Well, it looks like the game “journo’s” are in full defence mode again. This time over Diablo Immortal.
For those that are out of the loop, Blizzard announced their next Diablo game at BlizzCon this year, which will be a mobile title.
Predictably, there has been a backlash, with complaints about how this is a soul-less cash-in.
However, journo’s are playing defence for Blizzard, calling gamers out as being entitled, manchildren, sexist, and gatekeepers.
My personal favourite one propagating these calls is this one below.
Which asserts that the backlash is tied to a) the intended audience, b) and gatekeeping the gaming community, while also making points that mobile gaming hardware has “caught up”.
Of course, that’s all a load of shit. The mobile market has not caught up in terms of hardware capability. Even high end mobile phones still struggle, and the change in controls inevitably lead to shallower gameplay mechanics.
The backlash has focused strongly on the fact that this will almost assuredly include microtransactions to make money, and that the game appears to be little more than a reskin of another game that the chinese studio (NetEase) already made, called Crusaders of Light.
Interesting point to note by the way: Will Powers up there? Yeah, he works for a PR firm. Just a little disclosure there, because I’m sure that he isn’t financially biased at all, directly or through ensuring he doesn’t burn bridges.
So, out of all of this, I have seen nothing that links the backlash this game is getting to gatekeeping in anyway. It’s not gatekeeping to want a quality product that appeals to the existing audience an IP has already earned. If they wanted to enter the mobile market, maybe they should have tried doing it like Bethesda did with Fallout Shelter, by releasing it along-side/early to the core game, instead of dangling an IP in front of people, which comes off as insulting more than anything else.
it’s also stupid because this is highly predictable backlash because they revealed it in front of an audience that either paid to be there in person, or paid for a “virtual ticket” to access blizzard’s official streams
so imagine you’re a diablo fan
diablo 3 has been out quite a few years, and has had a few dlc expansions, but you’re ready for another one
another full proper entry, because they’ve got to be developing one
so you get to the stage or you watch the livestream and essentially the ONLY things revealed are:
a switch port of diablo 3, a game initially released in 2012, with all the dlc content bundled in
a mobile game
frankly, dead silence and one person asking a question saying “Is this an off season april fool’s joke” were a mild and polite reaction
particularly from an audience that by and large PAID TO BE THERE WITH THEIR OWN MONEY
besides that aspect, you’d have to be an oblivious absolute idiot to think that the reveal of it would go over like anything besides a fucking lead balloon
even taking the twitch reaction out of the equation (cause twitch chats are often garbage anyway), just listen to how DEAD the audience is when this is debuted
all that scattered golf clapping/applause and how you can FEEL the lack of enthusiasm here
or hell, just look at the reactions to things like the DmC Devil May Cry debut trailer or the Thief reboot/Thief 4 trailer
look at how befuddled people were when Valve announced “oh we’re making a new game” and then it turned out to be Artifact, a fucking Magic The Gathering clone themed off of DOTA
the announcement for Diablo: Immortal is clearly not something made for the audience that’d actually attend Blizzcon, so why they’d announce it there is a total fucking mystery to me when you could just get the job done by slapping the trailer on youtube and revealing it in depth at a Chinese game show or something lmao
Things I should have waited until next week to buy… I love them though, confused as to why the Diablo pops head seems to be glued to his back spikes and shoulders though.
We are William Afton stans first and humans second 
