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Is Blizzard Out of Touch with Its Players?

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  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,435
    natpick said:

    DMKano said:



    Nobody is saying mobile markets won't make Blizzard money.  But you don't scorn the fanbase that built your company.



    You do if you know that they will take you back in a heartbeat as soon as you do something nice to them. 

    Do you honestly think that Blizzard is losing a significant % of players forever here?

    They are not.

    Again if this caused a permanent 30% players to never play a Blizzard game again - this would be something worth talking about.

    In reality - it's overblown nothing due to the fact of how easy it is for Blizzard to win everyone back.



    one time i would agree but not now the player base is not happy and many of them are older gamers,who are not stupid and will only put up with so much,ive played blizzard games since they existed,and never known them to be this bad in all things,imho there have lost touch big time.
    If you have still been playing Blizzard games any time past 2010 you are exactly the reason why they won't worry about this action impacting their future sales in a significant way.

    ConstantineMerus

    "True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde 

    "I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant

    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

    Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 22,818
    Rukushin said:

    Scot said:

    What do players expect when those leading gaming companies have little or no interest in gaming? Just look at the board of directors, even if you give them a pass on how few (any?) indicate any interest in gaming, look at how few have any background in developing games. Blizzard is not alone here, not sure any of the big gaming companies are different.



    https://www.activisionblizzard.com/uk/en/board-of-directors



    If they have children or grandchildren I hope they speak up and tell their parents or grandparents to wake up and actually learn about the market they are in.
    The only way the top executives in the gaming industry get informed about what gaming is comes from their children? It is an interesting way to run a business that's for sure. :D
    ConstantineMerus
  • GarySevenGarySeven Member UncommonPosts: 14
    I think this is much ado about nothing. I'm looking forward to Diablo Immortal and expect it will be one of the better mobile games available.

    No one will be forced to play it, so what's all the fuss about?

    I'm sure there will be a D4 at some point. Patience is still a virtue.
    [Deleted User]
  • PhryPhry Member LegendaryPosts: 11,004
    Scorchien said:
    Phry said:
    Scorchien said:
    Phry said:
    Not just out of touch with players, but with investors too  :p
    Heelsvsbabyface just put up a youtube video showing actiblizz's share scare  

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6w1voxf5CI
    mehh .. im not even gonna blink at this ..
    It was more amusing than relevant  ;)
       For the streamer his angle was not amusement , hes reading into this as Immortal had an effect on stock ..

       It didnt , what hes seeing is more the market flucuate as always before elections , and other far reaching market intangibles , and trying to attach it to Blizz and Immortal..
    I don't personally think it was directly atributable to 'immortal'. I thought it was amusing more because after Blizzcon there should have been a surge of investor confidence, along with player confidence, its not like the two are not related after all, instead share value dropped.  :/
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  • meonthissitemeonthissite Member UncommonPosts: 917
    Hiring someone to make a port of Diablo III solely for tablets and phones was extremely wrong since most of Blizzard players have been PC for decades!

    What is ironic about this is Blizzard is THE reason why other gaming companies began porting their titles to computers that were typically not supported by Windows such as Macintosh computers. What did this mean? It means that they spearheaded a major change in the gaming industry simply by porting their own games, which with the huge number of players playing World of Warcraft early on, forced the hand of companies like Windows Games to convert their game titles to Macintosh computers as well! This was almost unheard of until they made this change at Blizzard!

    Additionally, the model for tablet/phone games is free to play -- with the addition of toxic billing practices such as the selling of boxes/keys that gamble on the contents of those boxes, in game requirements from the store in order to complete the leveling process or to get central storyline/progression materials in order to remain competitive in the game. This includes the ability to respec, questlines that tell the main story, or competitive skills/items that make it possible to win at PVP.

    Even though these things are speculative at this point, they are drawn directly from what's experienced in the typical phone/tablet game today.

    I don't expect Blizzard to handle this properly considering they made this move while also misleading the public on twitter by claiming there were "multiple" Diablo projects in the works weeks before the actual announcement of Diablo Immortality at Blizzcon.
    Quote
  • CickoCicko Member UncommonPosts: 14
    I think that the way they announced it was surprising, if they went on with a teaser of D4 or some other diablo pc content, then the outcome would have been different.
  • PhryPhry Member LegendaryPosts: 11,004
    Phry said:
    Scorchien said:
    Phry said:
    Scorchien said:
    Phry said:
    Not just out of touch with players, but with investors too  :p
    Heelsvsbabyface just put up a youtube video showing actiblizz's share scare  

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6w1voxf5CI
    mehh .. im not even gonna blink at this ..
    It was more amusing than relevant  ;)
       For the streamer his angle was not amusement , hes reading into this as Immortal had an effect on stock ..

       It didnt , what hes seeing is more the market flucuate as always before elections , and other far reaching market intangibles , and trying to attach it to Blizz and Immortal..
    I don't personally think it was directly atributable to 'immortal'. I thought it was amusing more because after Blizzcon there should have been a surge of investor confidence, along with player confidence, its not like the two are not related after all, instead share value dropped.  :/
    Not to mention Call of Duty underperformed.
     
    I think that goes back to the removal of the Single player campaign, i don't doubt that removing that one thing alone probably lost them some of their playerbase. More a sign of them being out of touch with their playerbase generally, as for seeking out a new playerbase we have seen how that often ends up with SOE, you sacrifice your existing playerbase in favour of a different one at your peril, SOE's historical precedent wasn't random chance after all, well as they say, learn from history or repeat it ;)
    laserit
  • Gobstopper3DGobstopper3D Member RarePosts: 965



    DMKano said:

    "Many players feel that the mobile announcement without any other news for the beloved IP is showing that Blizzard is out of touch with its hardcore playerbase."

    Out of touch and choosing to ignore a smaller "hardcore player segement" in favor of a much larger mobile space due to higher potential profitability - are 2 different things.

    I don't think that Blizzard is out of touch - they are just profits driven, and I also think it's silly to make a definite conclusion to this question based on a single presentation at Blizzcon.

    Out of touch would be - clueless to what's going on - and Blizzard is far from that, sure there are misteps but every company has those.

    There is so much more to Blizzard than 1 product, 1 presentation - you are asking if the entire company is out of touch based on one event?

    My answer is - no, not even close.



    No; if you played through the BfA release, then witnessed this tone deaf announcement, you'd be voting yes on this poll.

    Blizzard buys their own hype these days.  That might've been okay when their hype delivered, but it's not delivering anymore like it used to.

    Nobody is saying mobile markets won't make Blizzard money.  But you don't scorn the fanbase that built your company.



    You would think that giving the fan base that built your company the middle finger would be a bad idea, but they aren't the first to do so. Bioware is doing the same thing when it started trending a different direction starting with DAI. I could say the same about Bethesda as well, though they are handling it a bit better.

    Nothing wrong with companies diversifying their portfolio, but it's how you handle it that matters and it appears that Blizzard isn't capable of doing it without pissing off a good bit of their current player base.

    I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.

  • GdemamiGdemami Member EpicPosts: 12,342
    ....more like players are out if touch with the reality outside their die-hard or w/e bubble they live in.

    Business as usual....
    AeanderFlyByKnightIselin
  • MoiraeMoirae Member RarePosts: 3,318
    It's old. And most gaming companies seem to lose touch with what players want as time goes on if they ever had it at all. Just look at what happened to Andromeda as an example. 
  • LimnicLimnic Member RarePosts: 1,116
    Blizzard is a safety net company. They makes games for the broadest audiences they can. The Diablo Immortal game came at zero surprise to me in that regard, as it's just another take on the lowest common denominator. Given it's NetEase developing the title for them it's also likely a lot of banking on the asian market rather than western one.

    Blizzard has been in this kinda trend of leaning away from the fan-bases of their early games to chase financial markets instead for a long time from my perspective.

    And as others have pointed out it quite likely does work in Blizz's favor that their announcement made such a fuss, because they would otherwise have a hard time pitching a game that looks like a reskin of Endless of God by NetEase. It'd just get lost in the sea of mediocrity that's already there.
    MadFrenchie
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    When they made Wow,their first big robust game,they had ZERO to go on.So it was not about making a game for their players,it was simply targeting a small market at the time but that a lot of potential to grow being that DSL had recently become common in all households.

    So have the lost touch,they never were in touch and i look simply at D3 and the Ah nerf,they literally pissed off 90+% of the player base.

    Then WHO asked for scaling,like nobody?

    Hearthstone,well players finally got tired,some really big names have left the scene.They have not made one single move to improve or evolve the game,that is REAL lazy.

    OW..HOTS,well pretty simple just cater to making very low risk low cost games and feed them with the cash shop to buy heroes.They released OW with one friggin map...sigh.

    The announcement which i just found out at Blizzcon on the Diablo Mobile was met with BOOS.So the VERY staunch supporters,those crazy enough to spend money and time to go to a Blizzcon advertising event said NO,so who the hell are they listening to?

    The BIG picture?We keep using the term Blizzard,it is not about the owners of Blizzard,they have teams running every one of their games.Each team has maybe 1-2 guys in charge,so it is THOSE people that should be criticized,perhaps even fired.


    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • LimnicLimnic Member RarePosts: 1,116
    Ehh you can kinda see where they riffed on titles like Everquest in the case of WoW and evolved the dynamic that was already established there.

    The difference you can note is what's been mentioned before. Kern bothers me a bit, but I do agree with his sentiment that Blizzard has moved from a company that was was itself avid gamers into being a more corporate minded entity at this point. Their titles reflect this at the break point of when WoW launched and it's subsequent titles sought to largely act as cleaned up renditions of existing genres for them to take root it. 

    It's where my sentiment about Blizzard being a safety net company comes from. They make solid user experiences that a lot of people can enjoy, but that does not translate into being the challenging or oftentimes deeper user experiences they offered in prior titles. The stark difference between the Warcraft 3 plot had left us versus where Wrath of the Lich King expansion for WoW took it is kind of a example there. They simplified things, they made some things nicer, even their "bittersweet" outcome was considerably less evocative or emotional than the end of Frozen Throne.

    When they took their first step into mass-market product design, not specifically with the launch of WoW but with it's continued development, they saw how lucrative it could be to chase the market in this manner. Ever since it's just been a progressive shift. 
  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    This was Bliz at their best when they were in touch with players:

    https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/13607363/ascend-to-victory-with-happy-reaper%E2%84%A2-4-1-2014
    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

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  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591
    Gdemami said:
    ....more like players are out if touch with the reality outside their die-hard or w/e bubble they live in.

    Business as usual....
    Because it ain’t about a company supplying what the customer wants, instead it’s about the customer supplying what the company wants.

    Business 101 
    The customer is always wrong.
    Gdemami

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • HyperpsycrowHyperpsycrow Member RarePosts: 911
    Blizzard used to touch me everywhere around the body part, but recently they wont even pet me on the head anymore :/
    JamesGoblinJeffSpicoli




  • meonthissitemeonthissite Member UncommonPosts: 917
    YEP!

    End of discussion.
  • JeffSpicoliJeffSpicoli Member EpicPosts: 2,849
    Blizzard used to touch me everywhere around the body part, but recently they wont even pet me on the head anymore :/

    [Deleted User]
    • Aloha Mr Hand ! 

  • Riqqy82Riqqy82 Member UncommonPosts: 91
    Well I look at like this, before WoW had my 60 bucks or so for the game, and 2 expansions, so thats 120 dollars, then they had my sub for 6 years at 15 bucks a month so thats 1080 + 120 = 1200 dollars, now they have suckered me into buying every expansion for 60 dollars so thats another 300 dollars and only manage to hold my interest for roughly 2 months so thats another 180 dollars which comes to 480 dollars in 8 years, I consider myself pretty hardcore and I tend to hang out longer than most as I tend to quit when I see less community happening, ie longer ques, raids not filling, or just plain nothing left to accomplish in the game, so if you think 1/3 of the money over a longer span of time is ok for a company, I dont think you understand what a profitable company is, this is strongly showing via their stocks, its been on decline for a bit of time now and its about to hit a drop off, the problem is they are too proud, classic wow is their only saving grace atm and thats will not last that long either, the only way to save this company is to crack down on the player base by not making progression so simple, short, and easy, get rid of alot of the RRNG with itemization, but they wont, and because of this its only going to get worse, if I was the CEO at blizzard I would be hugely worried about the future of the company, it seems activision is already pushing down the thumb, and blizzard is in panic mode trying to scrape whatever they can by any means possible. The solution is simple, and classic.

    image
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