• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Blizzard has appointed its first head of culture

nkarafo

Member
I wonder how much "better" gaming would be if people like this had to "fix" a team like this:

0nTP9I4d9VfMrqZsTrEyntdFfJE2HxLnpnAfBDw2LxA.jpg


Look at those edgy white males. This needs to be fixed, right?
 

rubenburgt

Member
Good for her, but can someone explain how blizzard Activision managed to stay active after all that mess? Is it because of Cod? I can't think of any other games of them being a hit nowadays.
 

Bragr

Banned
I guess I'm going to have to do this the hard way and watch you move the goalposts again...

Orchestrated guerilla-marketing tactics for Atlantic Records artists in the South Florida region for album releases and concerts.

Executed studio directives in five Florida markets

Executed customer engagement in a high-capacity retail location while working cross-functionally with multiple departments to ensure guest quality and safety.

Worked closely with digital, creative, research planners and production teams to efficiently deliver strategies, solutions, flawless execution and results to clients.

Oversaw all aspects of over 10 fully integrated, multi-cultural advertising campaigns from project inception to completion for branding, digital, radio, social and TV content while ensuring creative deliverables were aligned to brand voice and strategy.

Worked closely with digital, creative, research planners and production teams to efficiently deliver strategies, solutions, flawless execution and results to clients.

Oversaw all advertising aspects of brand launch in USA market including social media strategy, branding elements, digital billboards, print materials

Developed over 20 press releases, talking points and Q&A's regarding clients upcoming campaigns.

Overhauled influencer marketing efforts by creating detailed spreadsheets tailored per client based off target audience, engagement rate, content produced

Relaunched Norwegian Cruise Line’s loyalty program, Latitudes Rewards, along with developing strategy and creative to increase reach and guest loyalty through various communication channels.


Blizzard have hired an experienced marketing executive to manage internal staff and company culture problems. It's right there, in her own words.
What do you think she's supposed to do? working with many different companies and people like she has done is a rock-solid qualification for this job. This is a great resume for a person that's gonna manage people.
 

cash_longfellow

Gold Member
Thank god. Maybe she can return the studio to its former glory by ensuring the same productive working environment that created StarCraft, Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3 once again prevails. Blizzard needs a quick turn-around, I can only hope this does the trick and they're able to recapture the magic well before this generation is over.
I’m preeeeety sure those games were solid because the best people were hired to fill the roles…not people who are not great at their jobs just to meet some cultural quota Twitter said they needed to meet🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:

cash_longfellow

Gold Member
And this my friends, is exactly why we get pretty much 90% mediocre games now. I’m all for hiring all races, sexes, preferences to work on video games…but only when they are more qualified than the other people applying for the positions.
 

Tams

Member
What do you think she's supposed to do? working with many different companies and people like she has done is a rock-solid qualification for this job. This is a great resume for a person that's gonna manage people.
I mean, that list is full of marketing wank.

You'd have to go through each company to see they did after she left them, and ask people who worked at those places if it was actually her role that did anything, or if she was just there or a figurehead.

And I don't care enough to. I don't even care about Activison-Blizzard - they don't make any games I like or even play. I'm just here for the jokes (mostly at her expense).
 

WoJ

Member
These jobs are so fucking worthless. I work in a totally different industry and we have a full fledged executive reporting to the CEO getting paid as such, doing this shit as a full-time job. What a fucking waste of money these jobs are. People in these roles add no value to an organization and actively drain money from companies and in the case of a gaming company probably make the product worse.
 

yurinka

Member
I assume someone will complain and call them racists because she isn't black.
I wish her the best of lucks, let's hope she takes good decisions and fix any related issues they may have with common sense, without doing nonsensical woke stuff like demanding specific diversity quotes and so on.
 
Last edited:

Smiggs

Member
I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Some people here seem to think she's going to be some "minister of wokeness", but we all know Blizzard had some serious workplace issues going on, and not that long ago.

The stories that came out from Blizzard and their culture were beyond ridiculous. Maybe she will just try to reign in the good 'ol boys club, and hold people accountable, not turn the place into an insufferable woke hellhole. Who knows at this point.
 

nkarafo

Member
let's hope she takes good decisions and fix any related issues they may have with common sense, without doing nonsensical woke stuff like demanding specific diversity quotes and so on.

But these bullshit jobs are designed for that. These people will try to find problems where there aren't any, exaggerate small issues or fabricate some themselves. Otherwise there will be nothing to do to justify their position.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I wonder how much "better" gaming would be if people like this had to "fix" a team like this:

0nTP9I4d9VfMrqZsTrEyntdFfJE2HxLnpnAfBDw2LxA.jpg


Look at those edgy white males. This needs to be fixed, right?
At least their biggest sin was disagreeing about the creative direction of their games.

Now Blizzard... phew... where do I even begin... almost makes you miss the innocent times when John Romero was about to make you his bitch.
 

Jaybe

Member
No company seems to care about driving a culture of high performance any more. It’s not about results, it’s about public perception and coddling the weakest. One reason why most of these large companies are churning anemic middling filler.
 

yurinka

Member
I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Some people here seem to think she's going to be some "minister of wokeness", but we all know Blizzard had some serious workplace issues going on, and not that long ago.

The stories that came out from Blizzard and their culture were beyond ridiculous. Maybe she will just try to reign in the good 'ol boys club, and hold people accountable, not turn the place into an insufferable woke hellhole. Who knows at this point.
But these bullshit jobs are designed for that. These people will try to find problems where there aren't any, exaggerate small issues or fabricate some themselves. Otherwise there will be nothing to do to justify their position.
I know, but maybe could do it in the proper way:
  • Implement some fair protocols to make sure merits are the ones taken into account to hire and promote and that gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, political views, age, origins etc aren't involved on it.
  • Implement some fair protocols to make sure complains about gender, color, religion, sexual orientation, origins are properly handle and make sure real issues are properly addressed instead of hiding them under the carpet. While also punishing woke fake complaints to get rid of both.
  • To forbid alcohol in their offices and highly reduce it in company events.
  • To implement some common sense rules proper behavior that I assume they already have to make sure everyone feels safe there (no need to go crazy with pronouns and stuff like that).
  • Implement some policies and benefits for women who recently had kids, extra days off for hurtful period or stuff like that.
  • Implement production related changes to reduce or remove crunch to enhance productivity and both long term physical and mental health of the workers.
  • Implement healthy off work optional team building activities like creating teams to play some sports, visits to museums, view movies in the cinema, cooking lessons and stuff like that.
And well, I assume people from HR or from their company would add many related things that I assume almost everyone would agree and see as positive.

I don't see it as a full time job, but as part of common sense work of HR, something done -or at least sould be done- in every big company. To have a specific full time job for it I think it's only white signaling PR for the modern times and that only leads to implement unnecesary stuff to justify their role.

They could have a studio culture figure, but as a job title for someone of their PR staff who could also do other HR tasks, without needing it to be a "minister of wokeness" or something like that. Just to make sure they improve they improve their studio culture and that everyone feels better there without needing to go woke (I mean to discriminate males, whites, straights, cis, pronouns everywhere, etc).

No company seems to care about driving a culture of high performance any more. It’s not about results, it’s about public perception and coddling the weakest. One reason why most of these large companies are churning anemic middling filler.
I think both things are complementary. In fact, to improve studio culture -something apparently needed in their case- may lead to performance improvements like workers being more productive and reduce temporal or permanent leaves.
 
Last edited:

Smiggs

Member
No company seems to care about driving a culture of high performance any more. It’s not about results, it’s about public perception and coddling the weakest. One reason why most of these large companies are churning anemic middling filler.
I don't think it's anywhere that simple. I think most of these large companies have gotten to the point where everything is completely formulaic, and are much less willing to take risks.

I get it, making games gets more expensive all the time. So I understand checking boxes to make the game appeal to as many people as possible, but you also lose the magic that some older games had when they took chances.

Look at WoW in 2004 vs. today. It's MUCH more accessible and easier to play today, but it lacks the charm it once had, even with all of the issues it had at the time (I realize I'm being a bit reductive on this topic).
 
Last edited:

LordCBH

Member
What they REALLY need to hire is a “VP of Understanding What Made Us Great So We Can Be Great Again, Because We Havent Been Grest In 20 Years.”
 

nkarafo

Member
At least their biggest sin was disagreeing about the creative direction of their games.

Honestly, do you think this company of nerds didn't exchange sexist/edgy jokes on each other all day or something? I'm not saying they did for certain but would it be a huge problem if they had their edgy fun and nobody had a major problem with this? Would it be a problem if they tried to cope with working overtime under strict deadlines this way?

Today, it would be impossible for the old ID team to exist, not without backlash directed to them for not having any women or black people or muslims or whatever in their team. They would probably have to hire a diversity/culture consultant and replace half of the team with diverse hires. Maybe even separate Romero from Carmack, because two white male nerds together is way too many white male nerds, who knows. So now you have a team with people who have no chemistry between them whatsoever and everyone feels like walking on egg shells every day. This isn't how you make DOOM. That's how you make Mass Effect Andromeda.

I understand Blizzard is a much bigger company, unlike the old ID. So some rules need to be implemented in order for all the people who work there can co-exist. I get that. But i still don't think it's a bad thing to have a smaller team of shitheads as long as they do their job and don't harm anyone (unlike Blizzard obviously where harm was done).
 
Last edited:

Drizzlehell

Banned
Honestly, do you think this company of nerds didn't exchange sexist/edgy jokes on each other all day or something?
Of course they did. But as long as it was just jokes exchanged by mutual friends and it didn't harm anybody then it's not an issue. I don't see any point in debating whether a team like that could exist today either because that was then and today things are different.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fuz

Rambotito

Member
Head of culture, you say? I guess she will be responsible for gastronomy, festivals, traditions, norms and familial structure. I winder if she will choose the nuclear family or the extended one? Tough choice for a company.
 

Tams

Member
If the accusations weren't enough to convince me a position like that is needed, seeing the prejudging against her before she even starts certainly would.
Lol, you think any of the shite we spout (yourself included) on here matters?

They live in a completely different world. Occasionally they send an underling down to the likes of here. Usually that ends up with the underling being shat upon (usually rightfully) and they piss off.
 
Last edited:
If this position helps with development, making better games, do not force things down the throat, make the environment less toxic then I have no problem. But if it was created for only PR purposes, will make things worst, and do not help with development, and things go from there, then:

200.gif
 

Mess

Member
I read the title and thought that Blizzard was hiring an Oxford Professor of Ancient History or someone along those lines to help them with world building. Then I remembered it's 2022 :messenger_weary:
 
Last edited:

Fbh

Member
I hope she spends the first year extensively reviewing all the art and decorations around the office, and replacing them with fruit paintings where necessary.


Good for her, but can someone explain how blizzard Activision managed to stay active after all that mess? Is it because of Cod? I can't think of any other games of them being a hit nowadays.

COD continues to be one of the best selling and most popular games out there every year, even an under performing entry like Vanguard outsold almost everything else.
Candy Crush continues to make more money than most AAA games.
Wow, while not as popular as before, still has millions of monthly paying customers.
Hearthstone has quietly continued doing well and still has millions of monthly active players
Diablo 2 Remaster sold over 5 million units

Even mismanaged they still have a lot of popular games and franchises. And let's be honest, most people don't really care about the internal drama at the studio
 
Top Bottom