Blizzard’s bad year and why being indie is so cool
By: Yossi Gershon
Tags: Gaming, Esport, New Media, YouTube, Twitch

Blizzard’s bad year and why being indie is so cool

Those of you who know me know that im Blizzard’s biggest fan. I played all of their games, I watch every blizzcon INCLUDING the cosplay competition! I have met Blizzard employees both virtually and physically and I have a friend that up until recently worked in their HQ. I am a Daimond Overwatch player, a Legend Hearthstone player and was peak 2,450 rating in World of Warcraft so if you think im biased against Blizzard — I am most certainly not.

The fact that Blizzard had a bad year is undeniable, but I will give a minute to run down Blizzard’s most prominent failures so that we’re all on the same page:

Diablo — Diablo had one of the worst announcements in gaming history. Diablo Eternal was announced for mobile on Blizzcon and fans were not happy to say the least. Overwatch — A series of changes and new characters have created a frustrating imbalance in the game, resulting in many content creators and players leaving the game. Youtube is now filled with “Why im quitting Overwatch” videos by the biggest names, and the community is furious by how slow Blizzard fixes and balances the game. They are slower than ever to respond and sometimes it takes several months to patch the tiniest of changes. Moreover, the Overwatch League had almost half a year break and Overwatch’s popularity is in an all time low. World of Warcraft — The new expansion “Battle for Azeroth” failed to deliver and resulted in WoW’s last active popular streamer “Asmongold” quitting the game. Blizzard also released a series of expensive mounts and new paid content that made the fans even angrier. Heroes of the Storm — Blizzard closed HOTS’ eSports division and essentially scheduled an early burial to the game. RIP.

I don’t have much to say against Hearthstone but in previous years, when an expansion came out, Twitch had an overflow of Hearthstone streamers playing and Hearthstone was at the top for a few days. It certainly did not last long in the latest expansion “Rastakhan’s Rumble” compared to previous years. Also the lead game director Ben Brode left Blizzard, a thing that cannot be taken lightly, especially when taking into account how influential Brode was in the Hearthstone team.

These are only the most popular cases. On a more general level, if you happen to go into any of Blizzard’s forums these days, the top posts are very likely to be some sort of a rant on one the of many matters that piss the community off. But why did this happen? When did the friendly Blizzard become another greedy corporate?

I have a theory i love to call “The indie theory”. Gamers these days are more involved than ever. We used to play games like “Doom” or “Age of Empires”, enjoy and stay put. Today, in the Twitter and Reddit era, gamers are more involved than ever. They are involved in the process of game making and know how the industry ticks. It sometimes raises their expectations to impossibly high levels. They expect a perfect game. It’s crazy to think that only 10 years ago, we could play a half broken game, pay more than 60$ for it and still like it and have nothing bad to say about it. Today? games can cost 20$ and players would ask for a refund for the smallest bugs, or go rant in social media about how bad the game is.

Nonetheless, gaming companies are still to blame. The loot-box age has brought corporate greed to a whole new level and it’s showing. Gaming companies expect players to pay for new DLC’s, skins and features on top of the initial game’s cost and gamers are unhappy.

The biggest problem that huge gaming companies face is how slow and pretentious they have become. Sometimes it takes companies like EA and Blizzard months to respond to players’ criticism. They make an oopsie and by the time they release an official response players have lost their patience and no matter what response comes out eventually, players are going to stay mad and disappointed. Companies are so afraid to admit they made a mistake because they will have to explain it to investors and their stock price would go down. In result, it takes them ages to respond and the community suffers.

Even a company like Blizzard that used to be “By gamers for gamers” now feels so distant and unreachable, the player base feels they are disconnected from their own titles and feel no remorse towards it. It is just another company that came to make profit on the back of us gamers.

Now let’s compare the situation to indie companies, or more correctly, companies that act like they are indie. For example, let’s take a look at Bluehole that made PUBG and Epic Games that made Fortnite.

Player Unknown BattleGrounds came out to the market as one of the most broken games I have ever seen. You could die randomly from just about anything: Falling, getting out of a car, crawling or even touching a tree — you name it and it probably could kill you for no reason. Do you think players were outraged? Nope. Why? Because Bluehole is a small and unknown company. The game was in “Open Beta” for about a year and players to this day give PUBG a chance even though little was done to fix it, and it’s essentially still a broken game.

Fortnite on the other hand was created by Epic Games, by no means an indie company. The studio developed quite a few popular games like Paragon and is no stranger to multiplayer games. BUT! and it’s a big one, Epic games were wise to choose an indie approach towards their customers. Fortnite is “obviously” still on Open Beta, almost 2 years since it’s launch and that’s not all. When Epic released season 7 with a broken weapon that killed everyone, the sword, the community complained. Not a week passed and Epic removed the weapon indefinitely and published an apology on their Twitter account. The player base was quick to forget the sword was ever in the game and the community is happy as ever.

Epic releases an update to Fortnite every week and its’ moderators wander around in Discord servers to talk to the community. Epic also collaborates directly with hundreds of content creators and co-operates with them on a daily basis. If you tweet at Epic there’s a good chance you will get a reply from them in a matter of minutes. All of the above helps us gamers feel like we’re in good hands, like Epic Games cares about us and the community and that’s exactly how it should be.

The indie theory doesn’t stop at gaming. Youtube and Twitch also have this. Twitch, for example, has the popular streamer “Ninja”. Ninja is by far the most successful streamer of all time but has made some big mistakes that are making him fall from grace, FAST. Only a few months ago Ninja had over 200k subs, now he has less than 100. Why? well, he bought a mansion, partnered with Redbull and is now streaming from what looks like a Spaceship. I think Youtube’s most popular Ninja videos these days are “We miss the old Ninja”. That’s because Ninja changed his persona from your friendly gamer that wants to succeed to a tycoon. Who wants to support a tycoon? he doesn’t need our support…

Some learned from Ninja’s mistakes. Tfue for example, another Fortnite streamer can’t pass 30 minutes on his stream without mentioning how poor he is. Tfue has 40k concurrent viewers, makes a couple hundred thousands a month, and still, when asked “why not buy a better keyboard” he answers “ain’t got enough money for that”. Know what’s crazy? IT WORKS! Tfue’s popularity is growing each day and why? because we all want to be there for the small guy.

On Youtube it’s on a whole another level. Youtubers who turned their channels into companies have crashed spectacularly. Nigahiga and Smosh turned their success stories into companies with over 10 employees, and viewers no longer feel like they enjoy watching them. They have editors, writers, directors, cameramen and it just doesn’t quite feel the same.

Pewdiepie, god of Youtube himself, predicted this issue and was wise enough not to fall into that trap. 2 Years ago, when every other Youtuber made a “Check out my new car” episode, made a parody, showcasing his 2,000$ car. He understood flexing his money on his viewers won’t do any good to his channel. With tens of millions of dollars made from years on Youtube’s top, Pewdiepie almost changed nothing in his setting. Small studio, a camera and a mic. No fancy cars, no 10 men crew, no mansions. Just a Youtuber and us the viewers. Now when an Indian media company threatens to dethrone him from his #1 spot on Youtube, viewers and creators in the platform have all risen to the cause in helping him get almost 10 million new subscribers in a matter of months, to help him stay on the top. I believe that if Pewdiepie would have flexed his money all over the place no one would have been there for him.

Why? Because why support a big firm when you can support someone who could be your best friend?