Diablo 3 Developers React Angrily to David Brevik Interview

Posted 20 August 2012 by Flux

Rush posted his interview with Diablo series creator David Brevik last night, and as everyone who has watched it or read the transcript knows, Dave was quite honest and candid with his answers, and wasn’t afraid to criticize features he’s not very fond of in Diablo III. He didn’t say anything we haven’t heard before, and his criticisms were about 1/1000th as angry as your typical flaming Battle.net forum post, but they seem to have really gotten under the skin of some of the D3 developers.

The quotes come from Chris Haga’s Facebook page, where he posted about the interview, and then received comments from a number of other Blizzard employees, including prominent members of the Diablo III dev team. Again, these are on Haga’s Facebook page; this isn’t coming from private messages or email or anything hacked. Thanks to an anonymous source for spotting them and throwing me the tip.

What’s got them so mad? I don’t think it’s Dave’s comments about the game, since after all, everything he said has been said far more forcefully and angrily a million times by now. I think it’s 1) the fact that he’s a developer, 2) that he created the game in the first place, and 3) his comments about how great the old Blizzard North D2 team was, and how none of the current D3 devs have experience making ARPGs.

Point #3 makes two assertions that are true as far as I know, and I think Dave meant it as a compliment to his old friends and coworkers… but it’s not hard to see how the current D3 devs took it as an insult. Drama!

Update: A few hours later Gazilli0n issued IncGamers with a statement reading

“We admire Blizzard and Blizzard games.  David was asked about Diablo 3 and gave his honest opinion and we stand by him 100%.  Marvel Heroes is David’s vision and is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. We’ll be in closed beta soon, so visit MarvelHeroes.com if you want to check it out.” – Leo Olebe, VP Marketing Gazillion Entertainment.

 

 

Tagged As: | Categories: Controversy, Dave Brevik, Jay Wilson, Steve Parker
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244 Opinions have been expressed on “Diablo 3 Developers React Angrily to David Brevik Interview”
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  • +101
    Bobby Kotick
    August 20, 2012 at 06:38

    Truth hurts ouch!

    and

    “Steven Parker: ?”They didn’t choose what I would have, so it sucks!” Sucks to hear.

    Andrew Silvernail: Don’t worry about it Haga, you made the fastest selling PC game of all time. He made Hellgate: London.”

    Hellgate London was great actually and D3 sold fast thanks to the previous Diablo games, no one expected a pile of flaming **** it turned out to be.

    • +19
      Kno Whows
      August 20, 2012 at 06:45

      I liked your original comment;

      “They deserve it. Game sucks.”

    • “the fastest selling PC game of all time…”

      With a ravenous fan base who’d been waiting ten years!

      This is the same mindset that the film and music industries use to keep shovelling out mediocre product, as long as it sells.

      • They will pay for that arrogance.
        Can’t wait to see them selling D3Expansion.It’s like selling the new Iphone5 and after 2 weeks you realize that is crap.But because the name milions of ppls already bought it.Pure Scam :P Enjoy our money guys.Better fix that game because that will be your over as a company.

    • Notice how they throw hate at incgamers, a site that has thrown so much free publicity at their game franchise since before many of those clowns were even employed at Blizzard.

      P.S: In before the avalanche of incredulous fanboys finding ways to spin this arrive.

    • +5
      JAYRETARDED
      August 21, 2012 at 10:16

      JAY FAT PIG RETARDED SPONSORISED BY MAC DONALDS HAHAHAHAHHAHAH

      BLIZZARD NORTH POWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

    • Fun fact:
      Flagship Studios was founded in 2003 so, at the most, Hellgate: London was in development for about 4 years before beeing forced out the door unfinished.

      Diablo 3 was over 10 years in development, with atleast one complete rewrite/redesign, before beeing released unfinished (no PVP, etc)..

      They may think Diablo 3 is a better product than Hellgate: London, and that I can agree with.
      But the damn thing was in development for more than _twice_ as long as Hellgate and they _still_ couldn’t finish it in time, nor could they make a particularly good game.

      With that amount of development time, it should have been f—ing spectacular! It wasn’t, and still isn’t.

      • A little logic here please. There are more than 10 years between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. That DOES NOT equate the game being in development for 10 years. Gamers have been waiting for 10+ years for Diablo 3, yes. That DOES NOT equate the game being developed for 10 years.

        • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III
          “Development on Diablo III began in 2001 when Blizzard North was still in operation”

          D2: LoD was released, as in finished, in 2001, so that makes perfect sense.
          It’s very common for a company/team to slowly start development on the next title even _before_ the release of the previous title and then pick it up full time right after.

          Sure, that was Blizzard North’s version. But I did say it had atleast one complete rewrite/redesign. That would be it.
          Still, they didn’t HAVE to do that, they could just have picked it up where North left it (and it would probably have been a better game), but nooo they knew better and started basically from scratch.

          No matter which case, Diablo 3 HAS been in development for over 10 years. That is undeniable.
          And with Blizzard themselves saying they’re constantly doing “iterations” in their development, the rewrite that early on is really not that big of a difference from some of the other “iterations” (read: complete redesigns/removals) they did _after_ their 2008 reveal.

      • Before saying something more try to research the facts. The Blizzard North game and new Diablo 3 is 2 completely different games. The Diablo 3 we can play now is the game that was in development for 6 years, not 10.

        • *sigh*
          Before posting anymore replies, try to read the previous posts, for example my post above from the day before you posted. Hint: It kinda already has my reply to your post, before you even posted it.. :roll:

          Anyways, even _if_ they somehow get a pass for starting over from scratch and scrap that amount of devtime from history, the game _still_ was in development two whole years longer than Hellgate, and they _still_ couldn’t finish it in time and it _still_ wasn’t a particularly good game.

          So no matter how you slice it, my point still stands.

  • Did Jay really say ‘**** that loser’? That’s really sad.

  • +41
    Kno Whows
    August 20, 2012 at 06:44

    Ditto the last guy, it’s not just their blatant screw ups but it’s their slow ass and often non-existent attempts to rectify them that makes them deserve every ounce of criticism they get.

    Let them throw their tantrum, their unprofessional attitude shows in both their latest product and in their conduct.

  • What Dave Brevik said was really true. If it was so far off as it would seem from their comments, they wouldn’t be rebuilding the game and tweaking everything in it after release.

    The game is good but it lacked that power and feeling like the other 2 games had. This iteration had way too much of a WoW feel to it quite honestly. The enrage timers, monsters killing you and regenning, dps checks, etc. Which is totally what the other games didn’t have and they were better for it.

    • It may have been true to some extent, but he also basically in a backhanded way said that D3 failed because they lost the Blizz North talent. That may seem fair to you and me, but it’s basically saying the devs that worked on the game sucked, which is very insulting.

      Also, when he insinuates that he is happy D3 is doing poorly, that is also really insulting to the current devs. The devs may have made some poor decisions, but honestly they likely worked really hard. To expect them to just take such insults is a little unrealistic.

      • Very insulting, but very true!

      • He says that loosing that talent is whats responsible for those bad decisions. He never says that they didn’t work hard or they didn’t put effort into the game.

        They clearly have ties to the other products that Blizzard has produced, the devs responsible just had different ideas about what was needed in a arpg like this game. Since they have been reworking so many numbers for the entire game over and over just shows that dispite how much work they put into the game and the honestly good job they did with what they have, there was a learning experience to figuring out the best middle ground in making a fun yet challenging arpg game. These last patches and direction they are starting to go, had it been when the game was first released would have made for a much better game.

        Now it’s really easy to say this now after it’s released and there is absolutely no way to be certain that things would be much different even if there was a partially different team working on the game. Him being behind the scenes of the Diablo games gives him enough to be able to critique a continuance of the game series. Different people are always going to have different ideas about how a game should be at the final stage and he was asked for an honest response, kudos for him giving one.

      • I personally take the philosophy that… well… it doesn’t matter how hard you work on an idea if the idea was bad from the start ;s

        Realistically if the team at Blizzard had any lasting talent, or – perhaps – more freedom to do what they wanted (rather than what Mike Morhaime and Chris Metzen expected), they game would have been a success and this situation wouldn’t have occurred.

        I personally think that Blizzard need to rethink their market strategy moving forward. Diablo 3 has, without doubt, tarnished their reputation enough to impact the sales of MoP, and we can only assume that StarCraft 2 didn’t help things, so there is clearly a need for Blizzard to mitigate any lasting damage with a sound long term plan. That, in my opinion, involves a total redevelopment of the company philosophy. Otherwise they may find themselves in a similar position to Activision, where on paper they perform fairly well but no one thinks them a credible long term prospect.

        • I think there’s a lot of ways you can criticize both the game, and how the game felt. But I Think the way Brevik put it was really quite insulting.

          He could have left it at the fact that one of the weaknesses of the experience was “blizzard south’s” focus on the storyline, which is a natural weak point of ARPGs. But he didn’t leave it there, and he didn’t put it in such diplomatic terms.

          I’m not saying D3 is immune to criticism. I think they dropped the ball in many, many places. We don’t really know why the ball was dropped, whether it was pressure from Vivendi, Morhaime, or simply JW’s poor decision making. I personally think he probably made some bad calls, but I also wouldn’t be surprised or hold it against him if he was insulted by me calling him incompetent, as well.

      • Truth hurts man.

  • Could you at least provide the link to his facebook? Since the only one that shows is some random dude that has nothing to do with gaming, and since there is no source, I call bull****.

    • Go to facebook, type “Chris Haga Blizzard” in the search bar. That’s how I found it.

      As for the comments – good job, Blizzard, so professional.

      • Yes, I checked as you suggested and it’s there for all the world to see.

        What a shameful show they are giving there, talks about talent…

        Also one of them was sarcastic about this webpage, the best Diablo page ever made, a thousand times better than theirs by the way.

      • Wow, as much as I don’t usualy care about Jay, I think he should get fired for saying that.

        • I agree…
          Jay should get fired for that.
          100% unprofessional and it reflects back on the company. There have been upper management and execs fired in the past for WAY WAY less than that.

        • Quite agree, there’s not much professional conduct going on in that facebook post. Work related stuff should remain on the work floor, not on facebook where the whole world can see it.

          Amateurs.

        • While the comment is highly unprofessional, it’s not something he should be fired for. At least not on facebook. Now if he said it in an interview that would have been a different matter.

  • Hmmm I guess the reason D3 feels like it was made for children is because it was made by children. It all makes sense now…

  • I am not buying a Jay Wilson game anymore after reading his blatant insult to the actual genius behind the series.

    Bye forever Diablo. Diablo died with the original Diablo 2 team.

    • cut the drama, it’s ok to like a game but hate its game director. jay wilson came off as a giant douche after all this and I would not be surprised to see him publicly apologize Soon. maybe after his dreaded mf blog.

    • While it was silly/bad of Jay to write that on facebook, its understandable that Jay would be sad/angry with the comments by David. Even if people don’t think D3 lives up to D2 Jay still put his heart and soul (and years of work) into D3.

      Looks like Jay agree’s that it was silly to write what he did on facebook as he removed it.

      Lets wait with calling David Brevik the genius behind the series, as there was other people working on it. Big games like D2 is a team effort. Maybe if he can recreate the magic in the Marvel game.

      Don’t get me wrong D3 for sure has issues. Main thing I was annoyed by was that they clearly didn’t test inferno/end game enough. Kinda weird when everybody 2 weeks after release see issues Blizzard didn’t see after 6 months in beta.

      • Most thoughtful comment here. It’s normal to be very emotional in this case.

        I still can’t believe the guy put his entire profile as public…

      • +11
        Serenity420
        August 20, 2012 at 20:22

        David Brevik: I thought of the game when I was in high school

        (that’s in response to your holding off on calling him the genius behind the game….it was HIS creation and his baby…….damn right he’s the genius behind this creation. Good try though) :mrgreen:

    • To me it gets even worse. MoP will be the 1st title I won’t buy from Blizz. To me the company has changed to the extent where they put earnings over quality and has completely turned to the dark side. I noticed this a few years ago and got bashed for sayin it. Anywayz, the WoW universe is murdered, Diablo 3 is a badly implemented copy of D2 (yes it is :-L … ACT I isnt about tristram …its new ****in tristram … ACTII is caldeum vs lut gholein, ACTIII is d2′s act V, except you dont go up mount arreat, you descend into it and ACT IV to me is just bad. Everything about act IV is bad…and short. The only big plus is that Blizz has the best cinematics team in the damn world). Also, if you read the last AGREEMENT you had to accept in order to play, you could clearly read at some sections (don’t quite remember witch one it was, 14? 15?, anywayz), you could read that D3 is solely based on internet play now and forever and you will always need internet to play it AND that if at any given time in the future, D3 will stop being profitable (cuz that’s the translation from EULA/TOS language) and will stop being produced, Blizz has no obligation to keep the servers running, thus terminating the product you bought, turning it into even more of a **** scraping device. All this with the exception to selling/lending the right to host D3 services to 3rd parties. Now…to me this is the same as getting a car, using it for “x” years, and when they stop making parts for it, they come and take your car away. I could go on forever. TLDR: ME+Blizz are done forever.

  • Lol i doubt those people will coment something like that on the Internet.

  • “Don’t worry about it Haga, you made D3– the biggest disappointment of 2012. He made D2– the game that allowed your game to sell this many copies in the first place. Er, wait..”

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