Author Topic: What happened to Blizzard?  (Read 33002 times)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #30 on: February 14, 2020, 02:16:44 pm »
You could do it (if you can get the new map editor to work, that is), but Blizzard will own your work.

Definitely not an objective truth, as it depends on local laws. For example in Germany this would got laughed out of court, as creative rights are non-transferable (as they damn should be, because you know, reality ensues).

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #31 on: February 14, 2020, 08:44:04 pm »
I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company.  There are whole countries with the mindset:  "All your (creative works) are belong to us."   :P

Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #32 on: February 14, 2020, 10:34:50 pm »
I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company.  There are whole countries with the mindset:  "All your (creative works) are belong to us."   :P
When a huge multibillion company steals ideas and user maps made by kids something is really wrong  :o

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #33 on: February 15, 2020, 02:58:01 pm »
When a huge multibillion company steals ideas and user maps made by kids something is really wrong  :o

Yes, the law, duh.

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #34 on: February 15, 2020, 03:47:41 pm »
The rich and powerful make the laws.  If those that make the laws aren't rich and powerful, they soon will be.  In some countries, they hold political office directly such as emperors, kings, lords, dukes, and whatnot.  In other countries, they have their servants (read politicians) hold the office for them.  All political systems in reality boil down to this, despite what you may have learned in school.   :o


PS  I am not cynical that's just an unsubstantiated rumor!   :P

Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #35 on: February 15, 2020, 04:17:29 pm »
The rich and powerful make the laws.  If those that make the laws aren't rich and powerful, they soon will be.  In some countries, they hold political office directly such as emperors, kings, lords, dukes, and whatnot.  In other countries, they have their servants (read politicians) hold the office for them.  All political systems in reality boil down to this, despite what you may have learned in school.   :o
When governments set up taxes too high, like taking everything people make and turning population into slaves, such governments historically always failed and ceased to exist. The most recent example is USSR. People were stripped of rights and taken everything they made, therefore they had no incentive to make anything, yet sabotaged heavily any government effort. Same is happening with corporations, which don't respect their customers and employees. That is like a law of physics, which they should teach in management classes.

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #36 on: February 15, 2020, 06:21:11 pm »
Same is happening with corporations, which don't respect their customers and employees.

They don't really respect their shareholders either, when the CEO and his/her cronies can get away with it at least.  Employees probably have it worst with customers and shareholders on the same level.  But with one crucial difference:  It is relatively hard to screw over a few shareholders without screwing them all.  The opposite is true for customers.  Few care if a few customers get the shaft, but they can't screw all the customers for long.  Eventually that screws the shareholders too, and they wake up and replace the CEO.  The former CEO's cronies get weeded out too.  No guarantee that their replacements will be any better but the odds get better the crappier they were.  Kind of like weeding out rookies!  But the bad news is that those bad apples will find their way into upper management at another corporation shortly.

Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #37 on: February 17, 2020, 07:23:02 pm »
They don't really respect their shareholders either
That is the main problem: lack of work ethics.

Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #38 on: February 17, 2020, 09:34:44 pm »
While searching for what games recently got remasters, stumbled upon the near perfect Quake 2 remaster. The level geometry is intact, but they added modern light system and material info for textures. They actually put a lot of effort into these textures, compared to the blurry mess of WC3 remaster, which turned out looking worse than the original low res textures. Apparently Blizzard is the only one company having management and art troubles.


Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #39 on: February 17, 2020, 09:49:31 pm »
First time I've seen a 3 page thread where all but 3 contributors are currently online.   :)

Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #40 on: February 21, 2020, 09:46:45 pm »
The only good thing about the reforged (character models), was done by a Malaysian company Lemon Sky Studios, which apparently did cinematics for previous Blizzard games:
https://www.lemonskystudios.com/

Should have outsourced the whole remaster I guess.

I think the main mismanagement is that Activision tried to enforce single corporate culture onto all its sub-parts and just throwing people between departments at random, which naturally led to a disaster, with key professionals, like Metzen, being fired or leaving on their own. That problem seems to be here since the Mythical Man Month book, about the disaster at IBM, when they tried to speedup project development by throwing at it irrelevant people from different departments or just hired newbies, without any training and team building. It sometimes works with football teams, where they play a game with well defined rules, but fails bad for software and art projects.

The right solution would have been diversifying like Google, which created Alphabet super company to avoid mixing one brand with another, and to limit PR disaster to just one brand, in case some "google car" crashes into a wall. And to also have separate well trained teams on each project. Blizzard was known for PC strategies and RPGs with very good multiplayer, and their whole fan following was mostly PC gamers, so using the same brand to diversify into smartphone and console market was just retarded since the beginning. But then they used that brand to address their original fan base with irrelevant smartphone games. Even to non-business people it would have been obvious what could have happened. That means modern Blizzard management is either detached from reality, having some mass psychosis, or that is some sabotage from competitors, who bribed management into destroying the company (it is rumored that say Amiga was destroyed by Microsoft by bribing one manger).


Offline Nikita_Sadkov

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #41 on: February 27, 2020, 07:30:54 pm »
In the meantime fans used advances in AI interpolation to produce actually good remaster of the classic Blizzard's game:

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/47670-diablo-2-fan-remaster-upscale-project/

Guess the future is here! AI has finally surpassed human abilities :D

Activision-Blizzard themselves said they can't remaster Diablo II, because they have thrown the assets (including the source code) into garbage. What surprised me is that they openly admitted that, without understanding that it would be very insulting to fans. It is like taking an art piece in museum and tarnishing it on camera, and then asking "what is wrong with that?" No doubt a PR stunt, but not the one bringing you much love and respect.

« Last Edit: February 27, 2020, 07:36:49 pm by Nikita_Sadkov »

Offline Dioxine

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #42 on: February 27, 2020, 09:58:31 pm »

Guess the future is here! AI has finally surpassed human abilities :D

Activision-Blizzard themselves said they can't remaster Diablo II, because they have thrown the assets (including the source code) into garbage.

Another proof that overblown copyrights are harmful and should be seriously reconsidered (especially the part about full ownership rights being transferable from author to any entity). Apparently IP holders, such as Blizzard (but this is by far not a singular example) cannot be trusted to safeguard cultural goods which they  arrogantly took responsibility for. This act puts them in the same category (even if guilt is smaller) that Nazi book burners and Taliban buddha statue destroyers.

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #43 on: February 27, 2020, 10:22:10 pm »
The corporations are fully responsible for bribing lobbying the politicians for those overblown copyright laws.  See below for plagiarized fair use excerpt from https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/

"So, how, you might wonder, have companies like The Walt Disney Company managed to maintain copyrights on certain creations for almost 100 years? In the case of the Walt Disney Company, the answer is simple. It is powerful enough that it actually changed United States copyright law before its rights were going to expire."

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: What happened to Blizzard?
« Reply #44 on: February 28, 2020, 12:49:23 pm »
A situation where a movie studio shapes a large country's law is totally outside my Overton window. In other words, the idea seems too absurd and abstract to even consider, or have an opinion on.