As a gamer I know of Blizzard. I know of their huge games like World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Overwatch but, to be honest, the only game I've played of theirs is The Lost Vikings on the Megadrive. However, I knew of Rock and Roll Racing on the SNES from friends who had it at the time back in the day. Our paths have never really crossed but I was interested in the story as their rise, fall and whatever happens next has been interesting to follow on social media and on the gaming pages.
Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier does the deep dive into the company that is so sorely needed. It starts at the 2023 Blizzcon but goes through its origins in 1991 when it was called Silicon and Synapse. We then get a potted history of its founders, Allan Adham, Michael Morhaime, and Frank Pearce, and their evolution from a studio for hire - making conversions for other platforms - to Blizzard where it made Warcraft in 1994. We then go through the various acquisitions, such as the purchase of Condor who were making Diablo, to the wild success of StarCraft. More interestingly though, we gain an understanding of the financial mismanagement and self-enrichment that led to tensions within the studio and the frat boy bro culture that persisted. This created a toxic environment that grew over time to be off-kilter with the changing accepted norms of society.
There are nuggets of facts that make this an interesting read including:
- Andy Weir, the author of The Martian (which was famously turned into a Matt Damon led film and was bizarrely put into the Comedy nominations for the 2016 Golden Globes) worked at Blizzard for about a year as a programmer but left after some staff bullied him as the code he did was not absolutely spot on.
- Battlenet was proposed by some at the company as a potential digital storefront that could house other company's products but this was shot down by the higher ups. This could have been Steam wayyy before Steam became a thing.
- World of Warcraft was the biggest games release at the time, selling over 1.5 million copies within a few months and peaking at 12.5 millions users just a few years later.
- Bobby Kotick bought Mediagenic and then reverted to its original name: Activision.
- Kotick turned the company's fortune around by repackaging and selling its old games and then merged with Blizzard.
- In the early 2000s, World of Warcraft was making over half a billion dollars a year.
- As World of Warcraft became a cash cow a hierarchy emerged with the developers of that game being top of the pile. This led to resentment across the company as their contributions felt ignored or overshadowed.
- When Kotick took over the majority shares of Blizzard from Vivendi, he pushed for annualisation in a line goes up mentality. This let to an annual glut of games that lacked innovation and lightly iterated on previous releases. Inevitably, these games were reviewed lower with each successive game and exhausted many gamers. Game series that burned bright for this short time included Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.
- Overwatch was a much needed boost in finances and was a hugely successful release. Unfortunately, new corporate overlords just looked at finances rather than brand recognition. This led to a huge rise in micro transactions and loot boxes.
- When Morhaime left Blizzard in 2018, after sensing the direction of travel from Kotick, J. Allen Brack took over but Activision had already started to mooch in. They put a trailer for Call of Duty in Blizzcon which was out of step with much of the core audience.
- Diablo Immortal, the micro-transaction filled mobile game, was poorly received by fans. It allowed the more toxic elements of the 'gamers' (tm) to target and abuse many Blizzard staff, many who had no control over what decisions were being made above their pay grade.
- In 2019, Kotick announced record earnings in 2018 but not quite where he had projected so there would be changes. This is when 800 staff members were let go... this carried on the trend that the video game industry is still dealing with: release a product and get rid of lots of staff afterwards as a cost cutting measure to show inflated profits.
- Blitzchung spoke against China's influence over Hong Kong but Blizzard banned him. Brack did a mealy-mouthed apology without mentioning China, Hong Kong or Blitzchug
- When Warcraft 3 Reforged was given a release date before even being started on, the game became a crunched release and was Blizzard's lowest rating game at 51% on Metacritic. The company offered quibble free refunds and was humiliated.
- Covid happened and the stacked ranking system, where staff were ranked in accordance to a managers opinions on those individuals, was introduced. It did not go well as there is no fair system to rate individuals.
- During Covid, videogame companies made record profits as people were stuck at home with lots of time, but the people within the industry struggled with going online, childcare and all the other stresses that Covid exacerbated.
- There was a Blizzard Tax: you worked for a respected company but we're paid less than your industry peers. Many left for other studios and then were wooed back with higher pay, this was the ‘Blizzard Boomerang’.
- In 2021, a Sexual Misconduct and Descrimination lawsuit was filed and was settled for $51 million dollars outside of court.
- Rumours of swinger parties reached mainstream media and the disparity in power between the people involved raised many questions.
- The infamous Cosby Suite was less to do with the comedians rape allegation charges and more to do with the colour of his jumpers matching the carpet in the hotel room, apparently. However, in light of the sexual misconduct allegations that had surfaced, the optics did not look good.
- The ABK board were mostly friends and close associates of Kotick and did not remove him, even when allegations that he knew about the various sexual misconduct charges but did nothing came to light.
- Microsoft bought the studio for $69 billion dollars (nice) and the future of the company is uncertain as there have been mass layoffs within the industry and Blizzard is no exception.
The book covers a lot of the same issues that have led to many problems across the video games industry; crunch, lack of financial compensation for those who make the games, unreasonable deadlines, staff burnout, a toxic workspace environment and an executive class whose push for a consistent revenue stream through games as a service a model, even when it does not suite the game or genre, against infrequent but polished hits has played havok with the industry. The Sword of Damocles hangs over the industry as a whole and Jason Schreier has been instrumental in bringing to light the issues that have plagued what was one of the most revered and respected studios.
Having read the book, I've been thinking of the Moloch Trap: the race to the bottom where there is no eventual winner but, because everyone else is doing it, you feel that you must too to keep up and have parity with your peers. The videogame industry has this idea that constant growth is possible but it isn't, so to look like there is there has been a push to get rid of staff before yearly earnings announcements.
Also, this got me thinking about the Rot Economy-this is the idea that when a business has reached its top most threshold it purposely makes what it has on offer worse for the captive audience it has so it can squeeze the last bit of money from them, either by asking them to upgrade to a higher tier out of the basic version or making the basic version worse via ads etc. This is similar in principle to adversarial design or futilitarianism where you see your audience as marks and charge them for the convenience you purposely removed from your product - solution selling for a problem you intentionally created. You see it a lot in free online games with cool downs which can be made quicker with 'in game currency' which is actually real world money or the Online Gaming Subscription Services where your selection of games gets worse unless you pay up. This does not fly when people have paid upwards of £70 for a product!
Hmmm, I'm not some right-on loony lefty who hates business and money but this late state capitalism which worship goods, products and money more than people and devalue humans is not on. The whole meaning of god punishing people for the idolatry of worshipping a statue is not just a silly story: it's about something deeply human and important - in the end, the only thing we have is each other. There is very little happiness that can be had without other people involved (I mean, some fun for sure but maybe not a lot of happiness). Sure, hell is other people but hell is also no people at all and a world without videogames to unite and bond people is a sad world indeed.
So, overall, my opinion is read the book as it will provide insight into the industry and the tech philistines who lose sight of the fact that this electronic product of binary code is a means for connection not just cold, hard utilitarianism.
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LINK: The Transportive Nature of Objects (And the Power of Mini Consoles)
LINK: The Offworld Collection- Book Review