It was like going to a posh resterant and paying up front for the best they have, struggling through a half cooked and unappealing appetiser and then finding out that was actually the main dish, disatisfaction guaranteed.
For a second I was thinking it was a mistake to announce it at Blizzcon, but now I don’t think it was. They have every right to and they have every right to make any games they feel like making. You don’t have to support the games they make, but the reactions are ridiculous.
And we have every right to express what we think of them and their games. We used nothing but our words now didn't we? Is that ridiculous - to voice one's opinion? Well, why are you voicing yours then? Be the change you want in the world.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
The downvotes on the reveal trailer are currently at 107k.. the upvotes are 4.1k.
They have completely messed up. Announcing a crappy mobile game when all the fans have been starved of a proper Diablo for years is ridiculous.
While I agree - lets consider this from Blizzards perspective.
In their current portfolio - mobile titles are lacking - so from a business perspective of growing users in all markets - a mobile Diablo game makes complete sense.
I think its easy to forget that billion dollar companies focus on growing their earnings and wealth first and foremost even if it means upsetting some portion of their former fanbase.
I mean the pissed off fanbase is a really minor thing - as as soon as Blizzard announces Diablo4 - all will be instantly forgotten.
So it's a win-win for Blizzard, win with a mobile game - have a minor upset of the players and then get them all back with a proper D4 game.
if diab-lol 4 is being developed ( I seriously doubt it at this point ) how hard would it be to mention that this mobile game is just to "hold over fans till D4" much like how bethesda did with their first model offering announcement fallout shelter.
there is a right way and a wrong way to expand a franchise to new platforms, what happened at Blizzcon definitely wasn't the right way. . .
it seems 2018 is the year of big game companies pissing off their fans, like they all had a secret meeting and bet who could generate the most rage. . .mind bogglingly stoopid.
Diablo 4 or whatever it ends up being is in the works.
Blizzard simply is not ready to even drop a blurb about it, as they frankly dont need to. It gains them nothing to do so now as once ready they will market the hell out of it and make a killing.
Video game market is changing rapidly and Blizzard simply has no need to risk dropping any hints about projects in the works that still have some slim chance getting cancelled internally.
So for them the proven formula is - keep it under wraps until its ready for showtime then - ensure mega sales with a strong arm marketing campaign
If they said something now - that initial wave of hype is hard to maintain for year+ and Blizzard doesnt need to use "small studio, we don't have money to advertise" tactics where you know about the product 4 years prior to launc and there are constant developer updates during development. By the time the game is ready to launch you are already sick and tired of it.
When you have a huge marketing budget like Blizzard does, you dont need to resort to early reveal and an onslaught of dev updates for years before release.
dont give me that crap. . . diablo 3 was announced almost 5 years before its release and it STILL made a buttload of cash, and during those 5 years there was no major announcement outside of blizzcons.
I'm not saying Blizzard needs to show anything, they just need to mention that this mobile abomination is not the only thing fans have to look forward to.
all of what I've seen is blizzard bowing out of the ARPG genre because they no longer have the talent to compete.
P.S. it seems that with Trion being no more you've transferred your white knight flag to blizzard.
I want everybody to understand that in this metric/analytics worshiping society we live in, Blizzard (one of the largest and well known game developers/distributors in the business) has a;
1:32 positive to negative ratio on a game reveal.
That means for every person who liked the idea of Diablo Immortal, 32 people said "hell no". That's crazy. There's probably a video of some sicko kicking a puppy that doesn't have negative sentiment like that.
There's no spinning this as good. The mobile revenue won't be worth the long term damage.
That's like cheating on a great spouse, with a great job, who always supported you for a quick nut from a hooker, getting CAUGHT... THEN trying to rationalize the fallout as worth it.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Gaming journalists on Twitter seem to be reacting to fan backlash... Disagreeably.
I find that strange. They took special issue with the red shirt guy asking the April fool's question. I wonder exactly what they expected from Blizzard's fans when the developer has always been known as a PC developer and built a fanbase around such?
Gaming journalists on Twitter seem to be reacting to fan backlash... Disagreeably.
I find that strange. They took special issue with the red shirt guy asking the April fool's question. I wonder exactly what they expected from Blizzard's fans when the developer has always been known as a PC developer and built a fanbase around such?
Gaming journos can be just as out of touch as anyone else. It's cliche for them to berate grass roots negativity. When they do so they invariably come across as self-important blowhards and reveal their inner disdain for their audience. Sound familiar?
Payola doesn't even have to come into it (although their reaction does definitely provide fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.) They just know for a fact that they are much more knowledgeable critical thinkers than their regular folk gamer audience - something they try to hide since they want to be seen as "one of us." When push comes to shove though they know who invites them to special events and sends them the free review copies to play with.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm about as disappointed as can be imagined, both in the Diablo Immortal announcement and in BlizzCon overall. I'm sure there's much more that we don't know, but this whole thing could have been handled better.
Just look at what Bethesda did with revealing games that are years down the road. Just a flyby, "Hey look what we're working on" without any details, but fans are satisfied.
Blizz could learn something from that and understand that this isn't the early 2000s any more. They simply don't have that luxury.
Blizzard is doing what a lot of companies tend to do. They are so anxious to bring in new customers to increase revenue, that they start taking their current customer base for granted. Little by little they start treating their customers more like employees and whittle away their rights while dumbing down their games. This explains a lot of they may be prepping some of their other games for future mobile distribution.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You know this sprang out because this is how they justified what they were doing internally. Everybody's got a phone, right? Everybody can play! This is probably what Wyatt was told when it was dropped in his lap. Mobile? You're kidding, right? Nope. Everybody's got a phone.
I'm about as disappointed as can be imagined, both in the Diablo Immortal announcement and in BlizzCon overall. I'm sure there's much more that we don't know, but this whole thing could have been handled better.
Just look at what Bethesda did with revealing games that are years down the road. Just a flyby, "Hey look what we're working on" without any details, but fans are satisfied.
Blizz could learn something from that and understand that this isn't the early 2000s any more. They simply don't have that luxury.
That's actually a good comparison. One of the Bethesda reveals at Quakecon this year, Elder Scrolls Blades, was actually something very similar to the Diablo Immortal reveal but they did two things that Blizz didn't do:
1. It's not mobile exclusive but multi-platform instead. Despite being definitely mobile in spirit, it is playable on all consoles and PC with crossplay. Not only is that more inclusive of their current fan base it makes much more business sense than mobile only. 2. It was not their main announcement, FO76 was, and as you say Suzie, they also gave sneak peeks of the other bigger PC/console games they're working on.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm about as disappointed as can be imagined, both in the Diablo Immortal announcement and in BlizzCon overall. I'm sure there's much more that we don't know, but this whole thing could have been handled better.
Just look at what Bethesda did with revealing games that are years down the road. Just a flyby, "Hey look what we're working on" without any details, but fans are satisfied.
Blizz could learn something from that and understand that this isn't the early 2000s any more. They simply don't have that luxury.
You put this much more elegantly than me. From my point of view they are pissing on their customers and telling them it's raining fun. A mobile Diablo version that was outsourced to a third party... hahaha WTF.
Totally not an out of season April fools joke...
This makes Fallout 76 look like an actual attempt at a game. LOL
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
The user base that took Blizzard to the mega corp it is are not people who would get hype about a mobile re-skin of an older version. There are no "mobile gamers" there is only a mobile user base. If Blizzard desired to fleece the mobile user base,they could have done it without the dramatics that target their die-hards.
They thought the base wanted this. They invested in the reveal. They were confident. They were wrong.
People being consumer drones has nothing to do with it. Sure it will likely do well on sales day because compulsive mobile purchase people and FOMO (fear of missing out), but they have a 1:32 ratio of positive to negative sentiment. Blizzard got their ass kicked on this in plain view, and the fans don't forget.
So here's to hoping the uptick in revenue was worth the marketing diarrhea they now have in the bed
Do remember EA/Bioware/Mass Effect debacles...
This post perfectly illustrates the disconnect this board has with reality.
There are mobile gamers, just because you dont know any doesnt mean they dont exist.
If they didnt exist then Black Desert Mobile wouldnt be making 3x more money than the PC version.
Or NCsoft's mobile games making almost 2x more than all of their PC MMOs combined.
In Activision Blizzard's reports you can see that King(Candy Crush) makes more than Blizzard at a fraction of the production costs.
Also, you call ME Andromeda a debacle and it did perform under expectations but it did sell millions of copies and was a financial success.
Developers persue the mobile market because thats where the money is.
Of course mobile gamers exists. The market is huge. Nobody is saying their isn't a market for mobile gaming.
Everybody's saying, where's our next PC game for Diablo? Because PC gamers and mobile gamers are not necessarily the same. How hard is this understand?
Diablo "Immoral" at last my dream came true, ACTIBLIZZARD delivers me a fully fledged shitting experience. Boy, oh boy, i hope my hairy sack is not gonna be swimming in that shitty water while i take that long majestic fully fledged experience.
I'm so hyped, i'm not even buying FUCKING VANILLA SUBSCRIPTION because of this.
The user base that took Blizzard to the mega corp it is are not people who would get hype about a mobile re-skin of an older version. There are no "mobile gamers" there is only a mobile user base. If Blizzard desired to fleece the mobile user base,they could have done it without the dramatics that target their die-hards.
They thought the base wanted this. They invested in the reveal. They were confident. They were wrong.
People being consumer drones has nothing to do with it. Sure it will likely do well on sales day because compulsive mobile purchase people and FOMO (fear of missing out), but they have a 1:32 ratio of positive to negative sentiment. Blizzard got their ass kicked on this in plain view, and the fans don't forget.
So here's to hoping the uptick in revenue was worth the marketing diarrhea they now have in the bed
Do remember EA/Bioware/Mass Effect debacles...
This post perfectly illustrates the disconnect this board has with reality.
There are mobile gamers, just because you dont know any doesnt mean they dont exist.
If they didnt exist then Black Desert Mobile wouldnt be making 3x more money than the PC version.
Or NCsoft's mobile games making almost 2x more than all of their PC MMOs combined.
In Activision Blizzard's reports you can see that King(Candy Crush) makes more than Blizzard at a fraction of the production costs.
Also, you call ME Andromeda a debacle and it did perform under expectations but it did sell millions of copies and was a financial success.
Developers persue the mobile market because thats where the money is.
The disconnect is on your end. It’s like McDonalds making an announcement at the cattle convention for their new veggie burger. And telling attendees “You eat veggies right?”
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Today, Polygon spoke with Allen Adham, executive producer and Blizzard co-founder, and Dan Eggren, production director, about the response to Diablo: Immortal. The pair repeatedly stressed that Immortal is just one of the Diablo games currently in development at Blizzard and they hoped that fans will remain patient for future announcements.
“We have said that we have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple Diablo projects and that remains true, even after releasing [Diablo 3 for Nintendo] Switch and announcing Diablo: Immortal,” Adham said. “We still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. Diablo is a tentpole franchise for us. And it always will be. We love it. We hope our fans understand what we’re saying when we say that.”
“The world is evolving both geographically and demographically,” he said. “Younger folks now, many of them, mobile is their primary gaming device. And then around the world in many regions it’s their primary gaming device, and so it’s always been our aspiration [to bring games to them].
The user base that took Blizzard to the mega corp it is are not people who would get hype about a mobile re-skin of an older version. There are no "mobile gamers" there is only a mobile user base. If Blizzard desired to fleece the mobile user base,they could have done it without the dramatics that target their die-hards.
They thought the base wanted this. They invested in the reveal. They were confident. They were wrong.
People being consumer drones has nothing to do with it. Sure it will likely do well on sales day because compulsive mobile purchase people and FOMO (fear of missing out), but they have a 1:32 ratio of positive to negative sentiment. Blizzard got their ass kicked on this in plain view, and the fans don't forget.
So here's to hoping the uptick in revenue was worth the marketing diarrhea they now have in the bed
Do remember EA/Bioware/Mass Effect debacles...
This post perfectly illustrates the disconnect this board has with reality.
There are mobile gamers, just because you dont know any doesnt mean they dont exist.
If they didnt exist then Black Desert Mobile wouldnt be making 3x more money than the PC version.
Or NCsoft's mobile games making almost 2x more than all of their PC MMOs combined.
In Activision Blizzard's reports you can see that King(Candy Crush) makes more than Blizzard at a fraction of the production costs.
Also, you call ME Andromeda a debacle and it did perform under expectations but it did sell millions of copies and was a financial success.
Developers persue the mobile market because thats where the money is.
Disconnect from reality? Really? I think you missed the point. The point is perception of the market. Companies don't view the mobile user market as "mobile gamers". That's not to say that millions and millions of people don't play games on their smartphones but natural FACT that can be researched is, as it pertains to smartphones, gaming is a secondary or tertiary function. That's like calling everyone with a smartphone a "photographer" because there's a great camera functionality on them and people take pictures.
OF COURSE there's money to be made but when your primary base comes from mediums that are singularly based in gaming, do you sacrifice, leverage, or gamble that in favor of general mobile market without being 100% sure your base is there for support? NO you don't, or you end up with a 1:32 positive to negative ratio on your game reveals.
This is what happens. Is that revenue spike worth the EA/Bioware stigma?
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Yep, @SedrynTyros I think they should go after mobile, but not at the expense of making their other customers happy too. I'm sure there's lots more coming, but it would have been nice to have been teased. I would have been mollified.
I will never understand why people get so upset because their favorite game company made something that's not for them. Its the same thing to me as getting upset because Marvel is making toys aimed at 10 year olds instead of a film.
It not like Blizzard is never going to make another Diablo, and even if they didn't, you can still play the other Diablo games or products by blizzard. Hell there are thousands of games to play not named Diablo.
I find it hard to be upset because some new thing isn't made with me in mind. I'm not even trying to defend blizzard, I personally dont care for diablo that much but its just nuts seeing people get so upset over this new game because they feel like it wasn't for them. I really dislike gamer entitlement, and the sooner we move past it the better quality content we will get. Devs already have enough pressure as is. Some reactions are just not necessary.
Btw there is a huge market for Mobile gaming so Blizzard did nothing wrong b trying to throw a real contender in that market. Even Bethesda has a big Mobile game coming. Mobile is part of the future of gaming.
"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Comments
I'm not saying Blizzard needs to show anything, they just need to mention that this mobile abomination is not the only thing fans have to look forward to.
all of what I've seen is blizzard bowing out of the ARPG genre because they no longer have the talent to compete.
P.S. it seems that with Trion being no more you've transferred your white knight flag to blizzard.
1:32 positive to negative ratio on a game reveal.
That means for every person who liked the idea of Diablo Immortal, 32 people said "hell no". That's crazy. There's probably a video of some sicko kicking a puppy that doesn't have negative sentiment like that.
There's no spinning this as good. The mobile revenue won't be worth the long term damage.
That's like cheating on a great spouse, with a great job, who always supported you for a quick nut from a hooker, getting CAUGHT... THEN trying to rationalize the fallout as worth it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I find that strange. They took special issue with the red shirt guy asking the April fool's question. I wonder exactly what they expected from Blizzard's fans when the developer has always been known as a PC developer and built a fanbase around such?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Payola doesn't even have to come into it (although their reaction does definitely provide fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.) They just know for a fact that they are much more knowledgeable critical thinkers than their regular folk gamer audience - something they try to hide since they want to be seen as "one of us." When push comes to shove though they know who invites them to special events and sends them the free review copies to play with.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Just look at what Bethesda did with revealing games that are years down the road. Just a flyby, "Hey look what we're working on" without any details, but fans are satisfied.
Blizz could learn something from that and understand that this isn't the early 2000s any more. They simply don't have that luxury.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
1. It's not mobile exclusive but multi-platform instead. Despite being definitely mobile in spirit, it is playable on all consoles and PC with crossplay. Not only is that more inclusive of their current fan base it makes much more business sense than mobile only.
2. It was not their main announcement, FO76 was, and as you say Suzie, they also gave sneak peeks of the other bigger PC/console games they're working on.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com//Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I'm so hyped, i'm not even buying FUCKING VANILLA SUBSCRIPTION because of this.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Today, Polygon spoke with Allen Adham, executive producer and Blizzard co-founder, and Dan Eggren, production director, about the response to Diablo: Immortal. The pair repeatedly stressed that Immortal is just one of the Diablo games currently in development at Blizzard and they hoped that fans will remain patient for future announcements.
“We have said that we have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple Diablo projects and that remains true, even after releasing [Diablo 3 for Nintendo] Switch and announcing Diablo: Immortal,” Adham said. “We still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. Diablo is a tentpole franchise for us. And it always will be. We love it. We hope our fans understand what we’re saying when we say that.”
“The world is evolving both geographically and demographically,” he said. “Younger folks now, many of them, mobile is their primary gaming device. And then around the world in many regions it’s their primary gaming device, and so it’s always been our aspiration [to bring games to them].
https://www.polygon.com/blizzcon/2018/11/3/18059222/diablo-immortal-blizzard-response-blizzcon
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OF COURSE there's money to be made but when your primary base comes from mediums that are singularly based in gaming, do you sacrifice, leverage, or gamble that in favor of general mobile market without being 100% sure your base is there for support? NO you don't, or you end up with a 1:32 positive to negative ratio on your game reveals.
This is what happens. Is that revenue spike worth the EA/Bioware stigma?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
It not like Blizzard is never going to make another Diablo, and even if they didn't, you can still play the other Diablo games or products by blizzard. Hell there are thousands of games to play not named Diablo.
I find it hard to be upset because some new thing isn't made with me in mind. I'm not even trying to defend blizzard, I personally dont care for diablo that much but its just nuts seeing people get so upset over this new game because they feel like it wasn't for them. I really dislike gamer entitlement, and the sooner we move past it the better quality content we will get. Devs already have enough pressure as is. Some reactions are just not necessary.
Btw there is a huge market for Mobile gaming so Blizzard did nothing wrong b trying to throw a real contender in that market. Even Bethesda has a big Mobile game coming. Mobile is part of the future of gaming.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.