gay, or Trans.

That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

that isn't how diversity works. The whole reason diversity is a priority is because hiring processes used to definitely favour a certain section of the community (white men) - to the point where more qualified people missed out on jobs because they weren't white men. It's also about changing the workplace culture to be more inclusive, less cliques of people who then promote each other; that sort of thing.

Like if they have 4 applicants for a position and they have to choose two of them. A is a white male with loads of experience and qualifications, more than anyone else who applied then yeah they are going to get the job (provided they don't bomb the interview). But having different perspectives is good too, so if the other three have similar experience and qualifications then yeah you might go for the so called "diversity hire" because that person brings something different to the team.

[Beet]

I don’t give a flying fuck about them trying to be more diverse with their workforce. Just give us better games. Be like old blizzard. Because todays Blizzard hasn’t given us a solid hit in fucking years. Hearthstone being the only game that is still strong. Most fans contrary to popular belief don’t give a shit about the inner workings of the company and don’t even know about them. We do know however when a game sucks ass.

And before anyone jumps down my throat for being uncaring, ask yourself if you buy from WalMart, Target, or Amazon. Congrats you’re supporting companies far worse than Blizzard ever was.

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Dont bitch when people start getting let go.

I won’t. I’ll cheer for it. I want the people who have been making the games the last seven or so years gone. Just get new blood in at this point. They can’t do any worse than this generation of shitters.

[Kiwijello]

More double-talk that means nothing. You can't restore my faith in Blizzard because, based on this, you have no idea why we lost faith in the first place. It's not about PC culture. That's what you got BUSTED for. That is not why we left...

[Video Games]

Its cool they want to hire more black lesbian crippled midgets but their games are terrible and they didnt say they would make them better. You know - the reason for the company to even exist in the first place

Infracted

[Gadzooks]

I'm cynical, but I also understand that he has to put out public releases like this, in the current climate, and while facing a lawsuit by the state.

But talk is cheap. We'll see.

And, getting rid of the Cosby Suite is one thing - and is absolutely a priority for them. I'm sure there's more of that type there hiding under cover and need to be rooted out.

But if they're gonna talk customers...I'd need to see some substantial and meaningful changes to leadership, and the state of all of the teams inside Blizzard, not just WoW.

Keep in mind, Ybarra didn't create the situation that the company is in right now. He was handed a burning poop filled dumpster, thanks to people like J Allen and Kotick. He has his work cut out for him, but he needs to know his customers and the public heard the exact same platitudes from J Allen and Morhaime, while the exact opposite was occurring internally. We've heard the 'we're listening" and "we're hiring Culture leaders' stuff before, and nothing changed/got better. He needs to do more than this - and criticism of this is deserved, honestly. It's just more of the same, and that's not what his customers, employees and potential new customers need to hear.

And, keep in mind, while the MS takeover is coming, right now he and his company are very much still overseen by Bobby Kotick and his team, including some awful lawyers. So this may be all he can do...for now.

So yeah, talk is cheap, sounds like more of the same...so wait and see. At least that's how I feel. If the MS deal hadn't happened, I'd give this no credibility at all - but now with MS looming, and Kotick on his way out...wait and see.

[nnelson54]

Why would you expect them to be removed when the head people at Microsoft are just as bad?

[Citation Needed]

Microsoft is routinely praised for it's work environment and Phil Spencer was one of the first people to speak out against Activision Blizzard and threaten to stop carrying their games on Xbox if they didn't clean up their shit.

Plus Bobby Kotick is already out as soon as the deal closes. It was one of the conditions of the deal.

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That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

You are aware the slippery slope is literally a logical fallacy, right.

[neik]

Mike like a good fucking cop coming with never ending distraction stories. Who gives a flying fuck about your office drama, stop blogposting and give us good damn video games.

[Cosmic Janitor]

When people already don't want to work for you I'm not sure chasing dubious metrics will help you in any way while trying to hire more people. And since he probably knows this as well, this whole post is just another round of PR bullshit bingo.

[Trumpcat]

I couldn't care less who their employees like to have sex with, how they identify and how many of one type or another are filling the diversity quotas. All of this letter is meaningless not quality-based dribble that only concerns their internal processes. I'm a customer and I care about three things: quality of the product, price and that the product is manufactured within ethical standards. As in I don't want to give money to a company that overworks and underpays their employees. Regarding the quality of product - the state of all their games is telling enough when people in senior roles have their focus and concern on posting entitled radical left pseudo-wisdom on a regular basis in social media.

[Eosia]

That whole diversity initiative is a slippary slope but it is what it is, take what you want from my statement I just want good developers because good developers will do good work.

The thing is though nowadays they just simply do recruitment drives. When I worked in academic hiring, this is how we did it. You want more of Demographic X, you go to where Demographic X is and invite them to apply. Your pool ends up much more diverse as a result.

[Belloc]

The title says "PUTTING OUR TEAMS AND PLAYERS AT THE FOREFRONT OF EVERYTHING WE DO", yet nothing in there suggests to provide anything for the players aside from lofty promises about delivering more content - not like i heard that one before..

You ever hear of them being purchased by Microsoft before? If we're ever going to see serious improvements, now is the time.

[exsanguinate]

Hiring someone because of his sex not skills. xDD

[Elodeon]

Let me translate Ybarra's statement:


I’ve been leading Blizzard for a couple of months now

"I was sent by Global, Inc., to supervise this transition."


I want to share some initial thoughts as we strive to put our team and players at the forefront of everything we do.

"This whole thing is about our social engineering. Games are just one of the ways we deliver it."


As individuals, we care about treating everyone around us with respect and dignity.

"Global, Inc., wants to encourage as many people as possible to act and feel like helpless children. When people get their fee-fees hurt, we want them to run to mommy. We offer to play the role of mommy, so people might accept a child-parent relationship with us, and revert to the mental state of 5 year olds. Our logos use large letters and bright colors to put people into a preschool mindset. People who accept this suggestion empower us, and grant us access and control over their lives. We are then able to abuse this trust in any way we like. For example, we can force mass compliance and acceptance of genetic therapies to achieve any effects we want."


Our top priority—now and into the future—is the work we are doing to rebuild your trust in Blizzard.

"We created some fake scandals to make you question Blizzard. Now we're going to use that as an excuse to fundamentally change the company in ways that you would not normally want."


We’re measuring our executive and management teams directly against culture improvement.

"Anyone who refuses to go along with our social engineering is fired. We fired some already before even announcing the acquisition."


a Culture leader who will help us maintain the best aspects of what we have today, and change and evolve where needed to ensure everyone brings their best self to Blizzard

"We will appoint political commissars to make sure everyone toes the line."


a new organizational leader for Human Resources who will build trust, empower our teams, and help foster a safe, positive work environment for everyone

"People who don't toe the line will hear from the internal Gestapo."


a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) leader solely focused on our progress across multiple efforts in this area

"Our priority is to cleanse games and development of everything that is straight and white. This is to support the same thing we're doing with society."


We are committed to staffing these teams as a priority.

"Forget about games. This is about politics now."


We tripled the size of our compliance and investigation teams and have articulated clear accountability for unacceptable behavior.

"Our Schutzschtaffel are already marching."


We have shared representation data internally with our teams and have set goals around improvement across these metrics.

"We have already put targets on people's backs. All white, straight people should consider themselves on notice."


We’ve put in place an upward feedback program so that employees have confidence in evaluating management

"We've put in place a snitch program so that any subgroup in the company that tries to retain functional values will be identified and borgified."


Under this leadership, WoW becomes a zombie game created by political commissars and apparatchiks.

The only way WoW survives this is if the globalists are defeated globally. Otherwise, this game is gone, along with the rest of this world.

This must be reversed. Google must be destroyed. Microsoft must be broken up into a thousand pieces.

Everything that was consolidated for control, must be broken apart again for individuality.

[Dorothyjean]

that isn't how diversity works. The whole reason diversity is a priority is because hiring processes used to definitely favour a certain section of the community (white men) - to the point where more qualified people missed out on jobs because they weren't white men. It's also about changing the workplace culture to be more inclusive, less cliques of people who then promote each other; that sort of thing.

Like if they have 4 applicants for a position and they have to choose two of them. A is a white male with loads of experience and qualifications, more than anyone else who applied then yeah they are going to get the job (provided they don't bomb the interview). But having different perspectives is good too, so if the other three have similar experience and qualifications then yeah you might go for the so called "diversity hire" because that person brings something different to the team.

Different perspectives on what exactly when it comes to a videogame? Do we have people from a different planet applying to Blizzard? It's a videogame... not reality. Don't get me wrong in that I do understand what you are trying to get at but sometimes trying to force something has a negative impact but no one will discuss it because it's not "appropriate" to discuss such things. Like if you have 4 applicants for a position and you have to choose 2 of them and both are black males would not the experience be then that they made do the same thing "white people" did in that example of furthering their own agenda etc? The reality is when they discuss the whole white and "non-white" they act out of it (typically) from a white perspective in thinking that non-whites do not think like us ie. they have a different perspective but if you are hiring a welder... you want the best welder, not the best perspective.

If you hire a workforce, as another example, that is a majority non-white... since they are people also would it not show that they would do the same things that "white people" do in that same context?

Now that you're reading this you suddenly feel that weird feeling like someone is going "Is this person being racist?" ... when in reality it's probably a 99% chance that it's a white person talking about how non-whites have a different perspective and how "non-whites" are nothing like white people and that if you discuss that suddenly you feel racist.

That is why these situations almost never pan out because it comes from a place of superiority where the larger Group A (you can do this in any country) thinks that Group B and Group C will bring something different to the table even though they are all humans and in this case... a videogame is a videogame. You don't know if I'm white or black or asian but I've been involved with the gaming industry for 2 decades now ... so if I'm white does that mean my perspective about videogames is skewed because you believe someone non-white see's something in videogames differently than me? How would you even know?
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[LordVargK]

I don't think the implication More diverse team of Devs -> more players will play their game holds true.