Diablo Immoral - Pay to Loot - out now, not that you should care

OrangeRKN wrote:

Floex wrote:banana splits for booing, how?

Imagine working months and months on a new game only to get booed live on stage when you announce it

If you’re a game developer working for one of the more hardcore fanbases and then go and announce a mobile game for a predominately PC crowd then you’re a strawberry floating idiot (not you, the company)

It’s not about what you’re working on, we know how money grabbing mobile games can be. I’m puzzled how anyone can defend it.

Floex wrote:If you’re a game developer working for one of the more hardcore fanbases and then go and announce a mobile game for a predominately PC crowd then you’re a strawberry floating idiot (not you, the company)

Well exactly, unfair on the devs to give them a hard time for doing their job

And yes the reaction is predictable, but it's still silly and entitled to boo at a videogame you're not interested in

banana splits is maybe a strong word to describe the people booing, and I agree Blizzard made a mistake ending their opening show with it.

But to actually get up and essentially berate the guy on stage because it's not Diablo 4 is a dick move that smacks of entitlement.

Its a childish response and there were other ways they could have got their point across without seeming like annoyed children.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:banana splits is maybe a strong word to describe the people booing, and I agree Blizzard made a mistake ending their opening show with it.

But to actually get up and essentially berate the guy on stage because it's not Diablo 4 is a dick move that smacks of entitlement.

Its a childish response and there were other ways they could have got their point across without seeming like annoyed children.

I was going back and forth on this for a while - on the one hand the keynote of Blizzcon was perhaps not the best place to announce a game clearly aimed at hoovering up asian microtransaction money and so to some degree I can understand people being annoyed. However on the other, games companies have built their brands and fortunes on whipping people into frenzies with teasers, reveals/"leaks", preorder culture etc. to get as much attention and money as possible out of their audience. This whole debacle is an example of them getting exactly what they want in a monkey's paw way, and comes perhaps from a self-selecting group who paid significant amounts of money to be loudly and impressively marketed at over a weekend experiencing the cognitive dissonance of realising how much Activision Blizzard will exploit their beloved brands in the name of even more profit despite all the platitudes about their "passionate fans", who will turn on them at the drop of a hat.

Can we all at least agree that the guy who stood up, queued to ask a question and told the devs to their face that their new, unreleased game was a joke, was a banana split?

Tafdolphin wrote:Can we all at least agree that the guy who stood up, queued to ask a question and told the devs to their face that their new, unreleased game was a joke, was a banana split?

Yes.

Nope.

The guys on stage are paid to be there, they are the company reps. If they were not prepaired for the fallout then they shouldn't be there. Blizzard should have thought about anouncing it elsewhere, it's not like there haven't been a number of well known reactions to mobile game development.

The guy paid to be at the event, queued up like all the others and said what he felt. I personally wouldn't have done this but it doesn't make him a banana split.

I think it's a shitty and definitely entitled but it is completely tone deaf move and in some ways they were asking for that response.

Also I'm pretty sure more people would be Ok with the booing and questions if it was EA or Activision.

Hime wrote:I think it's a shitty and definitely entitled but it is completely tone deaf move and in some ways they were asking for that response.

Also I'm pretty sure more people would be Ok with the booing and questions if it was EA or Activision.

It was Activision, though.

Knoyleo wrote:

Hime wrote:I think it's a shitty and definitely entitled but it is completely tone deaf move and in some ways they were asking for that response.

Also I'm pretty sure more people would be Ok with the booing and questions if it was EA or Activision.

It was Activision, though.

Most people seem to see Activision and Blizzard seperatly, maybe?

Also:

Pedz wrote:Is what people there did any different to the uproar here when EA announced C&C for mobile, or is it different because we are above those mega nerds or because EA arem't liked as much as Blizzard?

Xeno wrote:Nope.

The guys on stage are paid to be there, they are the company reps. If they were not prepaired for the fallout then they shouldn't be there. Blizzard should have thought about anouncing it elsewhere, it's not like there haven't been a number of well known reactions to mobile game development.

The guy paid to be at the event, queued up like all the others and said what he felt. I personally wouldn't have done this but it doesn't make him a banana split.

Alternative perspective;

You're a dev at Blizzard. You've spent your entire life engaged in a passion that has, through hard work and dedication to your craft, led to to employment at one of the most revered and respected workplaces in your arena. Upper management decided it was time the company partake of some of that sweet, sweet Asian market mobile cash and task you and your team with taking a beloved franchise and porting it to mobile. Or rather, helping an contractor port it so you can concentrate on the big sequel to that franchise that you've poured your heart into.

Eventually it comes time to announce the game. Upper management chooses you to go out in front of thousands of fans and present something you know probably isn't what they're there for. You're not an actor or a showman, you're a developer but you take the torch and run with it because hey, the bosses are telling you to. Also, you're quite proud of how good the game is looking.

So you stride out onto that stage and present the game. It's met with a muted reaction but you kind of expected that. You've got the speech marketing wrote for you so you go through it, just like the hundreds of times you went through it the evening before in preparation. Your heart is still thundering in your chest as your presentation finishes and they open up the floor to the crowd.

Your brain stutters slightly as you try and process the question that's just been asked. Or rather, the statement that's just been made. You laugh nervously. Did this guy just say what you thought he...yep. Your copresenter too is laughing nervously. You somehow manage to expel an answer, another standard marketing line but at least you said something. You're sweating now, wishing to any gods out there that this was over and that you could go back to your desk and to work. But it's not over.

You check your emails, Twitter, the sites. Your team's work is overshadowed by the image of the man who asked the question, a fierce debate is raging on Twitter and your inbox is full, full, of journalists asking for comment. There's another from management instructing you not to talk to ANYONE until marketed has debriefed you. You just want to go back to work.

Eventually you are sent another statement from marketing and PR. You send it out. You repeat it in person, over and over as the cavalcade of journalists keeps on coming. The debate online continue and eventually, eventually, you make your way to your hotel room and collapse into something that might, on any other day, be called sleep.

Tl;dr strawberry float the entitlement of these strawberry floating manbabies and their strawberry floating privilege. This gooseberry fool is toxic, it led to GamerGate, it is the reason devs are harassed and then fired on Twitter and it's led to a malfeasant inversion of the power dynamic in gaming that means whiny strawberry floating manchildren are being empowered to continue this cycle of abuse. strawberry float that guy and strawberry float what he represents.

Blizzard should at no time put devs on the stage. They are devs and not sales people. I would go as far as to say Blizzard are a total gooseberry fool show of a company that deliberatly put people in the firing line as there was no chance on earth they didn't know what shitstorm was coming with this anouncement. To call out only the audience for what happened is unfair when the company knew what it was doing. There were no personal insults or threats that I have heard from anyone (I havent heard much so I could be wrong) towards a dev. There were quite negative opinions about the company as a whole and the game but nothing like gamergate.

What the guy in red represents is a consumer that has every right to voice an opinion of a game series that he has probably sunk weeks of his time over years of play as well as his money in to. He is the consumer that Blizzard want.

I would also like to see an overall reduction of devs on stage period. By all means allow interviews about the game developement and the thinking behind it all but they shouldn't be on stage at E3 or anywhere else stumping for sales.

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Tafdolphin wrote:

Xeno wrote:Nope.

The guys on stage are paid to be there, they are the company reps. If they were not prepaired for the fallout then they shouldn't be there. Blizzard should have thought about anouncing it elsewhere, it's not like there haven't been a number of well known reactions to mobile game development.

The guy paid to be at the event, queued up like all the others and said what he felt. I personally wouldn't have done this but it doesn't make him a banana split.

Alternative perspective;

You're a dev at Blizzard. You've spent your entire life engaged in a passion that has, through hard work and dedication to your craft, led to to employment at one of the most revered and respected workplaces in your arena. Upper management decided it was time the company partake of some of that sweet, sweet Asian market mobile cash and task you and your team with taking a beloved franchise and porting it to mobile. Or rather, helping an contractor port it so you can concentrate on the big sequel to that franchise that you've poured your heart into.

Eventually it comes time to announce the game. Upper management chooses you to go out in front of thousands of fans and present something you know probably isn't what they're there for. You're not an actor or a showman, you're a developer but you take the torch and run with it because hey, the bosses are telling you to. Also, you're quite proud of how good the game is looking.

So you stride out onto that stage and present the game. It's met with a muted reaction but you kind of expected that. You've got the speech marketing wrote for you so you go through it, just like the hundreds of times you went through it the evening before in preparation. Your heart is still thundering in your chest as your presentation finishes and they open up the floor to the crowd.

Your brain stutters slightly as you try and process the question that's just been asked. Or rather, the statement that's just been made. You laugh nervously. Did this guy just say what you thought he...yep. Your copresenter too is laughing nervously. You somehow manage to expel an answer, another standard marketing line but at least you said something. You're sweating now, wishing to any gods out there that this was over and that you could go back to your desk and to work. But it's not over.

You check your emails, Twitter, the sites. Your team's work is overshadowed by the image of the man who asked the question, a fierce debate is raging on Twitter and your inbox is full, full, of journalists asking for comment. There's another from management instructing you not to talk to ANYONE until marketed has debriefed you. You just want to go back to work.

Eventually you are sent another statement from marketing and PR. You send it out. You repeat it in person, over and over as the cavalcade of journalists keeps on coming. The debate online continue and eventually, eventually, you make your way to your hotel room and collapse into something that might, on any other day, be called sleep.

Tl;dr strawberry float the entitlement of these strawberry floating manbabies and their strawberry floating privilege. This gooseberry fool is toxic, it led to GamerGate, it is the reason devs are harassed and then fired on Twitter and it's led to a malfeasant inversion of the power dynamic in gaming that means whiny strawberry floating manchildren are being empowered to continue this cycle of abuse. strawberry float that guy and strawberry float what he represents.

Don't be daft Taf, this is not the toxic gooseberry fool that led to GamerGate. Less of the hanky-waving hysterics, bloody hell.

The guys on stage are the company reps, and if this really took them by surprise then perhaps they should reconsider their jobs. They're not stupid, and they're not innocent lambs just trying to do their best in the front of ANGRY MALE PATRIARCHY. They know that upper management are going after a mobile, Asian market because that's where the sweet moolah is, and they, having designed the game, will know that this is a cash cow. They also will have seen what happened when Dungeon Keeper tried the same trick.

They also know that this is Blizzcon, and that the hardcore dedicated fanbase are the absolute last people who are going to be receptive to this.

Whether you think the project has legs or not is beside the point - that this reaction would be elicited should have in no way come as a surprise and they should have had a better comeback than 'BUT DON'T YOU HAVE PHONES THO?' like that MS Rent-a-Twat in the run up to the XBOne launch who said that there was already a console for people without the internet - the 360.

If they genuinely thought that the hardcore PC Master Race attendees of Blizzcon were going to start cheering and applauding at seeing Diablo move to mobile then they're either naive or inept, and weathering the backlash that this was inevitably going to cause will hopefully help them be neither in future.

Hey, it's an alternative perspective. One could even say it's something I made up on the fly to attempt to illustrate a point and that it probably does not bear much in common with reality.

But I'm not going to change my thoughts on that dude: he's distillation of all the toxic trends that have been swirling about the gaming community since gamergate and yes, the privileges bestowed on simply being a mediocre white man. Aka, a banana split.

Today I learned that asking 'Wait, you're serious?' about a shitty presentation is equal to the harassment and abuse of Gamergate.

Awful low threshold.

Alvin Flummux wrote:
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Skarjo wrote:Today I learned that asking 'Wait, you're serious?' about a shitty presentation is equal to the harassment and abuse of Gamergate.

Awful low threshold.

That's not what I said at all. Or at least, it wasn't what I meant to say. I might have said it by accident, I get...annoyed by this sort of thing. You might have been able to tell.

I'm saying that the gaming community has currently been imbued with a disproportionate amount of power. The ArenaNet firings. The Riot firings. The harassment of Telltale devs after the company went bust. And on the development side you have senior figures forcing their developers to work until they're having strokes at thirty then using 100 hour weeks as marketing buzz and describing games as 'magical, like they're made by elves' in the same interview. The culture is toxic and weighted towards the consumer in a way that creates a petri dish environment for the continuation of abuse and harassment. This, I and many others believe, is an overhang from GamerGate when rather than being tackled head on, outlets and development houses were caught off guard by the sheer amount of harassment levelled at figures in the industry.

I'm saying this guy is a product of that environment. I'm saying his arrogance in presenting himself in front of thousands of people, millions after the story went online, to directly insult developers about their game simply because it wasn't exactly the product he wanted, was a valid option for him due to the current lay of the land.

I've said that announcing it at BlizzCon in such a way was probably a mistake, but not one that should have produced that sort of outwardly aggressive and entitled reaction.

Tafdolphin wrote:Hey, it's an alternative perspective. One could even say it's something I made up on the fly to attempt to illustrate a point and that it probably does not bear much in common with reality.

But I'm not going to change my thoughts on that dude: he's distillation of all the toxic trends that have been swirling about the gaming community since gamergate and yes, the privileges bestowed on simply being a mediocre white man. Aka, a banana split.

Bald Red Shirt dude didn't swear, didn't yell, didn't attack the developers personally, simply expressed his astonishment that this, THIS, was the massive big reveal that was so hyped.

Taf: He is the worst human who ever lived, why the poor poor developers! They must just be traumatized by the whole ordeal!

Rightey wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:Hey, it's an alternative perspective. One could even say it's something I made up on the fly to attempt to illustrate a point and that it probably does not bear much in common with reality.

But I'm not going to change my thoughts on that dude: he's distillation of all the toxic trends that have been swirling about the gaming community since gamergate and yes, the privileges bestowed on simply being a mediocre white man. Aka, a banana split.

Bald Red Shirt dude didn't swear, didn't yell, didn't attack the developers personally, simply expressed his astonishment that this, THIS, was the massive big reveal that was so hyped.

Taf: He is the worst human who ever lived, why the poor poor developers! They must just be traumatized by the whole ordeal!

Up there /\ Have a read of my response to Skarjo. I didn't want to/mean to say any of that.

EDIT: Of course it's a new page. Quoting myself for ease of use:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Skarjo wrote:Today I learned that asking 'Wait, you're serious?' about a shitty presentation is equal to the harassment and abuse of Gamergate.

Awful low threshold.

That's not what I said at all. Or at least, it wasn't what I meant to say. I might have said it by accident, I get...annoyed by this sort of thing. You might have been able to tell.

I'm saying that the gaming community has currently been imbued with a disproportionate amount of power. The ArenaNet firings. The Riot firings. The harassment of Telltale devs after the company went bust. And on the development side you have senior figures forcing their developers to work until they're having strokes at thirty then using 100 hour weeks as marketing buzz and describing games as 'magical, like they're made by elves' in the same interview. The culture is toxic and weighted towards the consumer in a way that creates a petri dish environment for the continuation of abuse and harassment. This, I and many others believe, is an overhang from GamerGate when rather than being tackled head on, outlets and development houses were caught off guard by the sheer amount of harassment levelled at figures in the industry.

I'm saying this guy is a product of that environment. I'm saying his arrogance in presenting himself in front of thousands of people, millions after the story went online, to directly insult developers about their game simply because it wasn't exactly the product he wanted, was a valid option for him due to the current lay of the land.

I've said that announcing it at BlizzCon in such a way was probably a mistake, but not one that should have produced that sort of outwardly aggressive and entitled reaction.

Also, re the hype of the reveal, Blizzard had already downplayed the fact that it wasn't going to be D4 (as mentioned here https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/1 ... -projects/ ) Anyone expecting it to be D4 weren't reading the news. But again, I will stress I do think announcing it in the manner they did was an error, but not one worthy of the vitriolic response it got.