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thetoughestbean posted:I am hesitant to say the quality correlates with the sex pestery. People still play and apparently enjoy Riot games, and it seems to have all the same problems as Blizz Nah riot has precisely one less problem: riot pays people competitively.
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Sep 15, 2021 00:42
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tithin posted:They are a separate studio yes, no allegations have been made against blizzard North that I'm aware of. David Brevik, who has been publicly extremely at odds with blizzard irvine for, uh at least a decade now, if not substantially longer. He was also one of the early people who was yelling about how rotten blizzard was years before it was common knowledge and on that note, he was one of the main inspirations for the original blizzwatch thread (back in the days when it was all blizz chat still, lol). Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Sep 15, 2021 |
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Sep 15, 2021 01:09
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crossposting Blizz is clearly trying and hoping for a pr blitz starting in a few days. Gonna be the d2r release, owl finals, and then ow2 announcement during the owl finals. I really do not expect much from the ow2 announcement. They obviously have jack poo poo to show or they would've already been showing it off. There's some speculation that they ***might*** have multiple new heroes ready to go but lmao I will enthusiastically take the under on that every single time. Especially on the 'ready to go' part. Tbh the ow2 info release probably is aimed as much at the currently very not-happy owl team owners as anything else. Generating some buzz to distract from the various lawsuits and scandals is a plus. D2R is another big can of worms. At the moment, d2r is still on a corporate mandated release deadline, but if they're going to blow it as badly as WC3 Reforged did, then there aren't a lot of indications of it yet. That said, we still have seen nearly nothing past the first 2 acts and still no sign of the assassin or the necromancer. Basically I believe that we've only seen the stuff the d4 team finished and everything else that VV has been working on hasn't made it out at all. As it stands, d2r is releasing with features removed from d2 and with no ladder and with an extremely bizarre patchwork of bugs fixed and bugs ignored (next hit always misses is still in, they ''''fixed'''' the beloved eth armor bug and the weapon swap animation cancel ''''bug'''' that was used in pvp, but hey! they fixed assassin traps counting as uniques! The no ladder on release is concerning. WC3r promised a ladder 'soon after release' too and 2+ years later and there's still no ladder. The only evidence of a ladder system even being in is, strangely, a mockup? I do think it'll get a ladder because even for all their faults I can't imagine they'd be stupid enough to repeat the wc3r thing of just pulling all support the day after release (and then firing/disbanding the team that worked on it). But, with that said, I don't think d2r gets much support after release either beyond what one or two people can do. The other bizarre thing about launching without a ladder is that they only have a few days, maybe a week before people get bots running in d2r and then the entire economy is just another huge botfest. If I was putting money on it, d2r will probably come out in a fine/playable state. Who tf knows how much support it gets after release though. They're obviously going to pull nearly all resources from it after it comes out, but just out of sheer self-interest you'd expect them to keep it supported at least long enough to get a ladder season going and to patch out the first rounds of economy wrecking glitches and exploits. I would be very hesitant to put money on any features actually getting added after it releases tho Wanderer posted:From what I've been hearing out of a few ex-Blizzard people I've spoken to in the last couple of years, they're separate issues. Yeah they're separate issues. The loss of veteran developers and project managers has impacted blizzard's productivity. And by impacted I mean cratered it. All the activision poo poo has been around for ages at this point and has been something of a constant. Similarly the layoffs of veteran employees has also contributed to the massive morale problem that has further undermined their ability to get anything done and, especially after the lawsuit, has been disastrous for their ability to even hire new people. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 23:30
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30.5 Days posted:FWIW a friend of mine got a call from their recruiter and it seems like their hiring pipeline is still in "gently caress you, we're blizzard" mode. If there was even a basic attempt to make the job attractive they might still be able to hire right now. The recruiter was like "yeah the salary isn't attractive, and there won't be any bonuses because our revenue is down 60% from our target for this point in the year, so don't come here thinking you're going to make a lot of money." Like, drat, at least sugar coat it. tfw even the recruiter isn't feeling it
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Sep 18, 2021 01:04
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Shooting Blanks posted:I kinda respect the honesty. I've had so many recruiters blow smoke up my rear end (entirely different industry) that I'd be pretty happy if one were to just lay out expectations bluntly - good or bad - and let me make a decision to move forward. Let's not talk about ownership or passion, let's not talk about creativity or work/life balance. Tell me what the pay is, what's expected of me, what the metrics are, let me meet the group I'd be working with to understand team dynamics and let's go from there. Yeah I'm not saying they're horrible, it's just more of the same poo poo with blizzard, where, if they really wanted to attract people, they'd be making competitive offers. Lord knows they can afford to. Hell even riot figured out that you can just pay people enough money that they will put up with some of your bullshit. Instead, it's basically the same 'you can't put a price on prestige' hiring script, minus the promise of prestige lol, which, particularly in Irvine, you definitely can put a price on because you need to actually make some money to not be living paycheck to paycheck there Cythereal posted:They're allowing mods for single player. Can't play multiplayer with mods. I don't think even plugy (the only singleplayer d2 mod that I am even aware of?) will be compatible with d2r. All the multiplayer mods are going to be unsupported or was that 
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Sep 18, 2021 02:09
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Jaytan posted:I don’t believe any allegations of misconduct have been offered for Mr Hazzokostas, but I will take this opportunity to point out prior to him joining Blizzard he was a member of Elitist Jerks which started as an offshoot of the beta Goon Squad guild. It’s full circle y’all. goons ruin everything
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Sep 18, 2021 03:20
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Max Wilco posted:I've heard of Median XL before. If you're looking to just play through Diablo 2 single-player (which is what I'm doing), can you run it with just the QoL and high resolution stuff, or do you have to also play with the new custom content? I ask because I still need to strike Diablo 2 and LoD off my backlog, but the only options to play it are in fullscreen or in a window (and the default window mode is small and doesn't play cinematics). Just get the hires mod for d2. It doesn't make it like super high res, but running it even in like 1600x900 is a big improvement. I'd also suggest the mod plugy for the qol stuff if you still want the generally vanilla experience. Median XL is cool but it's like 80% an entirely new game built on the back of the d2 story and engine.
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Sep 18, 2021 22:57
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Just a few days until d2r comes out and conspicuously we have seen literally nothing from after act 2. Starting to get a bit alarmed
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Sep 20, 2021 19:54
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That's a new investigation, to be clear, separate from the other two big ones currently running against them.Grondoth posted:Isn't the expansion supposed to be in, too? Act 5 had plenty of "oh drat" places, you'd figure they'd want to show those off. I can understand not showing off act 3,(who liked act 3, those little blowdart assholes were the worst) but 4's bleak and grey Yeah that's my understanding. I imagine they are naturally busy as hell, but we've seen literally nothing of it. The act 1/2 stuff did look good, but it was getting basically full AAA resources thrown at it since it was literally the main D4 team working on it. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 20, 2021 20:38
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Frankly I'd think it's more likely that the OWL team owners being extremely pissed with blizzard more likely led to the SEC getting involved albeit the various shareholder suits against activision probably are probably a more likely the direct cause). Other major possibility (and probably the one I'd put my money on) is NLRB found violations and referred them to SEC A Buttery Pastry posted:Still a stretch in terms of outcomes (Enron did get destroyed, but would the SEC hit Activision hard enough to bankrupt it?), but the chain of events is something like: Yeah idk about the wc3 led to xyz assertion specifically, but blizzard definitely lost their air of untouchability and repeatedly pissed away any benefit of the doubt people still had for them and no doubt that greased the wheels of the various private, state, and federal investigations. Ursine Catastrophe posted:Honestly I would have expected the other way around, "I gave you advice and you thought destroying evidence would be a better look so lol good luck see you when they call me up and ask me about it" Yeah that's much more likely Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Sep 21, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2021 05:45
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Buckwheat Sings posted:Games are a big deal but yeah guessing the numbers dropping spooked shareholders and they want blood. hmm 
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Sep 21, 2021 06:46
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you think he didn't want his name on a game that was described as 'hopefully we can get it into a playable beta state by the time exec-mandated OWL switch to OW2 happens'??
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Sep 21, 2021 20:56
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I said come in! posted:It would probably be for the best really if Blizzard just cancels Overwatch 2. Move that team over to Diablo IV and work on one new game at a time, in this case Diablo IV. OWL team owners were straight up telling blizzard they should just cancel the 2022 OWL season and get their poo poo in order wrt the lawsuits and with getting OW2 to an actually good state. Which is legit probably the smartest thing they could do at this point.
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Sep 21, 2021 23:07
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poo poo there's no more space in the thread title for the ow2 lead quittingDr. Red Ranger posted:Thanks. Diablo 2 was my big Blizzard game in high school and dropped off when WoW became their big project. I was temporarily excited when I saw the announcement, but we all saw the suit. Honestly if they end up firing bobby kotick I'd probably buy d2r that day if it turns out to be good. Assuming they don't replace him with dick cheney or something, ofc
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Sep 22, 2021 02:39
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D2R: game is apparently pretty good, absolutely huge launch issues between server stability and characters getting deleted, but apparently they're getting them more sorted out now? OW2 reveal/preview was just the ow client with one less tank, a slightly redone UI and 2 reworked characters on a new map. The numbers on the rework are ludicrous and idk what on earth they were thinking, but the main impression it gives is that there was indeed substance to the leak that they have no clue how to balance 5v5. Sombra is now a dps god annnnnnnnd zarya gets a 2nd bubble? Nice Reaction has been pretty mixed, some pros are sounding like they're moving on from OW, some seemed underwhelmed but open to giving it a shot, and some seem excited. development issues aside, I'm extremely skeptical that removing the really cool main-tank off-tank synergy and camaraderie is going to make the game better and more interesting. Unless they do some really nutty stuff to make tanks beefier, it's just shaping up to be a turkey shoot as main-tanks 100% rely on the off tank to facilitate taking space and giving zarya one more bubble is not in the least fixing that extremely huge core issue with 5v5 tanking.
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Sep 26, 2021 21:16
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Split off all the dps and make an arena shooter with them, keep the tanks and supports together and have a real brawly mobafps
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Sep 26, 2021 21:32
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OW was the almost perfect game to get people who don't play FPS into a loosely shootery genre. That level of approachability is also totally anathema to forcing a game into being a top-end esport
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Sep 27, 2021 21:22
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I would kill to have the full inside story of what goes on at valve cuz that place is in like top 5 studios in the industry that release the least for the amount of money spent. Like there's the obvious stuff that they don't assign people to projects and to get work done on your project you have to convince people to help you do it, which is by all accounts exactly as dysfunctional as it sounds. But man there has to be so much more to that story
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Sep 28, 2021 01:12
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Gamers and game devs are both terms that are so broad as to be literally meaningless at this point. Gamers by and large seem to just reflect people in general, many of whom suck and have horrible views, doubly so when they feel that they're anonymous, and game devs really seem to vary depending upon who they work for and when they were hired and a bunch of other factors. really it sounds like you're just playing some lovely soulless amazon game and are surprised that you ended up in some lovely soulless amazon game Endorph posted:what is it with you and cheetos only the freshest jokes from 2010 SA lol LIVE AMMO COSPLAY posted:Gamers are decent, hardworking folk who just want to come home after a hard day of work and unwind by typing vile poo poo into Twitch chat or Discord. lmao
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Oct 4, 2021 01:12
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New Super Metis posted:Update: There are a bunch of other dysfunctional or just plain peculiar companies that are on brand for this thread. DICE had a bunch of huge issues a couple of years ago though idk as much about the current state of it (one part of their issues culminated in a bug that persisted *for months* in the live version of battlefield that was causing players to not render. Respawn has had some weird stuff happening with the titanfall/apex games despite their otherwise huge success. Bioware apparently had a fairly substantial implosion several years back, though I know very few of the details of it. There's clearly some stories to be told wrt what's happening with Amazon games (anyone remember crucible? the only game I am aware of that was actually unreleased after it was released). Bethesday clearly went through some major rough patch a couple of years ago. Oh yeah and there are clearly some stories out there about valve's lateral heirarchy, which obviously works insofar as the company is profitable, but clearly is one of the least productive developers out there relative to their operating expenses
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Oct 5, 2021 07:13
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They were definitely dropping some hints that they wanted a 2022 release and it makes sense given what we know of blizz's dev pipeline that they would've needed D4 and OW2 to basically carry their earnings in 2022. They were obviously banking on, at minimum, one of them releasing in 2022, but most likely actually both. Like blizzard has a 1.5 bill operating budget, presumably they can develop the glorified OW patch that is OW2 and Diablo 4 at the same time while turning out maybe 1 big wow patch. Or could before the failure cascade kicked into overdrive with all the lawsuits. By all accounts their actual productivity and morale was rock bottom even before the lawsuits hit. Since the lawsuits hit hiring has been pretty much at a stand still and they continue to hemorrhage their veteran leads and talent at every level and it's hard to imagine that much is actually getting done when fresh bad news is breaking on a weekly basis. tbh the 2023 release is optimistic in that it makes the assumption that 1) blizzard stops the talent bleeding 2) blizzard fixes the morale/harassment/discrimination stuff 3) unfucks their hiring and development/onboarding process and 4) actually has a clear idea of where the projects need to go. Those are some huge things to unfuck while making multiple AAA titles in just 15 months OW2 in particular is clearly a huge clusterfuck if they're going from '5v5 is a disaster to balance' ~5 months ago to 'hopefully we will have OW2 in a playable beta state by the time owl starts playing on it in early 2022' a few months ago to today's announcement that it's 15+ months out. anyways this is why we're seeing kotick take a completely meaningless minimum wage salary, there's got to be a lot of people at this point realizing that his management has led to nothing but a massive lawsuit filled smoking crater. Hell, he was already unpopular with shareholders when activision was at its peak. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 10:52
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William Bear posted:The fact that they had a man and a woman co-leading Blizzard after a sexism scandal, and they paid the man more for doing the same job, is so tone-deaf that I can't believe it's real. it boggles the loving mind, even knowing how stupid and inept activision leadership is, it's still jaw dropping
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Nov 16, 2021 21:50
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Nybble posted:coincidence, but maybe having shitbags for leaders can be bad for a company. one can hope Unironically it's starting to look like repeated scandals from untouchable leadership has very tangible results on productivity because everyone is too busy printing resumes and posting on twitter about what a shithole the company has become. This then gets compounded by key people leaving and hiring basically outright stopping. Next thing you know it's taking you 4 years to develop OW2, which is a glorified expansion pack Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 02:12
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Hooplah posted:i think the notoriously hellish AB workplace just randomly giving all their employees A FULL GODDAMN WEEK OFF is probably a more damning indictment than all these articles and whatnot The ship is clearly on fire
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Nov 17, 2021 23:00
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Yeah let's instead make sure that they're at home emailing the story to eachother. There were multiple pdfs of that piece going around.
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Nov 17, 2021 23:41
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happyhippy posted:The employee that killed herself wasn't from Blizzard as far as I know, it was just mentioned in the first public announcement and assumed it was Blizzard as it was beside the Cosby Suite stuff. It wasn't specified anywhere what company she was in. Yeah the gutting has really been the waves of really massive layoffs going back to I think 2017 (might've started in 2018). It's very much an underway thing, if not already a fait accompli. iirc the employee suicide was reported as an activision employee and the exec was activision as well.
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Nov 18, 2021 23:45
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Harrow posted:I didn't change it, but even then, a jokey thread title is not a derail. Even the #MeToo thread has an irreverent thread title. I changed that title and tbh it's meant to be horrifying, not funny. Because it's horrifying and I still can not get over how loving insane it is that they walked their shiny new zero tolerance for sexual harassment policy back and crossed out the zero in just a matter of hours. Harrow posted:I've updated the thread title and request from other mods and IKs to keep the title focused on the topic and not a joke. If there are big headlines that just broke, that can make a good thread title update. It was explicitly topical and was in response to blizzard announcing a zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment and then literally hours later announcing that it didn't apply to bobby kotick. E: posted before seeing harrow wanted to move discussion to feedback, my bad Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Nov 19, 2021 |
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Nov 19, 2021 20:25
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Kotick personally was the exception to 'no truly ridiculous salaries in games'
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Nov 22, 2021 10:36
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Dick Burglar posted:I can see someone trying to make an incredibly weak argument for the patterns "coming together unintentionally"... until you see the isolated swastikas on the shoulder "buttons." Jesus Christ. gently caress whoever designed that. I hope they got fired. That's both a common pattern of ornamentation (seriously you'll see it all over the planet and it extremely pre-dates nazis) and it's still probably a pretty unwise thing to throw in a game in 20whenever. also just gonna leave this here https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Of_Blood_and_Honor Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 20:52
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Dick Burglar posted:Just because you haven't been paying the slightest bit of attention doesn't mean it hasn't happened, repeatedly. Nah I'm not referring to the swastika, I'm referring to that exact pattern of ornamentation of which the swastika looking bit is just a part of the larger thing. eg of which there are a ton of variations used all over the planet 
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Nov 22, 2021 22:08
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Boba Pearl posted:Part of having a serious place to discuss the crimes of a company that has been clearly fostering a nationalist white heteronormative group of anti-social rejects, is immediately bouncing concern trolls from the thread so that they're not allowed to dominate discussion. There is no reason to actively try and educate someone who, in the best light, is actively ignoring the rise of white supremacy in America, and how these dysfunctional institutions are preying on and profiting from, that. Yeah the convo over 'is x thing deliberate or incidental??' misses the greater point that most of this poo poo is stuff that someone 1) probably actually did pick up on and raised as an issues, as we've heard time and again from ex-blizz people and 2) when the people with final say are historically almost entirely white guys, you end up with stuff that reflects what they consider a big deal/not a big deal.
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Nov 22, 2021 22:14
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RagnarokZ posted:Wait, the StarCraft Confederacy was the bad guys, as in comically bad guys, turned a planet into a nuclear wasteland bad guys. Yeah and 'blizzard is lazy and overly relies on fascist imagery in some games' is a very different argument from 'art team is full of nazis/white supremacists/secret chuds' or w/e else (which imo is dumb and there's zero evidence of). Hell, to their credit, the wow team instantly rolled that warlock design back and unambiguously ate crow. This literally may be the first good thing I've said about blizzard in months, but they responded to that exactly how they should have. E: \/ yeah that's not good Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 22, 2021 |
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Nov 22, 2021 23:00
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feudal lords were still accountable to kings, which is a key difference here
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Nov 26, 2021 11:37
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What I'm hearing is that we blizzard should be formally slighted. Feudalism derail aside, AGS' ongoing implosion with New Worlds is very much subject matter for this thread though I don't know of any good single summaries of it to link as it keeps developing in some huge new way every few days. I would love to get the full unfiltered story of what's going on there, though the broad strokes are that Amazon is trying to run their game division the same way they run everything else which has been woefully inadequate both for running a games company in general but also for developing an MMO specifically. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Nov 26, 2021 |
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Nov 26, 2021 23:18
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Dieting Hippo posted:Unit testing is a good thing to do, but they should be done alongside real people doing testing too. Only unit testing leaves your quality in the hands of whoever wrote the tests, and won't get more creative or give feedback on how the game looks/feels. QA is essential for games testing and I wouldn't be surprised if the incompetent management at AGS thought they could innovate themselves out of needing QA. According to someone who interviewed for an upper position in their QA dept, they were planning to have the bulk of actual QA work outsourced. Interviewee apparently ran for the hills and stopped answering AGS' calls Dieting Hippo posted:Unit testing is a good thing to do, but they should be done alongside real people doing testing too. Only unit testing leaves your quality in the hands of whoever wrote the tests, and won't get more creative or give feedback on how the game looks/feels. QA is essential for games testing and I wouldn't be surprised if the incompetent management at AGS thought they could innovate themselves out of needing QA. For real. They're basically the finish carpenters of game design and, similar to finish carpentry, god help you if you try to skip/skimp there. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Nov 27, 2021 |
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Nov 27, 2021 02:51
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They're apparently offering more money to people now, but they've been in essentially production deadlock for, what, two years now? There's also been, if anything, negative progress at turning around the morale issues that has plaguing them since the major layoff waves started.Zonekeeper posted:Their piss-poor compensation has probably caused a lot of unseen brain drain over the years. Imagine how many talented employees they've lost over the years after they realized they were getting hosed over and leveraged that Blizzard resume entry into a job that actually pays well. It's not unseen, riot hired away a huge amount of blizzard's experienced project managers in particular (and has been basically poaching blizzard employees of all types at will for years now). They picked up a crazy number of work-years of experience, but a lot of others have been poaching blizzard employees, too.
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Nov 30, 2021 15:36
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cod being nominated for best esport game is a huge loving joke, too. Fun enough game apparently, but lol the pro-scene keeps releasing rulesets that have banned literally like half of the items/attachments/power ups in the game for being too game-breaking.
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Dec 4, 2021 20:52
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Arzachel posted:You start with a fun game and then figure out a ruleset to make it competitive, not the other way around. that's a good point, though we're talking about the cdl which is basically the antithesis of an esport scene arising organically out of a fun game
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Dec 5, 2021 04:13
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Even my years of cynicism towards blizzard has not prepared me to process that. What the absolute gently caress
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Dec 9, 2021 03:50
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^ good for themExternal Organs posted:"Internally, we had this super hardcore men's group – we’ve got a lot of hardcore fuckheads at Blizzard – that tested boundaries, and we got it to the point where they thought it was sexist enough, then we doubled it."
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Dec 9, 2021 18:08
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