Russ Pitts (Fletcher) To Reboot Escapist Magazine

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

"Barbie Horse Adventures", though!

The old man still got it.

Yeah. Didn’t find that funny at all.

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

Something something PC master race?

TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

You see, Blizzard has only ever put out games on the PC. And, as such, they are only ever allowed to publish games on the PC. The audience they currently have (remember, only hardcore PC players) is the only audience they need and the only audience they are allowed to go after.

By going, for the first time ever, away from the PC, they are showing they have abandoned PC gaming forever. By not announcing Diablo 4, they are showing it will never ever publish it. By putting it on mobile which, everyone knows, is a place that only losers and women (who are worse than losers) play, they are showing they have abandoned their true fans for ever and ever, for the rest of time.

Frankly, I was hoping for augmented reality Diablo where you and other players can cooperate to fight demons, kill bosses, and collect loot in the real world. What they announced seems like a Diablo reskin of someone else's clone. Kinda boring, but kids will probably be into it.

mudbunny wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

You see, Blizzard has only ever put out games on the PC. And, as such, they are only ever allowed to publish games on the PC. The audience they currently have (remember, only hardcore PC players) is the only audience they need and the only audience they are allowed to go after.

By going, for the first time ever, away from the PC, they are showing they have abandoned PC gaming forever. By not announcing Diablo 4, they are showing it will never ever publish it. By putting it on mobile which, everyone knows, is a place that only losers and women (who are worse than losers) play, they are showing they have abandoned their true fans for ever and ever, for the rest of time.

At the same time, they had a a captive audience of their best customers, who'd all paid to be there, and possibly had traveled from a significant distance away. Everyone there was, pretty much by definition, heavily invested in playing Blizzard games on their computer. As the capstone of this event, to these paying hyperfans, fans so good they spent hundreds of dollars to be there in many cases (how many other entertainment industries can say that?).... they presented a reskinned version of an existing freemium game, not even done by Blizzard, and not running on hardware they wanted to use for gaming.

When everyone was hoping for a title, preferably Diablo-related, that they'd actually want to play being the highlight of a conference they'd invested so much into, a cynical money grab did not go over well.

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

It was just bad event marketing.

garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Because when you decide to go after new customers and do not prostrate yourself at the alter of your current ones, it is always a cynical money grab and not a smart business decision. (I wish I could add a /s to this, but I cannot, because many, many people feel that way.)

I mean, ignore the number of kids playing Fortnite on their phones all the time. (For the record, at my oldest daughter's 12th birthday party, about half of the girls who were here spent time playing Fortnite on their phones.)

garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Because they're not doing what I want.

*pouty stomp*

garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Reskinning an existing freemium game? How is it not?

Maybe you should boycott it then.

Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Reskinning an existing freemium game? How is it not?

Is that what they're doing? From the extremely limited available information, I couldn't tell, but I guess other folks have more information than I do...

Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Reskinning an existing freemium game? How is it not?

Sounds like "smart use of resources" to me.

Malor wrote:

At the same time, they had a a captive audience of their best customers, who'd all paid to be there, and possibly had traveled from a significant distance away. Everyone there was, pretty much by definition, heavily invested in playing Blizzard games on their computer. As the capstone of this event, to these paying hyperfans, fans so good they spent hundreds of dollars to be there in many cases (how many other entertainment industries can say that?).... they presented a reskinned version of an existing freemium game, not even done by Blizzard, and not running on hardware they wanted to use for gaming.

When everyone was hoping for a title, preferably Diablo-related, that they'd actually want to play being the highlight of a conference they'd invested so much into, a cynical money grab did not go over well.

FTFY.

It's "BlizzCon", which says nothing about PCs in its name. If a bunch of Diablo "fans" want to be butthurt about getting a mobile game that is Diablo-related, when every console that matters has a Diablo game as well as Overwatch, they're just entitled whiners.

garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Well it's definitely a money grab, right? I mean, no one's doing anything for charity in this business.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that this was not the right venue for this announcement. That Pitts article just seems to be fanning the flames though.

Corporate marketing departments talking about the thing the company is actually releasing: unsurprising.

Gamers for some reason feeling entitled to an announcement about a game they want, and getting mad when something unrelated is announced: sadly, also unsurprising.

People who attend a corporate convention are as much the product (for bragging about to the news, and thence to the shareholders) as they are consumers. And being a consumer doesn't make you entitled to anything.

Talking about "betrayal" is silly: these companies owe you nothing. It'd be nice if they cared a bit more, but these are giant corporations we're talking about, not two-person indie studios. There's no betrayal here. Even compared to past game industry bad events, its silly: people lost their jobs when Telltale closed. I'm fine being upset with that. This? This is a mobile game that no one is being forced to play.

You're free to go spend your money elsewhere, though Activision Blizzard probably won't notice: they're doing quite well printing money. They made $2 billion from microtransactions in the first half of 2018, with Call of Duty and Destiny leading the way, so expect more of that because that is what consumers actually spend their money on. Their 2nd quarter results were way higher than expectations, and their 3rd quarter earnings report comes out tomorrow. Their big missing piece right now is that they don't have a battle royale game.

They're targeting demographics they don't have yet, and any Diablo-branded thing on mobile will open up a huge new audience. (Every console ever sold by Nintento, Sony, and Microsoft combined: 1.3 billion. Smartphones shipped worldwide in 2017: 1.4 billion.) Whiny BlizzCon fans aren't the market demographic they're targeting.

Writing an editorial giving comfort to the whiny gamers probably drives traffic, but it doesn't make the world a better place.

Malor wrote:
mudbunny wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

You see, Blizzard has only ever put out games on the PC. And, as such, they are only ever allowed to publish games on the PC. The audience they currently have (remember, only hardcore PC players) is the only audience they need and the only audience they are allowed to go after.

By going, for the first time ever, away from the PC, they are showing they have abandoned PC gaming forever. By not announcing Diablo 4, they are showing it will never ever publish it. By putting it on mobile which, everyone knows, is a place that only losers and women (who are worse than losers) play, they are showing they have abandoned their true fans for ever and ever, for the rest of time.

As the capstone of this event, to these paying hyperfans, fans so good they spent hundreds of dollars to be there in many cases (how many other entertainment industries can say that?).... they presented a reskinned version of an existing freemium game, not even done by Blizzard, and not running on hardware they wanted to use for gaming.

They paid hundreds of dollars to attend Blizzcon and they got to do just that. They didn't pay 100s of dollars to commission the game they wanted.

mudbunny wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

You see, Blizzard has only ever put out games on the PC. And, as such, they are only ever allowed to publish games on the PC. The audience they currently have (remember, only hardcore PC players) is the only audience they need and the only audience they are allowed to go after.

By going, for the first time ever, away from the PC, they are showing they have abandoned PC gaming forever. By not announcing Diablo 4, they are showing it will never ever publish it. By putting it on mobile which, everyone knows, is a place that only losers and women (who are worse than losers) play, they are showing they have abandoned their true fans for ever and ever, for the rest of time.

I know this is joking and sarcasm, I totally get it. But even that's not true, they've been in the mobile game business for a while now with Hearthstone.

The disappointment was real. The reveal going down like a sad trombone was real. The product they revealed wasn't horrible, but it wasn't the showstopper they intended it to be. Expectations aren't Entitlement, and what happened at the conference was more due to the former. What's happening after certainly has a bunch of the latter sprinkled in.

Should people be mad? I don't think so. Personally I'd love to have been there at the one con where something this unique happened. Does that mean there are no lessons to be learned? Hell no. There are plenty.

In this case a huge slice of the online complaints have been focussed on Blizzard "abandoning the fans" in favour of the "casual" market.

For "casual" you can go ahead and read "women".

Disappointment is one thing but there's anger here that comes from a whole other place.

Malor wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Explain to me how it's a "cynical money grab".

Reskinning an existing freemium game? How is it not?

That's a little uncharitable toward Blizzard and exactly the sort of lazy comparison that is causing SO many people to roll their eyes to the fan backlash.

Practically all mobile ARPGs play the same and look that way. Yes, Diablo Immortal looks a hell of a lot like Netease's games, which are made to look like Diablo 3 anyway.

Practically no one has played the other Netease games because they're only available in China. And the venn diagram of whose played Immortal and the other Netease games is probably nil outside of the dev teams.

I did find an English article from someone who has played the Net ease game: https://www.abacusnews.com/digital-l...

They haven't played Immortal, so it seems even here we can't find anyone whose played both!

Calling it a "cynical money grab" is a step too far. Wait until we get it in our hands, then bash away at it if it sucks. But watching a couple trailers and calling it a reskin is, well, cynical.

Maq wrote:

For "casual" you can go ahead and read "women".

I'm gonna disagree with that. Maybe five or ten years ago that was the case, but "filthy casuals" refers to everyone under the sun. Basically all mobile games are for normies. Blizzard fans already think Heroes of the Storm is for casuals and this is just one more step in the direction of abandoning the "core/real/etc" Blizzard fan.

But, yes, there are *many* who mean 'casual' to include pretty much any women who plays a game because "they're just playing Candy Crush or whatever."

Malor wrote:
mudbunny wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m still dumbfounded how a game publisher announcing a mobile title in 2018 is anyway remotely controversial. Have people been living under a rock and missed the whole smartphone revolution the last 10 years? My god even Nintendo has mobile games!

You see, Blizzard has only ever put out games on the PC. And, as such, they are only ever allowed to publish games on the PC. The audience they currently have (remember, only hardcore PC players) is the only audience they need and the only audience they are allowed to go after.

By going, for the first time ever, away from the PC, they are showing they have abandoned PC gaming forever. By not announcing Diablo 4, they are showing it will never ever publish it. By putting it on mobile which, everyone knows, is a place that only losers and women (who are worse than losers) play, they are showing they have abandoned their true fans for ever and ever, for the rest of time.

At the same time, they had a a captive audience of their best customers, who'd all paid to be there, and possibly had traveled from a significant distance away. Everyone there was, pretty much by definition, heavily invested in playing Blizzard games on their computer. As the capstone of this event, to these paying hyperfans, fans so good they spent hundreds of dollars to be there in many cases (how many other entertainment industries can say that?).... they presented a reskinned version of an existing freemium game, not even done by Blizzard, and not running on hardware they wanted to use for gaming.

When everyone was hoping for a title, preferably Diablo-related, that they'd actually want to play being the highlight of a conference they'd invested so much into, a cynical money grab did not go over well.

Nahh.. I'm not buying what you are selling.. I'm not even sure you really do. You are ignoring the realities of trying to run a large corporation. You always have to be growing and expanding and lets face it going into the mobile market especially with a partner in a market like China is an opportunity that Activision would be foolish to ignore. A mobile version of Diablo has the potential to be a new lucrative revenue stream for a company that is looking to replace a fading one in World of Warcraft. It's not just a smart move its a necessary move.

Maybe it will fail.. maybe it will be a horrible reskin.. but I don't fault Blizzard for making this move.. its the smart move.

Everything about gamers and spending money is just entitled bullsh*t.. nobody forced them to pay hundreds of dollars to attend Blizzcon.. as well there is all sorts of events and games showcased there.. trying to isolate the entire convention down to one moment is dumb.. it ignores everything else that happened there.

Back to the Original Topic.. I'm disappointed to see that my fears about the Escapist reboot are starting to be realized. The original no politics was just a code word to the gators to let them know they are on their side and would be sure to support their goal of getting gaming back to a world where the only opinion that mattered was the opinion of the "true gamer" the white dude that just wants to shoot brown people and look at scantily clad women as props. That Publishers and Developers exist only to appease and appeal to their whims and not the whims of any other possible type of gamer.

The one thing to remain to be seen is if Russ weaponizes the Escapist much the same way TB did his legion.

Blizzard is playing the markets, and US PC gamers are upset that we're not the market that companies focus on anymore (at least not primarily). Industries change, and it's easy to feel left out in the cold by companies that move to where the money is.

The first thing to realize is that the mobile market has enjoyed a larger share of the gaming market for a while, though this month saw an equalization between PC and smartphones (though if you add tablets in to mobile, mobile still wins). That's worldwide.

But compare the US and Asia markets. In the US, Mobile/Tablet gaming is 47.69% of the market, with the other 52.31% being desktop users. The Asian market, by comparison, is 63.17% Mobile/Tablet, 36.83% PC. And the Asian market makes up nearly double the amount of revenue compared to the US. The US PC guys can be upset all they want, the Asian markets are the goal post, and we're not. If Blizzard can make a game that appeals to the mobile users in both groups, it'll represent a massive increase in revenue compared to releasing a PC game. Truth be told, with the disparity of users, even a flop could potentially make more than a successful PC launch, especially when you consider the substantially lower rate of piracy on mobile, along with the easier development of games on mobile (similar to consoles in that more standardized hardware and OS's means less testing, bugs, maintenance, etc... it's basically less investment for more money).

Plus, a mobile game expands their market, while a desktop game caters to their existing market, as TheGameguru points out. After all, Pokemon Go coexists with other versions of Pokemon, doubling the revenue streams. (Also, Activision Blizzard owns King now too, and it basically generates as much revenue as the other two.)

As for the Escapist, I'm disappointed. Four years after Gamergate, being "neural" and "no politics" proves to mean "spinelessly capitulating to the loudmouth bigots".

I still have hope that the site as a whole has the opportunity to foster voices that counteract that...but I'm not going to be reading the out of the distant hope that they'll be better some day when places like Waypoint are putting out actual solid reporting right now with interesting, fresh angles on the state of the industry.

This whole Diablo kerfuffle is just one of the many, many reasons I don't share with most people that I play video games.

So is Diablo mobile literally the only thing announced at Blizzcon? That is what the manbabbies are making it sound like.

SallyNasty wrote:

So is Diablo mobile literally the only thing announced at Blizzcon? That is what the manbabbies are making it sound like.

Nope. It was intended to be the headliner, and succeeded in its own way. Hehe