Blizzard Dev Leak Explains Why Jeff Kaplan Quit | Asmongold Reacts
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- This is why Jeff Kaplan quit Blizzard
by @YourOverwatch • Blizzard Dev Leak Expl...
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i worked for a brief stint as a studio 3D artist, and let me tell you veteran and senior 3D artists are not just like 1.5-2x more productive than junior artists, they are like 5-10x as productive as jr artists and also have knowledge of systems and pipeline that junior artists just dont have yet. bleeding senior staff should be a very worrying sign for any company, losing a single senior developer is more painful to the productivity and knowledge base of the team than losing a whole crew of 5 or 6 jr artists all at once.
I can confidently say this is true in most industries but even moreso in creative ones as some of that talent and expertise can never be bought back with training.
Like that saying: 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
@@kunka592 unless you need to move a piano
@@thisiskitta it's true in the coding industry for sure. Junior coders vs senior coders is one hell of a gap.
I am an art director at a game studio. I can confirm this. This isn’t to say that junior team is lazy. It’s as the op said, senior team just has the experience since they have closed the loop numerous times with varying requirements.
After all these years of watching Frito and playing Overwatch, hearing Frito say "Fuck you Blizzard" hit me harder than the pve being canceled.
I respect it bc we’ve been calling him out for years now for his pretty much shilling. Even tho he says he stood up to the devs behind close doors to me always felt like he gave them the benefit of the doubt regardless of the facts and now it made him look like an idiot so yea makes sense he’s sayin fuck em hahah
All these years and you dont even know his name is Freedo
Frito 💀
@@Flowerz__ You're completely right. I remember unsubscribing because it felt like too much shilling a while back. Like delusional levels it was weird. But hey, can bring a horse to water can't force him to drink. He needed this to break out of it.
It's funny that people gave allll that money to blizzard and are just now reaching that conclusion. I saw what they were the second they tried to tie wow into Facebook and for users to use their real names on the forums, and how they treated people that did not like it. Blizzard hasn't got a dime from me since.
PvE doesn't have to be "balanced", it just has to be FUN.
PVE does need to be balanced to an extent. You should never have 1 class/skill/equipment combination that is 1000x better than all the rest due to some oversight.
Especially with Blizzard games, they usually end up having some sort of seasonal ladder that people like to race to the top. I'd imagine if in a perfect world where Overwatch 2 was released in Kaplans image, and we did get a full Borderlands style campaign, and then eventually an OW MMO, there would certainly be seasonal ladders. Balance is extremely important for this.
Borderlands (well BL2 mostly) can get away with their crazy bugs or oversights that cause extreme imbalance, because there is no seasonal ladder, it's not forced online, you can just jump and play with mates and that's all that matters.
You won't feel fun when the talent route you like is like 1% as effective as the best route. It doesn't need to be balanced for competitiveness, but it definitely need to be balanced for your enjoyment.
@@Klyttorius Borderlands in not a PvP online game, what are you smoking?! Bro learn to share! If wanna pick something it would be Destiny 2, wich has PvP+PvE or Division.
@@alalalal5952 What are you smoking? My argument is that OW campaign would need to be balanced, while Borderlands does not. I'm not arguing what games are the most similar.
Edit: Why did I waste my time replying to a bot?
@@Klyttorius Name balanced PvP game, that is not chess. There not a lot of them. Bruh "Balance" is just a way for stupid people to cope. Have you seen balance in League of Legends, DoTa or FORTnight? What do you understand for "balance", cuz LoL in imbalanced as wheel that does 8, but is in the top of most popular games and in top of most profitable games.
Canceling the only reason you made a second game is such a massive brain strat that only blizzard could do
And it'll pay off like diablo immortal sadly
It's galaxy brain
I am someone that has worked in the industry for over a decade.
One thing many hiring managers do not understand in highly technical fields like this a senior or lead dev is worth easily 10-15 junior devs. On projects on this magnitude it can take 6 months of virtually zero productivity to get a junior dev up to speed with just the work flows and systems in place to work on a project. Then potentially another 6 months on the project until they are useful. We are talking about a 2 year investment before they can reasonably be considered an actual asset to the company. I remember being fresh out of college thinking i was smart and frankly, I think many are just as naive as I was.
Throwing more young devs at a project really doesn't help. Development is not a linear project that gets quicker with more people. Its just more places that things can go wrong. When I hear a project has doubled in team members I immediately consider that project is likely to fail because senior members that are the lifeblood of a dev team are indispensable. Young junior devs are a dime a dozen and do not have the experience to even be worth their investment for a year or more.
sounds about right
Yeah but how else will they hit there diversity quotas
I graduated in 2021 in comp sci and I can agree, with the exact timeline of when you start to feel useful/knowledgeable for a company
@@jackbower9087 hOw ElSe WiLl tHeY hIt TheIR dIvErSitY qUotaS? bro stfu and read it again
3D Render Artist here - same story, but even worse. it takes about 6 months for a new hire to be able to barely work on their own, and about a year to work as "part of the team". 5+ year old veterans work around 5~6 times the speed of a 1 year hire. I'm currently at 4 years, and already work about 3x the speed of a 1 year hire. Time and experience matters so much, simply because of complex workflows and corporate bs.
I'm a software engineer and doubling a team often lowers productivity for a long time. The time it takes to train, teach, and get everyone up to speed where they can contribute is substantial, and once everyone is ready its difficult to get everyone working on something without stepping on each others toes. Adding people is not always the right play.
that actually makes sense. Hell it reminds me when i had to train someone at just a regular job despite it being above my pay grade to train someone. But they were short staffed and the manager was gone so i had to train some new people.
It could end up even cutting into the regular guys times like me, and then they spend less time developing and have to train people too.
Worst part is with these big triple A companies is usually when a game flops they cull the team they just spent time doubling up.
Yup, when you look at game credits like Halo 3 for example, the engineer team is relatively small compared to the artists and game developers / designers.
Yeah it blows my mind that companies can't see that a good lasting product brings more money now and in the future.
yea absolutely there is a theory of that we learned in economics, the more laborer you have the less productive your factories will be
Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan were part of my video game highlights. I played in the guild Legacy of Steel that Pardo was guild leader of with his character Ariel and later Kaplan took over guild leadership with his character Tigole Bitties. They led us to many world and server firsts in Everquest. Back then WoW was the unnamed game that quite a few guild members were working on. Kaplan was an English teacher and really hit the lottery by being in the guild with these guys. He was a popular figure on the server but being in Legacy of Steel certainly helped him become what he did. Anyway just my tidbit of information that I really had no idea of how big a deal it was to be playing with these guys till years later and WoW became the biggest MMO in the world pretty much.
Holup
I had a similar experience. One of my best friends was also in LoS and I spent countless hours watching them raid in his basement. EQ started my infatuation and love of MMOs. I remember Tigol vividly and my P99 login info is inspired by him. I’ll never forget the feeling of awe and amazement EQ brought us. I remember when the whispers started of tigol helping to develop WoW and seeing my buddy play the beta. Good times.
Yup, wasn't he a Troll shadowknight? I remember randomly seeing him in-game in EQ a few times and then learning like 8 years later that he was on the team that made WoW.
@@CyberneticArgumentCreator Tigole played a halfling Rogue I believe. I had never played any pc games really until I was 29 and got a new computer as I was going back to college. Guys at best buy said I had to get EQ. (Big mistake for college.. but most fun I ever had) Anyway in the pre any expansion EQ Tigole used to enter a zone and shout out "cookies and milk anyone"... It was pretty funny. I got lucky and joined Legacy of Steel soon after the first expansion hit. I think I left somewhere during the expansion The Planes of Power.. so really played religiously with them for like 3 years or so.. but I kinda burned out and sold my Shaman for $675 and that was that.
Did you know Pardo abused one of his employees?
From what I've experienced in corpo world, if you have a good idea and the talent to make it happen but the upper suites don't care, they will give you the 'freedom' to do whatever you want and no money. It's all speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised this is what happened based on people talking about the lack of resouces to develop and update OW/OW2.
This is how the companies EA eats for the most part operate. The most famous one being Bioware.
@Konstantin when you say “problematic” are you referring to the the devs who took part in the work place harassment that led to the company being placed under investigation?
@@Sirrizzo he’s talking about the social equity that has been implemented across companies countrywide. Social equity tries to promote racial diversity with discrimination.
@@Sirrizz he’s talking about the equity requirement banks are forcing on companies so that they can qualify for better deals and loans. I don’t see how that’s relevant though, since blizzards dropped the ball even before people knew what that even was.
@@dfwTxRen3Gade It's not just race based discrimination, it's discrimination against those with different political views on How America and the world should work. If you're a conservative who's more to the right, or just anyone who is normal and in the center or against politics all together, they'll destroy you by any means, in this case they'll sack you just to replace you with either a woman, a person of color/ethnicity, or even some LGBTQ+ "person" that has no skill or common decency whatsoever. It's madness that's making the businesses and Industries in America, and thus the rest of the world fall to the rising New World Order.
4:20 It's crazy to think that in this developer update there were 8 experienced developers speaking, and now only 2 of them are still working at Blizzard. Just imagine the chaos that would create, bringing in so much new talent to work on such high positioning in a new project.
i see the game company is more concerned about payers than players
Are we surprised when it comes to public companies? They have to grow year over year, it's so toxic
@@cbjewelz yep. the only way for a company to stay legit over a long period of time is to never go public. Once you go public there's a clock on it, it's unavoidable
@@EB-bl6cc 100% agree. I hope we see a shift in this but hard to be optimistic when the pay out is so immense for execs when they go public
Capitalism eats creativity and shits out disappointment
My issue with microtransactions is that they are desgined to exploit your negative emotions. If they actually made me happy or made me feel good i dont mind spending money on gaming like with many other hobbies. but right now each time im tricked into paying for something it makes me feel like shit and makes not wanna play the game anymore
It is a sad fact that immoral design and immoral (exploitative, manipulative) monetization are strongly correlated with profitability. Until executives wisen up and learn to plan more long term, either just for the sake of the health of the IP and the playerbase, which I'm sure is the most profitable decision looking at the next decade or so, or ideally they should also considering the personal impact on people and their moral responsibilities. But that might be asking too much of soulless suits. At least the first truth is something they might come to realize one day, hopefully. You can make all the money now and lose your fans, or you can make a lot of money in the long term, and keep your fans (while making them happy)
How do you get ‘tricked’ into micro transactions? Tricked as in you didn’t get the out come or perks you expected for paying for it? Or you didn’t realize you were paying for it somehow? It’s so sad that the gaming community can’t just organize to strike against all micros, and only pay for games that are at least 90% fully finished and functional. If y’all don’t and keep paying into half finished crap and micros, they have zero reason to stop being predatory. They don’t care about us lol, they care about their moola and investors. So just stop feeding the beast and they’ll be forced to stop this bs.
@@mrs.h2725 im not the OG commentor but for me i consider BP itself a form of trickery. You're basically paying for something that isn't guaranteed. And if one isn't smart and buys the battle pass after completing it they might not even complete it in time to get their moneys worth out of it. It also turns the game from being a "i feel like playing today" to "i have to play today or else i wont complete the BP"
On top of that usually buying the battlepass in most games gives BP exp boost to make leveling easier further incentivising buying it before finishing it.
Sure it seems less like trickery when youre aware of the smoke and mirrors, but it doesnt change the fact how much psychological research is done to make these games as predatory as possible. You can even find tutorials on youtube of people giving talks how to make the most predatory monetary systems in a game. It all comes down to psychology.
The worse part is once a habit is formed because now you have to break it. If you have a habit being aware of the problem isn't enough anymore because youve already become addicted to spending.
@@mrs.h2725 you get manipulated into microtransactions by the game design which causes frustration, impatience, FOMO. A low buy-in (discount) for new players to get them into the habit. Then psychological tricks designed to cause addiction.
lately micro-transactions are both wildly overpriced and over reliant on fomo. look at destiny for example(i know this is about blizzard but destiny is the game i play that had the most micro-transactions). to buy a single cosmetic armor set from the store, which are usually the most well designed ones because it’s gonna make them money, it costs more than buying an entire season of content in the game. how is that justified? and if it’s a holiday event set there is so much fomo incentive to buy it right now because if you don’t you gotta wait a whole year before you get a chance to buy it again. remember the oblivion horse armor? it cost $2.50 and at the time it was seen as one of the most egregious micro-transactions ever. nowadays it would have costed $10-$15.
Greed is one of the most destructive human emotions on this planet, not even something thats suppose to be fun like gaming is safe from it.
I might argue pride is even more deadly
3 of the deadliest human emotions are greed, pride, and jealousy. Greed leads people to do anything for their own gain, which then makes them prideful of what they have done, which in turn makes others jealous and repeat the actions of the first person its an endless cycle thats getting out of control.
duh, why do you think the phrase goes "money is the root of all evil"?
@@slynthrax CS Lewis: "According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through pride that the Devil became the Devil: Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind."
Greed is bad, sure, but it's also the most common of the sins, everyone wants something, be it money, power, fame, or even innocent things like the ability to help people, or friends, or even true love
Jeff might pushed PVE-Mode too much. Aaaand he‘s gone…
Jeff or PvE-mode? Oh wai~~
He played on hardcore mode
We don’t know what was happening behind the curtain but he certainly pushed pve too much only OW players will understand he left ow1 to rot
Don’t get me wrong i love papa jeff but his decision (if it was his decision) to leave ow1 to die slowly wasn’t the smartest
I agree, but a lot of people are forgetting overwatch was getting to feel stale even way back then. He had to give some kind of explanation and way to revive the hype knowing they were working on the pve mode and literally nothing else was going to change. After the third year of repeating the same events with a hero every 4 months it started to feel the same to a lot of people
@@MrSevenup14 sounds like it was half-hype and half-team, sounded like he was told something for the PVE and with the details as he was incredibly hyped about it. But it sounded a lot as just a company shift to give it a shot. Plus it was kinda figured they couldn't for every hero, but I was kinda surprised when after four years they didn't produce a PVE scenario or any PVE heroes.
For most, Overwatch was fun and as balanced as it needed to be, because the casual players just played the heroes they liked.
The big problem was trying to turn it into a major e-sport.
Former balancing tweaks became deliberate attempts to disrupt any meta that developed, supposedly to make the game more interesting for spectators.
In their attempt to break the rush meta, they introduced Brigette. A prime example of unintended consequence, as they inadvertently created the goat meta, which effectively killed the e-sport...
I played that game 24/7 but when they released brigitte the game just wasn't fun anymore, didn't take me more than a month to quit and never look back.
This happens to all games with heroes like this, they just keep adding more and more heroes and eventually, inevitably, the thing that made the game so much fun to play gets destroyed.
League of legends and overwatch being prime examples.
Just keep your original roster and identify the gaps and mistakes in it, fix those by adding 1 or 2 well thought out heroes and then leave the damn roster alone, just make new maps and balance tweeks only.
Then when it's time for OW2 you just make an entirely new roster with maybe 3-4 of the old ones just for the nostalgic flavor and you build a new fucking game. You could even make a big ass story game explaining why only those original 4 are still in there.
Everyone complains about Bridget yet don't remember complaining about the heros an wanting new heros to choose from the amount of bitching for new heros by the community is what killed the game all the casuals that think there pro gamers when they aren't is what killed the game
I'll never understand these game companies who constantly devalue their IPs by being short sighted and not giving them the proper resources to grow. If Overwatch 2 was made infinitely replayable in addition to the F2P model, there are so many things that could be done with the IP outside of games, toys, merchandise, tv shows, positive press, etc. It boggles the mind to see a company try so obviously to do the bare minimum and expect the maximum returns
This is why for all it's own set of evil, Nintendo raises above every damn time. Look at what they give with their lifelong IPs of Zelda and Mario (man idek about Pokemon's state so can't really speak on that but still is one of the most beloved IP worldwide). They know how to keep their product going, they know how to market a brand out of their IP and keep it alive. Zelda is so fucking old (legit older than me at 30 yrs old!) and it's still making game of the year worthy games in 2023? This is what Overwatch could've been. They caught the heart that is needed to have a beloved IP and are pissing it away for short term profits that will absolutely kill the product long term. Kudos to the creative team that built this up and I hope they find some silver lining in how loved what they poured out is.
@@thisiskittaI think the set of value to keep making with what their good at its the reason is Nintendo is so spiteful sometimes, being a trend setter can boost your ego so much
@@thisiskittaI think the set of value to keep making with what their good at its the reason is Nintendo is so spiteful sometimes, being a trend setter can boost your ego so much
Because they're public company with board of directors who doesn't give a shit, the moment your beloved gaming company got filled with people who just cared about profit, leave
It's exclusively for executive bonuses. They get more money (a lot more) if certain quarters, years, and milestones are met. Suits at the very top in many industries are out for themselves and are willing to run a company into the ground with profitable, but short-sighted benefits until they've milked it dry, and then golden parachute their way into the next company to be the biggest, stupidest tick sucking it dry as before.
They don't care about the company, its people, or its customers. Their imperative is themselves. Why would they stay in a company to earn a multimillion dollar bonus outlined in their contract over 5+ years if they can keep earning that bonus year over year until the smoke and mirrors no longer work?
I reject the narrative that box price games are doomed to fail. Especially when people are desperate for a good multiplayer game that is just a single purchase without a million micro transactions/shops/battle passes. They could absolutely be successful with this, but execs can’t resist just going for the obvious cash grab.
A successful multiplayer game doesn’t make a fraction of the money that Diablo Shitmortal makes from p2w. After all, you can’t make a good multiplayer game with p2w mechanics. Therefore, it’s a failure in the board’s eyes even if it’s the best game of all time… it doesn’t make as much money
Thing is, f2p games will always have more players. That means more potential micro-transaction paying people. I'm sure they get more people paying the 50-70$ in micro transactions than there would be people willing to pay 50-70$ for a box game. In addition they have whales that pay over 100x that amount, people paying a couple of $ in micro transactions, and everything in between.
I wish it were otherwise, I really do, but realistically an f2p micro transaction game will win out without competition.
@@AlluckyTV I'm not saying that boxprice games are going to be the most lucrative. I'm saying that they can be successful though, and that there is absolutely a market void for a quality multiplayer box price game. That free to play game some studio is making could be hugely profitable, but if it's competing with other similarly monetized games but isn't matching up to them it's not going to be popular enough for it to reach that monetary potential and support for it will wither until it's early death. Meanwhile a box price game that is fun, worth investing time into, and continues to get support could become a massive success and continue to grow it's playerbase due to being what so many people are wanting from every other game only to be disappointed by battle passes, and can continue to monetize itself through conventional expansions in the future to allow the game to have a long life while being continuously profitable for the team behind it. You would also accrue a huge amount of support from your community and earn support of future projects as long as you didn't corrupt future projects with predatory monetizations.
I hear you, but now it's pay for the box copy. Pay the monthly fee. Pay for the battle pass. Pay for expansions. Buy into the cash shop because all the armor that's free looks like crap. That's Blizzard. It makes a lot of sense when you look at how much Blizzard wants to milk you versus the free games. They're both milking you - With a free game you know you gotta crack out the wallet to look cool. With Blizzard, you gotta pay to even start the game up before you even thought about looking cool. They're quadra-dipping you before you've even made your character.
Hogwarts Legacy. Case and point, doesn't get enough credit.
Jeff was the best. There will never be anyone like him
@@pandapo7542 Didn't he also get banned in 2016 from lol because of his toxic behavior?
Who knew a perma-raging raid leader could capture lightning in a bottle twice only for executives to come in and run em into the ground.
he was kind of a petty ass
@@pandapo7542 no one cares
@@pandapo7542 you saying he did nothing wrong? are you kidding me right we all watched him typing flaming team lol
Early Overwatch was magical.
@@FlamespeedyAMV it’s just kids who never played an online shooter before typical generic woke hero shooter nothing special
@@acev3521 To you perhaps, but can you point to any game at the time that had such an exciting atmosphere around it? It's not just that it was magical to some zoomers or whatever, it's that this stuff comes and goes and people cherish these moments. It's baffling to see it crash and burn like this.
I played it on the first free weekend had some fun and never went back.
@@FlamespeedyAMV It was pretty amazing, initially. I think Overwatch got people excited for a 'PvP shooter' (to that degree) for the first time since basically Team Fortress 2 came out (and initially when TF2 was being demo'ed not everyone liked the cartoon'ish / Pixar style but by now everyone considers it a classic and it still goes on strong to this day). If the original Overwatch had been maintained by a Blizzard not acquired by Activision, then "that" hypothetical Overwatch would have inevitably equalled if not surpassed TF2, and would have also been much more difficult to compete with from the likes of Apex and Valorant.
But alas, what happened happened indeed. And at this point in time "Overwatch" is just "a shooter" in the mix and some people play it, many don't (or will stop in greater number, or will stop faster than originally anticipated because they did want that PvE portion of the game that won't exist anymore).
Agreed
The world building, the cinematics, finally getting to play the beta and having some of the most fun I ever had playing a game
Sad to to see this IP go to waste
Oh man, I feel like this is going to be a very satisfying video. Nothing surprising at all when you know how scummy Blizzard is nowadays, but satisfying nonetheless.
nowadays? not years ago when that girl committed suicide over sexual harrassment??
When a new project is announced : "We're better and bigger than ever!"
When they fail :" We really struggled with the workload"
= we fired 20 experienced devs but don't worry we hired 40 juniors
@@agssilv5919 I bet a bunch of them quit and weren't fired tbh. They saw that they needed to get the hell out of there before it got any worse.
People probably don't know who Sir Swag is but their stuff is actually pretty nice. They're a small news team based in Australia. They cover game news from time to time to doing monthly recaps of world news. I'd say their stuff is probably more credible than some of the stuff Asmon watches. People are reasonably hesitant since this just confirms everything, but Bellular has said similar things every video and no one questions him either, so not sure why the hesitation now. Either way, this just makes me sad af for Diablo 4.
Edit: Sir Swag credits their News Team in their video descriptions. Their individual socials are there. They have less than 10 people. Small team, but probably still got more credibility than most of the solo creators Asmon watches for reports just through logic of filtration by numbers (assuming quality is upheld).
I don't think more than 1 guy works on that channel but yeah I remember his videos when I used to play OW 1.
@@peasantofpersia He has an edit team. His news are impossible to do alone with his amount of output.
Even when Jeff was telling us about terrible choices for the game I still knew he had our best interests at heart
13:47 Making a character fun to play and prioritizing that isn't inherently a bad thing, but it requires the designer to also consider "is this fun to also play against?". I believe that when one designs something for a multiplayer game, they should ask the question "is this fun to use?" and "does the fun of this ruin the fun for those that have to go up against it?".
ive always carried the notion that snipers (tac shooters not withstanding) are one of the biggest things that goes against all of those questions because they warp maps and meta around them on all levels
overwatch would be a more fun game for almost everyone without widowmaker than with widowmaker and toning down some of the things widow kept in check in the first place
I am crying in AWP right now
"but it requires the designer to also consider 'is this fun to also play against?'"
I personally disagree. You can't keep everyone happy, so the "fun to play against" point should be relegated to the garbage bin as early as possible, with "fun to play as" the only qualifier or importance. Too many characters in OW have been broken by the undue value put into "fun to play against", with zero consideration for the single most important point, which is "fun to play as"
@@kwazii363 imho it goes deeper than that. The 2.0x headshot multiplier and getting oneshot by heroes OTHER than widow are what made ow less fun at times.
@@halofreak1990 problem is that mindset gives birth to problems like brig
There is nothing that prevented PVE from coming other than Bobby and corporate greed. I'm happy for Jeff and hope he finds happiness somewhere far away from Kotdick. I just hope they don't do a double kill with Diablo.
Sorry here to burst the Hopium bubble.....They did.
any1 thinking diablo4 is gna be atleast somewhat decent are deff on the heavy copium.
Yes, it was pretty obvious that this was the reason why Kaplan left when the news dropped the other day.
I am kind of sad that my favorite game devs are still rotting away due to corporate business moguls. It just feels like a Death to Joy.
This is why entrepreneurs are so important to capitalism and human critical thinking.
If we continue to be consumers and not voting with our dollar, we will become zombies waiting online for our next corporate regulated dopamine hit.
Riot will overtake what blizzard once was. They already are moving in that direction. Unless Mike Morhaimes new DreamWorks studio can come out with insane IP's. I mean, after all, Mike created Blizzard.
Rotting away? It was dead years ago when StarCraft didn't even get a mention at the Blizzcon for its 10 year anniversary
Imagine you are passionate about video games and you dedicate yourself to learning programming/art design/writing/etcetc... you finally get that interview at Blizzard and you get the job. Just for a few months/years later realize that you are not allowed to exercise your passion, all you got do, is be nice to Bobby so Bobby can get what he wants. It must quite heart broking for a lot of people who work there who want to do amazing things and they are not allowed to.
What they should have done is do bog standard missions that are designed around 1 or a few different characters mechanics and add more missions with different characters as the game goes on. Make the enemies and the bosses have more difficult mechanics at highest levels and maybe have a timed mode to give people a chance to beat their personal best on missions with unique skin rewards as prizes for overcoming certain circumstances in those missions, similar to how you get a mount for doing certain achievements in raiding in WoW.
How to fail a project which deadline is very near? Add more people to it.
So the ones who can work on the project suddenly have to teach other employees.
I like your idea to be your own hero. Haven't heard of that one yet. You could make your own weapon type, have a bit of customization, and choose between a pool of abilities that change based on the weapon you choose. And they could put you in cutscenes. I think making that one pool of abilities would be easier than thousands of tweaks and options for the dozens of heroes.
Honestly they 100% could have done this. Choose to be a male or female, give a somewhat limited choice of cosmetic options so later down the track Blizz could incorporate both male and female of your hero as characters in the lore and in PVP overwatch if they choose too, but the campaign would always follow said hero. Everyone could just call you recruit, or hero or something like that. Similar to how your chosen Vault Hunters in Borderlands always become their own character and integrated into the lore in the next game.
Then in gameplay, they could simply combine/condense the talents they made and give it to your hero. The more powerful talents/skills would come with some pros and cons. Like if you chose Blink or some offshoot of it as a usable action skill, having it would lower your health a certain % so as to not be an overpowered 400+hp Tracer. Start with skills/talents from 2/2/2 of the OG hero roster (2 tanks, 2 DPS, 2 support) on release. DLC/Expansions would add story and more talents/skills down the line.
sounds like a awful idea, the entire fun of overwatch is playing a pre-defined character, not a OC.
@@Guntfarm sure, this is just an alternative idea. We all want the original vision.
IMO, they should have went with a created character for the PVE side of things... A storyline where your character is working to join a new Overwatch, with the hero characters sprinkled in to move the story forward... I think that would have worked way better than trying to balance all the PVP characters into a PVE setting...
No way, that makes too much sense! Why do that, when they can enrage their own fans with false promises again?
@@blackhat4206 yea, I forgot, this is ActiBlizz we’re talking about….
I like asmons idea there. They could have 3 archetypes in a character creation. Tank, dps, and healer. Then the talent trees could have you mix and match from a pool of all of the hero abilities.
Or they could just make some heroes available at first and add more with time, which will also be ok with seasons system
@@EladaDiel yeah, I guess. I was just thinking more like a destiny approach. They could make a buttload on unique hero customization. And the talent trees would grow every time a new character is introduced. Ultimately, none of this will ever happen. Neutered or otherwise.
Yep you can choose to be male or female and have some limited cosmetic options to change your appearance, but 3 archetypes would be like choosing from 3 different characters from Borderlands. Each archetype would have 3 or 4 skill trees that you can play with, but at release cannot all be maxed out. So you could max out 1.5-2 skill/talent trees on release.
I like this idea better than having to choose an existing OW hero.
@@XanthosAcanthus We can hope for Microsoft to successfully purchase Acti-Blizz, swoop in and fire Kotick, and rehire the talent that all quit. It's unlikely to happen, but hey a tiny chance is still a chance.
@@Klyttorius i was hoping the same. Or rather, just something at all. When I first heard about the deal, I had a lot of hope that blizzard could be course corrected, but just take a look at halo infinite and redfall. I 100% believe that blizzard will be better under Microsoft, but let's face it. Our dreams aren't coming true. On the other hand, if Microsoft wants to regain the good public perception(I personally still think game pass is the bomb, so I still have a positive opinion), they'd be smart to try and salvage something out of this... if they are smart. I'd also like for them to do something with hots. It was the best moba(opinion), and I don't understand how it died... oh wait. Blizzard mismanagement.
Also imagine Star Forge Games as a gaming studio....sounds sick
Blizzard rotted from the inside out. All the genuine and passionate developers have slowly left as they watched the company they belonged to shrivel up into a soulless corporate entity thanks to Activision. Of course, having a "leader" like Bobby Kotick certainly magnified the problems but as someone who has been playing Blizz games since the early 90s and were a big part of my childhood, it's sad to see this once beloved company arrive to this point in time
@@InternetDog_lol not even.
The company name is just a shell. It's the people that made the Blizzard of our childhood. Find them again. One is the head of a studio called Bonfire Studios.
Just looking from the outside I can tell Blizzard doesn't look like a fun place to work for anymore. It looks like Bobby, the actual main villain of all Blizzard story lines now, has "streamlined" things into a corporate office space. Basically imagine Apple when they kicked out Steve Jobs.
The products they put out reflect that
Why work at a sinking ship?! Especially if you have the money and/or option to do your own thing. That's why Kaplan left. No one wants to be on the losing team with losing momentum.
not surprising since he was a consumables exec before ending up as blizz he loved that make the consumer buy as much as you can mentality and its been destroying the company ever since he took over
Overwatch 2 campaign could have been a vermintide 2 rogue like style where you could have upgraded weapons for the character you played and as you progressed you could hold out resources to make yourself stronger. You could have created several different sub specialities of the character you played to make them tank, dps or support.
"They're just doing their job" "Their just following orders" And when 'doing your job' is lying to millions of people, who are giving money to the company you work for in hopes of seeing those lies come true, aren't we allowed to criticize the owners of the mouths that the lies came out of? Nah son, that ain't it. "Doing their job" isn't an excuse I accept.
Good luck finding another game dev to hire you if you tell the truth
y criticize the devs that sign ndas instead of the executive suits that actually make the decisions lmao
Literally this. Ppl are defending aaron like he's some saint and him and the other guy literally just lied to us for over a year but they're "just doing their job" if they actually cared they would've left like Jeff
it is pretty disgusting that this is the case, where you cannot speak out because all of the people doing nasty things are just protecting each other and they can destroy your livelihood
@@armpitfan7814 Because both can be done at the same time. Its not an either or for those who have an entire brain to work with.
I used to work in Irvine at a restaurant. Jeff would come by once in a while for lunch with his team. He was seriously one of the nicest guys ever.
This company is unrecognizable at this point from what it once was. Insane.
Remember this, because I guarantee they will lock D4 Story progress behind a battlepass. If it won't be directly bought with it, the progress will directly coincide with battlepass releases. Guaranteed.
I miss the Jeff Kaplan OverWatch era
It wasn't perfect, but you could tell he cared for the product.
People probably don't know who Sir Swag is but their stuff is actually pretty nice. They're a small news team based in Australia. They cover game news from time to time to doing
- The path of least resistance: - We are in an era of Gaming where producers and CEOs milk the I.P.s and make the least effort possible... AND THEY STILL make enough money to buy their next private jet or small island off the coast. -
Blizz was also hiring new talent and paying them far more than what they paid their existing longtime employees. They never raised their current employees to market level compensation.
@@txdmsk that’s more a tech thing than a corporate thing and blizz is a bit different compared to other gaming companies. It wouldn’t work bc we are talking like the disparity at blizz could be such that outside offers are at 2x. Even if blizz is paying newcomers more it can still be kinda low. A lot of people who work there love blizz. They grew up loving blizzard games. Besides how has that merc like mentality worked out for tech now? Pretty badly it seems.
The moment i saw Jeff quote his favorite cinematic "never accept the world as it appears to be, always dare to see it for what it could be" i knew it was over, the vice president of blizzard, game director of game of the year leaving after 19 years and that being his last message to us, i just want to imagine a world without bobby
My problem with this immediately was Diablo Immortal was released about a year after Jeff left Blizzard. So they'd have had no idea of how profitable Immortal would be at that time. So that inner shift in the company due to that would not have been one of the reasons Jeff left.
"They're doing their job." if your job is to lie, you need to get another job.
I quit overwatch about 3 years ago. This would've been the thing that brought me back...
Chris Metzen, Mike Morhaime, Jeff Kaplan… they were there from the beginning and they’re the ones who sold out Blizzard to Activision. They did this and they were the first to quit.
When someone’s vision manages to make you a game of the year, I feel like it is probably worth further investing into their ideas. It is correct that they will probably be able to milk the pvp live service game for a lot of money for a while but the hype behind OW in 2016 suggests it could have had profitability and longevity.
You'd think Asmon is joking a lot, but you can tell if he was a CEO at Blizz we'd be in absolute hell.
Blizz seems to be in absolute hell regardless
As a dev myself (in a different industry), I sometimes understand that shit on projects - even the longstanding ones - happens and it sucks massively if priorities shift like that, which makes it impossible to deliver on a promises made.
But damn, Blizzard really shat the bed this time, especially since they were selling OW2 with the promise that PvE will be the shit, only for it to be canceled. Players have been burned all too many times and from our perspective, ACB is falling apart at the seams for quite some time...
Fun fact Jeff Kaplan was a toxic as heck gamer in his youth, before becoming a game dev.
The man did not take bad quality of games well.
I feel it’s the same story for HOTS. They had the best moba but with low profits
I dont immediately buy it but i really want to. It fits in line with Blizz management track record
sir swag is a pretty authentic source from what I can tell. they went from Titanfall 2 and OW news to just news in general having made contacts and connections with people in warzones, etc.
so them managing to confirm a trustworthy source at blizz seems plausible.
The source citing Diablo immortal's profits being a pressure on Jeff doesn't align with dates. Diablo immortal came out in jun 2022. Jeff left a year earlier in april 2021, before Diablo immortal could have made profits.
Not sure if that's what the source said verbatim though or if it's paraphrased.
they were saying Diablo immortals profits was the nail in the coffin of pve, but jeff wanted a full fleshed out overwatch 2(the PVE side of OW), and he left when that became impossible.
Producing money off a game is important. It funds developers and new content. Which is why ow2 was doomed from the start. They should have gone free to play in ow1 2 or so years later after launch. and monetised customisation. If they had, they could have properly funded development of ow2 alongside providing regular content for ow1.
They had the funds but they decided not to use it towards more resources or expanding the team working on pve development. They actually gave them less resources and the stressful work environment drove a lot of talented individuals away. But I do agree with you, however, it would have not mattered probably because those funds were not going towards pve development regardless.
Remember, before Overwatch, Jeff was also a big part of original WoW and it's expansions (world design, quests, etc.) !
I say it over and over again. Be happy with the amount of MTX that are in games now. The mobile industry take up about 80% of the market and the fact that we still even get AAA games and games with no and little MTX actually blows my mind. Its the easiest money you can make in the industry especially ESPECIALLY when you have recognizable ips characters and worlds etc etc
The mobile market figures blow my mind. But almost all income for the mobile market is from Asian countries; they just devour microtransactions like candy. All the 3rd world countries that cant afford a computer, but they all have mobile phones and $1.99 for that new character skin.
@Paul Smith diablo immortal on pc. Google play now for pc. They're starting to build a bridge. Also it works both ways. Im Currently playing ghostwire Tokyo on my phone over the cloud flawlessly(when I'm not at my pc)
@@PaulSmith-nb6md say that to all the mobile game that exploded during covid.
Not everyone has a pc but a lot more do have a smartphone.
Hero mode was the only thing I would have spent money on.
This is an anonymous source so take it with a pinch of salt. Honestly, it's pretty easy to come up with this story. We know Blizzard Activision cares more for the money a game can make than the quality of the game itself, a number of devs can come forward about them cutting content. Jeff was the heart of OW, yes he made mistakes but you could tell he loved the game.
I expect Diablo 4 will have its own issues, hence why I'm staying away from it.
@@Vulgaels So fantastic that they release a preorder that costs around 100 bucks and yet add a shop and bp in the game. Every single designer who came up with that idea must be fired immediately, and every single game that does this must be purged and forgotten
@@Vulgaels is there a reason for you to defend them? They should go to hell for their deeds.
@@Vulgaels
> like 10 games already have done that
It doesn't make them good in ANY way at all. These games must be trashed as well for doing so, idk what's your argument here
> The shop is just cosmetics, at least there is that
Doesn't matter at all, ESPECIALLY in a game that already costs 70 bucks, it all should be free and obtainable in the game within a reasonable amount of time (as rewards for achievements and stuff). Cosmetics are as crucial to games, as any other kind of customization - because it's part of the fun.
This thinking is exactly why we as humans are doomed to get more OW2s, Diablo Immortals and other milking machines
@@Vulgaels "Those are the times" only because we allow them to be so and nothing else. If we were to figuratively stand at the EA, Ubisoft, Actiblizzard or other companies' doors with torches and pitchforks, that would have never happened
When a game has something bad, it doesn't mean that it justifies any other game doing that. Ubisoft tried (or maybe still tries) to push NFTs in their games, so if Blizzard did that - would it be ok? Of course not, neither for Ubi nor Blizz
The video game industry is pivoting their business model to a live service model that pulls consumers into a subscription base deal.
I miss Jeff so much man.
11:01 Honestly, I think this would have worked. Isn't that essentially what they did when moving from Warcraft 3 to WoW?
hi asmon (or anybody else), im a 21 painter who played way to much videogames and thought about doing a game myself, trying to work out c++ and unreal while studying fine art is kinda hard so im looking for people to join my party, anyway, mmo rpgs always were ment to be like a metaverse where you actually value the time and effort you put in the game, but the realization of all of the mmo rpgs in the history kinda left me watching this opportunity slip, you log in in wow and have just couple of variants of game play which are represented as okish weak pve and an outdated pvp gamemodes, i also always wanted to have an advanced complex progression system like gameplay of mineccraft with mods (complexed crafting for example) combine this with like dark souls pve, different pvp modes like moba's or battle royals, make a complexed crafting systems ( i thought of a 5x5 grid where you put and select items and then apply an action like combining or melting or infusing) you can even make skill system as crafting - like combining fire magic and liquid magic to get lava and then a bounce modification that it will bounce - and you get an mmo rpg game concept that will include a complexed progression system interesting enough to play and put time and you can then use your progression to play a variety of gamemods and game play, anyway anyone feedback will be apricated
Agents from valorant are not like overwatch heros. They all get the same base, them up skin and then give them 4 different powers how ever most end up being the same power, but slightly different. The overlap most heros have is rather real and it's because they are not making kits with a weapon in mind, they are making powers for csgo and like half of the powers replace nades that you can't get out side of powers now. Meaning they are not even real powers they are just goofy nade reskins.
All to say Agents are all basically the same with barely any difference. When overwatch's heros have extremely little overlap, out side of like 6ish matched chars that sorta are the same if you cover your eyes.
Thanks Asmon for a rection! :D
The fade to black and then pop back up, best!
Last minute, quoting Aragorn: "BUT TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY !"
Most company always does the 180~ main reason probably just cost optimization and create unrealistic OKR or KPI for the employee : ) then upper executives continue getting bonuses,commission, and big pay.
27:04 oh my g editor-kun, how could you do Asmongold dirty like that, setting him up to be clipped
I think they should have had max 10 characters, the more iconic ones. Soldier, Tracer, Mercy, Winston and a few more.
My favorite character to play is Junkrat but I would not put him as one of the characters.
11:01 Does this ring anyone's bell that before Overwatch was released, Blizzard was working on their next-gen MMO title "Titan". It was canceled, and the few people who stayed after the cancellation decided to develop a team based FPS which we now know it as Overwatch. In fact, some of the aspects in Titan were reused in Overwatch like the Jumper class. Jumpers would use their teleport ability which is very reminiscent to Tracer. It's a shame how anyone at Blizzard or Activision currently treats Overwatch like a cash cow instead of letting the developers establish their ambitious ideas.
All they had to do was scrap the skill tree and make it where you level up the hero and after reaching lvl 20 or something you get a mastered skin and if you wanted to diversify then add items that can be used that could change your play style. Since making skill trees would take a lot of balancing
I can't believe that making a talent tree for a character was as much or more work than designing a whole new character, unless the damn trees were as complex as a whole new character. Talent trees and alternative skills are two (of many) methods developers add more content to a game with less work than making a whole new character. If every character was going to have something like 30 possible skill tree points, I can't imagine all of them were going to be that complex. Tracer would definitely have a couple of nodes that scale speed and blink in one way or another, making 3-6 out of those nodes already very simple to design. Balance would take a while, sure, but there's no way making new characters is as much work.
The cinematics for Overwatch were so good
23:32 "I wouldn't take it too personally" The guy who made the video named his channel YourOverwatch that's pretty personal
Here’s the thing, game companies don’t give a single fuck about making good games anymore. We as gamers are no longer the customer, shareholders are the customer, we are just there to leech money from.
Jeff's final words in his note were: "i hope u do the same".
Is this a msg he left for his teammates?
Remember when Brattleborn had both pve and pvp content on launch with skill trees
Man, so glad they found the time to rename McCree.
"make your own personal character", so like the Mii's from smash bros on NDS/Wii, which you can base it on one of 3 archtypes, and customise it to have skills/moves from the other characters in the overall roster to an extent.
"Boxed price works here and here... and free to play works here and here."
Canada and Australia: Am I broke to you?
Regardless of the validity of these claims the one thing that is true is that consumers purchasing habits dictate the games and monetization systems being pushed. Under no circumstances if you want good games with a lot of content, pay for bad games where you have to pay for additional content.
Keep in mind those higher up executives also have power over D4s direction.
yep and that's why the game has multiple tier battle passes, cash shops, $70/90/100 price points you need a faq to figure all of it out.
The thing is the game industry is getting more and more like a casino industry.
never thought id see a asmon reacting to youroverwatch what a crossover
I knew exactly what was up when Jeff resigned years ago. He jumped ship while it was sinking.
They should've made a SP where you make your own character and fight WITH the heroes. It was never going to work to make every hero playable in a SP campaign. I mean who would want to play the slower characters or the non-damage-dealing characters?
"It's Bobby's World, dontcha know."
the same thing happened with fortnite, people bought skins early on thinking that the pve version was still coming
Something that comes into mind. They may be under contract on what they can and cannot say. Which can affect them on what they can and cannot say.
If you think about it, what they were shooting for would have been like if they added a new class to wow every x number of months.
No. A Class in WoW is much more complex than a Hero with 4 Abilities.
@@alexander1055 yeah, that’s true. However, with all the leaks and stuff, apparently this team is really small in comparison to the wow team, so I think what I said is still somewhat valid. Remember, they were promising more than just modifier talents.
I think Jeff Kaplan had the good idea for story based pve, it wont be like call of duty because it will feature cinematic and story progression, which made OW so interesting so far
That fade out edit lol
Well, Warframe proved that a f2p AAA title with a fair in game shop pricing is feasible. Before that everybody was really keen about f2p = mobile. So maybe not in terms of gameplay, but in terms of monetization it was absolutely groundbreaking.
I think they were trying to do a DoTa or LoL first person mode with pve, but you get talents instead of items and combining them... This is the only thing I could think of why they would cancel it. That is a huge task to take on for any team, to come up with unique talent trees for heroes..... then new heroes get introduced in the middle of designing, now you have to take that hero into everything.
RE: Wikipedia
Business strategy controversy
Some statements Kotick has made about his business strategy have led to controversy.[12] He has focused on developing intellectual property which can be, in his words, "exploited" over a long period, to the exclusion of new titles which cannot guarantee sequels.[40] Kotick described this business strategy as "narrow and deep" or "annualizable" and cited it as key to attracting development talent who may not be drawn to "speculative franchises."[41]
Honestly, I feel like a piecemeal pve mode would work far better than trying to have every hero complete at once. That way they get a second live service, reduce their workload, and play into pve's strengths in revisiting old content with new options. For sure having something would have been better than the so-undercooked-as-to-be-raw serving we got.
Box price games works at Brazil too.