Mike Ybarra - Blizzard Trust and Culture Efforts Update

[rrayy]

My concern is the games. Yes i want them to have a safe work space but my concern is the games. Why was none of this focused on Making better games. If you want our trust back that is where you earn it. not by lecturing us about equality and diversity when Blizzard is the one that was under investigation for years lol How about for once listen to us the people that player your games and take some advice for once. The fact that people are bailing on Blizzard games isn't just the horrible things that have been going on in that company that was just the tipping point. This just proves to me though that nothing is going to change at blizzard from a creative design.

They always listen to the players. Plyaters need to understand that listening does not mean "immediately cave to every payer demand". Not all players want the same thing. What you want, others do not want. You will never get 1200% agreement with the player base, so the goal is to try to please as many players as you can. That means you won;t automatically get everything you want. Hiowever, that does not mean they are not listening.

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In short, if you actually want to expand your mind, go to university. You won't be brainwashed. Quite the opposite.

You obviously don't go to university in the US. 90% of college professors in the US are liberal and they definitely teach their courses with the ideological biases heavily factoring in. They in no way teach critical thinking, informed decision making, or open-mindedness. They tell you what to think, how you should think, and are completely against open-mindedness.

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With Mr. Brack’s departure, Mr. Kotick also has an opportunity to cement control over Blizzard. For years after the merger with Activision, Blizzard had its own chief executive, Mike Morhaime. When Mr. Brack succeeded Mr. Morhaime as the head of Blizzard in 2018, he had the title of president but not chief executive. Now neither Ms. Oneal or Mr. Ybarra will get the title of president.

“It’s another attempt to try to get ahead of this wave of negative news,” Doug Creutz, the senior video game analyst at Cowen, said of the leadership changes. “I think it’s certainly the case that Activision corporate intends to exert more oversight over Blizzard than they have in the past.”

Yo do realize that MIcrosoft will be in change and that Mr. Kotick is out when the deal closes right? Activision is going to have no power over Blizzard just like always because AS Blizzard and Activision were two separate companies under the roof know as Activision-Blizzard, now that changes to Microsoft with both companies separate and under that roof.

There will no no oversight ffrom Activision to increase as they are not even in charge.

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"Co-Leader of Blizzard"

CEO definition: "a chief executive officer, the highest-ranking person in a company or other institution, ultimately responsible for making managerial decisions."

Co-Leaders were the highest-ranking persons at Blizzard Entertainment. They reported to their parent company Activision, but for Blizzard itself they were a CEO in all but name.

Activision was not Blizzard's parent company. Activision-Blizzard was the parent company of both Activision and Blizzard.

[Xilurm]

I dont get why all people bitching about this PR statement but nobody talks about the announcements next week.

Probably because it's next week.

[Jester Joe]

You obviously don't go to university in the US. 90% of college professors in the US are liberal and they definitely teach their courses with the ideological biases heavily factoring in. They in no way teach critical thinking, informed decision making, or open-mindedness. They tell you what to think, how you should think, and are completely against open-mindedness.

Crazy how so many of us must hit that 10% rarity then.

Or, you're pulling statistics out of thin air that aren't even close to the truth.

[Yarathir]

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Quite to the contrary. Workplace diversity looks like this:

- If you recommend a person for hire, you get $2500 kickback. If that person is a "diversity" hire, you get a $8500 kickback. The kickback scales with the position.
- If you have a corporate board and you're headquartered in California, you must have a certain percentage of diversity representation on your board. Or you face fines. Other cities and states are following suit.
- Complete diversity training, or face a pay cut. Or termination.
- Use inclusive language. Or face a pay cut or termination if you don't.
- Use prefered pronouns. Or face a pay cut or termination if you don't.

How do I know this? Because I work at a large, global tech company where these very policies are in effect. I would happily take a job at place that holds the policies you describe as workplace diversity. In a heartbeat.

This shit is just depressing.

[Aedruid]

Because different things are important to different people. And to a lot of people, myself included, it is important that money we spent goes to ethical organisations. Thus it is important that they address this issue.

Just because not everything they say speaks to the issues that are important to you doesn't mean those issues are of any less importance. I think you need to try be a little more mature about this.

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The best lies always have an element of truth. A brilliant line from my favourite tv show fits perfectly here: "Peterson isn’t all wrong. He is evil and he is cruel, but he taps into something real"



This mindset is exactly why the world is in such a fucking state of disaster at the moment. I don't know why, but a lot of people these days seem to feel massively threatened by those who are better educated than them. And honestly, that attitude comes from a place of ignorance. The fact that someone has an education should be a reason to listen to that person, but instead it has become a reason to mistrust them.

As said above, the best lies always have an element of truth. And the element of truth here is that universities do indoctrinate ideologies into what they teach. Ironically though, those ideologies are things like critical thinking, informed decision making, open-mindedness. Exactly what is lacking in the typical right-thinking masses who are rejecting them.

In short, if you actually want to expand your mind, go to university. You won't be brainwashed. Quite the opposite.

Alright hold on here, first off, indoctrination is not a bad thing unless it is sourced from a crazy zealot or originates from an evil source. Evil being categorized as dramatic socially unacceptable behavior (like murder). You can be indoctrinated to believe anything, and it is a teacher's duty to indoctrinate... because that is what it means to teach someone to have honor, principals, and imbue them with learning what the teacher is trying to teach. Sometimes politcal bias does come out, and intellectuals do look at the world differently, is that bad? No, but sometimes it can be. Since this chain is about WoW, I'll throw in an example:

There's the priesthood in WoW. They seek to heal / help people, and when they do, they spread the teachings of the light to those come into contact with. Those who join the priesthood are indoctrinated further into the teachings of the light, and the expectation of those within the priesthood is to follow the principals they were taught.

Secondly there's when they take the light too far... The light takes control and turns them into zealots who think they are helping everyone by forcing them to accept the light, but it goes too far.

Both examples are points of indoctrination, hell, even being patriotic is a source of indoctrination.

As to JP, what defines a lie? You? Or is it because others disagree with the opinion? Just because others within your world or on TV disagree with someone doesn't make them "evil". People should be able to produce ideas and communicate them without being disdained to that extreme... and if you are one of those that considers him "evil", then you probably heard someone say that someone said something that her Aunt said, and didn't hear what the guy has to say yourself. So you basically hate someone for something they probably never said or did, which is up to you, but this day and age could use a little less hate and zealotry. Hate is evil. Zealotry is evil. That's why Zealots and Mephisto (Lord of Hatred) are enemies within Diablo, they don't listen to anyone else but their own small bubble, and it turns them insane.

Additionally, I have been to a university and have personally experienced bias, and if you don't conform, you're shunned. That's definitely not "open-minded" and does not foster "critical thinking" or "decision making".

Today's scientific age reminds me how doctors literally thought bloodletting helped cure sickness back in the day and it was "unscientific" to not bleed people out. How did we overcome that and/or the inquisition of scientists who were "witches" because they were smart? WE QUESTIONED THE MAINSTREAM SCIENCE AND NARRATIVE

The way I look at the WoW community is that we are all people who want to experience adventures and become powerful heroes. We want to make the world a better place, but instead we decide to play WoW, because the world doesn't need us yet; I think you're a good person, you just let your bias blind you intellectually.

[Utrrabbit]

Labels someone as stupid, produces this gem.

Let's start with how you claim that the gaming is predominantly white and male. That by itself is fine. However, you chose to add that this predominance is explained by ethnicity and gender and not necessarily skill.

Not only did you assert that, but you were the under the impression that labelling it as fact would make it as a fact.

I think I speak for some of us when I say I'd like to see what sort of data you can produce that allows the measuring of these workers habilities and conclude without a doubt that their positions are an outcome of immutable traits.

Let's not gloss over the fact that in an attempt to point out a racist/sexist situation, you engaged in the same sort of behavior. Not only that, but you made use of the thing that others are being accused of making in the opposite direction.

Can we please ditch the whole shenanigans of screaming discrimination when you see a statistical discrepancy? It's boring and intellectually immature

I read all that and all I got was. "I am trying to come off smarter than I am by googling a few words, but in reality I an not saying anything important"

Try again when you say something of substance.

[Yarathir]

Well, it seems they aren't trying to actually make their company better.

Was it the soulless corpotalk and pandering to contemporary socially popular buzzwords?

[Grimbold21]

I read all that and all I got was. "I am trying to come off smarter than I am by googling a few words, but in reality I an not saying anything important"

Try again when you say something of substance.

What the actual fuck are you talking about. Are you one of "those" people.

I will make this extremely clear to you. So even someone with such a small brain can understand. The statement was saying they will be hiring based on if you are best for the job not for what your race, sex, religion or gender identification is. I also have news for you so you can understand this. Currently the gaming msrket is dominated by white males. Not because they have the skills or the knowledge, only cause they are white and a male. This is just a fact. And for you to even come on here a spew that crap is hypocritical bs.

I am trying to come off smarter than I am by googling a few words, but in reality I an not saying anything important

Since I'm seemingly so adept at googling words, would you like me to fetch you the meaning of Irony? While we're at it, why don't we add Hypocrisy onto that?

Speaking of being smart, your copout was terrible.

[Jester Joe]

Additionally, I have been to a university and have personally experienced bias, and if you don't conform, you're shunned. That's definitely not "open-minded" and does not foster "critical thinking" or "decision making".

You realize there's more to being shunned than "not conforming", right? It could just be that you, for example, said how much people should read Peterson and no one else wanted to read about a borderline scam artist.

Today's scientific age reminds me how doctors literally thought bloodletting helped cure sickness back in the day and it was "unscientific" to not bleed people out. How did we overcome that and/or the inquisition of scientists who were "witches" because they were smart? WE QUESTIONED THE MAINSTREAM SCIENCE AND NARRATIVE

Last I heard, it was because we stopped burning people at the stake for trying to innovate, or you know, "magic".

Kinda like how we're getting people now screaming about any sort of attempt to change/fix society.

[Yarathir]

As said above, the best lies always have an element of truth. And the element of truth here is that universities do indoctrinate ideologies into what they teach. Ironically though, those ideologies are things like critical thinking, informed decision making, open-mindedness. Exactly what is lacking in the typical right-thinking masses who are rejecting them.

Ah yes, the left-thinking masses. Infamous for critical thinking, informed decision making and open-mindedness.

[Aedruid]

You realize there's more to being shunned than "not conforming", right? It could just be that you, for example, said how much people should read Peterson and no one else wanted to read about a borderline scam artist.



Last I heard, it was because we stopped burning people at the stake for trying to innovate, or you know, "magic".

Kinda like how we're getting people now screaming about any sort of attempt to change/fix society.

To your first comment, I don't see when I mentioned that the reason for being shunned was due to reading JP, it was actually based a difference of opinion with the teacher, which makes you a "black sheep", since students follow the teacher whether they're right or wrong.

To your second comment, I see where you are coming from and that is a true statement, but I also think the change has been way too extreme, which is what pushes people away. Like instead of saying, "Hey let's be good people and do the right thing!", instead you get spit on, sabotaged, and discriminated against even when agreeing, you just didn't agree hard enough! Which puts them on the side of the people that were burning the witches, not the scientists who diligently (throughout persecution) finally convinced everyone to stop attacking them.

Intellects don't have bias, they just work through experiments and facts. Feelings aren't a part of the scientific experiment because it pollutes it, and the movements nowadays are solely based on feelings (mainly hate).

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Ah yes, the left-thinking masses. Infamous for critical thinking, informed decision making and open-mindedness.

Yep, this sums it up.

[Jester Joe]

To your first comment, I don't see when I mentioned that the reason for being shunned was due to reading JP, it was actually based a difference of opinion with the teacher, which makes you a "black sheep", since students follow the teacher whether they're right or wrong.

Do you argue with a mechanic about whether or not they're right about your car?
Do you argue with a doctor due to their diagnosis?

No one is infallible of course, but generally speaking expertise does matter quite a bit. A teacher's expertise is teaching, if you're holding up class or taking their lessons as opinions, yes you're going to get shunned because other people are there to learn and not waste their money.

If you truly felt it was an issue, that's when you get a second opinion, like you go to another car mechanic, or another doctor.

To your second comment, I see where you are coming from and that is a true statement, but I also think the change has been way too extreme, which is what pushes people away. Like instead of saying, "Hey let's be good people and do the right thing!", instead you get spit on, sabotaged, and discriminated against even when agreeing, you just didn't agree hard enough! Which puts them on the side of the people that were burning the witches, not the scientists who diligently (throughout persecution) finally convinced everyone to stop attacking them.

Man, if only someone told Martin Luther King Jr that.

Oh wait.

Not to get too far off topic, but the issue is you're seeing years of trying to do things peacefully succeed in the same exact issues still repeating. So yes, it's escalating.

Intellects don't have bias, they just work through experiments and facts. Feelings aren't a part of the scientific experiment because it pollutes it, and the movements nowadays are solely based on feelings (mainly hate).

Almost as if this isn't a scientific experiment issue that's going on.

And when science is involved, well, if you're going to agree with another user making mockery statements, let's just point out the current reaction in society to getting vaccinated and what side is responding with hate and anger while refusing to listen to the scientific facts.

[Aedruid]

Do you argue with a mechanic about whether or not they're right about your car?
Do you argue with a doctor due to their diagnosis?

No one is infallible of course, but generally speaking expertise does matter quite a bit. A teacher's expertise is teaching, if you're holding up class or taking their lessons as opinions, yes you're going to get shunned because other people are there to learn and not waste their money.

If you truly felt it was an issue, that's when you get a second opinion, like you go to another car mechanic, or another doctor.



Man, if only someone told Martin Luther King Jr that.

Oh wait.

Not to get too far off topic, but the issue is you're seeing years of trying to do things peacefully succeed in the same exact issues still repeating. So yes, it's escalating.



Almost as if this isn't a scientific experiment issue that's going on.

And when science is involved, well, if you're going to agree with another user making mockery statements, let's just point out the current reaction in society to getting vaccinated and what side is responding with hate and anger while refusing to listen to the scientific facts.

I agree with all those points, and yes I shouldn't agree with mockery, it just gets old when you feel like a punching bag when you disagree with people nowadays. School is supposed to foster intellectual thinking, which does mean that there will be differences in opinion... leading to discourse (which is healthy; otherwise, we are just a hive-mind). As to the last point, science wasn't fully involved ever since it was politicized. Literally zero long-term studies, if people are comfortable with that, then fine, but I don't think news anchors hosting "medical experts" (just talking heads), or the people actually selling the goods should have a say in anything, on top of that, politics needs to stay out of making medical decisions. Period. Otherwise that opens the door to government mandated medical procedures, which is the stuff of nightmares.

[rrayy]

You realize there's more to being shunned than "not conforming", right? It could just be that you, for example, said how much people should read Peterson and no one else wanted to read about a borderline scam artist.

That is naive. Ther are plenty of stories of conservative students who get shunned. Plenty of stories aobut conservative speakers getting kicked off campuses because the intolerant liberal students kick and scream until they get their way. To say it does not happen is to willingly ignore the truth.

[Rozz]

You guys never talk about the actual news Jesus.

[Tiev]

What would that be though? More raids and dungeons? I don't raid and I only lazily run dungeons.

More world content? That would be great for me. I love being out in the world. It would suck for those who would rather just raid log. A better story? Lots of people don't care about the story at all.

That's why all of these posts about "better" are so much bilgewater. They don't mean anything because 'better' means totally different things to different people and in some cases it's contradictory. It's just posturing unless you provide specifics about what better means to you.

That's very fair, I don't know what better is for solo players. For people like me, who enjoy dungeons, raids and the social aspect of MMOs, I feel like the game has been suffering very much for a while now from quick, short-sighted decisions aimed at milking as much money as possible from players at the expense of quality, generating a lot of friction with them.

There are a lot information out there (from Bellular / Preach / Asmongold's videos and many others) to comparisons to FFXIV and forum posts, I feel like the devs have a pretty good idea what much of the playerbase think was lacking in shadowlands.

My hunch is that they have a hard time navigating top-down business decisions and are caught between a tug-of-war between players and stakeholders.

But maybe they just disagree. In any case, the gist of why I think this game is at its low is the lack of emphasis on the social aspects of the game, the many systems set in place to make players feel pressured to play every single day in order to keep up, and how dilluted looting is due to their catch up systems (which is in itself a good thing, but there's some level of satisfaction to be had to have a piece of loot you need to get ready for an activity to drop and know it's the end of the line. Now, there's always that piece of loot that is exactly the same as the one you want but with higher item level. That makes looting something less impactful and the feeling from seeing it dropping less exciting). The latter issue is mostly only a thing if you're catching up though.

This is coming from someone who plays since Vanilla and thinks the apex of WoW was during Wrath. So your mileage may vary. Many of the modern decisions made by activision blizzard feel to me like in complete opposition to the soul of the game.

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Nah, there will always be ppl who dislike the content. "Better" is something very individual. I dislike SL contet aswell, i would prefer meaningful content, connected with charpower progreß, way more grind, and less cosmetics.
But his only jobis to make money fpr AB or soon Microsoft. And as long as enough people playing the games its completly irrelevant if you or i liked the content or not.

I don't think it is though. Because the only way for that strategy to be successful is if you have no competition for the same market. While WoW have always had competition, it never had one that aimed to get the same players and that was actually up to par. It does now, XIV is actually a superior game to many of us who play MMORPGs for years. If you don't keep your critical mass, monetizing on it is less valuable. Like percentages on top of base values. At a certain point, increasing percentage of profit by say 40% is a loss compared to trying to maintain your base value. 40% of 100 is 40. 100% of 30 is 30.

This analogy is using percentange as the mechanisms to milk players and base values as your playerbase.

[Rendark]

You guys never talk about the actual news Jesus.

Is there any news?

[MoanaLisa]

That's very fair, I don't know what better is for solo players. For people like me, who enjoy dungeons, raids and the social aspect of MMOs, I feel like the game has been suffering very much for a while now from quick, short-sighted decisions aimed at milking as much money as possible from players at the expense of quality, generating a lot of friction with them.

There are a lot information out there (from Bellular / Preach / Asmongold's videos and many others) to comparisons to FFXIV and forum posts, I feel like the devs have a pretty good idea what much of the playerbase think was lacking in shadowlands.

My hunch is that they have a hard time navigating top-down business decisions and are caught between a tug-of-war between players and stakeholders.

But maybe they just disagree. In any case, the gist of why I think this game is at its low is the lack of emphasis on the social aspects of the game, the many systems set in place to make players feel pressured to play every single day in order to keep up, and how dilluted looting is due to their catch up systems (which is in itself a good thing, but there's some level of satisfaction to be had to have a piece of loot you need to get ready for an activity to drop and know it's the end of the line. Now, there's always that piece of loot that is exactly the same as the one you want but with higher item level. That makes looting something less impactful and the feeling from seeing it dropping less exciting). The latter issue is mostly only a thing if you're catching up though.

This is coming from someone who plays since Vanilla and thinks the apex of WoW was during Wrath. So your mileage may vary. Many of the modern decisions made by activision blizzard feel to me like in complete opposition to the soul of the game.

Good post. There’s much there that I agree with. I have a whole spiel about the problems of consensus design, an over-engineered game and the lessons not quite learned about keeping casual (for lack of a better word) players busy that they took from Warlords. Suffice it to say that contrary to popular belief I don’t think Ion or anyone else is fully in charge of the design. It’s all committee work and suffers for that.

[timshuku]

Ybarra left Microsoft for Blizzard in 2019, 2021 Microsoft buy Blizzard and Ybarra is back

[Aedruid]

Ybarra left Microsoft for Blizzard in 2019, 2021 Microsoft buy Blizzard and Ybarra is back

I wonder if Ybarra left Microsoft because he hated it there.