AZ's latest epic rant: Blizzard are making games for shareholders, not players

[korijenkins]

2 buttons on screen?
alright now your making up bullshit... im done here, its pathetic.
man how do you text people with a keyboard that only has 2 buttons on it?

More sycophantic arguments about D:I

It literally has two fat buttons that obstruct view, not to mention you'll be trying to look THROUGH two fingers in front of the screen.

The difference is that you don't need to see what's being texted when I text someone because the words come up in a different place from the buttons, whereas the buttons in D:I block the game's camera, not to mention the argument about non-existent buttons is completely true. It's incredibly slippery to play with them.

Play a mobile game once and you would understand this.

[Th3Scourge]

You can. Plenty of Arpgs that work on mobile. A lot of them enjoyable. What you can do on touchscreen is impressive, Ive seen fps for mobile.

Are these the same Asian ARPG advertisements that I see all over YouTube videos on my phone? They look fucking horrendous.

[Depakote]

Has any Blizzard game actually become better since they shift to profit focused corporate culture in late 2017, all of 2018?

No?

Thought so.

I'm not claiming that they have. In fact i'm agreeing with you sentiment.

[Gaidax]

Aside from some "influencer" bitching for numbers (influencers are making videos for bankers, not viewers, btw) - he's wrong, because Blizzard is not making any games period.

Last time they made a game was several years ago and seems like they won't be making any actual game in 2019 either.

[Malix Farwin]

Cosmetics can never be predatory. (unless tha game has 2 armor pieces to choose from, and then has 50 transmogs on shop)
WoW has hundreds of free transmogs and mounts and 1% is from the shop.

Predatory is Black Desert Online with straight out lack of inventory space, weight, AH fee, stuff to level up gear....numerous other stuff

Yes they can lol what? have you never played a gacha game before. Their whole model is predatory with cosmetic items and its well known to the point that people make jokes/memes about it. You have no clue what you are talking about.

[msdos]

Since there's millions and billions of human beings walking around at any given moment now, you sure don't need to do much to strike gold, you don't even need to produce quality, you just need a billion idiots to spend 1$ on your piece of trash and you're set. This is the model of mobile gaming, well, mobile apps really.

This is the end-game of capitalism also. Once technology gets advanced enough, we won't be producing anything but art and trash.

You can sell trash to the rich as long as it's marked up 5000% also. It's all too funny to me. The human condition, greed, materialism. You know as well as I do that this is all smooth skinned chimping around, literally advanced monkeys squabbling over trinkets, baubles and fiat currency, so meaningless!

[Tiny Dancer]

What does that even mean? Are shareholders playing the game? They need to make a game that people want to play so they'll pay for it. Their shareholders care about money. A good game makes money, because players want to play a good game. What's his point? This guy has based his whole existence on shitting on Blizzard.

[James240]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ng2EO_IKY

[Auxora]

Shareholders care about profits. But customers (players) care about the product and quality. They are tightly intertwined, not exclusive of each other. Quality isn't just a bug-free game. It's that and customer interaction, valuing customer feedback, putting out games that draw people in and that they can't put down, innovation, etc.

I could name many examples, but look at a recent one - Sears. Sears was massive not that long ago and was *the* place to go for just about anything but especially tools and hardware. They were the place to go because of their reputation for having quality merchandise that they would service and support better than any other large national chain. That was the hard-earned reputation they gained from decades of goodwill with their customers. In a short amount of time through poor leadership they destroyed that reputation through short-sighted CEO cost-saving moves like cutting back on service departments. It didn't take long for Sears to lose that reputation, and once it was gone they were done. Their competitive advantage was their quality and service, and when that's gone there was no reason for customers to go to Sears rather than Home Depot or Lowe's or any other department store.

Totally different industry with Blizz, but there are a lot of parallels. Blizzard is a unique company in the industry because of their reputation with gamers that games won't be released until they are ready, and when they are they will be quality. Activision has never followed that philosophy. So seeing Activision shift the philosophy of Blizzard to match Activision's where profits >>> quality, is downright scary. If Blizzard loses that, they are just another game dev company. Seeing Bungie cut off their own arm to save themselves by bailing from Activision before they do the same to them that they are doing to Blizzard, just reinforces it being a legitimate concern.

[KainneAbsolute]

It seems shareholders want Blizzard make new games and expansions and, in 2018, Blizzard wanted to get more players with advertisement and esports.

[Yunaqt]

Why is IVE underlined?

[munkeyinorbit]

This is such a dumb statement that I don't even know where to begin. Squeezing the juice as much as possible as fast as possible is what is "best for shareholders", yet clearly hardly the best for players.

And then sales, subscriptions and potential for future growth drop. Is that good for shareholders?
Best thing for shareholders is to make a quality product which is best for customers. Adding value to that product generates more profit. Just because there is a store to purchase mounts doesn't detract from the game. It could be argued convincingly right now that the product is bad and that is not good for shareholders. Think for once.

[kamuimac]

Dinky games and puzzles are fine for mobile. I don't want to play something like diablo on a phone. Same goes for all of the other pc titles. It's ridiculous.

If I have five minutes to kill while waiting for something then I might goof around on my phone. If I want to experience an adventure for an extended period of time then I want to be sitting in front of my pc/tv.

you are clearly not target audience of this game them .

target audience if for example people in China / Korea who spend 1-2 hour commuting to work daily .

and those are literaly milions of people .

[Raysz]

what do you think?

I think he should shut the hell up, he's leeching off of haters. If you don't like the game anymore, move on. Instead he's paying lipservice to most haters for views and cash. If you fall for that you're just sad.

[Eleccybubb]

I think he kind of has a point. Which is rare for me to agree with people like these.

However the way he presents said points only add fuel to the fire. He doesn't need to. Blizzard and Activision are doing a damn fine job of it as of late.

[HumbleDuck]

Didn't this guy quite during WoD?

[Nightstalker]

Didn't this guy quite during WoD?

Yeah, but outrage over WoW pays the bills, so he had to come back from a desperate attempt to establish other formats.

[Tharkkun]

Dinky games and puzzles are fine for mobile. I don't want to play something like diablo on a phone. Same goes for all of the other pc titles. It's ridiculous.

If I have five minutes to kill while waiting for something then I might goof around on my phone. If I want to experience an adventure for an extended period of time then I want to be sitting in front of my pc/tv.

You might not but every child, cousin, grandson or friend of theirs under 18 right now has no interest in being tied down to a PC. The new generation wants portable and live to play games on their ipads, phones, switch type portable devices.

You're the premium customer but not the average one.