Blizzard “progress”

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Liliana submitted:

So, remember when a Blizzard VP was acknowledging how dumb bikini armours were and promised progress in the future? Fantastic. Now a new patch for Diablo III is coming out soon and they’re going to include new sets of armours.

Diablo is known for its ridiculous outfits, but hey Blizzard is starting to get it, and so the new wizard outfit will no doubt be…

Sigh.

Nevermind.

Oh Blizzard… I want to be disappointed in you but it’s so hard when you continually recognize the issues with your products and manage to make your attempts to improve into even bigger jokes.

-wincenworks

More on World of Warcraft | More on Diablo | More on Overwatch

Probably a good time to bring this back since, well we’re still having people assuring us that Blizzard – a company with literally billions of dollars and armies of talent people… is really trying!  Just look at them trying so hard with Overwatch!  Examples include going from this:

image

To this:

image

This is not, by any stretch of the imagination – trying. There is no classroom in the world where this would be considered a passing grade improvement despite the claims of caring by lead.  (If you missed the outrage by… people claiming others are outraged, there’s a great summary here.)

Yes, it is scary for companies to change up imagery when working with an established brand – but making the actual changes is the only way that it still perpetuates all the problems.  Ultimately, all they’re doing is well…

image

The only way they’re going to fix things is to really take an actual whole new direction with it – and they probably won’t get that right the first time either.  

Lara Croft was still wearing a spaghetti strap top to show off her boobs in Tomb Raider (2013) but the overall shift was enough they were able to make big improvements in the next game (mostly) and stay away from backsliding. Gauntlet’s Valkyrie has gone from bikini babe to certified badass.

Neither of these games improved by trying to get credit for minimalist changes and writing nice quotes about how their game is for everyone.  They did by actually digging into what was wrong and looking at ways to avoid doing that.

If you’re a big brand who announce you’re trying to do things better, and the headline combined with a press pack image is an instant joke… you’re not doing better and nobody should credit you for it. At all.

– wincenworks