I was in the same boat as Pat listening to this. No *wonder* Blizzard has had so much trouble in the last decade. For every game they released like 5-6 other projects failed. The mismanagement is ridiculous. Anthem levels of mismanagement
If you think that is massive, imagine how many games were scrapped by Activision (who we should blame for Blizzard's downward spiral), EA, Ubisoft, 2K or fucking Sony or Nintendo?!
Ghost was really the beginning of the bad times, they had the game about 90% complete to the extent that they had the statue commissioned for the launch of the game and treat it as a released product in-house. I still have the files for Lord of the Clans too, which is also effectively 90% complete.
I actually read (well listened) to the book. It's not so black and white. They started as as a small group of 19 year old just spitballing ideas so that sort of culture continued as the company grew because they wanted to hear all the ideas. Also their reputation for producing bangers also stifled them from releasing anything where they couldn't "find the fun". They would rather cancel than release a bad game. A lot of these also took place during the 90s and early 2000s where games could take less than 2 years. Project titan and the original diablo 4(if you could call it that. it was going to be 4 player game with 3 rd person action combat like arkham asylum lol) the most recents scraps. Titan just had Metzen and Pardo who clashed heads on what it was supposed to be and they also wanted the game to be one part animal crossing / sims and another part action mmo. Overwatch took the classes that you would select and character creation and turned them into unique characters. They pumped it out in around 3 years. This was attributed to the team getting to be small and lead by Jeffs clear vision. You learn that it wasn't until the Mid 2010s that Activision got more involved. Kotick wanted everyone on WoW and didn't see why they would waste resources on smaller games. Blizzard was accustomed to letting devs create and think tank but Activision wanted "steady predictable revenue". That's why COD got annualized. Kotick wanted them to release a new WoW expansion every year wanted to create multiple teams to facilitate that but Morheim constantly pushed back and was like throwing money and resources doesn't make quality necessarily. Project Titan cost them 80 mill but the predicted revenue for the next big MMo that they lost was a problem along with the rubberbanding of of how Blizzards revenue would get cut in half every other year even if that reduction was still 500 mill(it wasn't steady or predictable). Warcraft 3 reforged was the big fuck up as it was the first truly bad game in 30 years and that was due to only having a year to make it. The guy in charge of it was a super dickhead for not giving the team the time they needed as what they wanted to do didn't get to happen(this, in my opinion, was a result of Activision's profit driven culture permeating through blizzard after Morheim was no longer there to intervene). They also started hemorrhaging talent because Activation made it no longer fun enough working there to put up with being paid less that other places , reduction in perks like free blizzcon tickets, the sexism(very much there) and sexual misconduct (that judging by the book wasn't as egregious on a whole as court documents made it seems. It was more creepy nerds being creeps and giving attention to the few "attractive women" that worked in what was 90 percent men + a few bad actors at the top were the assailants.Also a lot of people were swinging and hooking up and it make the workplace awkward. One dude had an affair with upper management's wife(while his current wife was pregnant) who also worked at Blizzard. Manager got wind and basically made his last few months at blizzard hell. I think Woolie and Pat did a disservice by not really adding context. I know they are not journalists but a little more due diligence goes a long way.
@@lewisgraham4174 idk wow in 2010? when i read that, the writer lost credibility. wow in 2010? i dont think so. these guys had the biggest reputation in gaming in 2006 2008. south park was doing memes politicians were doing wow memes. 2 aaa games just flushed down the toilet, and he is kinda correct. it was the executives that capitalized on the hype and let the games, plural, i dont even know the word, perish. they just stopped caring and started relying on drops. writing "small indie company" as your excuse as why you trashed every game you made, is insulting to the reader. we saw it happen, we were there when they did nothing. as if we didn't live thru it.
Yeah, I feel like it used to be the consensus that Blizzard just had very high standards, so they cancelled anything that didn't live up to those. But it reeeeally feels like that was just people giving them the benefit of the doubt, and they were actually just HORRIBLY mismanaged.
People trot out sentiments of 'delays mean it's being worked on and will be more quality' often and these days I often feel like that's a smokescreen for what should indicate strife and mismanagement in game dev.
@@Churono The existence of a delay in of itself implies poor planning (or at best, understandabely unforseen hurdles/accidents that slowed progress). A project being termed "gold" some time before the release date set out originally can be a good sign at times. I believe Xenoblade 3 or its DLC actually released a month prior to its original release or something crazy like that.
You know what the problem is with these cancelled games? They were cancelled instead of repurposed. Resident Evil 4 spawned Devil May Cry when it was too actioney and it spawned Haunting Ground when it was too supernatural. They could've just made new properties with all this work.
You're right, but I suspect several of the more idiosyncratic Overwatch characters came from game prototypes we never saw or were repurposed from Titan when they stopped developing it.
Blizzard makes things to an exacting standard of marketability, meaning that designs and design language probably cant be carried over to new projects without infecting them with the traits of the previous one. Its not a good strategy, but I think they approach mechanics and characters as functions of how to make a singular game playable and profitable at a time. They force themselves to relearn the process each time, for no reason at all.
It's insane to me that they couldn't even add some PVE to Overwatch. The game that was originally a PVE MMO FPS was to hard to make PVE content for....
Their comments on it were quite literally not that they couldn’t do it but rather that it was deemed not worth it in comparison to just pushing the game as it was. So without using the words explicitly they just told everyone that they cancelled it because they couldn’t see how it would make them more money long term than just selling battle passes.
It costs significantly more to actually put effort into well crafted story content rather than say, charging $70+ for a single mythic skin that they only need to pay one modeller to make and maybe one animator for $20 emote/highlight intro.
At 0:58 unfortunately this has become a common problem with journalists, Bob Woodward it’s a good recent example a lot of them just keep information to themselves in order to write a book
It's honestly really weird when you think about it that Schrier releases a book all about Blizzards mismanagement and at the same time is making articles about Mike Morhaime's new studio. So Schrier according to himself not only knew about a lot of the Blizzard shit, he saved it for a book AND then also did a positive piece about the new studio by the old founder of Blizzard, a guy who was the boss during all that heinous shit going on. I'm not even saying there's a conspiracy there, but it's a bad look to set up for yourself imo. People seem to forget that Morhaime was called out by employees for sweeping a lot of it under the rug.
@@jimbob1862 JS is just a classic two-faced scumbag, 'Journalisim' is his business. He's like a real life version of a crooked reporter from a show or movie
I thought you were mainly talking about keeping the scrapped game leaks private, but I think you're talking about the "allegations". I'm not gonna jump the boat and expect to know what goes on in people's minds (I've not been in such profession to offer any insight), allthough you can't help but feel for the victims who probably wanted help sooner.
They were so mad about DotA 2 they commissioned (because they didn't event want to spend the time to do it themselves) Reforged which decimated the player base and interest in the game JUST to put into TOS how they own all custom maps.
yeah it really feels like Blizzard was just terrified of trying literally anything new that wasn't a direct sequel to something already successful. I'm certain that tons of these projects could have easily been at least moderately successful if they just gave them the time of day, but no we only want WoW expansions and Diablo Sequels. Hell I'm shocked they managed to make Overwatch at all after hearing all this, and then they managed to fuck that one up eventually too with terrible mismanagement!
@@ckorp666it was always meant to be a unique ip narratively. The story and lore was 1 to 1 what was meant for the original game. So no on the StarCraft but yes on the destiny. They wanted a classic based fps mmo. And the launch heroes were originally just the classes.
I think Blizzard is the golden example of letting success go to their heads, believing everything they make will be the gold standard or it's nothing. They can't just make something it has to be top tier and the king of it's genre. They don't understand it's not the 2000s anymore.
It also shows how perspectives can be decieving. Becoming the king of the hill in videogame development during the late 90ies/early 2000s was a completely different thing because there were way less games being made/released, so they had way less competition, but nowadays? Even with the current issue of "AAA"-game development becoming to slow and cumbersome there are still way, way, way more games coming out then during Blizzards golden age, so they have now a way harder time to get noticed or become mega succesful.
I cannot fucking believe they murdered all this shit, and still went "the texture upgrade for warcraft 3 that KILLS THE ORIGINAL GAME [still salty about it] yeah let's force ship it to everyone."
Big fan of Big Think Dimension’s other nickname for Jason Schrier, “Randall Weems”, after one of their former cohosts replied to Schrier asking for people to reach out to him by posting a picture of Randall Weems from Recess.
As someone who didn’t grow up with Blizzard or PC gaming in general, it was always strange to me when I’d look over at Blizzard during the height of WOW and see that they had like less than ten games to their name. I never thought too much about it, cause I thought “Well I didn’t grow up with their games so I can’t really comment on that.” But now hearing all these canceled projects is weirdly vindicating to me. Also since then they’ve added like, what, three more actual GAMES to that list? Not including WOW expansions.
I did grow up on PC with Blizzard games. Quality over quantity, they didn't put out that many games, but basically every one up through Starcraft 2 was a banger. Also (for me, at least) these were games with staying power and replayability, which is a big deal when you're buying maybe 5 games a year as a kid. Obviously the "three B's" are a meme at this point, but I have a hard time thinking of a developer with a better run than mid 90's through early 00's Blizzard.
The funny thing about World of Starcraft is that, after the end of Legacy of the Void, you could probably write a lot of reasons for the three races to start hanging out together.
So is this a game developer equivalent of a room full of monkey's writing a script and they write half of it then start destroying everything because one of them made a typo?
If this is what Blizzard canceled we'll someday get a 8 volume book series on the sheer amount of shit that floated around the Valve office and never saw the light of day.
I want to put an F in the chat for everyone who joined the Blackthorne Blood Pact for Heroes of the Storm. We were fucking promised that shit and we didn't get it.
Licensed musous under Omega Force lately have been AMAZING. I've been eating fuckin' 5-star gourmet as a DW/Persona/FE:3H fan over the past few years (minus the graphics/performance for Switch-locked FEW3H). I remember loving the Gundam Musou days too, DWG2 especially, but it's so much better now. I'm sure it would be rad as hell to have a game like this in the WarCraft or (more interesting to me) StarCraft universes, especially modern Omega Force.
Remember when Jason Schrier told people to stop questioning if the last of us dev should get awards for their crunch? I pointed out that that was hypocritical, since his claim to fame is alerting people to toxic workplace stuff in games. He blocked me on twitter.
Mismanagement is an understatement. The state of WoW right now blizzard decided to make Tanks and Healers so hard to play that nobody wants to play them anymore, and out of the classes that can do it, only some are viable. If you don't play a resto shaman get fucked basically.
@@Dantarn Except for the part where I'll informed meta players will reject invites for certain classes based on info from higher keys, making an already miserable and toxic system worse.
One major thing Pat is forgetting or perhaps didn't know is that Riot originally -just- wanted to be League of Legends. Which is why they tried so many new modes: They didn't WANT to expand past LoL. When there was pushback from investors, the higher-ups at the time (Ryze and Tryn) stepped down as CEOs, which is where this surge of new ideas and IPs came from.
I can get wanting to focus on The One Game Your Company Is Known For. Makes managing easier, keeps costs down, keeps the job stable. Problem is, especially with how League's community and culture developed, that's just going to see your company stagnate or eventually die as time goes on and people either quit or never come to it in the first place. Even back when Taric was a blocky blue JPEG of diamonds, LoL was widely known for being a toxic shitheap.
A potential reason why is that *allegedly* Schreier demands exclusivity from his sources, and sabotages attempts from other people trying to look into this stuff.
Pat: "And at some point they go ' what about another Starcraft' and people went 'oh I think I could do another Starcraft'" Well clearly not given the absolute laundry list of cancelled Starcraft projects. The mismanagement is insane.
Pat's assumption that Jason was name searching, it's much more likely he's using a curated block list. And there are dozens of reasons Pat would show up on such a list, frankly.
I remember when people that worked at Blizzard seemed to actually like their job there was a whole April fools post about how they were gonna make every thing they make have a HotS acronym
The craziest part i heard about this book was about how the Cosby Suite was named that in the 90s...BECAUSE OF THE SWEATERS. THE GODDAMN HUXTABLE SWEATERS! No wonder they felt comfortable taking pictures of themselves next to his headshot Unreleased games are cool and all but I'm excited to pick up this book for all the other bullshit Blizzard was doing for the past 30 years
Yeah no, it's actually worse; Blizzard didn't just make sequels of the same crap that someone else already made for most of their games for the past 15ish years; Blizzard never made Diablo, that was Blizzard North, formerly known as Condor. They developed Diablo 1, 2, and 2's expansion. The reason they were closed down was because they were 'unable to develop Diablo 3 at a timely manner', according to Vivendi's... but before hand, a bunch of Employees were simply leaving Blizzard North due to apparently having conflict with Vivendi as well as their wish to make an original IP, whilst they were working on both Diablo 3 as well as the 2nd original IP that was Diablo-like that they were working on. Apparently Blizzard themselves was a cause for multiple people leaving Blizzard North and founding companies such as Flagship Studios, and another was Castaway Entertainment... At the end, Blizzard North was closed down and Blizzard worked on Diablo 3 and future Diablo games. So it isn't just that they spent most of their time working on the same stuff they did originally, they took an IP that was made originally by another team entirely before being worked on Diablo 3... and remember, Diablo 3 had a BUNCH of development problems as well on Blizzard's part.
Blizzard really is amazing to me. Such an incredible, storied company with these decades spanning house hold named IPs and they can't get fucking anything off the ground with them and the few things they do are mixed at best. People (somewhat rightfully) give Valve shit for their structure but think about how fucked up it is that a company with ~400 employees and ZERO STRUCTURE can still put out content for existing games and ship new games AND hardware but Blizzard with their ~13,000 employees puts out mid sequels, no new IPs, and can't get any shows or anything going. It's also incredible how much of their catalog, cancelled or otherwise, it's just derivative versions of whatever's popular. The settings were unique and nothing else was.
I will never forget what could have been with StarCraft: Ghost. That said, I feel like they've had this conversation before. I think it was a few years back when Woolie and Pat were talking about something else Blizzard had cancelled. They talked about what went on with Ghost, and mentioned Blizzard cancelling more stuff than they put out. Or maybe I'm remembering an episode of Matt's _What Happened?_
There was even a third version of Starcraft Ghost which was available for a short period of time at trade shows Blizzard attended that was heavily focused on a pvp multiplayer mode.
14:25 Im glad Pat liked Heroes of the Storm! I had a lot of fun with it for months when it came out. E.T.C., Anubarak and Illidan and Kael’Thas were my jam! Fun memories 😊
industry blunder is an overstatement in blizzard not going after DOTA at the time. IF blizzard had came out at the time with its own MOBA instead of Icefrog doing his own DOTA2, League of legends might have never been a thing.
It's wild how much many they basically let them pass by. I personally couldn't stand Overwatch as a game (I do not like FPS games), but I totally would've loved to see a complete show or movie with the characters. The short movie and the comic for reinhardt for example made me interested and could've made me into a proper fan if they actually bothered to continue with it for example
It's kind of crazy looking back and seeing how high Blizzard's standards were back in the day. I imagine the company back then would be violently vomiting at the thought of the current company releasing 4,5 maybe even 6 mediocre to piss poor slops in a row and yet still lining up another 4 or 5 in the works to shit out.
I think you can definitively say the pvp side of the game is dead. They confirmed no more pvp updates and they're not even bothering to port the new pve champs into pvp.
@@jojak0512 wait is that true? Cause some of the newer champs are still in pvp? I haven't checked to see if fiddlesticks got in pvp yet but all the other champs were in it last time I played a few weeks ago
"Do for Minecraft what WoW did for Everquest" is so crazy. If anything is doing for Minecraft what WoW did to EQ, it's going to be an older version of Minecraft.
I've been telling my buddy for years that Blizzard needs to release a diablo game set as a survival horror or something similar with a lot more narrative immersion. It's a great universe for this kind of game and all the weight of how dangerous these demons are supposed to be kinda fizzles out when you are killing hundreds of them in under a second.
So they basically pincer attacked themselves with their “high standards” all while refusing to release anything but generic slop that they think could make them more money only to consistently slip on their own vomit every single time, yet they still managed to make it this far. Blizzard really does have the most resilient fanbase by far…
Given Valve's weird structure-less structure, I'd wager literally every Valve employing has their own personal cancelled project. Including the janitors.
When Woolie talked about how x project was gonna be y-like game so many times, all I heard was: TREND CHASING. The problem with trend chasing is, if you're too slow, the market is already over saturated and you'll get pitiful returns for the huge budget you blew on the game as a AAA dev. Even worse, it just comes across as a soulless cash grab, and players will be less interested in it. Pure conjecture, but I suspect there was so much turmoil over these cancelled projects is because not a lot of devs had enthusiasm or the passion for making a game that's just chasing a trend instead of a cool, fun game they felt strongly about (a hilarious thought since they're just cranking out remasters, idiots.) Remember kids: if you're chasing trends, you've fallen behind. Falling behind as a 'AAA' developer means cranking out endless trash to stay alive with your bloated budgets until, well you end up like Blizzard, or any other developer that's under Activision or EA. Trash, just trash everywhere. There are a lot of games out now, and there are only so many people can to dedicate their time to (games just being a 2nd job now because of a focus on retention in the 'AAA' sphere.) That's why a lot live service games fail, or have a hard time and ultimately cannibalize their audiences populations from each other. You want people to play your game? Make it fun, make something that's new, or maybe a bit familiar with its own flair. The grim reality, however, is to just crank out crap that's worked before, and gamers will be stupid enough to buy it, instead of waiting for reviews to come out. A lot of developers and publishers have taken full advantage of brand loyalty from their fanbases, and with things the way are now, fanbases are stuck in an abusive relationship they don't want to part with. I say: let the titans fall, and the bodies fly. TL;DR spent too much time chasing trends instead of games they thought were cool and fun. Stop getting scammed, wait for reviews, and buy indie.
HotS was also my favorite out of the MOBA genre. The fact you didn't have to worry about shopping, and just focusing on micro and absorbing exp made it so fun for me. But blizzard didn't give a shit about it so they just putting out content/patches for it.
I remember hearing that when SC2 Wings of Liberty came out there was a lawsuit by Games Workshop which was settled out of court a.i. Blizzard just bought the right to never again be bothered by GW on that.
This is why I'm kinda over PlayStation. Sequels to great games are fine but holy fuck PLEASE MAKE NEW IPS! No more remasters/remakes. These companies are fucking cowards and people act like this was a recent thing, NO this shit was going off since THE BEGINNING
Over 10 years ago, Rising Superstar Liam Allen Miller of the Best Friends Zaibatsu retold one of his oldest bits about the three B's. Bioware, Blizzard, and Bethesda. I am thirty years old. I have never once seen these companies release anything decent. Genuinely and undismissively: were they ever anything more than hype?
From each, off the top of my head: Mass Effect, Overwatch, Skyrim. As much as we might complain about the current state of these franchises, they were absolutely MASSIVELY adored and with good reason. Nowadays, sure, it's just the hype from the name, especially with layoffs and dev migration, but there's no reason to act like they were always the scum of the earth. There was a heyday!
@@Slimurgical not luck, oddly enough. but victims of their own success. very common story, biggest one of which in recent history is JK Rowling. once you've had enough big wins in a row, you no longer have to listen to anyone telling you "this is a stupid idea boss," and so very stupid ideas start going through. over in literature they call it "outgrowing your editors," over in business it's letting the finance guys take over the shop, and in politics they call it imperial decay. cycle of life, baby! you don't get to stay young and pretty forever!
@@nuclearhardt Again stressing that I'm not trying to be some enlightened internet debate lord... It's all just hype. - Mass Effect's gameplay is so bad that it should have been a movie and it's politics are so bad that it shouldn't have. - Overwatch at its best was no match for TF2 at its worst. - Skyrim is an ankle deep ocean. Normally these critiques wouldn't mean that much for me, but its because they're so famous that I am flabbergasted with how less-than-mid they are. The hype culture around these studios are the only reason we still talk about them.
@@AJGexeYou seem to be dismissing like. The vast majority of gamers preferences while saying you are not being dismissive. Lots of people love those games that you say are nothing but hype. It doesn't mean much that you seem to think they are mid. Like. If you are just going to go "ok but those suck tho" when someone tells you the reason is that those companies made some of the most popular games, what do you expect, or even want to hear. I don't get what you are looking for.
what funny timing, I just read the two Stay Awhile and Listen books (interviews with the people involved in the first 2 diablo games) which also expose a lot of how messy their development was and now this comes out...crazy stuff (and hoo boy the more I learn the more I wonder how they made it to 2021 before getting sued for sexual harassment)
I find it funny to hear the mention of Blizzard trying to do a Minecraft competitor but just gave up. Meanwhile, Riot took up the Hytale devs and has been pursuing that unicorn for a couple of years now.
As someone who used to be so into Blizzard IPs and has done extensive research let me tell you what I came to learn many years ago and has proven more true every year since. WoW Cataclysm thematically ironic for the state of the company. Blizzards success came from the talent they acquired and retired Blizzard North. Blizzard North is what created all the games and cultural momentum Blizzard proper still rides on to this day. Diablo was the only original idea they ever had and Warcraft and Starcraft began as recycled Warhammer games. Since WoW launched and Blizzard North was dissolved, because Blizzard is not just evil but stupid (with the devils luck), they have been chasing talent and visionaries ever since. However, the thing that caused them to dissolved BN is the same thing that drove the Creative Minds behind Overwatch, their one success at this, to quit the company: The Leaders of Blizzard are Marketing Execs and not a single one is driven by creative passion. This led them to kill their golden goose studio of BN, this led them to put Jay in charge of Diablo, this led them to squander the success of Overwatch and this led them to strip mine WoW. WoW only had 2 great eras. WoW Classic and Wrath of the Lick King. Burning Crusade was a low point between these two that is now fondly remembered because of how awful Cataclysm became and how disappointing WoW became afterwards. Its why their two most successful expansion since Cata were the member berries expansions of Durotan, Illidan, and Jaina. Its also why after the first member berry expansion they immediately pivoted into another one instead of trying something new. I have been saying it since Blizzard North was dissolved, there's a reason why you never saw another game with the Blizzard logo during BNs lifetime. Because only Blizzard North was making games. Blizzard HQ was just waiting to reap their harvest.
Okay, I don't feel as bad about my angry overly edgy unfunny jab I made at JS's expense. I read the room correctly that he was being an opportunist about horrible crimes to profit later. I was still out of pocket.
I think a good comparison to make is Capcom. When you make 100 games and 10 of them are amazing and 90 of them are strictly okay, you've still made 10 amazing games.
Trend chasers but they had money for decades so they were kept afloat by the ones who actually made them popular. Also wow Riot Games for the joke for a decade being they only had one game. Then they made a massive amount of games in the span of 5-8 years. Hearing all this makes you wonder still how the fuck did they not die or get found out sooner as being criminals?
14:20 I'd say my sympathies as a battleborn lover but....well, ya know. Blizzard is like 70% of the problem with that one. Jason Schreier does great work in not just an industry but a whole country with nonexistent journalism for the most part, but he's never once done it for moral reasons. Everything in his career has been pretty blatantly done through the lens of "how does this boost my career?" rather than....ya know, wanted to expose corruption or anything noble. Lest we forget this is a manchild who last time he was this widely criticized a few years back fell on the Ben-Shapword-tier defense of "if you criticize me you're actually just antisemitic". He is very much someone who will purposefully not spread word of worker injustices so that he can save that juicy story for a self published book or whatever. I'm hesistant to say he's a rate due to the historical context of calling a prominent jewish figure such a thing, but yeah really his mealy-mouthed "maybe i will maybe i wont" noncommittal way of doing things is presumably why someone as spineless as him has so many deep industry connections in the first place and how he manages to avoid too much suspicion when gathering that kind of info. Frankly though i'm being charitable in assuming that much..... People like to use the amount of games blizzard has cancelled as some sort of proof of their artistic integrity but all it tells me is that they have shit managerial skills since day 1. Their "artistic integrity" meanwhile has pretty much always spoken for itself i mean idk why people were convinced the ones who made World of Warcraft had any form of integrity.
This makes me realize that Overwatch may be the least capitalized game relative its popularity ever. Outside the games themselves, there's NOTHING in that franchise, just 2 games and some trailers. That one game used to be a dominant % of the market and they squandered it completely
He’s widely responsible for shining a spotlight on crunch culture and employee mistreatment. I’d say there are many game developers who appreciate his work in fighting for their rights. I get he can be a bit abrasive, but we wouldn’t know as much about how the sausage was made without his reporting.
Good for him. He's still so insecure he searches for his own name on Twitter to block people. It reflects very poorly on him as a journalist and as a person. He's not above criticism.
He's good at his job. He didn't take action regarding the abuse stories because, frankly, it wasn't his place to. If the staff were attempting to pursue legal action, or if there was already preparations for legal action, or if certain members expected retaliation he would be blowing up his sources, as well as victims, for personal gain. Something significantly worse than simply sitting on information until the proper time to tell arrives. Pat's disinclination towards Schreier because of his behavior on Twitter kind of gets in the way of his legitimate work.
We talk a lot about the thousands of canceled games but not enough about the fact that among those there is only like 3 games that are a little more interesting than "hurrdurr Minecraft but BLIZZARDtm!"
Sometimes The simpler The Idea, The most enjoyable It is. I mean look at The pasta decade where we had ALL Thais grandiose obter ambitious games that either failed, took years to be fixed or worse are still being "funded"
just saying, read the book. there is a lot of info in there. it is mildly infuriating listening to Pat go off based on an idea he formed in his head rather than going, huh maybe I should read the book the guy who did the actual leg work wrote… and this is coming from someone who largely agrees with Pat!
Thank you so much for pointing that out Pat. Schreir blocked me on twitter for mentioning it so i am happy people arent letting him get away with that crappy journalism.
I think it's crazy that so many games got cancelled but it's nice that they don't fall into the pit of 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' which so many devs struggle with. Even canceling OW2 PvE because they realized they wouldn't be able to deliver. I think something like that is a big reason why Blizzard games are always top knotch when they do come out (Aside from Warcraft Reforged and Shadowlands those are obviously huge black stains on an otherwise fantastic record)
My man, this industry was born out of experimentation. Every artist making something always jumps in with the risk that he might do something that doesn't work for people, on the off-chance it does. Your favorite things were made this way. I'm reminded of when RGG tried their hands at making a full-fledged RPG, and it worked really well for a first time. Pat even commented on this. There has to be room for failure, otherwise what's the point of appreciating when something good happens.
@@leithaziz2716 I don't mean that companies should never try anything new i just mean that instead of trend chasing they should sit down and consider what they can feasibly create. Too many big companies get bogged down trying to expand their portfolios when in reality all anyone wants is a good game. Basically, focus on quality instead of quantity.
I was in the same boat as Pat listening to this. No *wonder* Blizzard has had so much trouble in the last decade. For every game they released like 5-6 other projects failed. The mismanagement is ridiculous. Anthem levels of mismanagement
Read that as 'autism levels' for a moment and was offended. An autistic person would do a far better job than these soulless suits!
If you think that is massive, imagine how many games were scrapped by Activision (who we should blame for Blizzard's downward spiral), EA, Ubisoft, 2K or fucking Sony or Nintendo?!
Ghost was really the beginning of the bad times, they had the game about 90% complete to the extent that they had the statue commissioned for the launch of the game and treat it as a released product in-house.
I still have the files for Lord of the Clans too, which is also effectively 90% complete.
I actually read (well listened) to the book. It's not so black and white. They started as as a small group of 19 year old just spitballing ideas so that sort of culture continued as the company grew because they wanted to hear all the ideas. Also their reputation for producing bangers also stifled them from releasing anything where they couldn't "find the fun". They would rather cancel than release a bad game. A lot of these also took place during the 90s and early 2000s where games could take less than 2 years. Project titan and the original diablo 4(if you could call it that. it was going to be 4 player game with 3 rd person action combat like arkham asylum lol) the most recents scraps. Titan just had Metzen and Pardo who clashed heads on what it was supposed to be and they also wanted the game to be one part animal crossing / sims and another part action mmo. Overwatch took the classes that you would select and character creation and turned them into unique characters. They pumped it out in around 3 years. This was attributed to the team getting to be small and lead by Jeffs clear vision. You learn that it wasn't until the Mid 2010s that Activision got more involved. Kotick wanted everyone on WoW and didn't see why they would waste resources on smaller games. Blizzard was accustomed to letting devs create and think tank but Activision wanted "steady predictable revenue". That's why COD got annualized. Kotick wanted them to release a new WoW expansion every year wanted to create multiple teams to facilitate that but Morheim constantly pushed back and was like throwing money and resources doesn't make quality necessarily. Project Titan cost them 80 mill but the predicted revenue for the next big MMo that they lost was a problem along with the rubberbanding of of how Blizzards revenue would get cut in half every other year even if that reduction was still 500 mill(it wasn't steady or predictable).
Warcraft 3 reforged was the big fuck up as it was the first truly bad game in 30 years and that was due to only having a year to make it. The guy in charge of it was a super dickhead for not giving the team the time they needed as what they wanted to do didn't get to happen(this, in my opinion, was a result of Activision's profit driven culture permeating through blizzard after Morheim was no longer there to intervene). They also started hemorrhaging talent because Activation made it no longer fun enough working there to put up with being paid less that other places , reduction in perks like free blizzcon tickets, the sexism(very much there) and sexual misconduct (that judging by the book wasn't as egregious on a whole as court documents made it seems. It was more creepy nerds being creeps and giving attention to the few "attractive women" that worked in what was 90 percent men + a few bad actors at the top were the assailants.Also a lot of people were swinging and hooking up and it make the workplace awkward. One dude had an affair with upper management's wife(while his current wife was pregnant) who also worked at Blizzard. Manager got wind and basically made his last few months at blizzard hell.
I think Woolie and Pat did a disservice by not really adding context. I know they are not journalists but a little more due diligence goes a long way.
@@lewisgraham4174 idk wow in 2010? when i read that, the writer lost credibility. wow in 2010? i dont think so. these guys had the biggest reputation in gaming in 2006 2008. south park was doing memes politicians were doing wow memes. 2 aaa games just flushed down the toilet, and he is kinda correct. it was the executives that capitalized on the hype and let the games, plural, i dont even know the word, perish. they just stopped caring and started relying on drops. writing "small indie company" as your excuse as why you trashed every game you made, is insulting to the reader. we saw it happen, we were there when they did nothing. as if we didn't live thru it.
Yeah, I feel like it used to be the consensus that Blizzard just had very high standards, so they cancelled anything that didn't live up to those. But it reeeeally feels like that was just people giving them the benefit of the doubt, and they were actually just HORRIBLY mismanaged.
People trot out sentiments of 'delays mean it's being worked on and will be more quality' often and these days I often feel like that's a smokescreen for what should indicate strife and mismanagement in game dev.
@@Churono The existence of a delay in of itself implies poor planning (or at best, understandabely unforseen hurdles/accidents that slowed progress). A project being termed "gold" some time before the release date set out originally can be a good sign at times. I believe Xenoblade 3 or its DLC actually released a month prior to its original release or something crazy like that.
same with valve, tho at least they weren't... yknow
Considering the quality of the shit they actually released, I wouldn't say they have high standards.
After the world of warcraft money started dropping off a sheer cliff face they started throwing shit at the wall hoping it would stick
You know what the problem is with these cancelled games? They were cancelled instead of repurposed. Resident Evil 4 spawned Devil May Cry when it was too actioney and it spawned Haunting Ground when it was too supernatural. They could've just made new properties with all this work.
You're right, but I suspect several of the more idiosyncratic Overwatch characters came from game prototypes we never saw or were repurposed from Titan when they stopped developing it.
Blizzard makes things to an exacting standard of marketability, meaning that designs and design language probably cant be carried over to new projects without infecting them with the traits of the previous one. Its not a good strategy, but I think they approach mechanics and characters as functions of how to make a singular game playable and profitable at a time. They force themselves to relearn the process each time, for no reason at all.
Probably money, they're too big so probably the CEOs didn't saw that as worth the pennies...
@adams3627 yeah pretty much all the launch characters for overwatch were derived from Titan's concept art
It's insane to me that they couldn't even add some PVE to Overwatch.
The game that was originally a PVE MMO FPS was to hard to make PVE content for....
Their comments on it were quite literally not that they couldn’t do it but rather that it was deemed not worth it in comparison to just pushing the game as it was. So without using the words explicitly they just told everyone that they cancelled it because they couldn’t see how it would make them more money long term than just selling battle passes.
@@Kyderra makes sense, the PVE got shafted both times bc it requires actual content, instead of just occasionally adding chars and printing skin money
It costs significantly more to actually put effort into well crafted story content rather than say, charging $70+ for a single mythic skin that they only need to pay one modeller to make and maybe one animator for $20 emote/highlight intro.
At 0:58 unfortunately this has become a common problem with journalists, Bob Woodward it’s a good recent example a lot of them just keep information to themselves in order to write a book
Remember, it's always justified to sail the seas for Journalist books
@@cyberninjazero5659or "borrow from a friend"
It's honestly really weird when you think about it that Schrier releases a book all about Blizzards mismanagement and at the same time is making articles about Mike Morhaime's new studio.
So Schrier according to himself not only knew about a lot of the Blizzard shit, he saved it for a book AND then also did a positive piece about the new studio by the old founder of Blizzard, a guy who was the boss during all that heinous shit going on.
I'm not even saying there's a conspiracy there, but it's a bad look to set up for yourself imo. People seem to forget that Morhaime was called out by employees for sweeping a lot of it under the rug.
@@jimbob1862 JS is just a classic two-faced scumbag, 'Journalisim' is his business. He's like a real life version of a crooked reporter from a show or movie
I thought you were mainly talking about keeping the scrapped game leaks private, but I think you're talking about the "allegations". I'm not gonna jump the boat and expect to know what goes on in people's minds (I've not been in such profession to offer any insight), allthough you can't help but feel for the victims who probably wanted help sooner.
They were so mad about DotA 2 they commissioned (because they didn't event want to spend the time to do it themselves) Reforged which decimated the player base and interest in the game JUST to put into TOS how they own all custom maps.
yeah it really feels like Blizzard was just terrified of trying literally anything new that wasn't a direct sequel to something already successful. I'm certain that tons of these projects could have easily been at least moderately successful if they just gave them the time of day, but no we only want WoW expansions and Diablo Sequels. Hell I'm shocked they managed to make Overwatch at all after hearing all this, and then they managed to fuck that one up eventually too with terrible mismanagement!
wasnt OW originally a first person starcraft MMO trying to eat destiny's lunch or smth like that?
Bingo!!!
@@ckorp666it was always meant to be a unique ip narratively. The story and lore was 1 to 1 what was meant for the original game. So no on the StarCraft but yes on the destiny. They wanted a classic based fps mmo. And the launch heroes were originally just the classes.
I think Blizzard is the golden example of letting success go to their heads, believing everything they make will be the gold standard or it's nothing. They can't just make something it has to be top tier and the king of it's genre. They don't understand it's not the 2000s anymore.
It also shows how perspectives can be decieving.
Becoming the king of the hill in videogame development during the late 90ies/early 2000s was a completely different thing because there were way less games being made/released, so they had way less competition, but nowadays? Even with the current issue of "AAA"-game development becoming to slow and cumbersome there are still way, way, way more games coming out then during Blizzards golden age, so they have now a way harder time to get noticed or become mega succesful.
Also, most people who worked at Blizzard before 2010 have left, it's not even the same company anymore.
@@SuperMrSkully yeah I was gonna say, there's nobody that remembers working the 00s still working at Blizzard
I cannot fucking believe they murdered all this shit, and still went "the texture upgrade for warcraft 3 that KILLS THE ORIGINAL GAME [still salty about it] yeah let's force ship it to everyone."
You know it’s fucked when the best way to officially play Warcraft 3 is through a custom campaign mod in StarCraft 2.
It's so starblover bros...
Big fan of Big Think Dimension’s other nickname for Jason Schrier, “Randall Weems”, after one of their former cohosts replied to Schrier asking for people to reach out to him by posting a picture of Randall Weems from Recess.
As someone who didn’t grow up with Blizzard or PC gaming in general, it was always strange to me when I’d look over at Blizzard during the height of WOW and see that they had like less than ten games to their name.
I never thought too much about it, cause I thought “Well I didn’t grow up with their games so I can’t really comment on that.” But now hearing all these canceled projects is weirdly vindicating to me.
Also since then they’ve added like, what, three more actual GAMES to that list? Not including WOW expansions.
I did grow up on PC with Blizzard games. Quality over quantity, they didn't put out that many games, but basically every one up through Starcraft 2 was a banger. Also (for me, at least) these were games with staying power and replayability, which is a big deal when you're buying maybe 5 games a year as a kid.
Obviously the "three B's" are a meme at this point, but I have a hard time thinking of a developer with a better run than mid 90's through early 00's Blizzard.
An MMO where you have to be a human shooting different alien factions? I guess it just wasn't Starcraft's Destiny.
That's pretty good.
The funny thing about World of Starcraft is that, after the end of Legacy of the Void, you could probably write a lot of reasons for the three races to start hanging out together.
Nothing can soar if it never even gets to the runway.
So is this a game developer equivalent of a room full of monkey's writing a script and they write half of it then start destroying everything because one of them made a typo?
If this is what Blizzard canceled we'll someday get a 8 volume book series on the sheer amount of shit that floated around the Valve office and never saw the light of day.
I want to put an F in the chat for everyone who joined the Blackthorne Blood Pact for Heroes of the Storm.
We were fucking promised that shit and we didn't get it.
My dream game is a Warcraft musou just like Dynasty Warriors. It's never going to happen with Activision's current leadership.
Licensed musous under Omega Force lately have been AMAZING. I've been eating fuckin' 5-star gourmet as a DW/Persona/FE:3H fan over the past few years (minus the graphics/performance for Switch-locked FEW3H). I remember loving the Gundam Musou days too, DWG2 especially, but it's so much better now.
I'm sure it would be rad as hell to have a game like this in the WarCraft or (more interesting to me) StarCraft universes, especially modern Omega Force.
Dude, that sounds so close to my dream game of a Diablo in the style of Nioh.
Oh, now I see why Stormgate is the way it is.
If it were made by Blizzard it would be one of the cancelled games.
Best part is that Stormgate isn't even good.
Remember when Jason Schrier told people to stop questioning if the last of us dev should get awards for their crunch? I pointed out that that was hypocritical, since his claim to fame is alerting people to toxic workplace stuff in games.
He blocked me on twitter.
Mismanagement is an understatement. The state of WoW right now blizzard decided to make Tanks and Healers so hard to play that nobody wants to play them anymore, and out of the classes that can do it, only some are viable. If you don't play a resto shaman get fucked basically.
That only affects high level keys on a certain affix week for M+ not the rest of the game
@@Dantarn Except for the part where I'll informed meta players will reject invites for certain classes based on info from higher keys, making an already miserable and toxic system worse.
Maybe if they weren't so busy crawling underneath desks then they'd actually be able to make half of the project that they canceled
One major thing Pat is forgetting or perhaps didn't know is that Riot originally -just- wanted to be League of Legends. Which is why they tried so many new modes: They didn't WANT to expand past LoL. When there was pushback from investors, the higher-ups at the time (Ryze and Tryn) stepped down as CEOs, which is where this surge of new ideas and IPs came from.
I can get wanting to focus on The One Game Your Company Is Known For. Makes managing easier, keeps costs down, keeps the job stable.
Problem is, especially with how League's community and culture developed, that's just going to see your company stagnate or eventually die as time goes on and people either quit or never come to it in the first place. Even back when Taric was a blocky blue JPEG of diamonds, LoL was widely known for being a toxic shitheap.
Starblo sweep
Its really sad Jason Schreier is the only voice from a major publication talking about this shit.
A potential reason why is that *allegedly* Schreier demands exclusivity from his sources, and sabotages attempts from other people trying to look into this stuff.
Pat: "And at some point they go ' what about another Starcraft' and people went 'oh I think I could do another Starcraft'"
Well clearly not given the absolute laundry list of cancelled Starcraft projects. The mismanagement is insane.
Pat's assumption that Jason was name searching, it's much more likely he's using a curated block list. And there are dozens of reasons Pat would show up on such a list, frankly.
I remember when people that worked at Blizzard seemed to actually like their job there was a whole April fools post about how they were gonna make every thing they make have a HotS acronym
the unhinged criminal perverts liked their job, but not for the right reasons
I mean, I found out that even I'm blocked by Jason Shreirer, and I've never interacted with any of his posts. 😂
The craziest part i heard about this book was about how the Cosby Suite was named that in the 90s...BECAUSE OF THE SWEATERS. THE GODDAMN HUXTABLE SWEATERS! No wonder they felt comfortable taking pictures of themselves next to his headshot
Unreleased games are cool and all but I'm excited to pick up this book for all the other bullshit Blizzard was doing for the past 30 years
Yeah no, it's actually worse; Blizzard didn't just make sequels of the same crap that someone else already made for most of their games for the past 15ish years; Blizzard never made Diablo, that was Blizzard North, formerly known as Condor. They developed Diablo 1, 2, and 2's expansion.
The reason they were closed down was because they were 'unable to develop Diablo 3 at a timely manner', according to Vivendi's... but before hand, a bunch of Employees were simply leaving Blizzard North due to apparently having conflict with Vivendi as well as their wish to make an original IP, whilst they were working on both Diablo 3 as well as the 2nd original IP that was Diablo-like that they were working on. Apparently Blizzard themselves was a cause for multiple people leaving Blizzard North and founding companies such as Flagship Studios, and another was Castaway Entertainment...
At the end, Blizzard North was closed down and Blizzard worked on Diablo 3 and future Diablo games. So it isn't just that they spent most of their time working on the same stuff they did originally, they took an IP that was made originally by another team entirely before being worked on Diablo 3... and remember, Diablo 3 had a BUNCH of development problems as well on Blizzard's part.
Oh yay more reasons to hate blizzard i cant wait to listen
Blizzard really is amazing to me. Such an incredible, storied company with these decades spanning house hold named IPs and they can't get fucking anything off the ground with them and the few things they do are mixed at best. People (somewhat rightfully) give Valve shit for their structure but think about how fucked up it is that a company with ~400 employees and ZERO STRUCTURE can still put out content for existing games and ship new games AND hardware but Blizzard with their ~13,000 employees puts out mid sequels, no new IPs, and can't get any shows or anything going. It's also incredible how much of their catalog, cancelled or otherwise, it's just derivative versions of whatever's popular. The settings were unique and nothing else was.
One trick pony more like complacent thieves who buy their own hype.
I will never forget what could have been with StarCraft: Ghost. That said, I feel like they've had this conversation before. I think it was a few years back when Woolie and Pat were talking about something else Blizzard had cancelled. They talked about what went on with Ghost, and mentioned Blizzard cancelling more stuff than they put out. Or maybe I'm remembering an episode of Matt's _What Happened?_
hey atlest the orginal ddiablo 3 getting cancelledd lead to tourchlight.
There was even a third version of Starcraft Ghost which was available for a short period of time at trade shows Blizzard attended that was heavily focused on a pvp multiplayer mode.
Every name Woolie lists, you can see the last threads of respect Pat has for Blizzard shrivel and die with each one.
Can't go wrong with the three B's.
14:25
Im glad Pat liked Heroes of the Storm! I had a lot of fun with it for months when it came out. E.T.C., Anubarak and Illidan and Kael’Thas were my jam! Fun memories 😊
Man. There’s a lot of games that started as Ultima spin offs
industry blunder is an overstatement in blizzard not going after DOTA at the time. IF blizzard had came out at the time with its own MOBA instead of Icefrog doing his own DOTA2, League of legends might have never been a thing.
It's wild how much many they basically let them pass by.
I personally couldn't stand Overwatch as a game (I do not like FPS games), but I totally would've loved to see a complete show or movie with the characters. The short movie and the comic for reinhardt for example made me interested and could've made me into a proper fan if they actually bothered to continue with it for example
It's kind of crazy looking back and seeing how high Blizzard's standards were back in the day. I imagine the company back then would be violently vomiting at the thought of the current company releasing 4,5 maybe even 6 mediocre to piss poor slops in a row and yet still lining up another 4 or 5 in the works to shit out.
Runeterra isnt dead, its just kinda lowkey, i can still get on and get decent pvp matches and its still fun. But the support is coming a lil back
I think you can definitively say the pvp side of the game is dead. They confirmed no more pvp updates and they're not even bothering to port the new pve champs into pvp.
@@jojak0512 wait is that true? Cause some of the newer champs are still in pvp? I haven't checked to see if fiddlesticks got in pvp yet but all the other champs were in it last time I played a few weeks ago
"Do for Minecraft what WoW did for Everquest" is so crazy.
If anything is doing for Minecraft what WoW did to EQ, it's going to be an older version of Minecraft.
Overwatch could have been it's generations GI Joe but they fumbled it so hard.
I've been telling my buddy for years that Blizzard needs to release a diablo game set as a survival horror or something similar with a lot more narrative immersion. It's a great universe for this kind of game and all the weight of how dangerous these demons are supposed to be kinda fizzles out when you are killing hundreds of them in under a second.
STARBLO
Rest in peace Star-blo
I love seeing the industry implode under their own weight
So they basically pincer attacked themselves with their “high standards” all while refusing to release anything but generic slop that they think could make them more money only to consistently slip on their own vomit every single time, yet they still managed to make it this far. Blizzard really does have the most resilient fanbase by far…
last i played something from blizzard is diablo 2 and thats like 2003. now if i played arpg lost epoch or grim dawn is my jam.
"thats not normal" it is literally normal in every creative field pat. the term "shovelware" exists for deviants.
This makes me want to see the amount of canceled project Value has in their closet
Given Valve's weird structure-less structure, I'd wager literally every Valve employing has their own personal cancelled project. Including the janitors.
When Woolie talked about how x project was gonna be y-like game so many times, all I heard was: TREND CHASING. The problem with trend chasing is, if you're too slow, the market is already over saturated and you'll get pitiful returns for the huge budget you blew on the game as a AAA dev. Even worse, it just comes across as a soulless cash grab, and players will be less interested in it. Pure conjecture, but I suspect there was so much turmoil over these cancelled projects is because not a lot of devs had enthusiasm or the passion for making a game that's just chasing a trend instead of a cool, fun game they felt strongly about (a hilarious thought since they're just cranking out remasters, idiots.) Remember kids: if you're chasing trends, you've fallen behind. Falling behind as a 'AAA' developer means cranking out endless trash to stay alive with your bloated budgets until, well you end up like Blizzard, or any other developer that's under Activision or EA. Trash, just trash everywhere.
There are a lot of games out now, and there are only so many people can to dedicate their time to (games just being a 2nd job now because of a focus on retention in the 'AAA' sphere.) That's why a lot live service games fail, or have a hard time and ultimately cannibalize their audiences populations from each other. You want people to play your game? Make it fun, make something that's new, or maybe a bit familiar with its own flair. The grim reality, however, is to just crank out crap that's worked before, and gamers will be stupid enough to buy it, instead of waiting for reviews to come out. A lot of developers and publishers have taken full advantage of brand loyalty from their fanbases, and with things the way are now, fanbases are stuck in an abusive relationship they don't want to part with. I say: let the titans fall, and the bodies fly.
TL;DR spent too much time chasing trends instead of games they thought were cool and fun. Stop getting scammed, wait for reviews, and buy indie.
Curious to ask is it’s the same when we learned Warner bros canceled a lot of projects and writes it off as a tax off
Nah, it's more like "we couldn't get this idea to work fully, so we scrapped it"
That's significantly worse actually.
@@rudeboyspodcastbruh that's what you do to prototypes. We're talking 90% complete games here.
I don't like JS either, but I'd watch Kyle Bosman's recent interview with him if you don't just want to believe Pat's conjecture completely.
Like him or no, he's great at his job.
Who is JS?
@@DragoonBoom Jason Schreier.
HotS was also my favorite out of the MOBA genre. The fact you didn't have to worry about shopping, and just focusing on micro and absorbing exp made it so fun for me.
But blizzard didn't give a shit about it so they just putting out content/patches for it.
I'm sad I have to live in a world where Warcraft Go never came to be.
I'm still kinda sour about Ghost getting canceled, honestly.
i remember at the time i absolutely did get HOTS confused with HOTS. good work lol
I remember hearing that when SC2 Wings of Liberty came out there was a lawsuit by Games Workshop which was settled out of court a.i. Blizzard just bought the right to never again be bothered by GW on that.
This is why I'm kinda over PlayStation. Sequels to great games are fine but holy fuck PLEASE MAKE NEW IPS! No more remasters/remakes.
These companies are fucking cowards and people act like this was a recent thing, NO this shit was going off since THE BEGINNING
You LOVE Horizon. You want MORE Horizon.
Then why is Microsoft literally asking devs why they don't make games for Xbox
New IPs dont sell as well as sequels / remakes these days - same reason why movies are that way
Over 10 years ago, Rising Superstar Liam Allen Miller of the Best Friends Zaibatsu retold one of his oldest bits about the three B's.
Bioware, Blizzard, and Bethesda.
I am thirty years old. I have never once seen these companies release anything decent.
Genuinely and undismissively: were they ever anything more than hype?
From each, off the top of my head: Mass Effect, Overwatch, Skyrim. As much as we might complain about the current state of these franchises, they were absolutely MASSIVELY adored and with good reason. Nowadays, sure, it's just the hype from the name, especially with layoffs and dev migration, but there's no reason to act like they were always the scum of the earth. There was a heyday!
Worse; They were luck.
@@Slimurgical not luck, oddly enough. but victims of their own success. very common story, biggest one of which in recent history is JK Rowling. once you've had enough big wins in a row, you no longer have to listen to anyone telling you "this is a stupid idea boss," and so very stupid ideas start going through.
over in literature they call it "outgrowing your editors," over in business it's letting the finance guys take over the shop, and in politics they call it imperial decay. cycle of life, baby! you don't get to stay young and pretty forever!
@@nuclearhardt
Again stressing that I'm not trying to be some enlightened internet debate lord...
It's all just hype.
- Mass Effect's gameplay is so bad that it should have been a movie and it's politics are so bad that it shouldn't have.
- Overwatch at its best was no match for TF2 at its worst.
- Skyrim is an ankle deep ocean.
Normally these critiques wouldn't mean that much for me, but its because they're so famous that I am flabbergasted with how less-than-mid they are.
The hype culture around these studios are the only reason we still talk about them.
@@AJGexeYou seem to be dismissing like. The vast majority of gamers preferences while saying you are not being dismissive. Lots of people love those games that you say are nothing but hype.
It doesn't mean much that you seem to think they are mid. Like. If you are just going to go "ok but those suck tho" when someone tells you the reason is that those companies made some of the most popular games, what do you expect, or even want to hear. I don't get what you are looking for.
what funny timing, I just read the two Stay Awhile and Listen books (interviews with the people involved in the first 2 diablo games) which also expose a lot of how messy their development was and now this comes out...crazy stuff (and hoo boy the more I learn the more I wonder how they made it to 2021 before getting sued for sexual harassment)
Hell of a thumbnail
I find it funny to hear the mention of Blizzard trying to do a Minecraft competitor but just gave up. Meanwhile, Riot took up the Hytale devs and has been pursuing that unicorn for a couple of years now.
There is a balance to be struck, but they were crippled by consensus
As someone who used to be so into Blizzard IPs and has done extensive research let me tell you what I came to learn many years ago and has proven more true every year since.
WoW Cataclysm thematically ironic for the state of the company.
Blizzards success came from the talent they acquired and retired Blizzard North.
Blizzard North is what created all the games and cultural momentum Blizzard proper still rides on to this day.
Diablo was the only original idea they ever had and Warcraft and Starcraft began as recycled Warhammer games.
Since WoW launched and Blizzard North was dissolved, because Blizzard is not just evil but stupid (with the devils luck), they have been chasing talent and visionaries ever since.
However, the thing that caused them to dissolved BN is the same thing that drove the Creative Minds behind Overwatch, their one success at this, to quit the company: The Leaders of Blizzard are Marketing Execs and not a single one is driven by creative passion.
This led them to kill their golden goose studio of BN, this led them to put Jay in charge of Diablo, this led them to squander the success of Overwatch and this led them to strip mine WoW.
WoW only had 2 great eras. WoW Classic and Wrath of the Lick King. Burning Crusade was a low point between these two that is now fondly remembered because of how awful Cataclysm became and how disappointing WoW became afterwards.
Its why their two most successful expansion since Cata were the member berries expansions of Durotan, Illidan, and Jaina.
Its also why after the first member berry expansion they immediately pivoted into another one instead of trying something new.
I have been saying it since Blizzard North was dissolved, there's a reason why you never saw another game with the Blizzard logo during BNs lifetime. Because only Blizzard North was making games. Blizzard HQ was just waiting to reap their harvest.
Okay, I don't feel as bad about my angry overly edgy unfunny jab I made at JS's expense. I read the room correctly that he was being an opportunist about horrible crimes to profit later. I was still out of pocket.
I think a good comparison to make is Capcom.
When you make 100 games and 10 of them are amazing and 90 of them are strictly okay, you've still made 10 amazing games.
Trend chasers but they had money for decades so they were kept afloat by the ones who actually made them popular.
Also wow Riot Games for the joke for a decade being they only had one game. Then they made a massive amount of games in the span of 5-8 years.
Hearing all this makes you wonder still how the fuck did they not die or get found out sooner as being criminals?
Maybe glorbo was real
14:20 I'd say my sympathies as a battleborn lover but....well, ya know. Blizzard is like 70% of the problem with that one.
Jason Schreier does great work in not just an industry but a whole country with nonexistent journalism for the most part, but he's never once done it for moral reasons. Everything in his career has been pretty blatantly done through the lens of "how does this boost my career?" rather than....ya know, wanted to expose corruption or anything noble. Lest we forget this is a manchild who last time he was this widely criticized a few years back fell on the Ben-Shapword-tier defense of "if you criticize me you're actually just antisemitic". He is very much someone who will purposefully not spread word of worker injustices so that he can save that juicy story for a self published book or whatever. I'm hesistant to say he's a rate due to the historical context of calling a prominent jewish figure such a thing, but yeah really his mealy-mouthed "maybe i will maybe i wont" noncommittal way of doing things is presumably why someone as spineless as him has so many deep industry connections in the first place and how he manages to avoid too much suspicion when gathering that kind of info. Frankly though i'm being charitable in assuming that much.....
People like to use the amount of games blizzard has cancelled as some sort of proof of their artistic integrity but all it tells me is that they have shit managerial skills since day 1. Their "artistic integrity" meanwhile has pretty much always spoken for itself i mean idk why people were convinced the ones who made World of Warcraft had any form of integrity.
Blizz is the Ledd Zeppelin of gaming. Also, Riot can't seem to get away from League no matter what they try.
What about Valorant?
This makes me realize that Overwatch may be the least capitalized game relative its popularity ever. Outside the games themselves, there's NOTHING in that franchise, just 2 games and some trailers. That one game used to be a dominant % of the market and they squandered it completely
as time moves on the old super beat friends podcast clip about the three B's of the gaming industry ages better and better
19:35 That's not true, there's also the lowest point in WoW history.
23:48 What is Pat talking about here? WoW has always had an auction house.
They were talking about diablo having an auction house, he accidentally called it wow.
1:17
I'm glad that Pat referenced that. Regardless of what he's done to legitimize gaming journalism, Jason Schreier is a deeply irritating person.
He’s widely responsible for shining a spotlight on crunch culture and employee mistreatment. I’d say there are many game developers who appreciate his work in fighting for their rights. I get he can be a bit abrasive, but we wouldn’t know as much about how the sausage was made without his reporting.
@@johnconnorpliskin7184 Good for him. He’s still so insecure that he searches his own name on Twitter for people to block.
No, the man rules.
Good for him. He's still so insecure he searches for his own name on Twitter to block people. It reflects very poorly on him as a journalist and as a person. He's not above criticism.
He's good at his job. He didn't take action regarding the abuse stories because, frankly, it wasn't his place to. If the staff were attempting to pursue legal action, or if there was already preparations for legal action, or if certain members expected retaliation he would be blowing up his sources, as well as victims, for personal gain. Something significantly worse than simply sitting on information until the proper time to tell arrives. Pat's disinclination towards Schreier because of his behavior on Twitter kind of gets in the way of his legitimate work.
We talk a lot about the thousands of canceled games but not enough about the fact that among those there is only like 3 games that are a little more interesting than "hurrdurr Minecraft but BLIZZARDtm!"
Sometimes The simpler The Idea, The most enjoyable It is. I mean look at The pasta decade where we had ALL Thais grandiose obter ambitious games that either failed, took years to be fixed or worse are still being "funded"
Gotta say a Starblo sounds amazing
Don't ever work with big punishers.
Foamstars was not free to play or worth its asking price
Ultima Online mentioned 🎉 🌟 🎂
love cancelled shit
just saying, read the book. there is a lot of info in there. it is mildly infuriating listening to Pat go off based on an idea he formed in his head rather than going, huh maybe I should read the book the guy who did the actual leg work wrote… and this is coming from someone who largely agrees with Pat!
It's Blizzard so they all would've sucked lol
I"ve heard Starcraft is just a stolen Warhammer story 😅
It actually started out as an official 40k game - they had the license - but they lost it and had to change everything
Pax Bisonica
How about those Three Bs of Gaming, eh?
So much canceling...
Aren't Jason and Gene friends? I guess not
Any proof on their animosity?
@@Dracobyte Didn't said they had any. Wondering if they are or aren't since his good pal Pat is not a fan of Jason
Starcraft ghost...mgs5
Thank you so much for pointing that out Pat. Schreir blocked me on twitter for mentioning it so i am happy people arent letting him get away with that crappy journalism.
Did Microsoft just acquire blizzard through Activision lol typical Microsoft, gutting so many games after a major acquisition
Microsoft owns Actiblizz, yes. The article Woolie is reading is about the shitload of projects that Blizz canned by its own will throughout the years
I'm surprised Overwatch ever came out now that I've heard all this
I always think about an alternative timeline in which Warcraft adventures didn’t get canceled.
I think it's crazy that so many games got cancelled but it's nice that they don't fall into the pit of 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' which so many devs struggle with. Even canceling OW2 PvE because they realized they wouldn't be able to deliver. I think something like that is a big reason why Blizzard games are always top knotch when they do come out (Aside from Warcraft Reforged and Shadowlands those are obviously huge black stains on an otherwise fantastic record)
Companies really need to accept the idea of staying in their wheelhouse.
Eh, depends on the company.
Naughty Dog never made a racing game before Crash Team Racing, and that became a classic.
My man, this industry was born out of experimentation. Every artist making something always jumps in with the risk that he might do something that doesn't work for people, on the off-chance it does. Your favorite things were made this way.
I'm reminded of when RGG tried their hands at making a full-fledged RPG, and it worked really well for a first time. Pat even commented on this. There has to be room for failure, otherwise what's the point of appreciating when something good happens.
@@leithaziz2716 I don't mean that companies should never try anything new i just mean that instead of trend chasing they should sit down and consider what they can feasibly create.
Too many big companies get bogged down trying to expand their portfolios when in reality all anyone wants is a good game. Basically, focus on quality instead of quantity.
@@werewolf873 "Companies really need to accept the idea of staying in their wheelhouse" is not the same statement as companies shouldn't trend chase.