This is most certainly true, but it doesn’t mean that fan gatherings don’t serve a purpose. While I was at CCP my thinking changed over the years from it being about us telling the community what we were doing and getting their feedback to it being almost entirely about giving our fans a way to interact with each other.
As for paying attention to what people actually do, we frequently read posts from players who said they unsubscribed, for example, when we knew for a fact that they did not. Do not believe anyone who is complaining about a game.
Fan Gatherings serve a purpose, absolutely. I think that purpose is better served when they are for and by the fans, because that doesn’t provide the illusion of having a more significant role in game development than they actually have.
Well, as usual, it takes two to tango: if you get comments out of the gate from journalists about “toxic masculinity” and all that sort of tiresome bs, then you know it’s become about “progressive values,” and you also know who started it.
Same as with GG - the initial disgruntlement is genuinely about a serious issue, journalists cover their asses and gaslight the complainers by impugning deplorable motives to the collective on the basis of comments from a few trolls and assholes, and we’re off to the races.
Not entirely sure what the point of that image is. At least four of these people aren’t journalists, and the rest of the bunch is apparently guilty of not being ok with the people on stage–who most definitely did not make the decision to announce the game at BlizzCon–being shat on.
I also don’t get the “people paid big money to attent BlizzCon” argument. Yeah, they did. Blizzard didn’t hold a gun to their head and forced them to do so. I’ve checked the official PR material in which they announced that BlizzCon tickets will go on sale or happen to be on sale - none of which made any Diablo-related promises. Diablo only gets mentioned in the “About Blizzard” section along with all the other Blizzard franchises.
Blizzard mentioning some Diablo-related news … that happened way after tickets had gone on sale, and it was solely a response to several rumor reports on Diablo 4.
Nobody “shat on” the people on stage. Activision should have known that hyping the announcement of the latest release in a decades-old beloved PC franchise, revealing it’s rebranded mobile outsourced shovelware, then offering an open mic to the most hardcore of hardcore fans, wasn’t wise. That “is this a joke?” is the rudest comment they received at the event reflects well on the restraint of the fans at the conference.
But the quoted people in that image are not simply saying it’s “not ok” to make comments like “is this a joke.” They’re insulting, profane, and openly abusive, incomparably more so than the guy who asked the “joke” question. The hypocrisy is startling.
Show us on the doll where Blizzard touched you, dude. Maybe you’re taking this too seriously.
Also, it’s hip and trendy to blame all of whatever you think ails Blizzard on Activision, but that’s really giving the people at Blizzard the easy way out. They have said over and over that they are an independant group, and that nobody at Activision is pulling the strings. They want to take the blame for the things you think are going wrong, so I’d suggest you take their advice.
EDIT:
Here is Blizzard’s statement about what to expect about Diablo at Blizzcon. They knew and expected controversy, and they absolutely did not promise “the latest release in a decodes-old beloved PC franchise.” In fact, while they didn’t specifically say “WE ARE NOT ANNOUNCING DIABLO 4 AT BLIZZCON,” they pretty much say it.
People definitely read what they want to read, but you can judge for yourself.
Like I said, you read what you want to read. But when I read “we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show” I do not think a major expansion to Diablo 3 is in the cards.
But like I said before, I actually think it was a misfire to announce the mobile game at Blizzcon. It was just unnecessary for what it actually is, in my opinion. But all this weeping and gnashing of teeth over it is just silly.
Edit: at this point I would not be surprised if by Wednesday the Diablo team puts out a statement that says, basically, “we are super excited about D:I and thought you would be too, but we guess what you really wanted was a PC announcement and were disappointed you didn’t get it. Sorry, we’ll have more news about the future of Diablo soon.”
The people at Blizzard really do care about the community and I’m sure a lot of them are super bummed about the reaction. I’ve been in a similar situation where you get hyped up about a project and lose sight of what is probably best. Luckily it wasn’t ever something that had so much attention as this did.
Look, I’m not saying it was a particular savvy decision to announce a Diablo mobile game at BlizzCon and also have it be the announcement to close the keynote with. I don’t think it was.
hyping the announcement
That said, again: Blizzard (or its parent company) had not promised the announcement of a new Diablo game at all. The blog post referenced by Menzo above makes it very clear, and it was posted mid October - long after BlizzCon tickets had been offered for sale. And it was only a response to rumors about Diablo 4 and the Netflix series that had been circulating on some websites. If anything, that blog post was supposed to diffuse any hype situation,
Probably a poor choice of words on my part, but I think a new class coming to D3 would be a big announcement.
In any case, my point is that a fan could read Blizzard’s statement and discard the idea of Diablo 4 or a Diablo MMO, but given that it was Diablo news scheduled in the prime slot with lots of time set aside for it, I could see how they might get their hopes up for new content for Diablo 3.
Remember when Bethesda announced Fallout Shelter? It was during their E3 2015 press conference. They had already shown Doom gameplay and announced and shown FO4 gameplay. Tom Howard spent all of about five minutes talking about it and then he moved on.
I don’t agree with this, especially when it comes to Blizzard. If you spend any time reading Blizzard gaming forums, it’s just an endless litany of mental illness and victim mentality issues. The abuse Blizzard puts up with, and comes back with a smile or a joke…fuck…I wouldn’t do it.
I get why people don’t care for this, but the hyperbolic nature of the replies, is exactly what’s wrong with a good percentage of the Blizzard community. It’s the same kind of mentality that has people posting mega threads about how bad Diablo 3 is, and then you look at their character profile and they easily have thousands of hours invested into it. Because Blizzard has released a fair number of high quality games, that people have been able to sink way more time than they should into, they’ve also bred this completely unreal expectation in people that their games are going to be life substitutes.
I really do believe that gaming in general, in the last 30 years or so, has cultivate it’s own niche of mental illness. It’s some combination of addiction, victim mentality, and escapism gone rampant, and it’s incredibly toxic.
The community is never happy is closer to the truth.
Well, the “problem” that Blizzard has is that their community is now so huge that this is 100% true. I mean Hearthstone alone is played by 70 million people a month. Overwatch is another 40 million, and that’s just today. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that over 100 million people had rotated through WoW over the last 15 years.
Unfortunately, a decent proportion of that community is hard-core PC gamers, and there is nothing in the world worse for a gaming company than a hard-core PC gamer scorned. They will reign fiery death upon you for just mentioning something new that isn’t going to be on PC, because they literally think every dollar and minute spent on something not on PC is wasted.
Sure, the vocal minority. But we’re not talking about the vocal minority. The reveal video has 221 THOUSAND tumbs-down (and rising). The community has spoken. They don’t want this shit.
