But almost 1,000 current and former Activision Blizzard employees have now signed a letter criticizing the company's response, which included a statement from Activision executive Frances Townsend saying the lawsuit's claims are "factually incorrect, old
-J.
The only way this gets rectified is if the stockholders see their bottom lines get hurt.
It's where up and coming studios go to die. They buy them out so they don't have competitors and they don't have to create or maintain new IP. Idea's then stagnate and old boy culture like a mold sets in.
The only way this gets rectified is if the stockholders see their bottom lines get hurt.
Which will never happen. With the COD's that get made and the cash cow that is the world of microtransactions, Activision's bottom line won't get hurt anytime soon.
It is truly sad what's happened to Blizzard though. They used to be kings of RTS and MMO's and over the last few years they have completely stagnated into near irrelevancy. There's a Diablo 4 in the works and it seems like anyone cares. I know I don't. D3 was fine but became a chore after the main story was done. Hearthstone was fun but now its P2W. Sad.
This is where not being a gamer feels great because if you're not one then you don't support with your money the newest generation of malicious corporate frat-boy assholes.
I stopped being a gamer because of companies like EA and Activision. I never went past PS3, and I refuse to buy any newer systems (also because I'm poor), and don't want to ever fill their coffers anymore.
-J.
The gaming industry suffers from what would be see in other industries as regulatory capture. The media that covers them are owned outright so it is akin to North Korea in terms of journalistic freedom. It is seen as not-my problem by the majority of wall street as it pertains to regulation so it has a free hand to do as it wants and the stockholders are only interested in the bottom line. So CEO make runaway salaries while the people who make the games are literal wages slaves. So there are no standard except where they break the law so obscenely that internationally there has to be a crack down a-la the loot box is gambling is gambling to minors in star wars battlefront 2.
There is no fix for this as Jim says, you can only cut this cancer out.
I stopped being a gamer because
-J.
Can I still call myself a gamer if the last game I played was Frogger?
I never got the lure of gaming. I'm also totally inept at them, especially with keyboard commands. Just don't have the hand-eye co-ordination I suppose. To each their own but if I have any spare luxury cash to spend I'll go buy another model kit to build instead. At least I have something tangible to show for it afterwards that's a lot more meaningful to me than a victory over "Schlongmeister88" or "BitchHammer69" or "GasTheYidsNow" on some forgettable MMORPGWTFBBQLGBQT could ever be.
The lure of gaming is the same as reading books or watching movies, but the story is never the same and you are a participant.
I used to play the COD series, for about 12 - 15 years. From COD World at War to COD WWII, and all the expansion packs in between. The later games were the ones that were the worst. And' it's not hand-eye coordination that was the only reason I sucked, it was network latency. There is no way to beat a 12 year old kid with a 30ms ping, when you have an 80ms ping. Unless you have a super powerful machine, and the algorithm makes you the host. Which is why I can spend $10k on a PC. But some of the later titles were just unplayable. CoD "Ghosts" was one. Even with a super fast PC, the gameplay just sucked. And it was in "Advanced Warfare" that they decided to do micro transactions. That, and leaving Steam, were the end for me. I payed like $100 a year for the package that gave you the game, all the expansion packs and benefits for the year, and it was never worth it because you had to spend hundreds on things that you couldn't get any other way. You couldn't earn them in game, and the odds of winning them were too low.
So I paid $60 for a game 5 years ago, that regularly gets expansion packs and updates - even complete revamps of the entire game - and doesn't cost a cent more. It can be multiplayer if you like. Or single player. You can have adventures, explore, do missions, or just sit around and enjoy the scenery, if you like. There are no player v player battles. You can join a vast conglomerate of planets and people, trade goods or services, if you like. Or explore all 255 galaxies on your own.
That is what a gaming company should be. Building a gaming experience that keeps people coming back, not fuck the customers and the programmers for every penny of stock value.
It's where up and coming studios go to die. They buy them out so they don't have competitors and they don't have to create or maintain new IP. Idea's then stagnate and old boy culture like a mold sets in.
The only way this gets rectified is if the stockholders see their bottom lines get hurt.
Which will never happen. With the COD's that get made and the cash cow that is the world of microtransactions, Activision's bottom line won't get hurt anytime soon.
It is truly sad what's happened to Blizzard though. They used to be kings of RTS and MMO's and over the last few years they have completely stagnated into near irrelevancy. There's a Diablo 4 in the works and it seems like anyone cares. I know I don't. D3 was fine but became a chore after the main story was done. Hearthstone was fun but now its P2W. Sad.
D3 was dogshit. It's a disgrace that game came after D2.
Blizzard isn't capable of making good games anymore.