Bloomberg reports more about the sheer dysfunctional rot at Blizzard Entertainment including something I’ve alluded to often in the past; the arrogant chip on the shoulder (rock star) mentality of many key designers (I referred to this before as DBST; designer bullshit talk). Some of the earlier designers in Team 3 (the Diablo III group) fell into that category where they were responsible for iterating the ARPG out of what finally shipped (a linear on-rails experience). These were the same folks who pushed back on the community (saying it was misplaced nostalgia about D2) which was one of the main reasons why there was this constant sore spot between the D3 developers and some in the Diablo community (my old blog postings here ad nauseam covered this).
The names dropped in the article (some on repeat like co-founders Morhaime and Pearce) are just the tip of the iceberg. There are more including the ones who left the company. We’re far from the actual bottom because this is industry wide (starting at the top of many design and publishing studios). Coverage of this hasn’t yet reached the mainstream media because they are single-tracked focus on politics at the moment; it’s mainly in a portion of the financial press and gaming media. Maybe it does need to hit the main stream to get the kind of wider backlash (not saying I would enjoy how singularly focused and sensationalist it would end up becoming though) to finally begin the actual process of change.
Unionization is only going to be a bandaid fix. Heads need to roll in the executive suite because that is where the problem starts, and rolls downhill. As Jim Sterling said, it really needs to be burnt all down because the rot is just so deep and pervasive in the video game industry.
