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Source: Link | Link Mirror
Some select SC2 related inquiries:
Why the hell did starcraft 2 take so long?
lol that was totally up to the Devs for that one. I have no idea why it took so long, but I can tell you that while I personally wasn't working on it during that time, my friends were doing QA for it and it was basically hell for them. Working 14 days straight, 12-14 hours a day, non-stop. I feel like the devs wanted it to be perfect before they released it so they could prove to everyone that they were the shit. In reality, though, I just think they didn't have their shit together enough and couldn't collaborate properly to get it out on time.
What did Blizzard think internally over the company's complete and utter failure to support and co-opt DOTA, which was originally a Warcraft III custom map? I know that Blizzard tried to sue Valve and others when Dota moved on from WC3..... We WC3 players had been pleading with Blizzard for YEARS to provide official support for DOTA, to hire DOTA developers, and in general acknowledge the game's existence, yet none of that ever came about.....and now League of Legends is several times more popular than WoW has ever been. What do the people inside of Blizzard think about this monumentally epic fuckup?
Same thing you're feeling. A lot of people rolled their eyes and laughed at what they were intending to do with DOTA. I know a lot of QA people thought it was a joke, but we didn't get paid to have an opinion. I'll just reiterate this: SC2 devs are mostly dicks.
Whoa. Huge SC fan here. Expand on this? They always come across as nice guys, even if they are a bit stubborn to make balance patches.
I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure.
[edit] Not all the comments he left were negative, in fact most of the comments about other Blizzard games and policies were mostly positive. These were the answers he had regarding SC2. Read the full AMA for answers to questions about World of Warcraft, Titan, and some of his more personal takes on the direction of Blizzard.
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This is interesting, thanks for the post!
Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist.
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Sounds about right. The SC2 developers have refused to comment on fundamental issues that hinder the game (the fact that ALL map balance must take into account one fucking spell: Forcefield), The fact that expanding isn't more of a priority thus creating pockets of skirmishes throughout the map and the list goes on.
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This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer.
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Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. On the other hand, I was surprised to read that lots of Blizz viewed D3 as a success... kinda troubling lol.
@ Assirra, I thought that to for a second, but the guy *seems* pretty honest if you start reading through more of it. He has a lot of nice things to say a long with some more critical points. Doesn't really seem as if hes super miffed and has a bone to pick.
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Devs that work for a company that makes a shit tone of money with everything they touch are thinking they are good and better then other? Not very surprising at all.
And that the gaming industry is kind of a hell to work is nothing new.
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Ok, people need to take this all with a huge grain of salt. First off, the guys name is "BlizzardThrowaway", so that give you a good idea of his intent. The guy was let go from Blizzard, worked in QA, tech support and other areas of the company. Quality assurance, or testing, is the lowest level of game development. People who work there are not involved with the primary decisions as to how games are made and would not have access to a lot of areas of the company. They may hear stuff, but they are not part of the meetings or involved with the decision making itself, so his claims "that Blizzard did this thing for this reason" are likely his own personal opinion.
The guy is clearly grumpy he got let go and doesn't care if he gets rehired at another company. A lot of the stuff he is saying sounds like he is telling the community exactly what they want to hear about Blizzard, which may or may not be true.
Not saying people shouldn't listen to him, but remember that he may have other motivations to the AMA than just telling people about his time at Blizzard.
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i guess someone was mad bout blizz and want to let some steam out
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Ever since the whole Blizzard North situation (the Schaefer brothers, David Brevik and Bill Roper leaving) and then shortly after that the Activision deal, Blizzards policies have been much less pleasant towards fansites. I think Teamliquid has also been on the receiving end of some this unpleasantness in the past and I know of at least one other fansite who got the finger after over a decade of dedication to one of their games. If you did not praise everything Blizzard crapped out then you would not be allowed to even look in their direction.
Recently, some time after the release of SC2, I feel they have adjusted their attitude somewhat.
At any rate, this guy is obviously just annoyed with standard office politics. I can't blame him, but this is how it goes.
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On June 06 2013 23:46 Plansix wrote: Ok, people need to take this all with a huge grain of salt. First off, the guys name is "BlizzardThrowaway", so that give you a good idea of his intent. The guy was let go from Blizzard, worked in QA, tech support and other areas of the company. Quality assurance, or testing, is the lowest level of game development. People who work there are not involved with the primary decisions as to how games are made and would not have access to a lot of areas of the company. They may hear stuff, but they are not part of the meetings or involved with the decision making itself, so his claims "that Blizzard did this thing for this reason" are likely his own personal opinion.
The guy is clearly grumpy he got let go and doesn't care if he gets rehired at another company. A lot of the stuff he is saying sounds like he is telling the community exactly what they want to hear about Blizzard, which may or may not be true.
Not saying people shouldn't listen to him, but remember that he may have other motivations to the AMA than just telling people about his time at Blizzard.
It's a she and the name 'BlizzardThrowaway' doesn't say anything of her intent. The term throwaway on reddit refers to using an account that isn't your main, essentially it's identical to the term 'smurfing' in Starcraft/Dota etc.
She could definitely be full of shit, spiteful, or whatever but most of her responses were pretty fair and she even goes on to say Blizzard is a great place to work and that she might not get back into the gaming field because she knows she will never find a place as great as Blizzard.
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I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions.
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From personal experience - a lot of stuff he's saying in answers in general is true , as for some other stuff it's rather hard to confirm.
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So basically the only information in the AMA is petty office gossip? The person is clearly frustrated because they felt unappreciated by the dev team, but really, one team being frustrated and annoyed with another is pretty common in any organization.
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Not a surprising interview.it is sort of obvious blizzard devs are living in their own ivory tower,disconected from reality having a "we know better than you guys who buy our product" attitude.This is happening while competition such as league of legends constantly has high end personnnel constantly interracting with fans on their forums asking questions about balances,changes etc.Basicly if you get a thread with more than 20 pages of responses it is likely a red poster aka riot employee to give you a response.Oh well its their company and their product and in the end their profit.Wish they would listen more to the community though.In this highly competitive scene i do not see blizzard going well in the next 10 years.
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On June 06 2013 23:51 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:46 Plansix wrote: Ok, people need to take this all with a huge grain of salt. First off, the guys name is "BlizzardThrowaway", so that give you a good idea of his intent. The guy was let go from Blizzard, worked in QA, tech support and other areas of the company. Quality assurance, or testing, is the lowest level of game development. People who work there are not involved with the primary decisions as to how games are made and would not have access to a lot of areas of the company. They may hear stuff, but they are not part of the meetings or involved with the decision making itself, so his claims "that Blizzard did this thing for this reason" are likely his own personal opinion.
The guy is clearly grumpy he got let go and doesn't care if he gets rehired at another company. A lot of the stuff he is saying sounds like he is telling the community exactly what they want to hear about Blizzard, which may or may not be true.
Not saying people shouldn't listen to him, but remember that he may have other motivations to the AMA than just telling people about his time at Blizzard. It's a she and the name 'BlizzardThrowaway' doesn't say anything of her intent. The term throwaway on reddit refers to using an account that isn't your main, essentially it's identical to the term 'smurfing' in Starcraft/Dota etc. She could definitely be full of shit, spiteful, or whatever but most of her responses were pretty fair and she even goes on to say Blizzard is a great place to work and that she might not get back into the gaming field because she knows she will never find a place as great as Blizzard.
Some of her responses are reasonable and I have no doubt that she is being truthful about some things. I am only pointing out that anyone should be suspicious of claims made by a fired employee about a previous employer. There is no way the point of view would be objective or provide a complete view of the company. There was a reason sh was let go, which we don't have all the facts on.
Second, if she was in QA, it isn't likely that she was involved with any of the big decisions made by Blizzard or knows the exact reasoning behind them. She may have some information, but a lot of the things she has are just way to close to exactly what the community wants to think about Blizzard. There may be some truth to it, but I personally got the feeling she was telling people what they wanted to hear.
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On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy.
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On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions.
Any expert in any field will always look down on community feedback and suggestions by people not involved in their industry. Not saying that it's a good thing to do, but it happens in all industries because many things the community want or suggest are just borderline retarded.
I'll give an example from my own field of work. At my last job people kept on ranting about wanting less traffic congestion, more parking spaces AND more room for children to play. Those things do NOT go along.
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On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Agreed, I really don't think anyone should take what he wrote to heart.
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His AMA was actually quite entertaining...Lot's of good insight into the inner workings of Blizzard and how they treat their employees.
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On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy.
This is so true. My firm does not let us read new articles about us at work either, because the comments are soul crushing and terrible. I have no doubt that Blizzard tells their programmers and non-community oriented employees to limit their time of the forums, just for their own mental well-being
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On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy.
There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue.
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Modifications by users as a spin-off or a seperate game? Ha! Troll.
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On June 07 2013 00:08 Ysellian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. Any expert in any field will always look down on community feedback and suggestions by people not involved in their industry. Not saying that it's a good thing to do, but it happens in all industries because many things the community want or suggest are just borderline retarded. I'll give an example from my own field of work. At my last job people kept on ranting about wanting less traffic congestion, more parking spaces AND more room for children to play. Those things do NOT go along.
Get this stuff out of your head.Game devs in other successfull game such as lol and world of tanks are constantly communicating with the people on the general discussion forum,receiving input and community suggestion.Yes they do receive a lot of trashtalk but its part of the job. The idea of close interraction with community is vital to any gaming company especially in the field of esports.We are not living in 1998 anymore when blizzard had a monopoly.Also we are resonable individuals with many specific concerns.If they wanted to they can communicate with us in a humane language.
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lol with all the due respect to the QA job, a "QA" guy isn't exactly always the most reliable source every company has hundreds of QA guys and they are not involved at all in the developing process, they simply test stuff out. so many of these answers should be taken with a grain of salt
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Agree with others here. Sounds like just a guy who is no longer employed there and bitter about it.
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On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. "Riot" don't. "Valve" don't. Their devs are most likely, in general, far removed from the community forums. There will be a community management team that can and will post on the forums and pass on anything that comes in. I would be surprised if, largely, any suggestion that comes from the forum is used. I'm largely talking about balance here. User interface changes, etc, there's usually more leeway with, but even then it's only really implemented if there's huge call for it. It's not about saying you're better than your customers, it's more saying that you can't listen to everything your customers say, not least because generally a group will not be able to agree on a solution. Hence balance changes being really considered by the games played rather than what's being said.
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On June 07 2013 00:19 Gowerly wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. "Riot" don't. "Valve" don't. Their devs are most likely, in general, far removed from the community forums. There will be a community management team that can and will post on the forums and pass on anything that comes in. I would be surprised if, largely, any suggestion that comes from the forum is used. I'm largely talking about balance here. User interface changes, etc, there's usually more leeway with, but even then it's only really implemented if there's huge call for it. It's not about saying you're better than your customers, it's more saying that you can't listen to everything your customers say, not least because generally a group will not be able to agree on a solution. Hence balance changes being really considered by the games played rather than what's being said.
Riot does post a lot of their forums, but they generally ignore a lot of the communities dumbest requests. The freak out about them adjusting the prices for their skins was one of the dumbest threads I have ever read in my life. Riot came out and pointed out that a single reasonably complex skin costs around 20K to make and the community responded by calling Riot liars.
Valve doesn't talk to anyone, ever. I never see anything from them at all beyond press releases. They respond to so little, but gain unlimited love because of steam and cheap games. It easy to develop games when you make money off of selling other peoples games and use the profits to fund your own.
The community should be taken with a grain of salt, just like the AMA.
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Working 12-14 hours per day, who knew? I knew, no surprise Blizzard treat theirs employes as slaves.
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On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue.
That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run.
Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong.
Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break.
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On June 07 2013 00:14 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:08 Ysellian wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. Any expert in any field will always look down on community feedback and suggestions by people not involved in their industry. Not saying that it's a good thing to do, but it happens in all industries because many things the community want or suggest are just borderline retarded. I'll give an example from my own field of work. At my last job people kept on ranting about wanting less traffic congestion, more parking spaces AND more room for children to play. Those things do NOT go along. Get this stuff out of your head.Game devs in other successfull game such as lol and world of tanks are constantly communicating with the people on the general discussion forum,receiving input and community suggestion.Yes they do receive a lot of trashtalk but its part of the job. The idea of close interraction with community is vital to any gaming company especially in the field of esports.We are not living in 1998 anymore when blizzard had a monopoly.Also we are resonable individuals with many specific concerns.If they wanted to they can communicate with us in a humane language.
Valve don't communicate (Seriously Half Life 2: Episode 3 ever happening Gabe?) and it's worked out for them just fine. Close interaction with the community is hardly necessary, you talk to figure heads or have people gather information to give you a general consensus of what the community wants, but someone who has been in the industry as long as Dustin for example will still know his shit better than most people.
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On June 07 2013 00:29 Trumpstyle wrote: Working 12-14 hours per day, who knew? I knew, no surprise Blizzard treat there employes as slaves. That is standard in the video game industry, its called crunch. They are there because they care about the game and want to make it better. If you disapprove of people working 14 hour days, stop buying video games. All of them.
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Where's that twitch.tv "salt" emoticon when you need it.
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On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break.
i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining
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Not to sound like a huge fanboy but this dude does sound quite bitter, even condescending towards the Blizzard devs. Considering that and his low position I'd take everything he says with a grain of salt.
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Having worked in the industry, when you're in crunch time at the end you basically work 2-4 weeks and put in 12 hour days, 7 days a week. This is par for the course and has been the way game dev has worked for decades. Nothing new.
Second, QA people are a dime a dozen, and have never gotten along with devs and vice versa. Devs do the heavy lifting, QA tells them where they fucked up. The problem stems from Devs hating being told they did something wrong and QA thinking they have more control over development than they actually do. Again, par for the course, nothing new.
He's basically describing what happens at every game company ever, but complaining about it as if it's something bad. It's just what it is. You either deal with that or get a different job. It's not like QA staff is difficult to find.
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On June 07 2013 00:41 vesicular wrote: Having worked in the industry, when you're in crunch time at the end you basically work 2-4 weeks and put in 12 hour days, 7 days a week. This is par for the course and has been the way game dev has worked for decades. Nothing new.
Second, QA people are a dime a dozen, and have never gotten along with devs and vice versa. Devs do the heavy lifting, QA tells them where they fucked up. The problem stems from Devs hating being told they did something wrong and QA thinking they have more control over development than they actually do. Again, par for the course, nothing new.
He's basically describing what happens at every game company ever, but complaining about it as if it's something bad. It's just what it is. You either deal with that or get a different job. It's not like QA staff is difficult to find.
This, also I'd take every comment about a former employer from someone who got fired with a grain of salt in general.
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On June 07 2013 00:27 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:19 Gowerly wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. "Riot" don't. "Valve" don't. Their devs are most likely, in general, far removed from the community forums. There will be a community management team that can and will post on the forums and pass on anything that comes in. I would be surprised if, largely, any suggestion that comes from the forum is used. I'm largely talking about balance here. User interface changes, etc, there's usually more leeway with, but even then it's only really implemented if there's huge call for it. It's not about saying you're better than your customers, it's more saying that you can't listen to everything your customers say, not least because generally a group will not be able to agree on a solution. Hence balance changes being really considered by the games played rather than what's being said. Riot does post a lot of their forums, but they generally ignore a lot of the communities dumbest requests. The freak out about them adjusting the prices for their skins was one of the dumbest threads I have ever read in my life. Riot came out and pointed out that a single reasonably complex skin costs around 20K to make and the community responded by calling Riot liars. Valve doesn't talk to anyone, ever. I never see anything from them at all beyond press releases. They respond to so little, but gain unlimited love because of steam and cheap games. It easy to develop games when you make money off of selling other peoples games and use the profits to fund your own. The community should be taken with a grain of salt, just like the AMA.
I have seen this threa don the riot euw forum
http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1225244
Basicly there is a huge shitstorm going on on the euw forums regarding the server statuses being bad and other regions such as na and kr getting priviledged redpost and mor eperks.I saw some very high end people there like technical directors and stuff like that
Also posts such as these
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=38402547#38402547 http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=36216732#36216732
where a couple of actual game devs(it says in red theyare game devs) at least give some explanations to the community are a bit better than nothing.Not to bash blizzard or anything but it would be cool if some game devs would come to us about the game design in general and about their ideas
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On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining
Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy.
And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something.
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On June 07 2013 00:48 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:27 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:19 Gowerly wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. "Riot" don't. "Valve" don't. Their devs are most likely, in general, far removed from the community forums. There will be a community management team that can and will post on the forums and pass on anything that comes in. I would be surprised if, largely, any suggestion that comes from the forum is used. I'm largely talking about balance here. User interface changes, etc, there's usually more leeway with, but even then it's only really implemented if there's huge call for it. It's not about saying you're better than your customers, it's more saying that you can't listen to everything your customers say, not least because generally a group will not be able to agree on a solution. Hence balance changes being really considered by the games played rather than what's being said. Riot does post a lot of their forums, but they generally ignore a lot of the communities dumbest requests. The freak out about them adjusting the prices for their skins was one of the dumbest threads I have ever read in my life. Riot came out and pointed out that a single reasonably complex skin costs around 20K to make and the community responded by calling Riot liars. Valve doesn't talk to anyone, ever. I never see anything from them at all beyond press releases. They respond to so little, but gain unlimited love because of steam and cheap games. It easy to develop games when you make money off of selling other peoples games and use the profits to fund your own. The community should be taken with a grain of salt, just like the AMA. I have seen this threa don the riot euw forum http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1225244Basicly there is a huge shitstorm going on on the euw forums regarding the server statuses being bad and other regions such as na and kr getting priviledged redpost and mor eperks.I saw some very high end people there like technical directors and stuff like that Also posts such as these http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=38402547#38402547http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=36216732#36216732where a couple of actual game devs(it says in red theyare game devs) at least give some explanations to the community are a bit better than nothing.Not to bash blizzard or anything but it would be cool if some game devs would come to us about the game design in general and about their ideas To quote Tseric:
... Posting impassionately, they say you don't care. Posting nothing, they say you ignore. Posting with passion, you incite trolls. Posting fluff, you say nonsense. Post with what facts you have, they whittle down with rationale. There is no win. ... The devs need to stay away from the community discussion in order to keep their sanity.
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I find it hilarious how people claim that QA "simply tests the product". Ever heard of product conforming to the requirements? Be it functional or non functional? How can one test if the product conforms to the specification if he has no idea about it? Run it with end-user, perhaps he will accept it after 1 mln iterations? Waste hours of time and money to get it conformant?
On topic, I was actually curious how the work at Blizzard looks like, and thanks to that post I have at least slight idea.
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*Reads AMA, thinks of Queen patch*
It's all starting to make sense!
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On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something.
I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free.
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Enjoyed this shit, contrary to most people in this thread it looks like. I didn't take all the "X people are douchebags" too seriously, it was interesting mostly for the Titan stuff and all that.
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"I didn't take it as seriously as other people did just because video games were never a passion of mine, but it was one of the best places to work."
Hrmm, not sure I care an awful lot about this guy's opinion after reading that little gem of a comment off his reddit Q & A
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I am missing a bit of an "intro" in the OP to give me a hint on what the quoted comments are about ...
On June 06 2013 23:46 Plansix wrote: Ok, people need to take this all with a huge grain of salt. First off, the guys name is "BlizzardThrowaway", so that give you a good idea of his intent. The guy was let go from Blizzard, worked in QA, tech support and other areas of the company. Quality assurance, or testing, is the lowest level of game development. People who work there are not involved with the primary decisions as to how games are made and would not have access to a lot of areas of the company. They may hear stuff, but they are not part of the meetings or involved with the decision making itself, so his claims "that Blizzard did this thing for this reason" are likely his own personal opinion.
The guy is clearly grumpy he got let go and doesn't care if he gets rehired at another company. A lot of the stuff he is saying sounds like he is telling the community exactly what they want to hear about Blizzard, which may or may not be true.
Not saying people shouldn't listen to him, but remember that he may have other motivations to the AMA than just telling people about his time at Blizzard. Maybe because of NOT working directly at the core he can see problems easier and any constructive criticism gets ignored / overruled by the "big guns"? That has been my feeling since I came to the conclusion that the game has HUGE problems which are not centered around one or two units but rather about the general unit handling and production (which is considered as "done" or "perfect" and thus nothing will be changed there).
On June 07 2013 00:10 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. This is so true. My firm does not let us read new articles about us at work either, because the comments are soul crushing and terrible. I have no doubt that Blizzard tells their programmers and non-community oriented employees to limit their time of the forums, just for their own mental well-being Now that is a stupid way of going about business. They need a SPECIALIST who stalks the forum for ideas and criticism ... someone not connected to the design process so he is as objective as possible. If he comes across a gem in the sea of drivel he simply notifies his superiors and they need to be objective enough to judge the post / thread / idea. This way you still have the connection to the fans while not burdening your devs with going through the massive amount of written nonsense to find something good.
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This would be like a lowly lab technician attacking the senior scientists and executives for perceived grievances. Some complaints may be mildly accurate but there is no way this individual has a comprehensive and fair understanding of behind-the-scenes at Blizzard. He only has his lowly perspective which more likely than not misses a lot.
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People saying it's a bitter person ranting about losing his/her job have not read the AMA. These answers were directed toward the sc2 department specifically. There were other answers regarding Mike Morhaime and the WoW department and they were positive.
Also, his/her response to the question, "Are you at all bitter about being laid off?" "Bittersweet, really. It was shitty that it happened, but it also allowed me to do some things I wouldn't have been able to if I had still been working there. I miss working there at times, but I had a good run."
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On June 07 2013 00:33 Ysellian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:14 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:08 Ysellian wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. Any expert in any field will always look down on community feedback and suggestions by people not involved in their industry. Not saying that it's a good thing to do, but it happens in all industries because many things the community want or suggest are just borderline retarded. I'll give an example from my own field of work. At my last job people kept on ranting about wanting less traffic congestion, more parking spaces AND more room for children to play. Those things do NOT go along. Get this stuff out of your head.Game devs in other successfull game such as lol and world of tanks are constantly communicating with the people on the general discussion forum,receiving input and community suggestion.Yes they do receive a lot of trashtalk but its part of the job. The idea of close interraction with community is vital to any gaming company especially in the field of esports.We are not living in 1998 anymore when blizzard had a monopoly.Also we are resonable individuals with many specific concerns.If they wanted to they can communicate with us in a humane language. Valve don't communicate (Seriously Half Life 2: Episode 3 ever happening Gabe?) and it's worked out for them just fine. Close interaction with the community is hardly necessary, you talk to figure heads or have people gather information to give you a general consensus of what the community wants, but someone who has been in the industry as long as Dustin for example will still know his shit better than most people.
Dustin Browder may have been in the industry a long time, but really which of the games he's worked on have been any good? Red Alert 2? Battle for Middle Earth? Eh... very questionable. Just because you've been in the industry a long time doesn't mean you know it all or that suggestions are useless. And Valve at least puts on the impression that community concerns are at least looked into. Valve games and their system is constantly patched with changes to enhance the community. Let's be honest, Valve and Steam have definitely had problems in the past but they are clearly interested in community input and interaction. With Blizzard we get Bnet 2.0 a long with a whole slew of steps backwards compared to the past.
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On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free.
I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing:
"Don't read the comments"
Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet.
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blizzard hires diamond players to assist the sc2 team -> huge uproar because blizzard listens to a diamond guy
blizzard doesn't listen to a guy who doesn't even like computer games -> uproar because blizzard didnt listen
:'(
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On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet.
It's not THAT bad. Generally speaking, if something is loved by the majority then you don't get a flood of hurtful comments on your forums. For instance, the LoL forums seem to be far more positive than negative.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina72 Posts
Pretty entertaining. The sc2 dev portrayal matches up quite nicely with the state of the game.
Not sure why some nerds here shove the notion of bitterness though.. The person seems quite reasonable and brings up positive and negative stuff, but i guess some people are used to buying the idyllic employee talk.
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this very much pisses me off about how right i was that many of the star2 devs had their heads up their asses.
maybe theyll get their shit together, i sure hope so for the esports sake
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Imo, the experience that he/she wrote happens in a lot of companies. Overall, the tone seems like he/she enjoyed the time at Blizz, even if he/she is at the "lower" ranks.
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On June 07 2013 01:04 Rabiator wrote:I am missing a bit of an "intro" in the OP to give me a hint on what the quoted comments are about ... Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:46 Plansix wrote: Ok, people need to take this all with a huge grain of salt. First off, the guys name is "BlizzardThrowaway", so that give you a good idea of his intent. The guy was let go from Blizzard, worked in QA, tech support and other areas of the company. Quality assurance, or testing, is the lowest level of game development. People who work there are not involved with the primary decisions as to how games are made and would not have access to a lot of areas of the company. They may hear stuff, but they are not part of the meetings or involved with the decision making itself, so his claims "that Blizzard did this thing for this reason" are likely his own personal opinion.
The guy is clearly grumpy he got let go and doesn't care if he gets rehired at another company. A lot of the stuff he is saying sounds like he is telling the community exactly what they want to hear about Blizzard, which may or may not be true.
Not saying people shouldn't listen to him, but remember that he may have other motivations to the AMA than just telling people about his time at Blizzard. Maybe because of NOT working directly at the core he can see problems easier and any constructive criticism gets ignored / overruled by the "big guns"? That has been my feeling since I came to the conclusion that the game has HUGE problems which are not centered around one or two units but rather about the general unit handling and production (which is considered as "done" or "perfect" and thus nothing will be changed there). Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:10 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. This is so true. My firm does not let us read new articles about us at work either, because the comments are soul crushing and terrible. I have no doubt that Blizzard tells their programmers and non-community oriented employees to limit their time of the forums, just for their own mental well-being Now that is a stupid way of going about business. They need a SPECIALIST who stalks the forum for ideas and criticism ... someone not connected to the design process so he is as objective as possible. If he comes across a gem in the sea of drivel he simply notifies his superiors and they need to be objective enough to judge the post / thread / idea. This way you still have the connection to the fans while not burdening your devs with going through the massive amount of written nonsense to find something good.
Rabiator, you don't know anything about my firm and we are very successful. I am a paralegal and I am told not to read articles about my firm because it is a waste of my time. Of course someone else reads them, but not the support staff or general counsels. Why? Because they are filled with incorrect information that does nothing but detract from our work flow. Of course I read them at some point, but on my own time.
As for the other stuff, you are entitled to your opinion. I follow a lot of games and development of them and I have a different opinion. I don't think this person was involved with many of the decisions that they reference, or development of SC2, because someone in QA wouldn't be. That and the fact that she also states that she "was not passionate about video games" and was terminated leads me to think she didn't really enjoy the work. I take it all with a huge grain of salt.
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On June 07 2013 01:14 Batcha wrote: Pretty entertaining. The sc2 dev portrayal matches up quite nicely with the state of the game.
Not sure why some nerds here shove the notion of bitterness though.. The person seems quite reasonable and brings up positive and negative stuff, but i guess some people are used to buying the idyllic employee talk.
And what's the state of the game exactly? Your race isn't doing well enough for you?
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TLADT24917 Posts
A couple of interesting things that I found and to address some of what was mentioned in this thread: + Show Spoiler + #1: [–]argole 6 points 11 hours ago Are you at all bitter about being laid off?
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 17 points 9 hours ago Bittersweet, really. It was shitty that it happened, but it also allowed me to do some things I wouldn't have been able to if I had still been working there. I miss working there at times, but I had a good run.
#2: [–]soooeasyjoe 464 points 10 hours ago May I hear one of the highly revered game master jokes?
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 1839 points 10 hours ago How many GM's does it take to change a light bulb? None, it's working as intended.
#3: [–]ozagon 1 point 9 hours ago How well, or badly, do devs in big-name gaming companies really get paid. What about unpaid overtime and conditions/benefits in general. Based on all of this, would you recommend the gaming industry to devs currently in school/training?
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 5 points 9 hours ago If you can get in with a decent company, you should make decent money. Devs at Blizzard get paid a lot. The Cinematics team is on par salary wise with movie studios.
#4: [–]TronSpecial 1 point 9 hours ago Thanks for doing this Ama. I dropped out of college because of WoW. Will Blizzard help me pay my student loans? What was the Blizzard's reaction to South Parks WoW episode?
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 3 points 8 hours ago Blizzard actually worked with the South Park creators for that episode.
#5: [–]MarcoSamson 132 points 12 hours ago I recall chatting with the "glitter throwing Gnome" GM! And IIRC, I think I gave them a perfect score everywhere on the little survey that they prompted us to fill in after each intervention.
Thanks for the answer, and thanks for doing this AMA!
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 376 points 11 hours ago No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system.
Good AMA! Wish she answered more questions, definitely chose what to answer lol
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On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet.
That's the worst mind set you can possibly have as someone whose career is built off of the public's perception and reception. As others have mentioned, Riot does a good job of at least reading the comments. They don't need to listen to any of them, but at least give the impression that you care in some way, shape or form. Simply ignoring your audience while saying "haters gonna hate" is going to get them nowhere except behind the companies like Riot which at least give the impression of valuing customer opinions.
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On June 07 2013 01:14 Batcha wrote: Pretty entertaining. The sc2 dev portrayal matches up quite nicely with the state of the game.
Not sure why some nerds here shove the notion of bitterness though.. The person seems quite reasonable and brings up positive and negative stuff, but i guess some people are used to buying the idyllic employee talk.
He did just lose his job though, surely he is a little bitter with what went down right?
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On June 07 2013 00:09 Gorlin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Agreed, I really don't think anyone should take what he wrote to heart. Unfortunately I agree as well. I wish there was some kind of happy medium between the fluffy AMA with the SC devs and this clearly unhappy (former) employee.
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TLADT24917 Posts
On June 07 2013 01:19 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:14 Batcha wrote: Pretty entertaining. The sc2 dev portrayal matches up quite nicely with the state of the game.
Not sure why some nerds here shove the notion of bitterness though.. The person seems quite reasonable and brings up positive and negative stuff, but i guess some people are used to buying the idyllic employee talk.
He did just lose his job though, surely he is a little bitter with what went down right?
Should answer your question: [–]argole 6 points 11 hours ago Are you at all bitter about being laid off?
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 17 points 9 hours ago Bittersweet, really. It was shitty that it happened, but it also allowed me to do some things I wouldn't have been able to if I had still been working there. I miss working there at times, but I had a good run.
Ya, it's from her side but all we have
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On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. Other people have made this argument before, but I've still not heard one realistic/good suggestion to monetize a f2p SC2 that did not follow the LoL-model. As you've mentioned, the Spawning was a good step in getting new players to try the game, but ultimately they're still going to have to pay for something for Blizzard to make any money. . A lot of this is due to how Starcraft is marketed/perceived by many people (even newcomers) on the internet. The campaign/custom maps aren't what people see/think of when you look up Starcraft on youtube etc, because no matter how we try to guise it well all know SC is more about the competitive aspect.
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Well obviously this person has every right to be annoyed at Blizzard if they've been laid off. It does sound like there is truth to some if not all of those answers though.
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On June 07 2013 01:20 Mortal wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 00:09 Gorlin wrote:On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Agreed, I really don't think anyone should take what he wrote to heart. Unfortunately I agree as well. I wish there was some kind of happy medium between the fluffy AMA with the SC devs and this clearly unhappy (former) employee.
Not to mention, Blizzard is a huge company. There will be dicks, not everyone in the world is an incredibly charming charismatic individual you know. >.>
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The guy is mostly very positive, only when he talks about SC2 dev, he is negative.
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How brave of him to insult people from behind a throwaway account.
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On June 07 2013 01:27 Grumbels wrote: How brave of him to insult people from behind a throwaway account.
If he gave his identity then they would be removing any chance of a job in the industry in future.
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On June 07 2013 01:23 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:20 Mortal wrote:On June 07 2013 00:09 Gorlin wrote:On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Agreed, I really don't think anyone should take what he wrote to heart. Unfortunately I agree as well. I wish there was some kind of happy medium between the fluffy AMA with the SC devs and this clearly unhappy (former) employee. Not to mention, Blizzard is a huge company. There will be dicks, not everyone in the world is an incredibly charming charismatic individual you know. >.> That's actually a great point. A friend of mine worked as something just above an intern and said that the majority of his associates were a lot like the BM kids we know about on ladder (very abraisive, obtuse), while a lot of the higher ups were generally more understanding and soft-spoken (not saying the really high ups, just the ones with a stable position).
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On June 07 2013 01:29 Nekovivie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:27 Grumbels wrote: How brave of him to insult people from behind a throwaway account. If he gave his identity then they would be removing any chance of a job in the industry in future.
The weird part is s/he said s/he was never passionate about gaming in the first place, kinda odd to land a job at Blizzard with that in mind. *shrugs*
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As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash.
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On June 07 2013 01:19 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. That's the worst mind set you can possibly have as someone whose career is built off of the public's perception and reception. As others have mentioned, Riot does a good job of at least reading the comments. They don't need to listen to any of them, but at least give the impression that you care in some way, shape or form. Simply ignoring your audience while saying "haters gonna hate" is going to get them nowhere except behind the companies like Riot which at least give the impression of valuing customer opinions.
Yes, and Riot also calls troll and toxic players dumb to their face through the power of math and look at the person's bad history. Riot does an good job and I am sure Blizzard reads the forums, but they don't respond to everything. But every employee doesn't read them. It the difference between someone's agent reading all the fan mail and the star reading all the fan mail. One is better because it provides a filter.
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On June 07 2013 01:08 SupLilSon wrote: Dustin Browder may have been in the industry a long time, but really which of the games he's worked on have been any good? Red Alert 2? Battle for Middle Earth? Eh... very questionable. Just because you've been in the industry a long time doesn't mean you know it all or that suggestions are useless. And Valve at least puts on the impression that community concerns are at least looked into. Valve games and their system is constantly patched with changes to enhance the community. Let's be honest, Valve and Steam have definitely had problems in the past but they are clearly interested in community input and interaction. With Blizzard we get Bnet 2.0 a long with a whole slew of steps backwards compared to the past.
Red Alert 2, Battle for Middle earth and C&C Generals are all seen as good games by many people, so I'm not really sure what you are on about. Regarding Valve, Valve have done the exact same thing Blizzard are doing now. Valve strengthens my argument that the company knew what they were doing, but needed the time to make it all happen.
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On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet.
I've been lurking on these forums for a couple of years.The commuity isn't that bad.There are some exagerrations but they get banned rather quickly by the mods.Also there does not need to be necessarly direct interraction.They could have like community managers who observe the forums and if a topic gets a lot of attention it can inform the dev teams about it. The point that i am trying to make is that there are ways for the community and blizzard to closely interract without insults and trashtalk and it can work in the benefit of both.After all we want a good game and they want to take our money .
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Now we know why there are so many shitty maps in the pool! I feel such a huge relief, I can't describe it. This had been bothering me for ages.
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Interesting read, what he is saying basically sums up real life in any job to be honest. Not every person is bad, but as you rise up the "ranks" in any company the "Dick" factor grows more prominent as I know this from personal experience.
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A QA employee basically doesn't know anything about what's really going on. Nice read though.
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On June 07 2013 01:39 mechengineer123 wrote: A QA employee basically doesn't know anything about what's really going on. Nice read though.
Yeah at first I thought it was a former developer then I read he was a GM and QA. So I pretty quickly lost interest. Those are pretty much the lowest positions you can get.
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She doesn't sound bitter at all actually.
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99.9% of all community suggestions are absolutely dismal and unbalanacable crap. That includes other "models" of those games and "revamps".
Those community suggestions which do get taken on (the paladin attack power scaling system from WoW, for example, originally suggested two years before implementation and implemented more or less as was described) tend to be backed up by a huge quantity of mathematics and based on existing mechanics.
Not even pros really have a grasp of what is going on. The bulk of the mathematics has been done by much lower ranked members of the community.
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On June 07 2013 01:19 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. That's the worst mind set you can possibly have as someone whose career is built off of the public's perception and reception. As others have mentioned, Riot does a good job of at least reading the comments. They don't need to listen to any of them, but at least give the impression that you care in some way, shape or form. Simply ignoring your audience while saying "haters gonna hate" is going to get them nowhere except behind the companies like Riot which at least give the impression of valuing customer opinions. They pay other people to read it who report the most useful criticism. Paying developers to read forums is expensive.
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On June 07 2013 01:42 KingAce wrote: She doesn't sound bitter at all actually.
She doesn't sound bitter but it is still mostly just office gossip. Bitter or not she clearly doesn't like developers, but honestly I'm not sure why that matters all that much. Just typical stuff that occurs in all organizations.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina72 Posts
On June 07 2013 01:19 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:14 Batcha wrote: Pretty entertaining. The sc2 dev portrayal matches up quite nicely with the state of the game.
Not sure why some nerds here shove the notion of bitterness though.. The person seems quite reasonable and brings up positive and negative stuff, but i guess some people are used to buying the idyllic employee talk.
He did just lose his job though, surely he is a little bitter with what went down right?
He isn't happy for sure, no one would be.. but don't you think using "bitter" is a tad bit extreme? Apologies for dwelling into semantics, i just never happen to use "little bitter".
Overall i got a pretty normal vibe out of it, giving praise where praise is due and criticizing stuff he thought was wrong. You could say the revealing of dirt is motivated by the lay off, which is just common human behavior but looking at the answers as a whole, i fail to see how it might question the truth behind claims (at least in this concrete example). Unless you really believe everything is great at Blizzard and that all of the employees are great guys...
@ZenithM No, nothing to do with balance. Just with my disappointment with general design direction and HOTS shortcomings.
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On June 07 2013 01:22 Jojo131 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. Other people have made this argument before, but I've still not heard one realistic/good suggestion to monetize a f2p SC2 that did not follow the LoL-model. As you've mentioned, the Spawning was a good step in getting new players to try the game, but ultimately they're still going to have to pay for something for Blizzard to make any money. . A lot of this is due to how Starcraft is marketed/perceived by many people (even newcomers) on the internet. The campaign/custom maps aren't what people see/think of when you look up Starcraft on youtube etc, because no matter how we try to guise it well all know SC is more about the competitive aspect.
I do not advocate a f2p starcraft2.The campaign should remain pay to play(at least until a f2p company manages ot make money out of that too).The only thing that should remain f2p probably is the arcade(which thanck god is) and maybe the ladder so we can even the odds with the mobas(if the ladder becomes f2p basicly sc2 offers far more features for free than a f2p moba).In terms of how to monetize i dunno.Maybe they could apply the dragonage model where you could unlock certain missions for a cost.or the lol ip boost model to climb the rank higher.Or maybe a far more immense campaing.It could be something revolutionary,blizzard probably has people to think about those things.If I knew I would probably start my own gaming company and become a millionaire.Also I am a firm believer that the lol skin model can be implemented in sc2 despite what that dev said in that recent interview.Big units such as the ultralisk,collosus,tanks,overlords etc do have the possibility of customization due to their big size.I would love to see different species of ultralist or maybe different design of collosus.
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On June 07 2013 01:36 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. I've been lurking on these forums for a couple of years.The commuity isn't that bad.There are some exagerrations but they get banned rather quickly by the mods.Also there does not need to be necessarly direct interraction.They could have like community managers who observe the forums and if a topic gets a lot of attention it can inform the dev teams about it. The point that i am trying to make is that there are ways for the community and blizzard to closely interract without insults and trashtalk and it can work in the benefit of both.After all we want a good game and they want to take our money .
That is fine, but I think Blizzard has a problem that the volume of the community is at 1000% and it is impossible for them to tell who to listen too. They have done a lot of stuff recently that involved the community, including the launch of HotS, testing out features the community built. Remember when they bought a cake for Stephano when Hots launched? That was pretty great.
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On June 07 2013 01:49 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:36 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. I've been lurking on these forums for a couple of years.The commuity isn't that bad.There are some exagerrations but they get banned rather quickly by the mods.Also there does not need to be necessarly direct interraction.They could have like community managers who observe the forums and if a topic gets a lot of attention it can inform the dev teams about it. The point that i am trying to make is that there are ways for the community and blizzard to closely interract without insults and trashtalk and it can work in the benefit of both.After all we want a good game and they want to take our money . That is fine, but I think Blizzard has a problem that the volume of the community is at 1000% and it is impossible for them to tell who to listen too. They have done a lot of stuff recently that involved the community, including the launch of HotS, testing out features the community built. Remember when they bought a cake for Stephano when Hots launched? That was pretty great.
This probably won't garner many agreements but sometimes you just have to do what you think is best for your own creation, forget all the opinions from fans or haters. Make what you want to make, not what you think other people want.
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I work in QA and I'm pretty sure no dev in a big company is gonna give a rat's ass about what suggestions somebody from QA or CS has. So it's not just Blizzard, it seems to be pretty much the standard as far as I can tell. Working for the same company at this level doesn't give you the slightest advantage over a normal random member of the community.
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SC2 could go f2p if they added in a bunch of skins and things like that for purchase and only gave away the full MP client. Keep the campaign purchasable.
Though at that point they'd really need to give a way to turn off skins for your opponent
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From the snippets the person sounds bitter as f*ck, (edit: but the more you look through it its not really the case.)
I have a couple of friends who work at Blizzard and have nothing but great things to say about their experience and the company as a whole.
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On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash.
This seems reasonable.
When I first read that she was a Game Master, I thought it was a Blizzard in-house title for manager/lead programmer/etc. Reading on, I figured out that it was something low related to WoW. So, I wouldn't expect people to always listen to her suggestions. To be honest though, I'm not familiar with how the industry treats QA. Are they just there to find bugs, or are they supposed to comment on the play experience?
Also, her experiences seem to be centered completely around WoW. Most of her answers are related to it. So, I'm guessing the SC2 dev's seem like dicks to her, because she really doesn't know too much about SC.
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On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash.
tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail.
New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code.
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On June 07 2013 02:06 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail. New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code.
I never said QA isn't valuable. I'm aware of the purpose the QA team provides to the team. It just seems almost all I've ever dealt with have this idea that I need to keep them completely in the loop about everything with the bug.
And I'd argue the D3 AH bug was more a problem of large-scale game development having fairly poor unit testing. That bug should have one that was caught automated not via human intervention.
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On June 07 2013 02:06 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail. New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code.
QA has nothing to do with the auction house and would have no ability to change if it was in the game or not. They test bugs and play ability, not features. They are not focus testing. And Blizzard has admited that the auction house was not a good addition to the game at the last GDC. They also said that it focused tested really well and the community supported it when they took polls about putting something like it in. It was only after they put it in the released game did they start getting feed back on the negative impact it had on the game.
The D3 Auction house is an example of something that looked good on paper and sounded good, but did not work once it was released into the wild.
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On June 06 2013 23:30 Partha wrote: Sounds about right. The SC2 developers have refused to comment on fundamental issues that hinder the game (the fact that ALL map balance must take into account one fucking spell: Forcefield), The fact that expanding isn't more of a priority thus creating pockets of skirmishes throughout the map and the list goes on.
I agree with this statement.
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On June 07 2013 02:17 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 02:06 freetgy wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail. New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code. QA has nothing to do with the auction house and would have no ability to change if it was in the game or not. They test bugs and play ability, not features. They are not focus testing. And Blizzard has admited that the auction house was not a good addition to the game at the last GDC. They also said that it focused tested really well and the community supported it when they took polls about putting something like it in. It was only after they put it in the released game did they start getting feed back on the negative impact it had on the game. The D3 Auction house is an example of something that looked good on paper and sounded good, but did not work once it was released into the wild.
I think he was talking about the dupe bug with the latest patch to Diablo 3 which was a result of an integer overflow
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On June 07 2013 02:20 Tenks wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 02:17 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 02:06 freetgy wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail. New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code. QA has nothing to do with the auction house and would have no ability to change if it was in the game or not. They test bugs and play ability, not features. They are not focus testing. And Blizzard has admited that the auction house was not a good addition to the game at the last GDC. They also said that it focused tested really well and the community supported it when they took polls about putting something like it in. It was only after they put it in the released game did they start getting feed back on the negative impact it had on the game. The D3 Auction house is an example of something that looked good on paper and sounded good, but did not work once it was released into the wild. I think he was talking about the dupe bug with the latest patch to Diablo 3 which was a result of an integer overflow That makes way more sense. I didn't follow the bug, but it I was surprised that people didn't find one earlier in the game's life. Dupe bugs are almost standard in any loot driven game.
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His description of the SC2 top dogs seems spot on. Now i remember a Dustin B. interview saying how good of a change the queen buff was, their best change i think he said lol
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On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah honestly I'm not even interested in reading any more. This is clearly just a disgruntled ex-employee slinging mud at his ex-employer.
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On June 07 2013 02:41 Sapphire.lux wrote: His description of the SC2 top dogs seems spot on. Now i remember a Dustin B. interview saying how good of a change the queen buff was, their best change i think he said lol
It was a GREAT change if you play Zerg
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On June 07 2013 02:33 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 02:20 Tenks wrote:On June 07 2013 02:17 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 02:06 freetgy wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. tbh honest, QA is a very important part of software developement. => Simple example, D3 Auction house fail. New functionalities are cool, however the core product should be as bug free as possible first. Because the more features you implement the more interdependencies you get within the source code. QA has nothing to do with the auction house and would have no ability to change if it was in the game or not. They test bugs and play ability, not features. They are not focus testing. And Blizzard has admited that the auction house was not a good addition to the game at the last GDC. They also said that it focused tested really well and the community supported it when they took polls about putting something like it in. It was only after they put it in the released game did they start getting feed back on the negative impact it had on the game. The D3 Auction house is an example of something that looked good on paper and sounded good, but did not work once it was released into the wild. I think he was talking about the dupe bug with the latest patch to Diablo 3 which was a result of an integer overflow That makes way more sense. I didn't follow the bug, but it I was surprised that people didn't find one earlier in the game's life. Dupe bugs are almost standard in any loot driven game.
It wasn't found before because it wasn't possible previously. You could never put an amount of gold on the RMAH that was over the limit of an unsigned integer. In that patch they increased the limit of gold you could put onto the RMAH past that point. So basically the bug was they'd deduct MAX_UINT from your character's gold but put the actual amount you listed on the RMAH. You then cancel the auction and it returns the actual amount. So it deducted around 4billion gold from your character but you put up 10billion. So lets say you had 10billion gold to start with. 10b - 4b (amount deucted) + 10b (refund from RMAH) = 16b gold now.
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On June 07 2013 00:09 Gorlin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Agreed, I really don't think anyone should take what he wrote to heart. Yeah, though I feel like some truth is shining through this, like the part about changes not happening and failures to work as a team. That sounds like it has some backing considering what we know about blizz in general and timelines to be met.
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Most SC2 devs I met are really nice and earnest about the game. They love SC2 and were open to hearing balance/design suggestions. The only thing they seemed completely adamant about was not adding new elements into the game that would require additional development such as adding in a new unit or a new unit ability to do something completely different (introducing Lockdown from the BW Ghost for example) than what's already programmed. This is because of future expansions for obvious marketing reasons.
I daresay most of the fans who never talked to them would be surprised at how many ppl they include when collecting feedback/criticism of the game. They talk to lots of pro-gamers, organizers, casters, and read most of the posts of the community (even the hateful ones).
Of course, working with people is completely different than social event interaction. idk maybe Dustin Browder and crew are real pains to work with
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On June 07 2013 02:55 FrodaN wrote:Most SC2 devs I met are really nice and earnest about the game. They love SC2 and were open to hearing balance/design suggestions. The only thing they seemed completely adamant about was not adding new elements into the game that would require additional development such as adding in a new unit or a new unit ability to do something completely different (introducing Lockdown from the BW Ghost for example) than what's already programmed. This is because of future expansions for obvious marketing reasons. I daresay most of the fans who never talked to them would be surprised at how many ppl they include when collecting feedback/criticism of the game. They talk to lots of pro-gamers, organizers, casters, and read most of the posts of the community (even the hateful ones). Of course, working with people is completely different than social event interaction. idk maybe Dustin Browder and crew are real pains to work with
I think the most annoying part working with Dustin Browder would be that after a while you're not listening to him anymore except for counting the number of times he says "right".
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On June 07 2013 02:55 FrodaN wrote:Most SC2 devs I met are really nice and earnest about the game. They love SC2 and were open to hearing balance/design suggestions. The only thing they seemed completely adamant about was not adding new elements into the game that would require additional development such as adding in a new unit or a new unit ability to do something completely different (introducing Lockdown from the BW Ghost for example) than what's already programmed. This is because of future expansions for obvious marketing reasons. I daresay most of the fans who never talked to them would be surprised at how many ppl they include when collecting feedback/criticism of the game. They talk to lots of pro-gamers, organizers, casters, and read most of the posts of the community (even the hateful ones). Of course, working with people is completely different than social event interaction. idk maybe Dustin Browder and crew are real pains to work with
I'm curious as to what suggestions are brought to the developers. Keep in mind that when SC2 came out, people were upset that much of the game was thought to be similar to BW. I wonder how much of the QA feedback was "ok this game feels too much like BW" or "you should make this element easier". In his AMA his QA team was shown to not really see the significance of Dota back in the day (though thats understandable).
Not trying to frame this individuals as a biased wrong-doer - I'm just curious on the framing of his perspective. I doubt we'll ever find out but just interesting to chew on.
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First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff.
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On June 07 2013 03:11 TheRabidDeer wrote: First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff.
No they do not need to know who the guy is.It's called freedom of speech.Also he didn't give any info on titan.Let the man express his knowledge in public so we can also know what's going on.Whats in it for you if the dude gets busted.
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On June 07 2013 03:11 TheRabidDeer wrote: First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff.
Yeah I mean fuck learning about how development of things work and knowledge in general. Let's keep all that quiet for forever. Bullshit. He doesn't have a top secret security clearance and none of the information that was told was confidential.
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On June 07 2013 03:15 theking1 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 03:11 TheRabidDeer wrote: First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff. No they do not need to know who the guy is.It's called freedom of speech.Also he didn't give any info on titan.Let the man express his knowledge in public so we can also know what's going on.Whats in it for you if the dude gets busted.
That's not how freedom of speech works, since it only has to do with the government suppressing your ability to speak. Blizzard is not the government. If they are upset that this person is talking about things they shouldn't, can go after them for violating the NDA. It is there for a reason.
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I didn't see anything that appears to break an NDA. Mainly just anecdotes about working there and some of the internals about decisions that are already public.
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On June 07 2013 03:17 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 03:11 TheRabidDeer wrote: First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff. Yeah I mean fuck learning about how development of things work and knowledge in general. Let's keep all that quiet for forever. Bullshit. He doesn't have a top secret security clearance and none of the information that was told was confidential. Where did I say that? I am just saying that if he/she says anything that would break the NDA, he shouldn't be able to hide behind an anonymous name online. It pisses me off when people break NDA's, even more when it is for attention.
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On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash.
Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure:
- Yo, the game sucks ass fix it.
- Lol, sure k..
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On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k..
Great comment, that is exactly what happened for sure...
You didn't read a lot of this thread did you?
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On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k..
I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha
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On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k..
Yes this is exactly how software development works. Shame the developers didn't just go rogue and abandon all requirements given to them by the designers. Maybe just add the beFun() method?
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51325 Posts
Guys doesn't work for Blizzard anymore, QQs alot about the SC2 devs...big ups everything in blizzard..I think this should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt. I read into this as he was working with some of the high devs or was some sort of assistant to one and got a lot of shit thus the negative reaction.
Of course he might be right and they might be "dicks". But "dicks" isn't really much of a description is it. Why were they dicks would of been nice to know or wtf is "dickish" lol. Very childish that part imo. ^_^
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I would love to believe him, but he failed to provide examples for his argument.l
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On June 07 2013 03:11 TheRabidDeer wrote: First, I hope they find out who this person was because people need to respect NDA's, especially when they are speaking FOR the company from a LOW LEVEL position. From what they describe, their position was that of somebody that worked EXCLUSIVELY with WoW for most of their time at Blizzard. A GM in WoW is pretty much the lowest step on the ladder, and there were tons of them. This person probably had very limited interaction with devs at all, let alone the upper management making the decisions. It is interesting to learn about maybe the every day goings on as a normal employee, but beyond that... they don't have much real room to talk about stuff.
A few things I want to note:
[–]JehuLove 383 points 15 hours ago
They've said that before, though. Give us some love here, son.
permalink parent
[–]BlizzardThrowaway[S] 1705 points 15 hours ago*
I caaaaan't. Blizzard likes to sue people.
I read this when they were asking him about Titan. The guy probably has an idea of what his NDA entailed and what his risks are.
The thing is, it's okay to talk about a company's culture from your perspective unless explicitly stated otherwise and it's rare for companies to have such strict non-disclosure policies. That's why you have so much former employees writing books actually on the culture of a company. You can probably make a case against him, but it's quite ambiguous and you'd have to look at the specific terms of his agreement and compare it to the specific words he said.
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On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha Was the game really that bad? I bought it and I felt like it lacked content and that I can't enjoy that type of "grindy" game that force you repeat content over and over, anymore. But the gameplay seemed solid to me while I was playing and the repetition was no different than D2, which I and tons of others loved.
If anything, if I were Blizzard, I would take from D3 that the Diablo audience has moved on to different types of games, rather than they made a bad game, unless I'm missing something.
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This feels so fake. There seems to be absolutely no specifics or authentic stuff. If you ask for any specifics, he immediately stonewalls with "NDA", while on the other hand, he(or she) talks in vague generalizations about the people and teams. In general you can say such stuff about pretty much any developer, and come off feeling authentic. It was almost like he was just saying what everyone wanted to hear. :/
In conclusion: Its a huge fake, simply because he has nothing authentic.
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since when are useless TL randoms paid to post blizzard praises ?
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On June 07 2013 01:52 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:49 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:36 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote: [quote] To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy.
There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. I've been lurking on these forums for a couple of years.The commuity isn't that bad.There are some exagerrations but they get banned rather quickly by the mods.Also there does not need to be necessarly direct interraction.They could have like community managers who observe the forums and if a topic gets a lot of attention it can inform the dev teams about it. The point that i am trying to make is that there are ways for the community and blizzard to closely interract without insults and trashtalk and it can work in the benefit of both.After all we want a good game and they want to take our money . That is fine, but I think Blizzard has a problem that the volume of the community is at 1000% and it is impossible for them to tell who to listen too. They have done a lot of stuff recently that involved the community, including the launch of HotS, testing out features the community built. Remember when they bought a cake for Stephano when Hots launched? That was pretty great. This probably won't garner many agreements but sometimes you just have to do what you think is best for your own creation, forget all the opinions from fans or haters. Make what you want to make, not what you think other people want. So much agree.
If a lot of people like it, that's a bonus. As long as at least one person appreciates my effort, I'd be happy.
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On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha
D3 sold 8 million copies and received very good reviews. The core game was solid and my girlfriend and I still play it. The only flaw with that game is the auction house, which did wreck the end game for the most hard core fans. I wouldn't be shocked if it gets phased out in the expansion and refined, since Blizzard has admitted the auction house did not work as expected.
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On June 07 2013 04:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha D3 sold 8 million copies and received very good reviews. The core game was solid and my girlfriend and I still play it. The only flaw with that game is the auction house, which did wreck the end game for the most hard core fans. I wouldn't be shocked if it gets phased out in the expansion and refined, since Blizzard has admitted the auction house did not work as expected.
Reviews mean next to nothing... I'm surprised people still subscribe/read that stuff. Game play is subjective to different tastes. I knew I would not want to play a grind like game again so sure, I am biased against D3. I have 2 friends who still avidly play D3, I watch them play sometimes. I can understand its a simpler game which rewards time investment well. Aside from game play though, how are you going to argue that the game was released basically unfinished and wasnt fixed/finished till much later?
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So...random person says that they're a former Blizzard employee, repeats everything that haters have been saying for years, and then the same haters use this as proof that they were right all along.
Nice to know that people still believe everything they read on the internet.
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^ Agreed. All we saw was an unclear pic of a badge as proof. Could be anyone.
Most of his answers were very non-committal and neutral. Nothing juicy or interesting. In fact, if his answers were indicative of his powers of observation, I think Blizz did a good job in firing the guy.
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On June 07 2013 04:34 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:26 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha D3 sold 8 million copies and received very good reviews. The core game was solid and my girlfriend and I still play it. The only flaw with that game is the auction house, which did wreck the end game for the most hard core fans. I wouldn't be shocked if it gets phased out in the expansion and refined, since Blizzard has admitted the auction house did not work as expected. Reviews mean next to nothing... I'm surprised people still subscribe/read that stuff. Game play is subjective to different tastes. I knew I would not want to play a grind like game again so sure, I am biased against D3. I have 2 friends who still avidly play D3, I watch them play sometimes. I can understand its a simpler game which rewards time investment well. Aside from game play though, how are you going to argue that the game was released basically unfinished and wasnt fixed/finished till much later?
I always read reviews from sites and reviewers that I trust. Giant Bomb is pretty spot on when it comes to my tastes in games. I don't have unlimited cash and I have been betrayed by games before, so I read reviews.
I didn’t say that the game was unfinished, only that the endgame was not what the most hardcore D2 fans were looking for. That is a hard nut to crack and I don’t blame Blizzard for being unable to please the most hardcore fans who love to grind endlessly for loot. I enjoy and still enjoyed all my play throughs of the game and didn’t considering it grindy. I also don’t consider the game less complex that D2, which still can be boiled down to “right click on the devil until he explodes, drink potions when necessary”.
Blizzard always improves games with expansions, just like apple improves is OS through refinement. You release a thing and then refine it after people have used it for a while. D3 is a better game since release and will get even better with an expansion.
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On June 07 2013 04:34 WolfintheSheep wrote: So...random person says that they're a former Blizzard employee, repeats everything that haters have been saying for years, and then the same haters use this as proof that they were right all along.
Nice to know that people still believe everything they read on the internet.
That is true as well. Could just be some hugely butthurt ex-fanboy or something, though that doesn't seem all that likely but still, the point is valid. I mean I stopped reading when s/he responses when he said he was never passionate about gaming, he just viewed it as a job.
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SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game.
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Looks like David Kim didn't listen to his balancewhining employee. Im not getting more out of that.
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On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community.
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On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha I dunno, it was my first Diablo game and i massively enjoyed it for a couple months.
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Same thing you're feeling. A lot of people rolled their eyes and laughed at what they were intending to do with DOTA. I know a lot of QA people thought it was a joke, but we didn't get paid to have an opinion. I'll just reiterate this: SC2 devs are mostly dicks.
classic chris sigaty
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well if i only read the quoted parts here on TL, do they get a job at EA for shitting on their former employer?
what a load of bull.... sc2 is the best product blizz has to offer right now imo, and also the best product pcgaming has to offer right now, moba/dota may draw larger crowds, but without campaigns, cinematics, and such a well balanced multiplayer they just dont compare for me.
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On June 07 2013 00:08 Ysellian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. Any expert in any field will always look down on community feedback and suggestions by people not involved in their industry. Not saying that it's a good thing to do, but it happens in all industries because many things the community want or suggest are just borderline retarded. I'll give an example from my own field of work. At my last job people kept on ranting about wanting less traffic congestion, more parking spaces AND more room for children to play. Those things do NOT go along.
Depends on your budget, land acquisition, etc. I'm surprised I do not see more underground parking lots to be honest (the inverse of the above ground parking lots). Of course, there is the issue with cabling and the like, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. However, I don't understand the more room for children to play bit..what does that have to do with road construction?
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On June 07 2013 04:45 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 04:34 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 04:26 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 04:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 04:03 DDie wrote:On June 07 2013 01:32 Tenks wrote: As a developer myself I am probably thought of as a dick to QA as well. Because the only time I ever interact with QA is when they're complaining to fix some piece of software I'm in charge of and they think their little bug report is the most important thing to me. It isn't. I have a mountain of new development so just file the bug and I'll get around to it. Even worse, like he complained about, is when they give their opinions on the matter because 999/1000 they are completely and dead wrong. So when they go over their theories on the bug it goes in one ear and out the other. Or more accurately it goes right in my email's trash. Reading this i can definitely see how D3 turned out to be such a failure: - Yo, the game sucks ass fix it. - Lol, sure k.. I know right? And even worse, according to the AMA people at Blizzard were satisfied with D3 LOL. I guess they did sell a ton of copies before anyone realized how poor the game was... haha D3 sold 8 million copies and received very good reviews. The core game was solid and my girlfriend and I still play it. The only flaw with that game is the auction house, which did wreck the end game for the most hard core fans. I wouldn't be shocked if it gets phased out in the expansion and refined, since Blizzard has admitted the auction house did not work as expected. Reviews mean next to nothing... I'm surprised people still subscribe/read that stuff. Game play is subjective to different tastes. I knew I would not want to play a grind like game again so sure, I am biased against D3. I have 2 friends who still avidly play D3, I watch them play sometimes. I can understand its a simpler game which rewards time investment well. Aside from game play though, how are you going to argue that the game was released basically unfinished and wasnt fixed/finished till much later? I always read reviews from sites and reviewers that I trust. Giant Bomb is pretty spot on when it comes to my tastes in games. I don't have unlimited cash and I have been betrayed by games before, so I read reviews. I didn’t say that the game was unfinished, only that the endgame was not what the most hardcore D2 fans were looking for. That is a hard nut to crack and I don’t blame Blizzard for being unable to please the most hardcore fans who love to grind endlessly for loot. I enjoy and still enjoyed all my play throughs of the game and didn’t considering it grindy. I also don’t consider the game less complex that D2, which still can be boiled down to “right click on the devil until he explodes, drink potions when necessary”. Blizzard always improves games with expansions, just like apple improves is OS through refinement. You release a thing and then refine it after people have used it for a while. D3 is a better game since release and will get even better with an expansion.
Is there even PvP yet in D3? People enjoyed the loot casino because it allowed to better dominate in PvP. Of course some enjoyed it for the math and advancement aspect, but without PvP D2 wouldn't have lasted as long as it did (and of course Ladder).
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On June 07 2013 07:54 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community.
An AMA of this caliber on Reddit requires some proof that moderators verify. He provided his Blizzard door nameplate along with the games he has worked on for public proof and who knows what proof he provided the moderators.
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he didnt say anything new considering what has been happening with all blizzard games (WoW, D3, SC) recently
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On June 07 2013 08:11 MonkSEA wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 07:54 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community. An AMA of this caliber on Reddit requires some proof that moderators verify. He provided his Blizzard door nameplate along with the games he has worked on for public proof and who knows what proof he provided the moderators. A blurry nameplate of such questionable quality that it could easily have been printed from a home computer. And frankly, I have no reason to trust Reddit's verification process. For all you or I know, that crappy quality nameplate is enough for their moderators.
And let's even assume that this person is exactly who he says he is. Once you strip out all the bias from his words, you essentially have:
1) He thinks everyone outside of his department is a dick. 2) The QA department didn't get along with Devs...or possibly it was just him. 3) Despite being a low level employee doing QA grunt-work, he apparently knew everything that was wrong with the games being made, just no one listened to him.
More or less, this thread and that AMA served absolutely no purpose except allowing an asshole to inflate his own ego, whether he is ex-Blizzard or not.
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If he said what Titan was going to be like this could have been interesting, but it was pretty uninformative this way.
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On June 07 2013 00:29 Trumpstyle wrote: Working 12-14 hours per day, who knew? I knew, no surprise Blizzard treat theirs employes as slaves.
Pretty common in the IT industry...in fact the days where I get to go home on time, are like so few lol. And from what he's saying it seems like one of the better game companies to work in.
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On June 07 2013 08:35 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 08:11 MonkSEA wrote:On June 07 2013 07:54 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community. An AMA of this caliber on Reddit requires some proof that moderators verify. He provided his Blizzard door nameplate along with the games he has worked on for public proof and who knows what proof he provided the moderators. A blurry nameplate of such questionable quality that it could easily have been printed from a home computer. And frankly, I have no reason to trust Reddit's verification process. For all you or I know, that crappy quality nameplate is enough for their moderators. And let's even assume that this person is exactly who he says he is. Once you strip out all the bias from his words, you essentially have: 1) He thinks everyone outside of his department is a dick. 2) The QA department didn't get along with Devs...or possibly it was just him. 3) Despite being a low level employee doing QA grunt-work, he apparently knew everything that was wrong with the games being made, just no one listened to him. More or less, this thread and that AMA served absolutely no purpose except allowing an asshole to inflate his own ego, whether he is ex-Blizzard or not.
Did you even read the AMA or are you just here to desperately defend Blizzard? It didn't come off as someone with a grudge against Blizzard at all. They openly said they didn't elaborate on certain issues because they lacked the knowledge... far from the know it all demeanor you are talking about. They also had lots of nice things to say about Blizzard, such as, "It is a great company to work for if you are interested, but it's tough to get in." They said some bad things about the devs but didnt generalize, acknowledging that many devs truly wanted to make the best player experience possible. Whoever it was praised Mike Morheim and said working there was a "great experience". The answered all seemed pretty fair and gave the impression that Blizzard is a big company with many personalities. More or less, I have no idea how posting an anonymous AMA is supposed to boost anyone's ego... I'm really confused how you got the impression you did...
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I don't get this complaint about these big companies not listening to feedback... when feedback itself is just so diverse and the fanbase itself is arguing among themselves. You must not be reading the forums (the irony man) to think that community feedback is some unified hivemind voice of reason.
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Like other have said, this really does just sound like an angry ex-employee.
Also, I think his answer to why Starcraft 2 took so long was really misguided. The reason they always take so long to release games is because of their ridiculously high standard of quality. For example, here's a quote I read on gameinformer a week ago about why they cancelled Starcraft: Ghost:
"Pardo said that the company felt internally that it was an 80-85 game. According to Pardo, the company had no desire to release a game of that quality."
If a company is making sure that all their games are essentially going to be guaranteed to be getting at least 9/10's from reviewers consistently, their games are going to take a damn long time. Plus, it's Blizzard.
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On June 07 2013 09:03 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 08:35 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 08:11 MonkSEA wrote:On June 07 2013 07:54 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community. An AMA of this caliber on Reddit requires some proof that moderators verify. He provided his Blizzard door nameplate along with the games he has worked on for public proof and who knows what proof he provided the moderators. A blurry nameplate of such questionable quality that it could easily have been printed from a home computer. And frankly, I have no reason to trust Reddit's verification process. For all you or I know, that crappy quality nameplate is enough for their moderators. And let's even assume that this person is exactly who he says he is. Once you strip out all the bias from his words, you essentially have: 1) He thinks everyone outside of his department is a dick. 2) The QA department didn't get along with Devs...or possibly it was just him. 3) Despite being a low level employee doing QA grunt-work, he apparently knew everything that was wrong with the games being made, just no one listened to him. More or less, this thread and that AMA served absolutely no purpose except allowing an asshole to inflate his own ego, whether he is ex-Blizzard or not. Did you even read the AMA or are you just here to desperately defend Blizzard? It didn't come off as someone with a grudge against Blizzard at all. They openly said they didn't elaborate on certain issues because they lacked the knowledge... far from the know it all demeanor you are talking about. They also had lots of nice things to say about Blizzard, such as, "It is a great company to work for if you are interested, but it's tough to get in." They said some bad things about the devs but didnt generalize, acknowledging that many devs truly wanted to make the best player experience possible. Whoever it was praised Mike Morheim and said working there was a "great experience". The answered all seemed pretty fair and gave the impression that Blizzard is a big company with many personalities. More or less, I have no idea how posting an anonymous AMA is supposed to boost anyone's ego... I'm really confused how you got the impression you did... I'm not defending Blizzard in the slightest, I just don't see any reason to give this AMA any credence at all. This wouldn't be the first time someone anonymously trolled on the internet for anything except the lulz, and it wouldn't be the first time someone anonymously smeared coworkers that they didn't like on a public forum.
And yes, I did read the AMA, and frankly it reads exactly like a Blizzard fanboy talking about how the new devs fucked up their beloved franchises. Every question about games is answered with a vague "I love Blizzard games" answer, and every single question about development or devs does absolutely nothing but shit on them.
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Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW
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On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!"
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On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false!
Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other.
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On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard.
I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday".
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He just sounds angry and bitter imo
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On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday".
No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system.
On GM Satisfactions
They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy.
On Internship hiring
Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself.
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TLADT24917 Posts
On June 07 2013 09:52 MonkSEA wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday". Show nested quote +No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system. On GM Satisfactions Show nested quote +They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy. On Internship hiring Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself. this. They have lots of other valuable information as well as stuff that everyone already knows. From reading WolfintheSheep's posts, sounds like he wants more information on par of "yes, titan is about x and y and we did z etc...". The person is respecting the NDA so they are limited to what they can provide but lots of good stuff in there
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Sounds like someone grinding an axe. Badly. Meh about sums it up for me.
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Eesh, is this guy an idiot or does he really just not want to find a good job after this? Probably got fired for being late or drunk at work too many times...
Anyways, I might be a jackass for saying that since I don't have time to read the full interview and the OP says this guy says some good things, but really now... He's just not a smart person for being relatively insignificant to his company yet talking like a big shot. I have no interest in listening to his bad opinions.
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Activision has no direct role in any of the decision making done at Blizzard. When we merged it was no big deal. For some reasons I have a hard time believing that but hey.
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already had that impression of the SC2 devs
ignore what made BW & bnet 1.0 work (primarily custom game & UMS popularity)
implement what they think people want. doesn't work out like they expected.
take forever to add in what the community wants back bnet 1.0
fuck the SC1/BW story line and writes a story about romance that a 10 year old can understand
try as much as possible to create their own stamp on the game when replacing Swarm Hosts with Lurkers and replacing Colossus with Reavers along with making max selection equal to 24 units would make SC2 a much more interesting game to watch
also Hellbats are boring as FUCK. go from Vultures to Hellions which aren't as exciting as Vultures but they have their moments to slow tanky boring as fuck Hellbats.
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On June 07 2013 09:52 MonkSEA wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday". Show nested quote +No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system. On GM Satisfactions Show nested quote +They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy. On Internship hiring Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself.
On June 07 2013 10:20 BigFan wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:52 MonkSEA wrote:On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday". No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system. On GM Satisfactions They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy. On Internship hiring Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself. this. They have lots of other valuable information as well as stuff that everyone already knows. From reading WolfintheSheep's posts, sounds like he wants more information on par of "yes, titan is about x and y and we did z etc...". The person is respecting the NDA so they are limited to what they can provide but lots of good stuff in there
Let's be clear here. I don't give a damn about insider leaks or learning about top secret information. I'm wondering why a low level grunt is treated like his opinion is fact, and why his word deserves to be treated as anything but biased opinion, if he even is a real ex-employee. It's about credibility and notability, something that has not been remotely shown.
Also...fun fact, his answer toward the GM scoring system contradicts what this guy said. Take either with an absolute grain of salt...though the guy I linked to gives much more detailed answers.
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TLADT24917 Posts
On June 07 2013 10:54 Shinta) wrote: Eesh, is this guy an idiot or does he really just not want to find a good job after this? Probably got fired for being late or drunk at work too many times...
Anyways, I might be a jackass for saying that since I don't have time to read the full interview and the OP says this guy says some good things, but really now... He's just not a smart person for being relatively insignificant to his company yet talking like a big shot. I have no interest in listening to his bad opinions. not an idiot since she mentions that she doesn't plan on working in the same line of work(or something along those lines).
On June 07 2013 11:19 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 09:52 MonkSEA wrote:On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday". No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system. On GM Satisfactions They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy. On Internship hiring Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself. Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 10:20 BigFan wrote:On June 07 2013 09:52 MonkSEA wrote:On June 07 2013 09:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:28 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 09:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:On June 07 2013 09:17 unkkz wrote: Fun to get my suspicions about Ghostcrawler verified atleast. Clueless asshole that guy, remember how much he was despiced by people when i played WoW Lol, see, this is what I mean? The answers in the AMA are pure fanboy answers..."Oh, there's this guy everyone playing WoW hates, I hate him too! I can't say anything about what working with him is like, but everything the forums say about him is true!" Yea.. the fact that people agree with what was written is proof its false! Anyways, I never use Reddit and am kinda unfamiliar with the format so maybe I missed parts of what was written. I didn't really see where the person was bashing the devs too hard, but maybe its in there. Either way, nothing very specific was said one way or the other. No, the fact that he does absolutely nothing except repeat the popular opinion of forum haters is proof that it's false. If I was going to do an AMA as an ex-employee, I wouldn't just regurgitate the stuff that's said on forums by people who have zero knowledge of internal Blizzard. I didn't see a single answer that remotely showed a scrap of insider knowledge, even if it's something as mundane as "Blizzard has fancy coffees every Friday". No prob! Also, a thing to note about that scoring system...it's pretty fucked up on the internal side. For example: Let's say you really liked your GM, but weren't TOTALLY satisfied enough to give the experience all 5's, so instead you give them all 4's, or maybe some 4's and 5's. Well GMs are graded on how many "perfect survey scores" they get, and are rated with a 1 or 0 point system. Basically if you get all 5's, you get 1 point, and anything else is a 0. Pretty fucked up right? Well if you get too low of an average score per quarter, you have the potential to lose your job. Yeah...and they think this is an improved rating system. On GM Satisfactions They do, however it was because of said internships that lead to the release of some project schedules. I don't think they do that anymore, or are at least very choosy. On Internship hiring Just 2 of the many answers he gave that provided insight on the innards of Blizzard. Why are you so combatant against believing this was one of the 600 people laid off by Blizzard? I mean, what answers he did give were pretty bland and more personal and not much about Blizzard itself. this. They have lots of other valuable information as well as stuff that everyone already knows. From reading WolfintheSheep's posts, sounds like he wants more information on par of "yes, titan is about x and y and we did z etc...". The person is respecting the NDA so they are limited to what they can provide but lots of good stuff in there Let's be clear here. I don't give a damn about insider leaks or learning about top secret information. I'm wondering why a low level grunt is treated like his opinion is fact, and why his word deserves to be treated as anything but biased opinion, if he even is a real ex-employee. It's about credibility and notability, something that has not been remotely shown. Also...fun fact, his answer toward the GM scoring system contradicts what this guy said. Take either with an absolute grain of salt...though the guy I linked to gives much more detailed answers. Fair point but I'm mostly reading and seeing what they say, not necessarily taking everything 100% but at the same time, I'm not doubting everything he says. Considering from when I read the whole thing, all I saw was praise for blizzard, some stuff about SCII that we kinda know already, them respecting the NDA and only commenting on what they know otherwise saying I dunno or mentioning what they heard.
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Having a number of friends who used to work QA at Blizzard because they had some vision of working for Blizzard, they basically all universally admitted to knowing absolutely nothing about Blizzard. They all quit because after a while, they realized that what they were doing was horribly boring, required no real skill or intellect, and ultimately a waste of time. While a rare few actually move up from QA, they still don't contribute much if anything to the actual games.
So I don't believe a thing this guy says.
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having played both games I feel that ghostcrawler is a lot more competent than browder (at least, I think it's browder in charge of sc2). okay, so GC may or may not be less likeable as a colleague...I've nothing to say to that. but in terms of gameplay design, GC is willing to make major overhauls to the entire system (e.g. PvP just got another major revamp) for the sake of overall player enjoyment, while browder twiddles his thumbs.
i'm not saying GC is perfect -- I think they're both equally imperfect, but GC at least works on the shortcomings,even if it takes him a while.
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So his profile on reddit is deleted.
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On June 07 2013 09:03 Gaizokubanou wrote: I don't get this complaint about these big companies not listening to feedback... when feedback itself is just so diverse and the fanbase itself is arguing among themselves. You must not be reading the forums (the irony man) to think that community feedback is some unified hivemind voice of reason. The problem with feedback is that it is coming in a different set of colors, BUT there are usually different types of quality to it. Remember when we had a "hot topic" about dynamic unit movement? Blizzard even tried it and then said that it didnt change much ... which clearly shows that they completely missed the point of the exercise!
Some feedback (criticism) is well reasoned and logically explained and yet they totally refuse to act upon it. An example is my very own "Stalkers vs Marines" problem, where one Stalker can fight against three Marines well, but as soon as the numbers increase the Stalkers will lose without extra gadgets like Forcefield and Blink. Since these require skill to use and that skill isnt available in the same amount across all levels of the ladder it is a bad design that needs to be changed. There is no one who will argue with the gameplay comparison of the two units at low and high number count and that only leaves the conclusions to make. The only logical one is that the numbers of units in a certain area of the battlefield need to be limited by some method (kinda like BW did it). Forcefield has been an ultra powerful spell so far and yet there is no equivalent "crutch" for the two other races. This makes them unequal in the skill required to play and thus it needs to be changed ... and yet they totally ignore the problem ...
tl;dr Smart people can split feedback into "valid criticism" and "mostly junk" and "for fun" sections easily from the posts.
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On June 07 2013 09:11 Chronos. wrote: Like other have said, this really does just sound like an angry ex-employee.
Also, I think his answer to why Starcraft 2 took so long was really misguided. The reason they always take so long to release games is because of their ridiculously high standard of quality. For example, here's a quote I read on gameinformer a week ago about why they cancelled Starcraft: Ghost:
"Pardo said that the company felt internally that it was an 80-85 game. According to Pardo, the company had no desire to release a game of that quality."
If a company is making sure that all their games are essentially going to be guaranteed to be getting at least 9/10's from reviewers consistently, their games are going to take a damn long time. Plus, it's Blizzard.
It was probably a 40/100 game and that's why it was scrapped. No game-company would totally scrap a game that was bound for a mere 80/100 which would probably gain some income for all that hardship and cost of actually creating the game. You should take that qoute with a pinch of salt.
Personally why no inside information about Blizzard is disclosed is probably of the contract they have with Blizzard which would prevent laid-off personal to say anything about future projects and whatnot or risk huge fines. Which is pretty standard for such companies. That person seem to have some knowledge about blizzard innards to be honest if you read the posts. So she probably has some information about blizzard and is probably who she says she is.
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This sounds like he is bitter..
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Guy sounded a bit salty about getting laid off to be honest. Reading about blizzard and the business itself from an inside perspective was still interesting though.
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On June 07 2013 07:54 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 07:37 synd wrote: SC2 devs superiority complex, perfectly describes why none of the community feedback changes anything in the game. Person pretends that they're from Blizzard and shits all over employees, community believes it. Perfectly describes why SC2 devs don't listen to the community. He says good and bad things. Most of the stuff he said can be confirmed by other Blizz people.
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What do you know, sc2 devs are the worst ones apparently
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This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with everything he knows as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read.
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Somehow most if not all WoW fans who have met Metzen only tell good things about him from what I heard.
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On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer.
On June 07 2013 22:53 zeru wrote: This person simply sounds bitter for getting fired and is giving the community the answers they want to hear.
How often do people really do that when their employers were really great to them though? I'm not inclined to believe this is just malevolent spin.
There are just as many (or a similar number of) die-hard Blizzard fans that will assume it is what you say it is as there are people looking to grumble about Blizzard.
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On June 07 2013 22:46 PassiveAce wrote: This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with everything he knows as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read.
No kidding.
"GRARR, DID YOU KNOW THAT ENTRY-LEVEL PEOPLE WITH FEW SKILLS ARE REPLACEABLE!? GRAAA"
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1 former employee and look at the impact, lol.
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On June 07 2013 22:46 PassiveAce wrote: This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with [b] everything he knows[\b] as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read.
Sorry, but what do you mean with everything she knows? She mostly talks about her experience with Blizzard and her thoughts of the company, there is no insider information. Of course companies does not like if ex-employees talks about them publictly without their knowing about it. To her the ship is already burnt and she does not seem like going into the any game company after Blizzard and there is no onesided bashing either. You are more one-sided in your perception of the posts than the ex-employee posts are of Blizzard.
Though the qoutes that got posted on TL seem really grumpy, and depicts the sc2 devs as "mostly dicks".
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^Talking about the faults of the company and employees (on a massive public forum) after leaving is pretty fucking stupid and il tell you why. Because the next company she applies for will look at this and say "wow, I dont want to have to deal with this down the road"
She ommitted some of the things that could get her sued like specifics on the titan project, but its still really dumb.
And its not like this applies only to the video game industry, ANY company that sees something like what she wrote up will think twice about hiring her.
Im not even saying anything she says is wrong or innacurate, im just saying that it is really dumb of her to post it all publicly.
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On June 07 2013 23:01 Elldar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 22:46 PassiveAce wrote: This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with [b] everything he knows[\b] as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read. Sorry, but what do you mean with everything she knows? She mostly talks about her experience with Blizzard and her thoughts of the company, there is no insider information. Of course companies does not like if ex-employees talks about them publictly without their knowing about it. To her the ship is already burnt and she does not seem like going into the any game company after Blizzard and there is no onesided bashing either. You are more one-sided in your perception of the posts than the ex-employee posts are of Blizzard. Though the qoutes that got posted on TL seem really grumpy, and depicts the sc2 devs as "mostly dicks".
Because most people with critical reading skills would pass it off as pretty much biased noise after reading it, then you got people who are nodding their heads in agreement after each passing sentence and puts this AMA as some kind of definitive justification for their own dissatisfaction.
As for the burning bridges, this isn't restricted to a game company. Whether those bridges actually matter is one thing, but to pretend things like this only happen in a game company, this person would be even more naive than they would seem in this AMA.
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On June 07 2013 23:01 Elldar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 22:46 PassiveAce wrote: This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with [b] everything he knows[\b] as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read. Sorry, but what do you mean with everything she knows? She mostly talks about her experience with Blizzard and her thoughts of the company, there is no insider information. Of course companies does not like if ex-employees talks about them publictly without their knowing about it. To her the ship is already burnt and she does not seem like going into the any game company after Blizzard and there is no onesided bashing either. You are more one-sided in your perception of the posts than the ex-employee posts are of Blizzard. Though the qoutes that got posted on TL seem really grumpy, and depicts the sc2 devs as "mostly dicks".
Well as they say... if the condom fits.
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Kind of interesting, but obviously extremely biased.
This person is clearly not to pleased about being let go. It is also worth noting he/she was QA and a WoW GM. Which is to say he/she doesn't know a damn thing about actually making a video game (design/programming). Their opinion isn't worth a whole lot more than the average fan's. And if you know anything about the gaming industry, QA is pretty close to the bottom of the totem pole.
This is sort of like asking what the secretary or janitor thinks of the executives and professionals of a company. You're probably not going to get an objective and balanced opinion.
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I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure.
I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance.
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On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance.
DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me.
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On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance.
Those guys are practically christlike compared to greg street and the other mongoloids doing WoW balance.
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On June 07 2013 23:08 Judicator wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 23:01 Elldar wrote:On June 07 2013 22:46 PassiveAce wrote: This person is really silly for burning bridges like this. If he wants to get work in this industry again he will have a tough time if the company ever sees that hes the kind of person that goes to reddit with [b] everything he knows[\b] as soon as he jumps ship.
This guy seems really really stupid the more I read. Sorry, but what do you mean with everything she knows? She mostly talks about her experience with Blizzard and her thoughts of the company, there is no insider information. Of course companies does not like if ex-employees talks about them publictly without their knowing about it. To her the ship is already burnt and she does not seem like going into the any game company after Blizzard and there is no onesided bashing either. You are more one-sided in your perception of the posts than the ex-employee posts are of Blizzard. Though the qoutes that got posted on TL seem really grumpy, and depicts the sc2 devs as "mostly dicks". Because most people with critical reading skills would pass it off as pretty much biased noise after reading it, then you got people who are nodding their heads in agreement after each passing sentence and puts this AMA as some kind of definitive justification for their own dissatisfaction. Of course a person's opinion is biased. You will have a rather unconsidered life if every time you hear a person's opinion that you disagree with, you call them naive and "biased" - as though the existence of a person with an opinion that you disagree with somehow gives more credence to you. When the choice is as simple as having less information or more information, I would rather have more information so I'm glad there is a place for AMAs.
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QA folks hate devs devs hate QA folks nothing new
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Eh, I'll take this with a grain of salt.
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If there weren't clear problems with SC2, WOW and D3 you could say she was just bitter. But that isn't the case now is it?
I mean when she's says the guys at Blizzard thought Dota was a joke, so they didn't jump on the idea...opening the door for valve, hon and LoL, you can't really call that being bitter.
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On June 08 2013 00:20 KingAce wrote: If there weren't clear problems with SC2, WOW and D3 you could say she was just bitter. But that isn't the case now is it?
I mean when she's says the guys at Blizzard thought Dota was a joke, so they didn't jump on the idea...opening the door for valve, hon and LoL, you can't really call that being bitter.
Whether they said Dota was a joke or not, I bet they are smacking themselves for not jumping on that lol. You also have too look at just how untouchable Blizzard was up until the past few years, it wouldn't surprise me if there are some arrogant devs at Blizzard, but it's not like it wasn't justified or anything.
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People really need to relax.. and read the whole damn thing first. If she's 'pissed off and venting' she wouldn't have more nice things to say than otherwise. And yeah, obviously you take what is being said with a grain of salt. Don't we all do the same thing when Blizzard head developers open their mouths?
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On June 08 2013 00:27 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 00:20 KingAce wrote: If there weren't clear problems with SC2, WOW and D3 you could say she was just bitter. But that isn't the case now is it?
I mean when she's says the guys at Blizzard thought Dota was a joke, so they didn't jump on the idea...opening the door for valve, hon and LoL, you can't really call that being bitter. Whether they said Dota was a joke or not, I bet they are smacking themselves for not jumping on that lol. You also have too look at just how untouchable Blizzard was up until the past few years, it wouldn't surprise me if there are some arrogant devs at Blizzard, but it's not like it wasn't justified or anything.
That was justified several years ago with SC:BW, WC3, D2, and the earlier days of WoW.
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On June 08 2013 00:31 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 00:27 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 00:20 KingAce wrote: If there weren't clear problems with SC2, WOW and D3 you could say she was just bitter. But that isn't the case now is it?
I mean when she's says the guys at Blizzard thought Dota was a joke, so they didn't jump on the idea...opening the door for valve, hon and LoL, you can't really call that being bitter. Whether they said Dota was a joke or not, I bet they are smacking themselves for not jumping on that lol. You also have too look at just how untouchable Blizzard was up until the past few years, it wouldn't surprise me if there are some arrogant devs at Blizzard, but it's not like it wasn't justified or anything. That was justified several years ago with SC:BW, WC3, D2, and the earlier days of WoW.
Exactly.
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On June 08 2013 00:20 KingAce wrote: If there weren't clear problems with SC2, WOW and D3 you could say she was just bitter. But that isn't the case now is it?
I mean when she's says the guys at Blizzard thought Dota was a joke, so they didn't jump on the idea...opening the door for valve, hon and LoL, you can't really call that being bitter.
Hindsight is 20/20. Free to play was a joke in 2009 and was associated with Zynga, facebook and farmville. The Wii was king of the world and we all bought 2 copies of Rockband because we loved it. Everyone was talking about how facebook games and motion control were the future and Xbox live was the answer to online gaming. Sony was hated by gamers and Steam was this weird thing that you played TF2 on and kind sold games. Twitch TV did not exist and we all read RSS feeds. Starcraft 2 was released one year later in July, 2010, and we all thought the marauder was totally IMBA.
In 2013, Zynga is going bankrupt and closing offices, Free to play LoL is the new WoW and Steam made everyone love or ignore DRM. Rockband is done, motion controls are played out and streaming is amazing. The Wii is done, the Wii U is a joke and Sony is looking like they could recapture the hearts of games. Also, Iphones and Ipads have market shares that rival gaming consoles. We all player games on our PC with Xbox controlers or hook them up to our TVs. We also watch twitch on our TV, iphone and Xbox. Twitter is massive and Idra was trending world wide when he was left go from EG
Blaming Blizzard for not being able to accurately predict the future that none of us knew as coming is a little silly. Its easy for us now, because we can just look back and say "Oh its so obvious, how could you not see that coming?"
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That's true but at the same time, Dota did have a giant playerbase even as a simple mod for Warcraft 3.....Surely they could have seen the draw to it, and surely they could have predicted there would be some developers out there that would take that formula and run away with success.
But your point is valid, the rapid evolution (or trends) the internet has brought about, that is pretty hard to predict. Specifically the gaming industry is in an extremely volatile state right now, and there is a massive saturation of me-too! devs that are flooding each genre with their own clones, which really diminishes the value of the originals. I guess I'm thinking of WoW when I say that. There are an insane amount of WoW clones that have gone free to play, and I imagine it has hurt the enthusiasm people once had for MMOs.
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On June 08 2013 01:01 AnomalySC2 wrote: That's true but at the same time, Dota did have a giant playerbase even as a simple mod for Warcraft 3.....Surely they could have seen the draw to it, and surely they could have predicted there would be some developers out there that would take that formula and run away with success.
But your point is valid, the rapid evolution (or trends) the internet has brought about, that is pretty hard to predict. Specifically the gaming industry is in an extremely volatile state right now, and there is a massive saturation of me-too! devs that are flooding each genre with their own clones, which really diminishes the value of the originals. I guess I'm thinking of WoW when I say that. There are an insane amount of WoW clones that have gone free to play, and I imagine it has hurt the enthusiasm people once had for MMOs.
And the massive failure of those MMOs to capture the audience of WoW is the reason we don't see tons of LoL clones. There are a few that are out their, but most of them have fallen flat, with the exception of Dota 2. The fact of the matter is that companies are likely to fail chasing the success of others. Blizzard has watched EA and every other major publisher in the world fail in amazing ways while chasing the success of WoW. There is no reason for them to do the same with LoL.
And Blizzard is working on Blizzard all-stars, which I bet is going to be linked into the spawning feature they just released, the desktop battle.net and Hearthstone. I can see a lot of cross over with people coming for one and then getting pulled into the other games. But the whole idea that Blizzard is going to flip the F2P button on SC2 is just silly. I just isn't that simple or even proven that it would be a good idea.
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Is there any proof? The guy sounds way too immature to be working for Blizzard.
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On June 08 2013 01:17 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 01:01 AnomalySC2 wrote: That's true but at the same time, Dota did have a giant playerbase even as a simple mod for Warcraft 3.....Surely they could have seen the draw to it, and surely they could have predicted there would be some developers out there that would take that formula and run away with success.
But your point is valid, the rapid evolution (or trends) the internet has brought about, that is pretty hard to predict. Specifically the gaming industry is in an extremely volatile state right now, and there is a massive saturation of me-too! devs that are flooding each genre with their own clones, which really diminishes the value of the originals. I guess I'm thinking of WoW when I say that. There are an insane amount of WoW clones that have gone free to play, and I imagine it has hurt the enthusiasm people once had for MMOs. And the massive failure of those MMOs to capture the audience of WoW is the reason we don't see tons of LoL clones. There are a few that are out their, but most of them have fallen flat, with the exception of Dota 2. The fact of the matter is that companies are likely to fail chasing the success of others. Blizzard has watched EA and every other major publisher in the world fail in amazing ways while chasing the success of WoW. There is no reason for them to do the same with LoL. And Blizzard is working on Blizzard all-stars, which I bet is going to be linked into the spawning feature they just released, the desktop battle.net and Hearthstone. I can see a lot of cross over with people coming for one and then getting pulled into the other games. But the whole idea that Blizzard is going to flip the F2P button on SC2 is just silly. I just isn't that simple or even proven that it would be a good idea.
Well there are an awful lot of LoL clones, or at least similar mobas, that are already out and more are coming out. It's hard to imagine there is room for more than Dota 2 or LoL, but we will see I guess :D
If history is to repeat itself, all it will do is burn people out on the entire genre, and people will be starving for something new.
The gaming industry is by FAR the worst with getting fixated on one good idea that sells well, and I think that is a big part as to why it is in a bit of crisis right now.
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Sad, but iam not surprised.
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People talking about "her". Did he/she say who he/she is? All the posts are deleted now ...
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Not really familiar with reddit, but I'm looking at it and it looks like his responses have been deleted? Anyone archive that?
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She may have gotten worried about a "Knock it off" letter from Blizzard.
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colossus still in the game, i believe this person.
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I feel like the devs wanted it to be perfect before they released it so they could prove to everyone that they were the shit
LOL. Battlenet 0.2 Worse campaign than broodwar. Worse multiplayer than broodwar. Shit indeed.
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Yesterday it was just the account that was deleted, now it's all the posts. Given that there are still AMAs from other ex-GMs as well as youtube interviews and such, I'd say this is a good deal of proof that the whole thing was a pathetic troll.
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On June 08 2013 02:42 gh0un wrote:Show nested quote + I feel like the devs wanted it to be perfect before they released it so they could prove to everyone that they were the shit LOL. Battlenet 0.2 Worse campaign than broodwar. Worse multiplayer than broodwar. Shit indeed.
SC2 has an automated match maker, and the delay is waaaay smoother compared to the netcode they used in BW. This alone makes bnet 2.0 better than 1.0
The gameplay itself in the campaign is undeniably better in both WoL and HoTS (by far). The story, well you could argue each way, that's pretty subjective.
I think the multiplayer is too tricky to say definitively which was better, but I think alot of the people that grew up with BW will likely say it's better simply because that was what they played first.
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On June 08 2013 02:42 gh0un wrote:Show nested quote + I feel like the devs wanted it to be perfect before they released it so they could prove to everyone that they were the shit LOL. Battlenet 0.2 Worse campaign than broodwar. Worse multiplayer than broodwar. Shit indeed.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh. The amount of stupidity in this post is just shocking.
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United States12180 Posts
On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer.
It does, but at the same time there are a lot of grains of truth in there from the perspective of someone who has worked at the "low end" of a company. When I used to work in QA, it was common for QA people to give suggestions to developers and producers and some people would take it really personally when their suggestions were ignored or denied. They felt like the higher-ups were disconnected from reality, that they failed to acknowledge fundamental problems in their games. Generally I would say there are two kinds of QA testers: those who treat it as a job, and those who really put their hearts into improving the game. From the perspective of someone who is now higher up, it's entirely possible to acknowledge design-level problems from QA testers but simply not have the budget or backup design or spare resources to change them. Some producers/developers will come back to the QA tester and say "yeah I totally get where you're coming from, but we don't have the time left in the schedule to make a big change like this" but often that discussion will take place without the tester's involvement and only among production/engineering/art/management and the matter will be closed without explanation.
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Hi, video game developer here.
On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer.
Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different".
But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you.
It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses:
On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist.
On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams.
I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link:
BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure.
Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly.
Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got.
I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally.
And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this.
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On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: Show nested quote +BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Show nested quote +Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this.
Exactly. Its like our highest paid litigation attorney listening to a legal assistant about the problems with our work flow and argument styles. Sure they know, stuff, but it a total waste of time for the counsel.
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United States12180 Posts
On June 08 2013 06:32 Zenbrez wrote: What does QA mean? =\
Quality Assurance. They're the main internal testers of the game whose job it is to write up bug reports that the developer then fixes.
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Interesting read. Especially about DOTA. While I had only played a little of the original DOTA, I heard about it on a daily basis and even I knew it was extremely popular. Very...odd that blizzard thought it was a "joke".
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On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me.
Are you fucking joking?
Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps?
Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT?
Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs?
Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!!
Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team.
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On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: This is interesting, thanks for the post!
Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist.
In fairness, you don't need qualifications to do QA, but you do to be a game dev...
I got the impression this guy was a QA tester, in which case I imagine he'd have a bad time wherever he was: from what I've heard QA is just awful awful work.
As a lot of people have said, this kind of smacks of him being bitter at Blizzard, and it seems he's saying what the people who are angry that SC2 isn't BW want to hear
EDIT: apparently it's a she
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On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: Show nested quote +BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Show nested quote +Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this.
So basically you are saying the average game development company has a shitty working environment where lots of employees are shunned and ignored. Everyone coming out and saying that these interactions are normal, as well as expected in the gaming industry are just making Blizzard look even worse. Organizational culture is really important to the growth and development of a company. If your testament and others are true, its really not a mystery why Blizzard products have been consistently disappointing compared to their predecessors.
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On June 08 2013 06:30 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. Exactly. Its like our highest paid litigation attorney listening to a legal assistant about the problems with our work flow and argument styles. Sure they know, stuff, but it a total waste of time for the counsel.
It's not quite like that. It's more like attornies listening to legal assistants when it comes to the assignments they give their legal assistants. What's the point of having a QA department if the designers and devs consistently ignore them? Pure debugging? Fun stuff.
Still, this was probably fake.
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On June 08 2013 10:20 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 06:30 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. Exactly. Its like our highest paid litigation attorney listening to a legal assistant about the problems with our work flow and argument styles. Sure they know, stuff, but it a total waste of time for the counsel. It's not quite like that. It's more like attornies listening to legal assistants when it comes to the assignments they give their legal assistants. What's the point of having a QA department if the designers and devs consistently ignore them? Pure debugging? Fun stuff. Still, this was probably fake.
Uh...QA is about play-testing and bug finding. They're not marketing, or design, or development, or anything related to creative input.
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There's nothing that a Blizzard employee could say about Blizzard that could damage their reputation anymore than Diablo 3 did, and we all (I think) are starting to realize that Diablo 3 actually happened the way it did.
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On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer.
I agree, blizzard could be a bad place to work but .... ya its my dream and probably 90% of the people on TL.
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On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team.
I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't.
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On June 06 2013 23:22 Butterednuts wrote:Source: Link | Link MirrorSome select SC2 related inquiries: Show nested quote +lol that was totally up to the Devs for that one. I have no idea why it took so long, but I can tell you that while I personally wasn't working on it during that time, my friends were doing QA for it and it was basically hell for them. Working 14 days straight, 12-14 hours a day, non-stop. I feel like the devs wanted it to be perfect before they released it so they could prove to everyone that they were the shit. In reality, though, I just think they didn't have their shit together enough and couldn't collaborate properly to get it out on time. Show nested quote +What did Blizzard think internally over the company's complete and utter failure to support and co-opt DOTA, which was originally a Warcraft III custom map? I know that Blizzard tried to sue Valve and others when Dota moved on from WC3..... We WC3 players had been pleading with Blizzard for YEARS to provide official support for DOTA, to hire DOTA developers, and in general acknowledge the game's existence, yet none of that ever came about.....and now League of Legends is several times more popular than WoW has ever been. What do the people inside of Blizzard think about this monumentally epic fuckup? Show nested quote +Same thing you're feeling. A lot of people rolled their eyes and laughed at what they were intending to do with DOTA. I know a lot of QA people thought it was a joke, but we didn't get paid to have an opinion. I'll just reiterate this: SC2 devs are mostly dicks. Show nested quote +Whoa. Huge SC fan here. Expand on this? They always come across as nice guys, even if they are a bit stubborn to make balance patches. Show nested quote +I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. [edit] Not all the comments he left were negative, in fact most of the comments about other Blizzard games and policies were mostly positive. These were the answers he had regarding SC2. Read the full AMA for answers to questions about World of Warcraft, Titan, and some of his more personal takes on the direction of Blizzard.
I'm afraid this is true for most gaming companies I know anyway so this doesn't say much at all to be honest and plus the hours they work on projects is kind of ridiculous too when they trying to churn out a product. I'm pretty sure I would sound like a dick too if I were putting in the same amount of hours as they do. It doesn't sound fun. This just sounds like the old stereotype to me when people say "Devs are dicks and they don't listen." ;/
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Considering that Blizzard has yet to address common complaints about SC2 gameplay that have existed since beta, I'm inclined to believe this person. Its unbelievable that people still defend Blizzard after THREE YEARS.
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On June 08 2013 10:06 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. So basically you are saying the average game development company has a shitty working environment where lots of employees are shunned and ignored. Everyone coming out and saying that these interactions are normal, as well as expected in the gaming industry are just making Blizzard look even worse. Organizational culture is really important to the growth and development of a company. If your testament and others are true, its really not a mystery why Blizzard products have been consistently disappointing compared to their predecessors.
What on earth are you talking about?
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On June 08 2013 10:30 goofyballer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. So basically you are saying the average game development company has a shitty working environment where lots of employees are shunned and ignored. Everyone coming out and saying that these interactions are normal, as well as expected in the gaming industry are just making Blizzard look even worse. Organizational culture is really important to the growth and development of a company. If your testament and others are true, its really not a mystery why Blizzard products have been consistently disappointing compared to their predecessors. What on earth are you talking about?
The fact that you and others who claim to have worked in the gaming industry say that QA people are basically bottom of the totem pole and are treated like it. A company striving for strong organizational culture will at least make employees feel valued.
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On June 07 2013 01:34 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:19 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote:On June 06 2013 23:55 HeeroFX wrote: I think we knew the sc devs were dicks when they refused to give listen to the community wants and suggestions. To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy. There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. That's the worst mind set you can possibly have as someone whose career is built off of the public's perception and reception. As others have mentioned, Riot does a good job of at least reading the comments. They don't need to listen to any of them, but at least give the impression that you care in some way, shape or form. Simply ignoring your audience while saying "haters gonna hate" is going to get them nowhere except behind the companies like Riot which at least give the impression of valuing customer opinions. Yes, and Riot also calls troll and toxic players dumb to their face through the power of math and look at the person's bad history. Riot does an good job and I am sure Blizzard reads the forums, but they don't respond to everything. But every employee doesn't read them. It the difference between someone's agent reading all the fan mail and the star reading all the fan mail. One is better because it provides a filter. Exactly. If I were Dustin Browder/David Kim and I read the battlenet forums I would need some saintly self control to not go insane and froth at the mouth at the things being suggested/insinuated there.
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I felt valued as a QA tester. We would make lists of the most important gameplay-related issues we had with the game (which isn't what we're testing for the most part, since we're trying to find bugs first and foremost), and those would get compiled and sent to the dev team, and sometimes they would listen and sometimes they wouldn't. That's all we could really ask of them, since they're designing the game and we weren't. We were given plenty of opportunities for overtime (and never forced to work overtime) for 1.5x-2x normal pay. For a summer job home from college, it was awesome. And clearly the work QA did was valued as a not-insignificant number of people I work with now started in QA, as I did.
But like, when it comes to something like ghostcrawler shadowing a game master for a day - that's an absolutely retarded criticism. The designers/programmers at the top of the food chain have incredibly demanding jobs, and he was probably reading emails and taking phone calls all day because he has to. It's incredibly narcissistic for a game master to be like "why is this asshole busy doing his job and ignoring me when he's supposed to be watching me do mine today" - like wtf? That man's time is valuable. That the author chose that story as a point of contention is a perfect illustration of why she is clueless.
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Lemee just say, I had a chance to have lunch with both Dustin Browder and David Kim, and both of them came across as super earnest, likable guys who took what you said seriously, even though I was just an intern at the time. Also, I've interviewed Chris Sigaty in person as press and had a discussion with him after, and he was great too.
So I dunno who he's talking about that comes off as a dick at the SC2 team.
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lol sc2 devs being dicks.. not surprized.
the mere fact that the tools at blizz didnt acknowledge dota and let is slip shows how pathetic they are.
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On June 08 2013 11:00 ShiroKaisen wrote: Lemee just say, I had a chance to have lunch with both Dustin Browder and David Kim, and both of them came across as super earnest, likable guys who took what you said seriously, even though I was just an intern at the time. Also, I've interviewed Chris Sigaty in person as press and had a discussion with him after, and he was great too.
So I dunno who he's talking about that comes off as a dick at the SC2 team.
It's always about what people want to believe. People who have met them in person will know if they will trust random guy on internet of their own ears and eyes. People who hate Blizzard and SC2 will find ANY opportunity to support their view. Even GC who has reputation for being a dick among WoW fans is spoken nicely of by people who have met him.
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On June 08 2013 10:35 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:30 goofyballer wrote:On June 08 2013 10:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. So basically you are saying the average game development company has a shitty working environment where lots of employees are shunned and ignored. Everyone coming out and saying that these interactions are normal, as well as expected in the gaming industry are just making Blizzard look even worse. Organizational culture is really important to the growth and development of a company. If your testament and others are true, its really not a mystery why Blizzard products have been consistently disappointing compared to their predecessors. What on earth are you talking about? The fact that you and others who claim to have worked in the gaming industry say that QA people are basically bottom of the totem pole and are treated like it. A company striving for strong organizational culture will at least make employees feel valued. You seem desperate to hate on Blizzard here. At no point did goofyball say that QA's were treated like shit, he said they were treated like QA's. Which they are.
You don't let your QA's design your games, you don't let your designers run your company, you don't let your CEO's work helpdesk. That's what a business is like, and for good reason.
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On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. It must be nice being fourteen years old, possessing only ignorance and an utter incapability to consider perspective and the world greater...
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lol @ the people discrediting the guy because he seems "bitter." If you look at other things he says, he has a positive attitude about other parts of Blizzard. He's specifically calling Ghostcrawler and SC2 dev team dicks, and I can certainly believe they are. I've never seen a group of developers with their heads as far up their own asses as the SC2 core dev team.
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This guy can complain all he wants, but Blizzard is still probably one of the best and most successful game developers of the past 20 years. EA would love to be in their position right now.
There might be an asshole here or there but that's every company. Anyone interested in getting into gaming would be lucky to work at Blizzard or Activision.
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On June 08 2013 10:30 goofyballer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:06 SupLilSon wrote:On June 08 2013 06:23 goofyballer wrote:Hi, video game developer here. On June 06 2013 23:32 Assirra wrote: This honestly just smells like a fired person venting about his previous employer. Yeah, this is correct. Having worked both as a developer (programmer) now and in QA several years ago - in QA you feel like you guys are the ones spending the most time actually playing the game, and most of you are probably avid gamers in your free time, so dammit, you know games! And it's natural for people in QA to want to play game designer and be like "well I think this feature/unit/whatever would be better if it this part was different". But the reality is, QA is there to test the games, and the dev team is there to design + make them. Dev can (and generally will) take suggestions by QA under consideration, but they're certainly not obligated in any way to leave design decisions up to QA, and as a tester who thinks you know everything about the game you're working on, it can make you kinda bitter when you think you have a great idea and the dev team doesn't listen to you. It's pretty obvious reading through this guy/girl's AMA that he/she's an angry and bitter dude(ette). Looking through some early responses: On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. On June 06 2013 23:36 SupLilSon wrote: Wow, thanks for this, really interesting read even though I havent gotten around to finishing it. Not surprised to hear about lots of massive egos within the Blizzard dev teams. I get a sadface seeing people taking all this as gospel from someone who likely had no kind of view into the inner circle of SC2 development whatsoever. I can't read the AMA anymore since it's been deleted, but from the mirror link: BlizzardThrowaway: I’ll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don’t tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more “esteemed” devs have a superiority complex for sure. Like, wow, yeah, that's because you're a QA tester. Basically encapsulates what I'm saying above perfectly. Was he as much of a self-absorbed asshole in-person as he is on the fourms/on twitter? BlizzardThrowaway: Oh yes he was. I can tell you a story of this time were our Customer Service department had a new policy where any new hires, no matter what department you were hired into, would have to sit with a Game Master for a few hours and see what it was like to be the face of Blizzard, and how hard our job was. Well they decided to include the executives on this one as well, and one day Ghostcrawler was scheduled to shadow a guy on my team. He basically spent the entire time on his phone texting, checking emails, or just leaving for long periods of time to make phone calls. He was so checked out from the experience that he left early because he was just too good to sit there with lowlife GMs. At least that’s the impression we got. I don't know who ghostcrawler is but I guarantee he's important enough (from how they're talking about him) that sitting around with a game master for several hours is a complete waste of his time. It's not personal, but obviously this employee took it personally. And that's why you guys shouldn't pay attention to this. So basically you are saying the average game development company has a shitty working environment where lots of employees are shunned and ignored. Everyone coming out and saying that these interactions are normal, as well as expected in the gaming industry are just making Blizzard look even worse. Organizational culture is really important to the growth and development of a company. If your testament and others are true, its really not a mystery why Blizzard products have been consistently disappointing compared to their predecessors. What on earth are you talking about?
http://www.relationaldynamicsinstitute.com/?p=48
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On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't.
Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE.
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So this person massively dodged questions about Titan, which is something nobody really knows about, despite suggesting they'd been shown bits and pieces of the game... I call BS on this person being legitimate.
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On June 08 2013 10:29 iamho wrote: Considering that Blizzard has yet to address common complaints about SC2 gameplay that have existed since beta, I'm inclined to believe this person. Its unbelievable that people still defend Blizzard after THREE YEARS.
It's unbelievable how much people take for granted in what Blizzard has given them with SC2. It's like they think Blizzard is actively seeking ways to fuck the community.
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On June 08 2013 14:07 Brett wrote: So this person massively dodged questions about Titan, which is something nobody really knows about, despite suggesting they'd been shown bits and pieces of the game... I call BS on this person being legitimate.
non-disclosure agreement
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On June 08 2013 10:47 xAdra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2013 01:34 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:19 SupLilSon wrote:On June 07 2013 01:09 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 01:00 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:50 Plansix wrote:On June 07 2013 00:40 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:29 Aberu wrote:On June 07 2013 00:11 theking1 wrote:On June 07 2013 00:06 Gowerly wrote: [quote] To be fair have you seen some of the suggestions the community has? Some places (a couple where I have worked) don't even allow the devs on their forums because a) it's soul destroying and b) because the suggestions are largely bad at best and insane at worst It's ok to listen to a subset of the community, generally the top level players, as they understand things the most. Outside of that, though, you're all crazy.
There is a rule in business staitng the customer is always right.Saying that people who buy your products are wrong and you are better than them is a bit of dangerous for the company.Also listening to the community seems to be working flawlessly for other games develpes such as riot,valve or the dudes behind world of tanks.Why can't blizzard do the same?We're not half as toxic as other communities,most of us have been long time fans aka buyers of blizzard games and when a topic gets like a 100 pages on the forum its most likely a serious issue. That rule is based on how you treat the customers. You treat them AS IF they are right. If "the customer is always right" means "you give every single customer exactly what they want" then every restaurant in the world would have 50 page long menus and be unfeasible to run. Source: Restaurant manager. That saying is fucking ridiculous. You treat them courteously and nicely as if they are right, and you apologize humbly and try to make it up to them if something goes wrong. You treat complaints as 10 times important as compliments. That's the meaning behind that phrase, so tired of people getting this wrong. Or let's apply the customer is always right mindset to games. A new patch every week taht dramatically changes multiple heroes, at many times the labor cost to the development team. Do you think the game would be as popular if they did that every time some SonGoku447UltraZ complained that his favorite hero wasn't OP enough? Gimme a break. i was reffering mostly to serious issues like the ones that cause 100 pages long threads.The issues do not include nerfing heroes but more serious topics such the free to play online features which they have implemented,lack of lan,more customization options such as skins etc etc.Nerfing a hero or race does not raise a 200k pettion like the lack of lan has Also your example with the restaurant is a bit flawed in this context.if a restauran towner receives 100 complains regarding a certaina spect he will most likely change it as he will lose clients.Also I seriously never heard of anyone complaining about restaurants not having 50 page long menus lol.The basic idea is that having such a hardcore fanbase we are most likely different from Songoku44utraz and know what we want(theoretically) and maybe we actually want the good of the game and do not complain for te sake of complaining Free to play is not an option for Blizzard for SC2. It would cost them millions of dollars to create a business model to justify the development cost, create a pricing structure for the content and then sell that content world wide. It has taken Riot years to create that. Also, why would Blizzard chase after Riots success? That is what tons of companies did for WoW and failed. There is no reason for Blizzard to change their plans just because someone else is making money on another game. The demands for F2P are being made by people who don’t understand how the industry works or just assume that F2P is easy. And a lot of people being outraged or upset about something on the internet it not good feedback or a reason to change things. A 100 page thread means that enough people posted world wide to make the thread 100 pages. At 20 posts a page or so, that is around 20,000 posts. At maximum that is 20K people (which is unlikely) world wide that decided to post about that thing. That is like getting 20K likes on facebook, which isn’t super meaningful. Just because a lot of people are willing to post about something doesn’t mean its important. It just means they were willing to take 1-5 minutes to post something. I disagree with you on that.Blizzard does not need to copy ad litteram the lol model but instead they can find ways of implementing f2p in sc2 while still making a profit.They have made steps in this direction with the recent spawning feature which will basicly allow players who do not own the game to play certain feature such as team maps and custom maps(which are by fr what most casua players play).I personally believe it is a step in the right direction which could have been done form the beggining considering bw already had such a feature. Regarding the 100 page thread thingy if its constructive criticism why not allow it.it doesnt hurt at all and maybe they can get some positive feedback.after all its free. I think you underestimate how hateful and harmful reading the comments or forums can be for someone making games or anything, really. There are endless discussions among professionals in public fields(casters, writers, producers, developers) and they all say the same thing: "Don't read the comments" Caster, content producers and game developers are not robots. They cannot simply shut of their emotions and ignore everything they read. That is not how people work. Even if there are gems of good advice, there are other ways to get that advice than subjecting yourself to the hate and bile of the internet. That's the worst mind set you can possibly have as someone whose career is built off of the public's perception and reception. As others have mentioned, Riot does a good job of at least reading the comments. They don't need to listen to any of them, but at least give the impression that you care in some way, shape or form. Simply ignoring your audience while saying "haters gonna hate" is going to get them nowhere except behind the companies like Riot which at least give the impression of valuing customer opinions. Yes, and Riot also calls troll and toxic players dumb to their face through the power of math and look at the person's bad history. Riot does an good job and I am sure Blizzard reads the forums, but they don't respond to everything. But every employee doesn't read them. It the difference between someone's agent reading all the fan mail and the star reading all the fan mail. One is better because it provides a filter. Exactly. If I were Dustin Browder/David Kim and I read the battlenet forums I would need some saintly self control to not go insane and froth at the mouth at the things being suggested/insinuated there. The problem of Blizzard forums is that Idiots are given free reign to spin their idiocies ... because it is either too expensive to have a decent team of moderators OR they simply dont care. Since there are a lot of kids playing these games you get a big heap of immature and impolite idiots who need to learn forum etiquette first. Since Blizzard doesnt educate its customers their forums are what they are.
Teamliquid and Elitist Jerks are about the only well moderated forums I know, but Blizzard would need to have a firm hand with their immature customer base to keep their forums civil. Since they dont bother to react immediately to hackers in any of their games I think they have more of a "We have their mone, so why bother keeping things tidy?" attitude.
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
On June 08 2013 14:15 rd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:29 iamho wrote: Considering that Blizzard has yet to address common complaints about SC2 gameplay that have existed since beta, I'm inclined to believe this person. Its unbelievable that people still defend Blizzard after THREE YEARS. It's unbelievable how much people take for granted in what Blizzard has given them with SC2. It's like they think Blizzard is actively seeking ways to fuck the community.
well compare sc2 and BW and you can see where most complaints come from
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On June 08 2013 14:44 amazingxkcd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 14:15 rd wrote:On June 08 2013 10:29 iamho wrote: Considering that Blizzard has yet to address common complaints about SC2 gameplay that have existed since beta, I'm inclined to believe this person. Its unbelievable that people still defend Blizzard after THREE YEARS. It's unbelievable how much people take for granted in what Blizzard has given them with SC2. It's like they think Blizzard is actively seeking ways to fuck the community. well compare sc2 and BW and you can see where most complaints come from
I've never even conceived comparing the two titles. Thanks for the suggestion -- I'll hop RIGHT on that.
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On June 08 2013 10:01 Megapenthes wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 23:28 needcomputer wrote: This is interesting, thanks for the post!
Certain professions think they are better than other professions.. A Sc2 dev thinks he is greater than another blizzard employee (not a dev) just like a doctor thinks he is superior to a nurse/pharmacist. In fairness, you don't need qualifications to do QA, but you do to be a game dev... I got the impression this guy was a QA tester, in which case I imagine he'd have a bad time wherever he was: from what I've heard QA is just awful awful work. As a lot of people have said, this kind of smacks of him being bitter at Blizzard, and it seems he's saying what the people who are angry that SC2 isn't BW want to hear EDIT: apparently it's a she To be a good QA tester you do need certain qualifications too ... they arent of the "you got a degree to show for it" type though. You need to be patient to test the same things over and over again even though you are bored by them, objective enough to judge potential problems, creative enough to look for bugs and smart enough to articulate problems and explain them to others. Game developers dont need any super high qualifications either, because you can make great games with just a lot of enthusiasm and the right ideas; lots of indie devs show that every time and many of them dont have a degree for "game development" but instead probably only have programming qualifications. The devs at Blizzard probably dont do any programming.
Blizzard devs dont really come across as smart though, because they ignore the glaring problems of the game. Some interviews from Dustin Browder really showed that, because he claimed that players want the deathball. Sure they want ... but that doesnt mean it is a good mechanic ... and yet they dont do anything to get rid of it.
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On June 08 2013 14:21 udgnim wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 14:07 Brett wrote: So this person massively dodged questions about Titan, which is something nobody really knows about, despite suggesting they'd been shown bits and pieces of the game... I call BS on this person being legitimate. non-disclosure agreement Given responses to other questions, I don't think they appear to be concerned about legal consequences.
Wasn't their posting also annonymous?
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On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE.
I actually think this is an important point to touch on, in that it's important to know the difference between listening to your community and listening to your QA department. The Blizzard QA department is not made up of Korean GM players. They definitely should be listening to the community more - but, the fact that they gave us Klontas Mire, the shittiest map of all time, is not in and of itself evidence that the dev team should be listening more to their QA department, where the average tester is probably in, like, platinum league. Hell, Blizzard QA probably played that map and was like "lolz this is cool I love the bridge", since it's obvious that nobody who has a clue ever looked at that map before it magically appeared on the ladder.
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In regards to the "sickish debs" comment I think its quite fair comment. Coming off as a dev for android/iPhone (which is probably far more simpler) I can understand them being dicks. I see pointless feedbacks all the time which I do listen too and its overall impact does nothing or worse sales.
Fact is, I have all the resources, I have the stats and I can see what the general population likes from that. I have all the vital analytics I have to see what users like to use in my app.
When I see some anti-apple fan saying Apple will crash because it doesn't have full screen, I think "What do they know? Do they think they have brilliant minds to be an instant billionaire that Apple's problem can be solved by increasing screen size? What about costs? Battery performance? blah blah blah can go on for ever. Apple have the stats, they know what works and what doesn't for them and so they have the freedom to utilise that information to their advantage (they are after are near the top of the smart phone market anyways so they must be doing it right still).
Anyways, we can't judge what SC2 will be a successful game. Will balancing the game make the game more popular? Will adding more features do that as well?
But yes, devs can be quite dickish. The hard work of making a game and piecing the code together is such a mind fuck thing to do and when someone who knows nothing of the process comes along and derps like its so easy to put features in and generate billions of dollars because they think they are so smart.. LoL is all i can say.
Overall I think blizzard have come under fire over the last few years, they seem to be losing ground on the basis that they are laying off employees, their lust to gain control SC2 tourney probably didn't go as how they wanted it to.
And custom maps, it has alot of potential, but common where are the documentation to assist us? I have to work out every single thing on my own and that is just way too time consuming. I feel sorry for that kid who just sat in his basement trying to release the potential of blizzard with a "World of StarCraft" map only to be sent a cease and desist letter.
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This person could be anybody.
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On June 08 2013 15:33 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 14:21 udgnim wrote:On June 08 2013 14:07 Brett wrote: So this person massively dodged questions about Titan, which is something nobody really knows about, despite suggesting they'd been shown bits and pieces of the game... I call BS on this person being legitimate. non-disclosure agreement Given responses to other questions, I don't think they appear to be concerned about legal consequences. Wasn't their posting also annonymous?
And with the information they provided such as I worked in Blizzard from 06' to 12', worked in these departments etc I'm pretty sure it'd be easy to narrow down a few of the laid off employees. He went in anon, but went in with adhering to the NDA.
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I actually think this is an important point to touch on, in that it's important to know the difference between listening to your community and listening to your QA department. The Blizzard QA department is not made up of Korean GM players. They definitely should be listening to the community more - but, the fact that they gave us Klontas Mire, the shittiest map of all time, is not in and of itself evidence that the dev team should be listening more to their QA department, where the average tester is probably in, like, platinum league. Hell, Blizzard QA probably played that map and was like "lolz this is cool I love the bridge", since it's obvious that nobody who has a clue ever looked at that map before it magically appeared on the ladder.
It's not in any way the QA department's job to decide whether Klontas Mire is a good map or not.
It's the QA department's job to make sure that the map doesn't contain any graphical glitches, make sure all the stuff that looks passable is passable (and all the stuff that looks impassable isn't), make sure that the map doesn't run so much slower than other maps that people have to change their graphics settings, and so on.
The map pool is a perfect example of why "listening to the community" is a no-win scenario. "The community" hates any map on which the one build they have memorised for that match-up may not be optimal. "The community" hates any map that threatens to shake up the meta-game. "The community" hates maps that take risks. (Except in Pro League, because interesting maps that support weird non-standard builds are fun when someone else has to play them.)
(The lead designer of Magic: The Gathering was asked on his blog whether he regretted making a certain completely broken card. His response: “If we didn't risk making broken cards, we'd never make any good cards either.”)
SC2 has for the most part a monotonous, neutered map pool where everything is a minor variant on everything else because Blizzard keeps listening to the community's bitter complaints whenever they try to introduce anything out-of-the-ordinary.
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On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE. They were trying to introduce different modes of play. Having a bridge adds variety. It's not what everyone likes, and may not even be balanced, but those of you who hate it can just veto it. It was stupid, sure (I play exclusively macro games and hate that map), but there are those among us who may actually enjoy using it to do something other than a normal game.
By the way, which clock that doesn't run on real time are you talking about? I smell absolute retardation
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On June 08 2013 22:07 xAdra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE. By the way, which clock that doesn't run on real time are you talking about? I smell absolute retardation
you know the game clock runs faster than it's supposed to, given that no one plays at "normal" game speed, right?
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On June 08 2013 22:58 Quotidian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 22:07 xAdra wrote:On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE. By the way, which clock that doesn't run on real time are you talking about? I smell absolute retardation you know the game clock runs faster than it's supposed to, given that no one plays at "normal" game speed, right? My point exactly, the guy is saying Blizzard is arrogant for...making a clock that doesn't even run on real time. I'd like to see him come defend his point. Bitching and whining about Blizzard seems to be the "in" thing nowadays, even kids like this do it.
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On June 08 2013 23:11 xAdra wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 22:58 Quotidian wrote:On June 08 2013 22:07 xAdra wrote:On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE. By the way, which clock that doesn't run on real time are you talking about? I smell absolute retardation you know the game clock runs faster than it's supposed to, given that no one plays at "normal" game speed, right? My point exactly, the guy is saying Blizzard is arrogant for...making a clock that doesn't even run on real time. I'd like to see him come defend his point. Bitching and whining about Blizzard seems to be the "in" thing nowadays, even kids like this do it.
less arrogance and more incompetence, really... they could've made a system that scales all build times according to the game clock, it shouldn't be that hard.
The reason why it's "in" is because the bitching is warranted.
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On June 08 2013 22:58 Quotidian wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 22:07 xAdra wrote:On June 08 2013 13:58 _Search_ wrote:On June 08 2013 10:28 AnomalySC2 wrote:On June 08 2013 09:50 _Search_ wrote:On June 07 2013 23:31 Wildmoon wrote:On June 07 2013 23:29 _Search_ wrote:I'll say that working with SC2 devs can be challenging because they don't tend to want to listen to your suggestions. They can also come across as quite dickesh because they feel they can do no wrong. Mind you there are some very nice devs on that team that actually give a shit, but some of the more "esteemed" devs have a superiority complex for sure. I really don't understand why this is so surprising. Everything I've seen from Kim/Browder speaks of unquestionable arrogance. DB is really humble judging from various interviews if you ask me. Are you fucking joking? Who has the arrogance to keep adding more shit Blizzard maps to the map pool after years of everyone telling them to switch to tournament maps? Who has the arrogance to tell the community that Terran is balanced while Artosis and Tasteless THEMSELVES are calling it GomTvT? Who has the arrogance to abandon Wings of Liberty altogether 8 months before their new expansion ships, leaving the last 4 or 5 seasons of GSL to nothing but immortal/sentry allins and ZvZs? Who has the arrogance to MAKE A CLOCK THAT DOESNT EVEN RUN ON REAL TIME??!! Anything but absolute contempt is too good for the Blizzard design team. I'm not sure where to start with this one.....I guess I just won't, everything you said was retarded. Hint, maybe the creators of the game know more about it then the community, maybe they understand what makes for a balanced or imbalanced map better than you? Ever think of that...of course you didn't. Yeah, the creators of the game know more about the game than us, WHICH IS WHY THEY JUST GAVE US KLONTAS MIRE. By the way, which clock that doesn't run on real time are you talking about? I smell absolute retardation you know the game clock runs faster than it's supposed to, given that no one plays at "normal" game speed, right? Pretty sure a ton of people that play campaign only play on normal.
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you know, you could replace "blizzard" in the interview with almost any other company and it still wouldn't be surprising.
Take it with a grain of salt, no company is perfect after all.
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Why does this person's opinion matter exactly?
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I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company.
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On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company.
How do we even know that he knows what he's talking about and isn't just some guy on the internet. If he had come out and praised Blizzard everyone would have said that he's just a fan boy or a hired blizzard PR employee, but because he's negative everyone just assumes that he's the real thing? Give me a break.
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On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company.
Hyperbole is rife on both sides in this thread. There's also a load of comments about how awful all the Blizzard developers are and how they have no idea how to make Starcraft 2 because they don't post enough on forums.
When people start making blanket statements they'll all just drown each other out in a flood of exaggeration. There's no real discussion here; either people yelling "Fuck yeah I knew Blizzard are stupid!" or "Disgruntled Q&A who doesn't actually know anything tries to sound important".
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On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company.
I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke.
Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Also, GMs tend to be part timer or intern, with no real work experience, think of telemarketers; fits the guy pretty well. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired.
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On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired.
QA for software development is quite different from QA for video games.
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United States12180 Posts
On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired.
$12-15/hr is pretty common in the game industry for QA temp work, at least as of 3-5 years ago. It could be slightly more now, maybe $13-18.
Note that their title is "QA Tester" or "Game Tester" whereas QA in your company is probably closer to "QA Engineer" or something like that, where the work is a little more involved.
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On June 09 2013 07:27 -Kaiser- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. QA for software development is quite different from QA for video games.
So you are admitting that the barrier of entry is quite low and that the level of involvement this person would have in the company is low as well, basically reinforcing the fact that he has no real knowledge of the situation?
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On June 09 2013 07:27 -Kaiser- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. QA for software development is quite different from QA for video games.
He obviously meant (or tried to falsely imply) SQA though with it's close association with dev.
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On June 09 2013 07:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. $12-15/hr is pretty common in the game industry for QA temp work, at least as of 3-5 years ago. It could be slightly more now, maybe $13-18. Note that their title is "QA Tester" or "Game Tester" whereas QA in your company is probably closer to "QA Engineer" or something like that, where the work is a little more involved.
That might be the case but company rarely if ever hire full time QA / Game testers. They usually get summer interns or part time student and it's more of a fun job rather than a paying one.
Also they would have no real interaction with devs as they work on completely different level, the guy obviously is making himself sound like he has idea about how devs operate.
Now, if he was actually a disgruntled part timer, it would make the whole thing even more hilarious.
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Why were all his posts removed? I missed the AMA -_-.
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United States12180 Posts
On June 09 2013 07:33 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. $12-15/hr is pretty common in the game industry for QA temp work, at least as of 3-5 years ago. It could be slightly more now, maybe $13-18. Note that their title is "QA Tester" or "Game Tester" whereas QA in your company is probably closer to "QA Engineer" or something like that, where the work is a little more involved. That might be the case but company rarely if ever hire full time QA / Game testers. They usually get summer interns or part time student and it's more of a fun job rather than a paying one. Also they would have no real interaction with devs as they work on completely different level, the guy obviously is making himself sound like he has idea about how devs operate. Now, if he was actually a disgruntled part timer, it would make the whole thing even more hilarious.
The interaction with devs is usually limited to the comments section of bug reports in the database. Sometimes you'll get a producer or developer who will come down and speak at length about the issue, but that's uncommon because usually those guys are in different departments located in different physical areas and sometimes different buildings. Maybe the teams are a little more closely knit at Blizzard, I have no idea. It is rather common for some QA testers to be passionate about the bugs they find and the general feedback they have about the game because they play it most often and know the impact inaction will have on end users.
And yeah, the work is usually temp-to-hire but for studios like Blizzard it's more than an unpaid internship.
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On June 09 2013 07:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:33 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. $12-15/hr is pretty common in the game industry for QA temp work, at least as of 3-5 years ago. It could be slightly more now, maybe $13-18. Note that their title is "QA Tester" or "Game Tester" whereas QA in your company is probably closer to "QA Engineer" or something like that, where the work is a little more involved. That might be the case but company rarely if ever hire full time QA / Game testers. They usually get summer interns or part time student and it's more of a fun job rather than a paying one. Also they would have no real interaction with devs as they work on completely different level, the guy obviously is making himself sound like he has idea about how devs operate. Now, if he was actually a disgruntled part timer, it would make the whole thing even more hilarious. The interaction with devs is usually limited to the comments section of bug reports in the database. Sometimes you'll get a producer or developer who will come down and speak at length about the issue, but that's uncommon because usually those guys are in different departments located in different physical areas and sometimes different buildings. Maybe the teams are a little more closely knit at Blizzard, I have no idea. It is rather common for some QA testers to be passionate about the bugs they find and the general feedback they have about the game because they play it most often and know the impact inaction will have on end users. And yeah, the work is usually temp-to-hire but for studios like Blizzard it's more than an unpaid internship.
Oh, I did not mean to suggest they were unpaid, just that people usually apply those jobs more to be able to say "I worked on this game" than actually live off it.
If this guy started as a tester and went on to become GM and later fired / laid off, his opinion is not very relevant even if he didn't have a bone to pick.
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On June 09 2013 07:30 Caihead wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:27 -Kaiser- wrote:On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. QA for software development is quite different from QA for video games. So you are admitting that the barrier of entry is quite low and that the level of involvement this person would have in the company is low as well, basically reinforcing the fact that he has no real knowledge of the situation?
Uh, are you confusing me with someone else? Obviously?
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On June 09 2013 07:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2013 07:33 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:29 Excalibur_Z wrote:On June 09 2013 07:22 ragz_gt wrote:On June 09 2013 07:03 datscilly wrote: I feel like too many people in this thread are overeager to defend Blizzard, by attacking this person. They are attached to Blizzard, or something. Personally, I don't feel this attachment to the company. I would not defend Blizz as I'm not happy with them in any way of shape, but this guy is a joke. Unless he worked in upper management, he has no real knowledge of the situation than anyone else, no idea what made him think his AMA would be interesting or worthwhile in anyway. He (and most people commenting) seems totally lack any idea how software development work. And no, I do not believe he worked as QA, at least not software side. Every single software QA in my team (I'm software dev) has a BS in engineering or CS at least, and I don't know a single SQA who would work for 12/h, or 22, even considering how people throw themselves at gaming companies and result in lower pay (salary for a fresh out of college jr SQA is about 60k). GM though, I can totally see, as he seems on par with my experience with Blizz GMs. Not to mention that bad mouth previous employer is always a dick move and poor reflection on character. There probably was a really good reason to why he was fired. $12-15/hr is pretty common in the game industry for QA temp work, at least as of 3-5 years ago. It could be slightly more now, maybe $13-18. Note that their title is "QA Tester" or "Game Tester" whereas QA in your company is probably closer to "QA Engineer" or something like that, where the work is a little more involved. That might be the case but company rarely if ever hire full time QA / Game testers. They usually get summer interns or part time student and it's more of a fun job rather than a paying one. Also they would have no real interaction with devs as they work on completely different level, the guy obviously is making himself sound like he has idea about how devs operate. Now, if he was actually a disgruntled part timer, it would make the whole thing even more hilarious. The interaction with devs is usually limited to the comments section of bug reports in the database. Sometimes you'll get a producer or developer who will come down and speak at length about the issue, but that's uncommon because usually those guys are in different departments located in different physical areas and sometimes different buildings. Maybe the teams are a little more closely knit at Blizzard, I have no idea. It is rather common for some QA testers to be passionate about the bugs they find and the general feedback they have about the game because they play it most often and know the impact inaction will have on end users. And yeah, the work is usually temp-to-hire but for studios like Blizzard it's more than an unpaid internship.
Blizzard QA's their games at any phase of developement, so the QA teams aren't as temp as with other companies. WoW patches still go through QA before ptr, same with patches for Diablo 3 (which are semi regular still) and SC2 patches. Then there's also Blizzard-All Stars and Project Titan which they also did QA on.
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and now League of Legends is several times more popular than WoW has ever been. I don't get this, isn't LoL free-to-play and WoW is subscription only?
And isn't WoW a MMORPG and LoL is a MOBA?
So is this a stupid question or am I a stupid man? Or both? >-> <-<
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Regarding companies that won't listen to their customers because they feel that their customers are stupid, ignoring your customers is the stupidest thing you can do. Think of the phrase "the customer is always right." Yes it gets made fun of because the customer is clearly wrong when they are trolling you, but the target customer is paying you money to deliver what they want and the moment you forget that your customer base will begin to erode. This is a very simple concept in business and many companies miss this point by miles. Also Blizzard makes no effort to even pretend they are listening to us which is where all the backlash originates from. Lastly to those calling us crazy, the posters on this website are top notch. Of course there are frequent trolls, but there are far more of us with sound and logic responses which smash the trolls to the ground.
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