John UM
Blizzard has suffered a lot of criticism in the community because of its recent series of measures. Players believe that Activision’s control over Blizzard is gradually deepening, and Blizzard is gradually losing its autonomy. Some players even angrily think that Activision is destroying Blizzard, so what about the current situation of Blizzard’s former employees?
Recently, Blizzard’s former employee, Patrick Beja, made an analysis of the current situation of Blizzard. He was originally the host of the famous podcast program “How I WoW”. Later, he joined Blizzard Europe as a performer. Assistant PR. In 2014 he left Blizzard to become a full-time podcast. His work experience in Blizzard and his uninterrupted coverage of Blizzard over the years have made his analysis highly readable, and most importantly, his analysis of this tweet has been a heavyweight before Blizzard. Otsuka Mason’s recognition
The following is a full-text translation of Patrick Beja’s analysis:
I saw a lot of angry comments and videos about how evil Activision destroys Blizzard. I want to calmly analyze the whole thing…
The current situation of Blizzard.
There will be no new releases in the foreseeable future (eg 12 to 18 months).
There will be many “classic” game teams.
There will be many new game teams (possibly mobile).
Most “game as a service” games are no longer at their peak (watch, hearthstone, etc.).
In short, there are a lot of expenses, and income is decreasing.
They are currently used to save money.
Reduce expenses. I’m not sure what it is, but I think it should be something that doesn’t matter, such as hosting events, advertising budgets, and so on
Incentives motivate employees to leave. This is also an employee who works for customer service (a position that is not needed very much).
They have not made the move.
Roughly dismissing anyone directly, when you need/who wants to lay off, it is the gentlest way to provide a motivation to leave
Reduce the size of the development team. In fact, they seem to be doing the opposite: they tell the development team how many people they need to hire
“What does evil “moving” need to get?
The first thing is to sell a game called “Diablo 4”, so that more than 4 years of development spending should not be squandered
May be a massive layoff, that is, fried squid.
Then add as many micro-transactions as possible in all places?
Our analysis can draw conclusions.
They didn’t do anything we thought would be done by an evil company.
They insist that developers have a long development cycle and maximize optimization before release. Just like they have been doing
I think a lot, to be honest, I don’t know why anyone saw these facts and concluded that what is happening inside Blizzard is bad/evil
I know that people hate the current World of Warcraft (as if this is the first bad piece of information) and hate Diablo Mobile Games. I guess this is the catalyst for the current incident
But the facts (or at least the rumors/reports that people are angry with) simply do not support the notion that “motion is destroying Blizzard.” This illusion, if it happens, will manifest itself in the exact opposite way we see it now, and (they) will not give Diablo 4 more than two years of development time
About Storm Heroes.
Yes, the development team reduction is very bad. But we can’t blame Blizzard for not trying hard. They have been doing it for many years and have done a lot of things… but if they don’t see the future, they have to unplug at some point
I agree that for those professional e-sports players who put their lives into the storm, this timing is very bad, but this is another problem
Similarly, Diablo: The immortal announcement process is also very bad, which has been discussed millions of times
But these issues are not a problem in the company’s overall game development. It is naive to confuse the two, and the worst case is to spread fear/anger. I know that doing this will cause it to generate more page views on the tubing, but that doesn’t mean it’s true
By the way, even if you want to look at this problem from the perspective of making money, then Blizzard has made a lot of money for Activision, “very much.” So why are they now starting to interfere with developers who clearly know what they are doing? It makes no sense
This is what I think about the whole thing. Of course, I may be wrong, maybe Blizzard… I am no longer playing games? But I really think that they just have a lot of things in the oven, I hope that there will be a few that will be as delicious as before. Time will tell us the answer
Finally, although most of you know, but just in case I still mention, I worked in Blizzard for a few years, I like / report many of their games. If you feel that my analysis is not reliable, I can’t blame you (although I would like to know how you came to another conclusion)
So, what do you think about this?