Blizzard reject accusations of Activision interference in game design
By Tim Colwill on September 13, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Much like it’s popular to blame EA for things you don’t like about BioWare, it’s long been popular to shift the blame to Activision when Blizzard make an unpopular move. Blizzard have had enough of that though, and spoke out overnight on a Reddit AMA thread about World of Warcraft.
Director Tom Chilton was asked: “”As the people designing the game, do you feel there has been a change in how things are done since the merger [between Blizzard and Activision], either within game development or the company in general?”
He responded unequivocally. “I’ll come out and say it. Activision gets an unfair reputation among our players for this, as does Bobby Kotick. We do demos for the Activision executive team about twice per year (sometimes only once). They ask intelligent questions about why we’re doing what we’re doing, but at no point have any mandates (or even “suggestions”) about the game’s design been issued.”
Slammin’.
Source: PCGamesN
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it feels like the Activision argument comes out when gamers “accuse” Blizzard of trying to make money.
this always makes me laugh.
So don’t blame Activision for what Blizzard has done, blame Blizzard…
OK then?
diamondd,
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/25212116.jpg
Great so it’s Blizzard going straight down the toilet then. Sigh.
Yeah, just like it’s EA’s fault for DICE’s fuck ups with battlefield.
I don’t have an issue with blaming someone, but blame the right someone.
To me that question seemed carefully answered and avoided in a way. From someone who has been playing WoW since vanilla beta, SC2 and D3 I have definitely noticed a decline in their quality.
I’ve said before somewhere on GoN that after blizz merged with activision they dropped their whole “it will be done when it’s done” attitude and started rushing their releases.
If it were true that activision has “basically” nothing to do with blizzard apart from the “executive demos” then really what was the point of the merger in the first place?
somexspec,
You do realise blizzard had originally planned to release diablo III in 2011 right? Then they decided to do some major changes to the game.
somexspec,
I have to strongly disagree with you about SC2, as I’m sure the general SC2 community past and present. D3 I do agree with.
I want to clear something up about the merger, because there are a TON of misconceptions on every site I visit. Vivendi owns both Activision and Blizzard. Vivendi acquired Activision and merged it with Vivendi Games. Blizzard remained a separate entity with completely independent management.
ActivisionBlizzard is the holding company. Vivendi is the parent company. Blizzard presents demos to Activision because Bobby Kotick needs to know what the hell is going on for business reasons. He does not have the authority to tell Blizzard management what to do – that’s a fact. Vivendi can tell Blizzard what to do. Activision has as much control over Blizzard as Blizzard has control over Activision — Read: none.
There’s no sudden decline in Blizzard games, nor are they becoming rushed (D3 took forever and a year, and Heart of the Swarm is following the same timeline). SC2 was/is the best RTS there is. WoW, despite being 8 years old, is still a smash hit. D3, regardless of its commercial success (due to hype IMO) is the only Blizzard game that I would call subpar, and I place the blame squarely on the development team. They’ve improved it drastically with 1.04, but it still has a ways to go.
SC2 is a remake of SC. It failed to advance the genre in anyway and is quite literally a 3D skin for a 2D game that for some reason got popular when there were FAR better RTS games about (Total Annihilation anyone…). The fact it brought nothing new to the table to me makes the game an utter failure and a cash in on everyone who eagerly awaited something new.
D3 was just awful unfortunately. I played through to the end once just to see if it had learn’t it’s lessons. It’s not on my HD any more as it hadn’t learn’t…
WoW is still popular for some unknown reason. There are many reasons some other MMO’s should be as successful or moreso than WoW but they aren’t because of familiarity rather than loyalty. People like familiarity and WoW provides that for them. Kudos to Blizzard for supporting it for so long. Slap Blizzard in the face for caving to the demands of the vocal maggots.
In the end Activision are hard at work screwing everyone over with their IP’s, while Blizzard is just doing the same with their own. Apparently the management don’t have drinks and cats on their laps while discussing how to do it together :D
money
I think you have some serious trust issues. As it is you’re just flat out calling Tom Chilton a liar.
chrisn,
I couldn’t disagree with you more if I was paid.