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Games Entertainment

Why Bill Roper Left Blizzard 38

Posted by Zonk from the too-many-murlocs dept.
Last week Gamasutra put up an interview with Bill Roper all about Flagship Studios' projects and history. Along with some details on their Massive game Mythos and a reiteration of the Hellgate pricing scheme, Roper talks about the reasons he left Blizzard in the first place: "Our original intention back in 2003 was not to leave Blizzard. We wanted some level of participation and direct communication with Vivendi's home office in order to offer our insight, knowledge and desires as to their plans at the time in terms of a possible sale or IPO of the games unit. The level of uncertainty back then made it extremely difficult to plan for our futures, as well as the futures of our team members. And with no long-term compensation or employment contracts in place, we wanted to be able to interact directly with the people making the key decisions that could drastically affect our lives and workplace. In the end, Vivendi chose not to make that opportunity available and accepted our resignations over the matter. The next day, David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and I started Flagship Studios."
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Why Bill Roper Left Blizzard More

Why Bill Roper Left Blizzard

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  • Boils Down To.. . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:10PM (#19735859) Homepage
    ...wanted more money, did not get it.

    Really the problem was they weren't bargaining from a position of strength... Diablo 3 wasn't screaming right a long or anything.

    • Not everything boils down to money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @06:34PM (#19736849) Journal
      Hmm... now I didn't RTFA, but the summary doesn't mention anything even remotely equivalent to "we wanted more money". So do you have any other information you base that on, or is it just pulled out of the ass? Especially given that I suspect they were better paid at Blizzard than at some startup company noone heard about yet, that assumption seems somewhat fragile.

      The only thing which would come even close is the talk of long term contracts and compensations, but he _does_ spell out that they wanted to know how to plan their future, so it doesn't necessarily come out as greed. It doesn't say they went and demanded contracts for life, it says they went and asked for a communication channel. There's a big difference.

      It may come as a surprise, but some people do actually like to know what happens next. You know, game is finished now, what happens next? Do we stick around and make an expansion pack? Extra content? A new game? Should we start sending out resumes now? Uncertainty about that can bring morale downwards quite a bit.

      As for position of strength, I beg to differ. World Of Warcraft turned out to be a bigger money printing machine than anyone expected, Vivendi included. People thought the old Everquest was a money printing license, and is what got half the developpers and publisher in a frenzy to try to make yet another MMO. And most attempts to imitate it failed pretty badly. Well, WoW overtook it by a whole freakin' order of magnitude. It has some 95% of the MMO market IIRC.

      Basically, as dev team achievements go, these guys pulled an _amazing_ achievement. I don't know what happened there, but that team had some incredible talent and worked surprisingly well. Design talent, programming talent (considering almost every MMO before was traditionally a _horribly_ buggy mess, and would spend eternity creating two new bugs for each one fixed... and some got into a dead end and got cancelled), etc.

      It takes a pretty brain-damaged PHB to just squander such an asset over something as petty and trivial as being asked to have an official communication channel. Whatever happened to transparency and communication? Because the way I read it, that's really all they were asking for.

      I know it's all the rage to treat employees as dime-a-dozen expendable, replaceable peons, but sometimes it comes out as particularly retarded. We're not talking pizza-delivery kind of expendable, but a team which was one of the legends in their field, and head over shoulders over most of the rest. They're not _that_ easily replaced. Not considering them even important enough to be informed what next, before they read the press release, seems kinda extreme, as low opinions go.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by moore.dustin ( 942289 )

        Hmm... now I didn't RTFA, but the summary doesn't mention anything even remotely equivalent to "we wanted more money". So do you have any other information you base that on, or is it just pulled out of the ass? Especially given that I suspect they were better paid at Blizzard than at some startup company noone heard about yet, that assumption seems somewhat fragile.

        Give me a break, what else is it about? They wanted open communication to what know about their future, which means money. Considering the people we are talking about, it was all about money. You think Roper feared for his job security? Please. Also, they were better paid at Blizzard? That was the problem for them, they were being paid. They wanted a part of the action and they deserved it for sure. Vivindi was in a pinch something fierce in 2003 and Blizzard was its most valuable piece that could be offlo

        • "Blizzard North was around for 4 years after the release of D2 ... in 2003." The math is off in that statement - Diablo II was released in june 2000, the expansion was released a year later in 2001.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

          Give me a break, what else is it about? They wanted open communication to what know about their future, which means money.

          You're confusing money with power which are not the same, but do share similarities.

          From the summary (I didn't RTFA), it sounds like he was more concerned about his influence than his paycheck. Which, as the GP pointed out, makes sense given the left a good paying job to start his own company. It sounds like he's also unhappy that the fact that, after being bought out, he had very l

      • > it has some 95% of the MMO market IIRC.

        Uhm, no.

        Lineage has 2 million people, so even if you exclude everyone else, 8 million / 10 million is only 80%.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by toad3k ( 882007 )
      That isn't fair. Blizzard was being sold off as a package with a lot of other worthless properties. Everyone was interested in blizzard but not in any of those other properties, so it went on for quite awhile. At any moment all of the employees could have woken up and found themselves jobless or outsourced or their current projects scrapped or any number of things. Management wouldn't talk to them about it. They wouldn't give any assurances. So some of them left.

  • A bit old... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:13PM (#19735897) Journal
    That's news that surfaced pretty much at the moment they left, back in 2003. It wasn't exactly shrouded in secrecy, and Roper briefly mentioned their dissatisfaction and lack of direct communication channels with Vivendi it in interviews, sometimes citing that they only received major news as it was announced by Vivendi for public knowledge. I think that's understandably a tough situation to be in as a game developer.

    They left mostly to form new game companies:
    - Flagship Studios
    - Castaway Entertainment
    - Hyboreal Games, that later became U.I. Pacific Games Inc.

    Note that ArenaNet (behind Guild Wars) was not among those despite also with significant staff from Blizzard Entertainment, because those formed the company before the "exodus" and were not primarly from Blizzard North either, but e.g. their Warcraft III 3D engine developer, Battle.net lead designer, and the World of Warcraft lead programmer. (this must have been turbulent times at Blizzard, and interestingly, we have not had a new product from them since) Of the companies above, it seems like only Flagship Studios has anything more than something suspiciously vapor-ish going on. :-/

    • Re:A bit old... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:27PM (#19736069) Homepage
      Well Flagship got the big dogs and thus, money to produce their games. The other companies are following a much harder route to get their game out. I would give the another year or so till it looks like vaporware.

      Also, Blizzard has done fine since the people left. WoW changes a ton in alpha/beta and much of its success can be attributed to those changes. Same with War3, the expansion was nothing spectacular, but the improvements to Battle.net were. Plus, Ghost was in production, but axed because of the timing of the product. Starcraft 2 looks more than promising as well.
      • I don't think it looks like vaporware...I think it looks like Diablo.

        And while that was cool and all, I don't know if I really want to play it again. There has got to be more to a game than "I got super ultra mega rare item X." I've played so many games that were like that, it's just paled.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jartan ( 219704 )
        I would say Arena.net got the true "big dogs". It's not something that people write news about but it's pretty well an accepted thing in the industry that the success of Blizzard North games was due to massive rebalancing and idea storming and general fixes by Blizz Central.

        Diablo 1 was originally turn based till someone from Bliz Central looked at it and basically forced Blizz North to try making the game real time. Also the reason Diablo 2 was purportedly late wasn't that Blizzard was doing their usual

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by cafard ( 666342 )
          What comes after that though from both Blizzard and Arena.net will be very telling.

          Warcraft 4, WoW 2, Starcraft 3, Diablo 3...
  • Better than sticking around and being associated with abysmal titles like World of Warcraft.

    • Re:Good Choice... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) * <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:40PM (#19736239) Journal
      Yea, boy I'd hate to have that on my resume. Who would ever hire anyone who had "I was on the WoW development team" on their resume? Might as well say, "Head of iPhone graphical interface development team" or "Lead designer for Google search algorithms."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Zeussy ( 868062 )
        I dont know. WoW is dispised in my games industry circle, it has had a very detrimental effect on the industry. This one game has significantly dropped the sales of the games industry as a whole. The fact that it isn't really that good of a game, it was made of the masses to be sold to the masses. Soap opera's are aweful shows, but it doesnt stop something like East Enders being watched by 13million people each night.

        Just because a game has sold lots of copies doesn't mean it is a great game. The other que

        • Re:Good Choice... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @08:17PM (#19737923) Homepage
          The masses don't read mmorpg.com, they're reading worldofwarcraft.com.

          In fact, the chart at mmorpg.com exists soely for the purpose of ballot box stuffing by various smaller game communities. It means even less then your typical Internet poll (which means nothing).

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Onan ( 25162 )

          WoW would be something you put one your resume, but I don't think it would be seen in the same light as Bioshock or Half-life2. World of Warcraft isn't even in the top 10 of MMORPG.com's game rating list: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/sort/rating/gam e [mmorpg.com]. It's a bit odd, that it is played by the masses but the masses except there are many better games.

          As far as I know, every game you mention or refer to is Windows-only. Which is, I suspect, a big part of why they're all less successful than WoW.

          Th

          • No. You have some problems with your argument there. If every machine sold since January 2004, a year before World of Warcraft shipped, were included in that tally, the total number of computers shipped doesn't even come close to 20 million. http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html [systemshootouts.org] This figure doesn't even break down non-pro mac books, mini's and older iMacs and Pro line hardware that can't cut it,. Machines still sold by Apple that represent large portions of Apples product line but do not run WoW "

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Onan ( 25162 )
              Three things:

              1) You are using a much stricter definition of running the game well than I think is appropriate from a market-analysis standpoint. People with a few-years-old machine are likely not the type to define their self-worth by their framerates, so pretty much anything that isn't actively swapping or crashing will allow them to enjoy the game.

              2) That 2.5% share that you cite presumably includes office machines, which are pretty much outside the scope of a discussion of the market for games. If we ass
        • The funny thing is every game in development wants to be the next WOW. They say the don't but they lie. Its all about money at the end of the day. I suspect the reason people hate wow is for the same reason I'll never buy an ipod. Its a good product but I refuse to conform to all the bubblegum teeny bop idiot masses and get one. The example is totally not relevant I'm just trying to relate.

  • Pricing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:36PM (#19736197)
    I haven't been following the development of Hellgate all that closely, aside from playing the Mythos alpha a bit, but I can't help but think that the "elite" pricing is a terrible idea [penny-arcade.com]. $10/month for updates and a few small bonuses is crazy. The pricing model that Guild Wars uses would have made a lot more sense, and given them an excuse to announce a new expansion every few months, rather than a vague promise to add new content. Not to mention that people who join up a year after release will presumably get all the same content as those who have been paying for a year ($120). When you give people who have paid for the game second-class status, it's bound to cause resentment.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ricree ( 969643 )
      I suppose it really depends on how good the out of box content is. If it is good enough out of the box, that will take a lot of the problem away. People will still bitch about it, but as long as it is a good and complete game from the start it shouldn't be too big a problem.
    • It depends on what the 'premium' content is. If it's like Blizzard's codes that they give out at BlizzCon and so forth, for vanity pets and other status symbols that don't affect gameplay, then it won't be a problem. Some people will cough up for the ego boost of having a cute pet or a different coloured shirt or whatever, and the rest won't mind too much. If, on the other hand, it's like your Penny Arcade link (you can't equip items above a certain level without playing, for instance) then it will suck mig

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by anduz ( 1027854 )
      I agree.
      I have to admit that I was rather interested in Hellgate: London until they came up with that nonsense, and the more marketing blurb they spin on it to make it sound decent the less interested I become. This is obvioussly guessing, but I think there is a real risk that you would end up paying more for less through a subscription system like this compared to regular expansions - at the same time having less knowledge about excatly what it is you're paying for because things are added gradually.

      I'm

  • Stop poking me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by kerohazel ( 913211 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @05:51PM (#19736363) Homepage
    I think it's fairly obvious he left because his bosses kept touching him.
    (Bill Roper did all the voices, or almost all of them at least, of the early Warcraft titles.)

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