'Diablo IV' Developers Work Long Hours, Bracing For Impending Release (washingtonpost.com) 85
Activision Blizzard employees developing the upcoming dark fantasy action role-playing game "Diablo IV" say it will be hard to meet a June 6, 2023, release date without working significant overtime, in a process they say has been plagued by mismanagement. The release date, which has not been announced publicly, comes in the same month that Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition is set to close. The Washington Post reports: Fifteen current and former Blizzard employees spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company operations. They described a mounting sense of dissatisfaction and malaise among employees as they endured leadership changes at Activision Blizzard and on the "Diablo IV" team. The Diablo team has been losing talent for over a year, as employees look for more competitive wages and better work conditions elsewhere, according to employees. One group of about 20 developers working on one portion of the game saw about half of its members leave within a year, according to two former employees. Blizzard did not comment on attrition on the "Diablo IV" team. Last January, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick attributed the company's stock price drop to the game delay of Diablo in a Venture Beat interview, rather than an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company in July of 2021. "I think what affected the stock price more than [the sexual harassment investigation] is pushing out [the release dates of] 'Overwatch' and 'Diablo,'" he said, explaining that was one of the reasons he was selling the company to Microsoft. His comments frustrated some of the company's developers, who felt he was blaming them unfairly.
"Crunching" in the video game industry is a common practice, but it's become controversial in recent years, even while game developers continue working late into the evenings and weekends, sometimes secretly. Despite wishing to avoid crunch, some Blizzard employees in recent months find themselves facing down long hours again, unwilling to publish an unfinished product. They described consequences of crunch that included chronic back injuries, insomnia and anxiety, as well as less time to spend with family or to maintain romantic relationships. [...] "We were never going to hit our date without crunch," said a former Blizzard employee of a previously-intended "Diablo IV" internal release date. "And even with crunch, I don't even know if we would have hit our date." Activision Blizzard is offering "Diablo IV" developers a deal in which they will gain twice as many company stock shares when the game releases. Employees said they were offered more stock to stay on based on their position and seniority, from around $5,000 in value for entry-level workers to upward of $50,000 for more senior employees. [...]
"Diablo IV" had multiple internal, unannounced release dates. At one point, 2021 was floated as an internal goal. A more specific date emerged -- December 2022 -- after the title was publicly announced in 2019 at the company's annual gaming convention BlizzCon. Developers appealed for more time to avoid massive cuts to the game. After moving the date to April 2023, the team felt it still needed more time and was able to get the June date approved. The June date feels harder to move, several employees say. "We're at the point where they're not willing to delay the game anymore," said a current Blizzard Albany employee. "So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we're willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state."
"Crunching" in the video game industry is a common practice, but it's become controversial in recent years, even while game developers continue working late into the evenings and weekends, sometimes secretly. Despite wishing to avoid crunch, some Blizzard employees in recent months find themselves facing down long hours again, unwilling to publish an unfinished product. They described consequences of crunch that included chronic back injuries, insomnia and anxiety, as well as less time to spend with family or to maintain romantic relationships. [...] "We were never going to hit our date without crunch," said a former Blizzard employee of a previously-intended "Diablo IV" internal release date. "And even with crunch, I don't even know if we would have hit our date." Activision Blizzard is offering "Diablo IV" developers a deal in which they will gain twice as many company stock shares when the game releases. Employees said they were offered more stock to stay on based on their position and seniority, from around $5,000 in value for entry-level workers to upward of $50,000 for more senior employees. [...]
"Diablo IV" had multiple internal, unannounced release dates. At one point, 2021 was floated as an internal goal. A more specific date emerged -- December 2022 -- after the title was publicly announced in 2019 at the company's annual gaming convention BlizzCon. Developers appealed for more time to avoid massive cuts to the game. After moving the date to April 2023, the team felt it still needed more time and was able to get the June date approved. The June date feels harder to move, several employees say. "We're at the point where they're not willing to delay the game anymore," said a current Blizzard Albany employee. "So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we're willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state."
Musk should hire them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Musk should hire them! (Score:4, Informative)
> Aren't most game developers laid off as soon as the game is released?
QA is usually the first to be let go but it depends on the company. Sometimes senior engineers are let go, sometimes multiple junior engineers are let go.
Blizzard actually compensates via bonuses (Score:5, Informative)
Musk should hire them!. They know how to work long hours at high, hardcore intensity.
At Blizzard those long hours are compensated for by very significant bonuses based on profits.
Plus, they'll be let go soon anyway. Aren't most game developers laid off as soon as the game is released?
Not Blizzard. Development teams are permanent and move from one project to the next. It may or may not be Diablo V.
Blizzard is both the publisher and the development studio. You are confusing publishers that hire external studios on a per project basis.
The people who are let go at Blizzard are temporary QA who were hired with the full knowledge that their period of employment was for the release of a particular title. Basically, its like seasonal work. Except the seasons at Blizzard tend to be longer than originally planned as release dates slip. Some number of temps are offered permanent positions. Some temps who are known to be aspiring programmers or artists may be give small assignments to see how they do in those fields. There are many programmers, artists, producers, etc at Blizzard who started out as a QA temp.
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It's actually probably not all that relevant, if my time at Rockstar Games is any indicator. Studios that produce major, AAA titles are usually not controlled by their parent companies to a significant degree because the amount of revenue generated at release time for those titles is enough that the parent company isn't really inclined to mess with what their bean counters consider to be a "good thing".
Rockstar Games is owned by Take Two Interactive, but you wouldn't know it just by working there. All produ
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You keep saying "Blizzard" but it's "Activision/Blizzard". The "Activision" part is meaningful in regards to the discussion.
Not really. Blizzard's former owner, Vivendi, was wise enough to let Blizzard be Blizzard, don't screw around with what is working. So Blizzard had a special status at Vivendi, it reported directly to the Vivendi CEO rather than be put under the management of Vivendi Games. Blizzard remained largely autonomous.
The Activision "merger" actually had Vivendi taking the lead. Vivendi, being smart folks, recognized that the "Activision" brand was more valuable than the "Vivendi Games" brand and kept the Activi
Re:Musk should hire them! (Score:5, Informative)
Aren't most game developers laid off as soon as the game is released?
No, not at relatively stable companies.
Anyhow, this is actually nothing new for Blizzard. I know people from way back, on the original Starcraft games. They crunched like hell even back then. Most of the employees who left vowed that they'd no longer put up with that. When some of them came to positions of leadership, they made good on that promise.
So, the industry goes in several directions, it seems. There are companies that feel like they can get away with slave-driving tactics, and those that manage to encourage a healthy work-life balance (i.e. 40 hour weeks), where I've worked for most of my career. It's not an accident - I actively seek out those types of companies, and avoid the ones with sketchy reputations.
One problem, though, is that no one really hears about those "good work-life" companies, since it's not sensational news. You guys outside the industry only hear about the death marches, the exploitation, the sexual harassment. But it's not quite as ubiquitous as you probably imagine. I sure has hell wouldn't have lasted in this industry for several decades otherwise.
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This is more about games being a different kind of beast from most other software. There is no end to the features and polishes you'd want to add to make the game more immersive, and every bug breaks the immersion and your heart. Probably the only game that didn't have a crunch was Duke Nukem Forever.
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One problem, though, is that no one really hears about those "good work-life" companies, since it's not sensational news.
Legit question: Are any of these companies massive and stable? Do we not hear from them because it doesn't make headlines, or do we not hear about them because they aren't in the $1bn revenue club and thus don't get any media attention?
It seems like every large company these days works on some aspect of slavery, be it crunch time, or outsourcing to a country where effective slave labour is the norm.
Re:Musk should hire them! (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends. I've certainly worked at companies that are more obscure, but have also worked at companies most gamers have probably heard of - the kind that produce legit AAA titles. IMO, it's kind of pointless for a company to put out a press release saying "this year, we didn't ask our employees to work unreasonable hours." Literally no one in the press gives a shit about that, and the news would be cynically received, of course.
I was briefly corresponding with a journalist trying to break into videogame reporting. He was trying to collect contact info about my former employer, who was in the news recently, presumably trying to dig up some dirt. I mentioned to him that he might want to consider writing a piece with an angle I hadn't seen before - videogame employers that respect their employees, support them, encourage a healthy work-life balance... you know, sort of the counter-point to this story. I even offered to put him with several high-placed folks at a few companies. He didn't even have the courtesy to reply to me.
I've found the best companies to be small-ish sized, like anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred employees... small enough that the CEO interacts with employees personally, still knows people by name, and is really involved in day to day operations. And ideally, they're supported by a larger financial entity that can provide longer-term investment and financial support, without becoming too overbearing about day to day operations. So far I've had the good fortune to work at two such companies, and both treated their employees very well.
Also, interestingly enough, videogame development seems to be such a highly collaborative effort that outsourcing to third-world labor markets has never really seemed to catch on all that much. Primary / core work still tends to be done by local employees, although remote is much more common-now, obviously. Outsourcing/contracting is often done for more specialized tasks, like cinematic work, mo-cap sessions, audio, music, actor recording, and occasionally things like extra props and textures to help artists with the quantity of work to be done.
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Thanks for the insight. What you're saying reminds me of watching an interview with the developers of Monkey Island where they were working on Skywalker ranch semi autonomously able to try new things all the while still having decent financial backing from Lucas Arts.
It's good to hear not all AAA mega corps are pieces of crap. All we hear about these days is crunch at Blizzard, abuse at Activision, games literally designed by behavioural psychologists at the likes of Epic, and that's before we discuss wheth
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It is probably negative news cycle at fault here, and the news does like talking about bigger companies.
It's the same mechanism why you get murder reports in the news but never: "today nobody died".
Immovable deadlines are the norm in games industry (Score:4, Informative)
Video games are one of the remaining pieces of software where delivering a base version and Agile iterations later doesn't work. The product has to be pretty much complete from day one, bar bug fixes and expansions/DLCs later. This, unfortunately makes working overtime and crunch an unavoidable part of the industry. I've got friends who work for Rockstar and 2K Czech (Mafia game), and they openly say that their workweek has always been very close to the 9/9/6 schedule seen in Asia.
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> The product has to be pretty much complete from day one, bar bug fixes and expansions/DLCs later.
Sadly, that is no longer true with shitty GaaS (Games as a Service) model or even Early Access. F2P (Free-to-Play) and MMOs can be incomplete.
Re: Immovable deadlines are the norm in games indu (Score:2)
No Man's Sky?
It's been years since I was a gamer but I got Diablo III since my son had a PS4. I would probably be interested in playing IV but will wait until the reviews come in.
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Yes, there are always exceptions:
* Minecraft
* No Man's Sky
* Terraria
But out of thousands those are the exception not the norm. :-/ In the PS1 / PS2 days games would be relatively crash free. Today you get 80+ Gig patches on Day 1. :-(
Re: Immovable deadlines are the norm in games indu (Score:5, Insightful)
all time diablo fan here. diablo pretty much defined the multiplayer coop roguelike boss loot genre, diablo 2 was a masterpiece that improved several aspects on that gameplay and opened new technical ground to make a very honorable sequel, arguably even surpassing the original. diablo 3 though is utterly bland, all about flashy graphics and the infantilization of grinding loops to ridiculous extremes ... with nothing of the incredible atmosphere of the first 2 titles. just another hypertrophied grind clone at a time the genre had been already overexploited, tailored to the lowest common denominator. so completely ignorable, and seeing how blizzard has been doing in general i'm not holding my breath for d4 at all.
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Video games are one of the remaining pieces of software where delivering a base version and Agile iterations later doesn't work.
That used to be true, now it provably is not. It's rare that a game of any complexity lacks show-stoppers affecting a significant percentage of the playerbase. Some games aren't even usable on day 1 because of infrastructure or whatnot. Now it's common even for DLC to need updates before it works right, wait you released a game without this functionality and now we need a patch for the patch?
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Diablo IV will just be another pay-to-win piece of crap. You can buy the original Diablo for $5 and have several hours of single-player fun.
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Or you can just grab path of exile for free.
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why is this so particularly hard for video games? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, EVERY business has deadlines.
Every business has launches, long-planned programs, tight schedules.
A lot of businesses with a crapton more riding on the product than some gamers being disappointed.
Yet it seems that every time a video game is released, the devs are chained to their desks working 36 hour days without water and forced to wallow in their own feces and piss because "deadline"?
Re: why is this so particularly hard for video gam (Score:5, Insightful)
Other industries have these silly "Union" things where supposedly someone is actually standing up for the WORKERS. Can you believe that shit? Imagine anybody giving a damn about the folks that produce or deliver a good or service! The nerve of these little peons thinking they deserve anything just because they collective like billions of dollars worth of software.
Won't someone think of the CEOs? Please!
Re: why is this so particularly hard for video ga (Score:2)
"collectively make"
Way to ruin a good joke, autocorrect.
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Other industries have these silly "Union" things where supposedly someone is actually standing up for the WORKERS.
In general professionals such as engineers are not unionized.
Can you believe that shit? Imagine anybody giving a damn about the folks that produce or deliver a good or service!
Blizzard has provided profit based bonuses to compensate for the crunch times. These bonuses are quite significant. Blizzard has unheard of levels of retention in the game industry because it does treat people better than much of the rest of the industry.
Unions would not improve things. The total compensation is already better than union work.
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Unions would not improve things. The total compensation is already better than union work.
Unions are about much more than money. Unions were invented because of terrible working conditions first and money only later. Unions are where the 40 hour work week came from. In 1890 when the US government started tracking, the average work week was around 100 hours. It took 76 years for the labor unions to get the 40 hour work week established in law, and people died as police fired into crowds of striking workers, trying to force them back to work. It took a literal lifetime for the unions to achie
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Unions would not improve things. The total compensation is already better than union work.
Unions are about much more than money. Unions were invented because of terrible working conditions first and money only later.
As my 40+ year IBEW member grandfather explained to me. Unions were a godsend long long ago, but the worthy things they fought for are no longer guaranteed by a union contract. They are guaranteed by law. Union or non-Union, we are all protected. The Unions won the battle. We should be grateful.
He went on to explain that today's unions are nothing like those unions of old. Today they are just another middleman enriching themselves and trying to justify and perpetuate their existence. The union serves the
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The nerve of these little peons thinking they deserve anything
aaah! - that's why Peons in warcraft sadly say "work work work"
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Other industries have these silly "Union" things where supposedly someone is actually standing up for the WORKERS.
Nah, not really for a few reasons.
a) No industry is 100% unionised, and in those industries you can find plenty of examples of both union and non-union shops being treated both well and poorly.
b) In the games industry crunch time is not the norm. It's the norm for a few major studios pushing a few major releases during what amounts to 2 major times of the year (Christmas and summer holidays). Almost no unions exist in game development, and on the whole far less than 1% of games released yearly actually suff
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Oh bullshit.
In the US there are something like 10-12% unions. So 88% of US companies somehow manage this without being blackmailed into treating their employees like humans.
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Re:why is this so particularly hard for video game (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no income while the game is in development.
Traditionally you would have to buy shelf space which had long lead times but in the day of digital releases artificial deadlines are driven by finance and marketing. i.e. Management wants to minimize (expensive) expenses (salaries) so they want to ship something as soon as possible.
Unfortunately it takes a LOT of time to polish a game. Blizzard used to be famous for delaying shipping a game until "it was done" for extra polish but those days are LONG gone.
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"There is no income while the game is in development."
There is no income while physical products are in development, plus there are significant costs on top of labor. Yet somehow they manage.
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Part of the problem is that game studios tend to have very few past products to rely on. Many studios are in sink-or-swim. One dud and they are gone.
The other problem is that a game tends to fall off of the public's perception rapidly unless some streamer picks it up. i.e. Among Us.
Also, games tend not to age very well (although that is becoming less of an issue.)
Clones flooding the market is another problem -- especially in the mobile space. Having your game stand out is becoming harder and harder when
Re:why is this so particularly hard for video game (Score:5, Informative)
Because the employees put up with it. For real.
Working on video games is something that nearly every college computer science or software engineering major dreams about. Games are THE thing that got them into programming, in most cases. So, in this specific industry, there is an abundant labor supply. Employees must compete against each other by under-bidding and being willing to put up with abuse like this.
Also, the young and naive get their heads full of lies like "Working these long hours is proof that I am important, that the company needs me," and "if I put the good foot forward now, I will be rewarded handsomely for it later" etc. Most video game developers are young and naive because the old and experienced don't work as video game developers....they know better (or burned out long ago).
I was in this boat when I started my career, and my very first job offer from a game development studio included the above explanation about labor oversupply, how my salary would be less than market rates for business development whereas the hours would start at around 50-60 a week and go up from there during crunch time, and a few other things that I am pretty sure were illegal under labor laws even at the time but it didn't matter. I practically had a foot out the door before the hiring manager was done talking. The business software development job I got instead was boring and unglamorous, but paid market rates and only asked for 40 hours a week.
I have since then worked at other places, even in the business domain, that started demanding long hours. The hours given were never rewarded in kind, and the demands did not stop until I simply put my foot down and refused. That's when I really learned what it means to have negotiating leverage, and to use it.
If any young developers are reading this, you should learn that lesson too. Learn it from my experience. Your health and your financial success depend on your ability to negotiate (and refuse to be abused). No employer in the world will look out for you; it is not what they are paid to do.
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Mod parent +1 informative.
Unfortunately there are more naive kids who don't understand their bargaining power who will happily work extra long hours then those that refuse to be taken advantage of. :-/
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I mean, EVERY business has deadlines.
Because video games are some of the most complicated pieces of software. They tend to push the limits of the hardware, there is less tolerance for error. They are also heavily reliant upon first impressions that can kill a new game.
In the past, Blizzard has been blessed with management that would let the release date slip in order to get bugs resolved and the look and feel polished. Management used the success (income) of current games to pay for the extra time games under development needed. It was a vi
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So have you seen the backend software working on servers nowadays? Because if you think games are top tier taxing things, look up how high end server hardware is configured for performance, and what kind of performance you're talking about.
Besides nowadays, overwhelming majority of games just grab one of the two main engines on the market and use them. Blizzard is among the small handful of exceptions that still run on their own engines for most of their games, but even these majors are mostly switching to
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So have you seen the backend software working on servers nowadays?
I am mostly referring to client side, however you do realize that some Blizzard games have backend software too? And let's say they are under quite the load and its users are expecting "real time" performance. So yes, games tend to be more difficult server side as well.
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Stop and look around yourself. You are likely inside a building. That building likely has electricity, running water and heating/cooling. It is almost certainly directly linked to a highly complex real time system of traffic control. Which notably is also linked to the electricity at the very least.
All of those things in modern society have some, and most have a lot of automation. That needed to be coded. That needs servers to control it. Compared to this, "muh WoW server that lags every time there's a thou
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Stop and look around yourself. You are likely inside a building. That building likely has electricity, running water and heating/cooling. It is almost certainly directly linked to a highly complex real time system of traffic control. Which notably is also linked to the electricity at the very least.
All of those things in modern society have some, and most have a lot of automation. That needed to be coded. That needs servers to control it. Compared to this, "muh WoW server that lags every time there's a thousand people in the same instance" is a joke.
This is a great example of the fallacy so many people practice. They erroneously think a trivial thing has a simple implementation, not so, especially video games, client and server side.
By the way, I've coded things that are considered part of our national infrastructure. While important to the daily lives and well being of many people, the coding was not that complex. Important things can have simple implementations and only require modest hardware. The testing and paperwork required can take more effo
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It's funny that you made my point for me, and didn't realize it because you let your ego get in your way.
See, it takes skill to make simple, functional code that just works. It takes far less skill to make something like WoW server, that is overly complex while performing like complete garbage under any even slightly out of ordinary scenario in spite of well over a decade of constant optimization and rework with large budget.
Because skilled and experienced coders overwhelmingly don't go making games. They g
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It's funny that you made my point for me, and didn't realize it because you let your ego get in your way.
Not really, you are just still klinging to the fallacy that a modern AAA video game could be a simple thing to implement. In short, your accusation is just project, your ego won't let you face the reality of video game development. It is one of the more technically challenging areas to work.
See, it takes skill to make simple, functional code that just works.
Absolutely, I do that all the time. Also it takes more than skill, it takes time.
It takes far less skill to make something like WoW server, that is overly complex while performing like complete garbage under any even slightly out of ordinary scenario in spite of well over a decade of constant optimization and rework with large budget.
Actually you are simply ignorant of the problem, of the functionality and constraints that the various WoW servers have to deal with. What
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I'll still continue to push against the delusion and into reality. Blizzard, the "company of many gray beards" can't even make a server that doesn't have one of the least graceful basic failure modes when unpredicted flood of people comes in.
Which in MMOs is a routine event. Just like in traffic control for example. One of those craps out and fails. Other has fallback modes that are graceful. Guess which one is which.
We can argue about the brilliance of gaming coders if you want, but objective reality doesn
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I'll still continue to push against the delusion and into reality.
Actually, you are doing quite the opposite. Refusing to listen to someone outside your bubble, someone who has decades of knowledge of Blizzard and some very technical industries. Not guesswork, actual first hand knowledge. The truth is people from other industries are no stranger to Blizzard. Including the infrastructure industries you mention, been there, done that. And there is a common perspective amongst these people. AAA games are some of the most difficult software they have ever worked on..
Blizzard, the "company of many gray beards" can't even make a server that doesn't have one of the least graceful basic failure modes when unpredicted flood of people comes in.
That is a
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>Including the infrastructure industries you mention, been there, done that.
And that is the last part of the puzzle, slotting in. This is personal for you.
I mean imagine being so fundamentally divorced from reality as to assume that:
>The number of aircraft in the air is not a surprise, its pretty well known in advance.
And in real world on the other hand there's such a thing as emergency procedures, for which those things must be prepared for in advance. And unlike things you have made in the past, air
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>Including the infrastructure industries you mention, been there, done that.
And that is the last part of the puzzle, slotting in. This is personal for you.
Wrong, as I said it is a very common sentiment in the AAA gaming industry. That the capability and skill of the "average" developer is higher than in other industries you worked with.
The other way to look at this is, your BS got called because the person you are arguing with happened to have a background in the type of industry you offered as a counterexample. As well as other seemingly advanced industries.
I mean imagine being so fundamentally divorced from reality as to assume that:
>The number of aircraft in the air is not a surprise, its pretty well known in advance.
Roughly half of all flight are commercial. Hence scheduled and flight plans filed. The number of no
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Disconnect your ego and look at your argument as if someone you care for, like your child actually got to suffer WoW's server issues ...
What nonsensical emotional appeal, it well characterizes your entire emotional imaginary position.
The unavailability of a WoW server is inconsequential. Software developers knew this, IT knew this, business development people knew this, hence the absolutely acceptable notion that one respond to spikes in demand by not letting everyone on to the servers; and to focus developers on things that matter, the experience one has once in a game.
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This is what you call "utter disconnect between designers and users". Because as someone who played WoW for a very long time, one of the main problems with the game was server instability. In fact, server I played on earned itself a nickname "ravencrash" because of it.
I.e. server instability was so centrally important and so long lived (lasting several years) that a very large portion of server's large population stopped referring to it by its official name and adopted the name referring to server's lack of
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Actually most of the bold pilots don't die. They just have their wings taken from them after they manage to get themselves in a dangerous situation, and investigation board finds that it was the fault of them being too bold.
I.e. they remain bold. They just aren't pilots any more.
As for the rest, I'm honestly not going to even bother arguing with someone who presents "Blizzard's status page" as evidence of server instability. Hint: it's as good indicator of such as tachometer is a good indicator of the amoun
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Because as someone who played WoW for a very long time, one of the main problems with the game was server instability. In fact, server I played on earned itself a nickname "ravencrash" because of it.
From googling around the folks on your server are talking about DDOS attacks as a recurring problem. That's not a server code instability problem.
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Actually most of the bold pilots don't die. They just have their wings taken from them after they manage to get themselves in a dangerous situation ...
In the joke you referred to they do, because they never get themselves out of that dangerous situation.
As for the rest, I'm honestly not going to even bother arguing with someone who presents "Blizzard's status page" as evidence of server instability.
Good thing I also referred to 3rd party sites, which is where the mention of nearly all problems being connectivity and login problems, very few in game problems.
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I mean, EVERY business has deadlines.
Because video games are some of the most complicated pieces of software. They tend to push the limits of the hardware, there is less tolerance for error. They are also heavily reliant upon first impressions that can kill a new game.
In the past, Blizzard has been blessed with management that would let the release date slip in order to get bugs resolved and the look and feel polished. Management used the success (income) of current games to pay for the extra time games under development needed. It was a virtuous cycle.
Every business has launches, long-planned programs, tight schedules.
But not every business gets the most precious resource, time. Blizzard development teams could get more time when needed.
There's lots of branches of complicated software with low tolerance for error, I think games arguably have a higher tolerance for bugs as long as they're not game breaking.
The reason for the crush time is two fold.
First, if it's a graphics driven game you want to release it on the latest and most advanced game engine. Meaning that you start the game with the latest engine and release it before that engine starts getting dated. To make that timeline means there's probably going to be a big crunch.
Second, gam
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There's lots of branches of complicated software with low tolerance for error, I think games arguably have a higher tolerance for bugs as long as they're not game breaking.
I am not referring to bugs. I am referring to hitting your design and performance goals.
The reason for the crush time is two fold. First, if it's a graphics driven game you want to release it on the latest and most advanced game engine.
No you don't, especially if you are Blizzard. You want a larger potential market so you do not require the latest and greatest hardware. You know where a lot of effort goes, to the minimum system requirements system. Because that is where it gets hard to keep the game playable. The recommended system shines. Those users blessed with the latest and greatest hardware get little consideration, things ran wonderfully on thei
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I mean, EVERY business has deadlines.
yes, and in EVERY business when anyone in low/middle/high management starts using that bullshit argument to make unreasonable demands it's the time to say: "well, i did my job, we are here because you didn't do yours besides earning much, much more money than me, so feel free to clean up the mess yourself now, i'll be with my family, see you tomorrow" (a sound "fuck you" is already implied, but feel free to spell it out).
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I mean, EVERY business has deadlines.
Not every business has deadlines that meet specific financial seasons. I mean my business has deadlines, I'm working on a project right now that ... "Ooops project slipped 3 months, no biggie".
Quite a bit different to "Oops project slipped 3 months and we've missed the most profitable time of the year where we are statistically likely to make far more money than releasing anything any other time".
There are dozens of video games released every month. No we don't hear devs chained to their desks on every rele
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"Not every business has deadlines that meet specific financial seasons."
Yes, they do. They're just managed competently, which requires admitting that management is a field where competence can exist.
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Yes, they do.
No they literally don't. In fact let me correct myself. I said "not every business", what is reality is that "most businesses" don't have such deadlines.
For most businesses and projects including development deadlines are 100% artificial where the cost of exceeding the deadline is the same ongoing cost that is experienced during the entire project development.
I'll give you an example relevant to this industry: In March there were 162 game releases. March has no significant impact what so ever on sales. None
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The downside of believing that all management adds zero value is that you cannot identify management that provides less value than others. You just accept terrible management and that reinforces your belief that all management adds zero value.
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Diablo 3 moved 200 Million dollars in 24 hours and went on to become the fastest selling videogame of all time.
When the dollars get to be that big and stakes that high, what's a few chained up devs?
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My information is very out of date,so take it with a grain of salt. When I was in the games industry 25 years ago, one of the major reasons for the poor planning was that none of the programmers had much in the way of a software engineering background. Just cowboy coders who didn't even know what version control was, let alone used it. These are the people who are always super optimistic about how long anything will take. "Oh, I can knock that out in an hour" turns into a week-long project that doesn't int
Well, I for one.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anxiously wait the next buggy, half-baked, insecure, bloated money grabbing gambling simulator that they graciously squat out onto the market. Isn't everyone? Man I pre-ordered like 4 copies just to make sure!
Keep buying the garbage kids, they'll keep making it
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Wait, you don't want to have another game where you can't buy gear in real money shop. But you can buy lottery tickets for gems that you can slot in your gear, and most of your character's power will come from those gems.
And once you prove yourself by spending enough on lottery tickets to get enough gems, you'll discover the most amazing thing ever. That you can actually socket gems into other gems for even more power!
Diablo Immortal is honestly the meme that keeps on giving.
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Keep buying the garbage kids, they'll keep making it
Oh so you've played it already and know enough about it to pass judgement. Oh please write a full detailed review. We're dying to know about this game that you clearly know so much about already!
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No, their employees are woke and so they have plenty of actual sex scandals. And being proper degenerates, they unironically do shit like stealing breast milk.
Because you know, sexual harassment apparently beats masturbation in that world. And it probably lets one save on tissues!
There is always a push at deadline (Score:2)
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There has been a shift away from supporting Mac support with the other 2 Diablo games.
Apple made cross-platform support harder by deprecating a commonly used open graphics API in favor of a proprietary one, while the rest of the world is moving (gradually) away from a proprietary one to a different open one. It's not a surprise when publishers choose to skip MacOS. Meanwhile Linux supports the same API everyone is moving to, and you can use a translation layer to that API to support the API that most everyone is moving away from.
If you want to get salty about poor support, get salty with App
Why developers should manage, not investors. (Score:2)
Overrated (Score:2)
Why can't video game project managers... (Score:1)