Blizzard’s Culture of Crunch
One indicative story about early Blizzard’s work environment comes from a programmer who didn’t fit into the company’s crunch-heavy culture. The programmer tells Schreier that after he complained about not getting paid for overtime, he became “the target of endless bullying around the office.” He says he began to be dismissed, derided, or simply ignored.
“So many people were shitty to me, I have to assume I brought it on myself in some way,” the programmer says. He admits to making mistakes, but says that there was also no one willing to offer mentorship or training. After less than a year on the job, the programmer was fired. “This was a dream job for me, working at Blizzard,” the programmer said. “I was absolutely crushed.”
In the end the programmer, whose name is Andy Weir, pursued other dreams. He wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary. 4
Fired, goes on to write The Martian.
Nice.
More reason not to buy a Blizzard game. I’d love for someone to “do” Starcraft 3 like Larian came in and did BG3 but no way Blizzard let’s that happen.
Have you looked at stormgate? supposedly it is a spiritual successor to starcraft made by much of the original team (now under another company).
Personally i am warily hyped, it looks good so far but there is plenty to be done wrong between now and release, mostly concerning the business model. if it ends up a dlc or live service shitshow it is a non starter no matter how fun it might be.
I have seen rumblings about it but I’m so jaded with Early Releases/Kickstarted games that I haven’t dug deeply.
Do they a timeline?
I picked up the Kickstarter, it needs a lot of work but what they have done is promising, but the beta weekends haven’t been spectacular.
