Blizzard Dev Leak Explains Why Jeff Kaplan Quit | Asmongold Reacts

blizzard Dev leak explains why Jeff Kaplan quit OverWatch oh uh oh let's see it it's time this is why Jeff quit what's going on guys it's Frito here for your OverWatch for a second I thought that was Jeff talking like just for like [ __ ] a fraction I was like wait what the [ __ ] a YouTuber friend of mine sir swag released a video where he outlines quotes from an anonymous source that he has from Blizzard Entertainment a developer that knows the inner workings of what was going wrong on Team Four the dev team that was working on OverWatch 2 and the now canceled PVE I reached out to Sir swag as a precaution to say hey bro is this legit yes it sure is he has my confidence and Trust we'll break down the details of the leak and as well I think this illuminates a lot of the growing story arc of Jeff Kaplan leaving and the inner turmoil with the company the anonymous source says the cancellation was one thousand percent in upper management executive issue it was all about profit margins that they were looking at a game like Diablo Immortal which was making two million dollars a day and that changed the X 2 million two million dollars a day bro I think we need to make one of these games like we yeah we're in the wrong business guys we have been messing this up yeah I I could we could make a much better one expectations for this star Forge online he was looked at as increasingly irrelevant and not going to earn money in the long term keep in mind that just the live service multiplayer game that they already had all of a sudden turned on a new Revenue stream just by adding a battle pass and cosmetics I feel like it's hard for me to just automatically believe this because like it just seems like it's too based to be true like it just confirms so many biases that like oh I don't know you can see why higher Executives would look at that and say why do we want to invest in making this big complicated expensive game when we can make money in easier ways yeah these claims stand to reason to me but it gets worse during the pandemic there was slowed production and as progress got worse and they struggled to meet deadlines there began a vicious cycle that was doomed to fail the league talks about Talent leaving or getting reorganized to other projects but also keep in mind that there was the lawsuit which maybe some employees left due to protest but as the production due to other reasons they actually pulled resources from the team which was a doomed to fail strategy and a little bit at odds because the team is always publicly talking about how they've expanded the team doubled the size of the team but no offense when they bring up that's what they always say they said we doubled the size of the team and we cut the content in half boom problem solved some of the new developers they are often quite young and no offense to young people but a lot of the best devs and the seasoned veterans the ones that usually have enough experience or knowledge well those are beginning to get thin as many of them have left to other companies so the anonymous source speaks quite contrary to a lot of the public messaging that we're getting from blizzard home if you pay close attention multiple blizzard devs in the chats live streams BlizzCon line the blog posts say how they've doubled the size of the team increased way bigger than they've ever been before but at the same time they're admitting publicly as well that the workload they had was too much it really sucks that the developers have to I don't think that's necessarily double speak they were just trying to scale up and they couldn't do it be themselves the marketing mouthpiece for the game as well so they sort of have to tell the lies that Bobby caddick would want them to tell keep in mind this is the same guy that would reportedly write verbatim the responses that his figureheads would say in response to the lawsuits so you really have to be careful that was not reported that literally was proven to happen well absorbing any of the pr speak from anyone yet blizzard as if it's them speaking themselves no no they're speaking for Bobby so they talk about that that's right it's Bobby's World and we're just living in it guys keep that in mind banding but does that mean part-time work does that mean the commissioned artists that they have to churn out the Skins content for the game that you have to imagine they pay less than a full-time employee you're not really going to pin them down on any logically congruent storyline because somehow they both want us to believe that the team is massive big and capable but also they have to apologize for canceling the massive big project that they had and instead transferring all their energy to something that is lower on production cost and a higher return on investment banking a wonderful game that will build the franchise's IP strength overall no Bobby doesn't like that he likes profit margins small investment big payoff instead of a bigger investment and also a big payoff no no the amount of profit is all that matters another contradiction from I think we could have gotcha in OverWatch three you know like imagine if the Reinhardt suit with the ax would make him do more damage to armored characters or make him like if he had the axon he would ignore the armor and he would just hit their health pool instead like that would be pretty cool Anonymous leak they said a lot of the OverWatch 1.3 work from home policy was enacted meaning that employees had to actually live near the blizzard campus where it's very expensive this is directly in contrary to Jared Ness who says the opposite publicly but again I feel like this is a case where Blizzard's PR speak tries to have it both ways dated people quit because of the work from home I mean let's be real there's probably bad [ __ ] going on at the company and people are leaving because of it but they don't want to just go out public and be like yeah [ __ ] is all kinds of [ __ ] up guys like y'all have no idea like this place is a [ __ ] disaster this place is a zoo okay so yeah executives are [ __ ] Bobby's a dick uh the people that are running the company don't even know what the video games they're doing are uh you know some guy told me yesterday they thought OverWatch was Counter-Strike and he's the product manager so I don't know how that's gonna go but we're trying to figure things out one step at a time and uh oh yeah there's also like they they said now we have to pay for lunch yeah we don't get free lunch anymore like they're not really going to come out and say that right they're going to be like guys listen hey you know we've had some struggles but things are going well ultimately have a significant effect on your productivity no and if the team is big and capable well where's the product for it it really sucks to have to have these developers speak on the behalf of the company which is funny because with wow like blizzard said hey we're adding in like a hundred new employees for the wow team and we're getting more content for a while that's crazy huh wow how does that happen give us these lies that just don't add up but ultimately we know who to blame it should have been no surprise to anyone the anonymous source goes on to say something that I think we all know is that the devs really just did the best with what they were given and as they've said publicly developing the talent trees for every single hero in the game was an insane proposition I feel stupid it was stupid to even try to do that they weren't designed with that in mind every single class has the same type of talent tree that's it's dumb wonder if they would have been better off just like taking eight heroes or so and making that game first just with them because from Reddit responses from the devs they've told us that it was easier to design a brand new hero for PVP than to do the skill trees which had all these different options for PVE even though it doesn't have to probably would believe that because having to balance all of those things remember blizzard did this in like shadowlands and BFA where like all they would do is run around putting out fires because some sort of like weird trinket interaction you know is overpowered for fire Mages on three different fights like it yeah it probably would be awful to try to balance all that [ __ ] be as balanced somewhere between 30 and 50 talents for each hero in the game that's an insane amount of content especially when you think of like an action RPG I'm thinking Diablo Borderlands 3. there's only a handful of characters in the game and they span off into a few what they should have done is what they did with Warcraft 3. so like in Warcraft 3 there was like this separate rexar mission that you could do that was supposed to simulate what World of Warcraft was supposed to be and like you would play through that mission and level up rexar and get more powerful and like talk to different characters it's like really really cool and they should have just done that with like probably I think the best character to do it with probably would be like Soldier 76 because it's like the most traditional like RT or sorry not RTS FPS character and he has a heel so there's like a lot of different ways that you can like micromanage him like they should have just had to be Soldier 76 or something like that like playing through individual missions and then start there so at least people have something to work off of or go off of trees but it's not so much more than the amount that they're saying there if they did try to do that game it would have been the biggest action RPG type game of all time so it's really heartbreaking to see them not be given the resources to make that game of the decade that it could have been but it makes sense when you think to the way that Activision I don't know I mean maybe it would have maybe it wouldn't have like I'm not going to just be like oh yeah it definitely would have been so amazing like I mean like I mean Destiny Warframe like all these games are really good but they're not like transforming the game industry every single game is about them like they're not on the level of like valorant or anything like that so like I'm not going to just be like yeah this game would have been so [ __ ] great maybe maybe not blizzard King runs all of their IP Candy Crush Call of Duty they want OverWatch to be like that and it needs to be a different game if they wanted to make a real game instead of a cash flip with low investment requirement and high return on investment AKA milking out IPS and giving the least amount of product for the most amount of money it's a really unfortunate business strategy because if you look at a game like World of Warcraft which is just outrageously massive OverWatch 2 could have been the next thing it could have reached towards the MMO aspirations that Aaron Keller talked about in the day you want to know what my hot take on this was that uh I actually don't think that they should have gone about it with like the heroes I think they should have had it be like you're your own character rather than playing one of the heroes of OverWatch like you just can't like having a hero shooter that has like 50 different characters balancing all of that like why because number one like you can give people a way to experience the story second hand that way while also giving people ways to like play individual characters I think it would have been fine is it valorant like that with agents yeah I guess it kind of is I mean I I I I don't know like I think that was the mistake is trying to make it to where people were playing Heroes I have a Blog in my previous video it could have reached that size of game but at the moment the best thing we're going to get is like a full campaign in like years of time which I suppose is better than nothing but it's nowhere near the artistic vision of what these devs wanted to do and that's where I want to transition to talk about Jeff Kaplan where it's blatantly obvious now that he was not signing up for any more of this ATV IBS and while you guys know I had a lot of philosophical differences with Jeff over the years I'll be straight up the guy just did not like me at all I was a thorn in his side for years but I always respected the man's integrity and artistic vision and very unique route to arriving to a competitive multiplayer game that was unlike any other because Jeff worked on the wow team for so many years and as Aaron Keller said in his blog post the team wore wow devs they thought of things in more of the magical player immersion point of view whereas other competitive titles let's say valorant are all about the competition every step of the way which does have its benefits I will admit but you can see the weakness is clear as day the characters are less defined they often aren't as imaginative or intuitive so over the years I had to grow a level of respect for the alternate route that guys like Jeff Kaplan or the now former lead hero designer Jeff Goodman would take to design they look to maximize the fun first and worry about the competitive viability later it gave us the goats Meadow we were trapped in but it also gave us 2016's game of the year so I tend to take the good with the bad yeah I think it's more important for a game to be fun than for it to be balanced at high competitive levels but I do think that the problem is that if a game isn't balanced at all and there's like obvious outliers then it's not fun for anyone like I remember like sojourn is a good example for this right it's like at what level is sojourn op well it Grandmaster I'm pretty sure it was I saw a defran complaining about it all the time but like if you're playing in silver or gold sojourn's probably not OP and it's fine so it depends on the way the character is designed Bridget ruined OverWatch I don't know like people say that a lot I wasn't playing at the time now let's look back to quotes from the 2019 announcement of OverWatch 2. keep in mind that many of us believe that this was pushed out the door because Bobby katik wanted to change the news cycle surrounding BlizzCon with growing controversy over the blitz Chung incident so they had to come out with the big announcement then even though it's pretty clear in hindsight they weren't really ready to do so I would believe that right off the bat yep that's that sounds like a Bobby activity right there yep I believe it stage Jeff explained the endlessly replayable missions that they called hero missions and he said it's what Adventure Mode is to Diablo it was aimed to have a progression system with custom abilities and talents then he went on to explain that they wanted to redefine the sequel and this is where I always thought it was very tone deaf to speak this way because while Jeff was trapped at Activision Blizzard where they're used to sequel earned like Call of Duty coming out every year losing all of the progress cosmetics and everything to play a different game year on year the rest of the industry had already changed to free to play in 2019 fortnite was the biggest game in the world and at the start of that year Apex Legends launched so we had two games destroying OverWatch at the same time which were free to play and had all dude Apex on release was so good I remember I would play Apex every single day it was so [ __ ] fun man like and then after you were done playing you would watch ninja and shroud play it remember how good that was oh man oh dude it was so so good Apex is too sweaty now that's just the way games are they get too serious ly for that one time I streamed OverWatch and then I don't know if he's still in here but Josh balanced out it he's one of my mods [ __ ] almost clutched up a 20 kill game and soloed the entire team and got to the very end of the game and lost like a 2V1 it was actually the most intense it was like the first game that we had ever played on stream so Jeff was talking about for the sequel already free in the game so Jeff wanted his sequel to bring all of the old players along with so you could keep all your cosmetics and you'd still be able to play with the new players in OverWatch 2. we never really got the full explanation of what that meant because it didn't make any sense but over the years we're able to stitch it together and what it was going to be is that the PVP would just get updated and the PVE would be an entirely separate Diablo game with its own campaign and end game and you would pay for that new experience but you could also just stick to PVP if you wanted they would be separate that was always a competitive disadvantage though because the Activision Blizzard they were a bit in a bubble with the Box product model being so profitable for them the writing was on the wall even at that point yeah box price games are just not the meta anymore The Meta now is free to play games that have microtransactions because box price games work here and box price games work here but free to play games work here free to play games work here and they work here and they work down here too if the rest of the industry was on the box product model then yeah that would have been revolutionary but with so many free-to-play games already robbing attention from OverWatch that was going to be doomed to fail and think about this from Jeff kaplan's point of view he gets to be the scapegoat that goes on stage to over promise this massive game that they're trying to make that Aaron Keller cleared up on how audacious the vision of this was that not only did Jeff want that each hero having 30 to 50 talents in a PVE endlessly replayable Diablo game behind the scenes they wanted another higher bigger game a MMO game over that after they made OverWatch 2. that's what OverWatch three yeah that's what my expectation was going to be is that they were going to transition OverWatch into being a game like destiny I had heard that from people before I had hoped that was what was going to happen it was going to be so at some point in the company based on the links Bobby's World from Sir swag they're looking at the numbers of all of this and how Jeff wants to scale this up and I'm assuming a suit said No in fact I'll give you less resources good luck doing whatever you want it always felt odd to me because Jeff Kaplan was I think it's also like just trying to make something like that work might be really really hard to do like I mean you can blame it on the executives anyway but I bet doing it's probably really hard so it would make sense that they would struggle with it a lot I I don't know I don't think it's that big of a surprise I think that uh next uh April 1st blizzard should announce OverWatch 3 and tell everybody that the PVP is coming for sure this time all right guys it's gonna be for sure this time guys they're gonna have talent trees and they're gonna they're gonna have unique weapons too vice president of Blizzard Entertainment as the coverage of the lawsuit and everything has gone on we all know that there's really just one king at Activision Blizzard it's Bobby every other position of leadership just be a token and hey I mean vice president was already probably a token position but it felt strange that he couldn't have more pull to get what he wanted but adding everything up now in hindsight I think Jeff was looking down the barrel of the change of strategy that was being pushed onto him from top down seeing everything that he wanted to build be reduced to rubble and Jeff has to sit there and think does he want to have to come out again and give this massive apology that he shouldn't have to make I don't think Jeff was probably I mean like you really look at it from his perspective what this guy's saying really makes a lot of sense yeah I mean that this really does make a lot of [ __ ] sense have wanted to lie to us and say that PVE is coming and then months later down the line Prince claimed that it's in this diminished capacity after he had just years ago on stage promised the world I can see why he'd want to leave for that let someone else have to tell those lies he was not gonna walk the plank because while I have been on board for the free to play change expensive Cosmetics I don't mind paying a battle pass because I like the content I get in it I enjoy it more than loot boxes I like the seasonal model I like the update cycle we have I even will probably like the campaign so it's not even really necessarily any of these decisions that I hate because I never needed a Diablo game for OverWatch because Diablo 4 was coming anyway I like Diablo for a place the thing that I can't stand is the bait and switch is the lying is the thought that maybe I bought more skins thinking they were still making that big game that they did not tell us they have canceled when they knew they think that's the way a lot of people are is they thought they were gonna get uh you know they would buy skins in the game and invest a lot into the game like not not investors in money but like play the game a lot and you know get attached to it because they knew that it was going to get a lot better it's like people that like imagine like they have a pre-patch for an expansion and wow and everybody resubs to play the game to get ready for the new expansion and then blizzard comes out and it's like guys listen listen we don't really have listen there's making a video game is really hard okay it's the first thing I gotta say second thing is that the new one is just I mean you know it's I mean a lot I mean you know you're still gonna be able to level up it's just you I mean there's no you're not gonna be able to go to the new zone no there's no new dungeon so you can run the same Dungeons and get experience again though that before they even launch OverWatch too they flew creators out like myself to show us all the amazing things they were doing for PVP and when we kept nagging them especially me by the way the most annoying of any of the creators asking the hardest questions behind the scenes always with only a few other of my peers that even come close to how much I hold Blizzard's feet to the fire we kept nagging about PVE and we never got a response I don't think I've ever used a cuss word on this channel [ __ ] you blizzard didn't they get rid of this thank you for lying to my face into all of our other creators getting us on board with a strategy that you were not disclosing fully the changes and downgrades you were making I am never trusting another thing you say ever again because I will have to admit I was lure this guy is [ __ ] pissed dude I can't that went zero to sixty real quick God damn by the personality and Goodwill from the people who are working on the front lines but fooled into believing that they speak genuinely they often do but they also speak PR speak for Bobby codic like everyone else does at that company and you can't expect anything more from that I am beyond and that's not even really their fault you've got to remember that these are employees they are doing their job and it sucks you can be mad at him but it's important to just like nah I wouldn't take it too personally okay they're just following or what are they gonna do yeah what are they gonna do to irate about how we as the entire Community have been treated by Bobby Connick it's been his fault the entire way through and the leaks just keep compounding if you remember leaks from a while ago from an associate producer that went to Riot games saying that Bobby codic would come down after telling the dev team to work on one big Direction and switch gears entirely ruining progress now on top of it we have leaks saying that they would cut resources and make the project doomed to fail by having ridiculous expectations funded by starvation remember how cool this cinematic was man I remember me and McConnell dude we saw this [ __ ] it was like oh man this is gonna be awesome guys in resource tactics I'll end this rant today by reminding you Jeff kaplan's final response before leaving the company written almost as if it was on a napkin in lower case Jeff somebody had a personal note he says I'm leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years it was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes so people put more effort into leaving an Esports team than this he was just like all right yeah I'm out such a passionate audience I want to express my deep appreciation people put more how many of y'all ever had a girl where somebody would write a longer message of why they're leaving the guild patient to everyone at blizzard who supported our games our game teams and our players but I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the Journey of Creation with me never accept the world as it appears to be always dare to see it for what it could be I hope you do the same Gigi Jeffrey Kaplan and of course a notable exemption here the silence on certain aspects of the company is deafening supporting his developers as he always did and very clearly throwing shade at the suits that sabotaged his dream project so much so that he was willing to leave it after being one of the longest running developers at the company who helped build back in the day Jeff Jeff Kaplan used to be the main dude in WoW back in vanilla wow and BC and wrath and you know what he played he played a warrior those were some good days oh man those were some great days Sky rocketing World of Warcraft and transitioned into another team to work on Project Titan which eventually transformed into OverWatch and I can't help but imagine if Bobby Katic was willing to pay himself less and the talented people making the things that make him all that money more if we could have just had more wonderful things probably watch one was a Beacon of Hope in the game industry when there was a lot of also Rand type shooter games out OverWatch 2 was supposed to be the walk as Aaron Keller describes it instead as we know that Vision will never be realized at this pace at the level of commitment that Bobby caddock is willing to give this Dev team let me know what you think about all this in the comment section down below if you enjoyed this video please be sure to leave it a like and don't forget to subscribe and click the Bell icon to actually get notified when our videos come out that's been it for me I've been freedo if you're OverWatch I'll see you guys next time dude this guy went so hard where he was like you know what blizzard [ __ ] you [ __ ] you for lying to me [ __ ] you for everything man I [ __ ] hate you guys oh my God my expectation of OverWatch and like my excitement for the game is pretty much at zero like I I have no enthusiasm for OverWatch anymore because I know what it's never going to be and maybe one day I will be I will be proven wrong and I look forward to that day but it certainly seems like that day's not going to come any [ __ ] time soon you know

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 859,090

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, ZackRawrr

Id: HxPbdtZ770c

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023