Is Bethesda becoming the new Blizzard?

[Blackfrost]

Both companies were known for high quality, genre-defining games.

This caused them to become wildly successful ( rightfully so )

Then they got bought by a profit-first megacorp

And finally they started making "safer" games with less innovation and more marketing.

Is Bethesda following in Blizzard's footsteps?

Do you believe that we risk having a TES 6 with stuff like battlepasses?

It's starting to feel like indie devs, quasi-indie devs or eastern companies are the only ones really capable of challenging the status quo of gaming

Thoughts?

[Blackfrost]

I mean Fallout 76 already has seasons and stuff so I really could see it happening in an eventual TES 6

[Kao]

Originally posted by Blackfrost:

Both companies were known for high quality

AHAHAahahaha

They’re not the companies who created their popular franchises. Different companies. Activision and Bethesda are not known for quality, quite the opposite.

[Ianis]

Get a job.

[EleventhStar]

it happens to every company when they get too big.

blizzard and bethesda aren't the only ones and won't be the last.

good/bad intentions don't matter much either, at most a moral/pro consumer ceo can delay the negatives a bit.

basic rule of thumb is when you no longer know everybody in the office / when middle management becomes a thing, it starts going downhill.

and ofc its 10x worse if its a public instead of private company.

[Aasimar069]

LOL
Bethesda was crap from the start. Don't insult Blizzard

[Mortal_Kasi]

Well i do not see a quality drop in Starfield, Graphics ar better then before, writing is far better then before. Fo me it is a great game and it is getting better with every hour.

Seasons and Battlepasses? That is another thing and i don't think that they will put it in the Singleplayer titles but who now's. But i bet we eill get a creation club again, don't need it.

[Blackfrost]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

it happens to every company when they get too large.

blizzard and bethesda aren't the only ones and won't be the last.

good/bad intentions don't matter much either, at most they delay the negatives a bit.

basic rule of thumb is when you no longer know everybody in the office / when middle management becomes a thing, it starts going downhill.

and ofc its 10x worse if its a public instead of private company.

Yeah it seems to be the "suit & tie" problem

Where the upper levels on the company become filled with "suits and ties" they are no longer interested in developing GOOD games, but PROFITABLE ones.

So discussions on how to make a great game are replaced by "how can we monetize the game more".
That's why you typically see an increase in monetization schemes

The same thing tends to happen in movies ( a Marvel movie sold well, now we mostly get superhero stuff )

[GuerillaTactix]

Most companies become trash when they become big. When they first start out they create the games they want to play. As they become bigger, get bought out, have investors, they create the game that panders to the biggest audience that will get them the most money.

[bunkerking]

Both companies have burnt a lot of consumer goodwill. Not really because of any inclusion in their games but the in-game transactional anti-consumer models. In Bethesda’s case, they focused too much on MMO’s, and their single player experiences have exponentially gotten shoddier and shoddier. It’s known now that Starfield was mostly outsourced to a wide range of foreign companies and put together like a soulless humpy dumpty, relying on machine learning for world-filling.

[Blackfrost]

Originally posted by Kao:

Originally posted by Blackfrost:

Both companies were known for high quality

AHAHAahahaha

They’re not the companies who created their popular franchises. Different companies. Activision and Bethesda are not known for quality, quite the opposite.

Oh come on you're being a bit harsh, Blizzard ( not Activision-Blizzard, just Blizzard ) was a synonym for quality back in the early 2000's.

World of Warcraft ( the original one + The Burning Crusade + Wrath of the Lich King ) completely revolutionized the MMORPG genre by simplifying a lot of the chores from games like Everquest
20 years later it's still the MMO with the highest player count

Warcraft 3 ( the RTS ) was a great game
Starcraft was a staple for RTS as well

Diablo was the original A-RPG as well... remember Diablo 2?

And for Bethesda: their games had quirky bugs, true, but overall both The Elder Scrolls and Fallout are great series

[Blackfrost]

Originally posted by Rick. R. Bracker:

Both companies have burnt a lot of consumer goodwill. Not really because of any inclusion in their games but the in-game transactional anti-consumer models. In Bethesda’s case, they focused too much on MMO’s, and their single player experiences have exponentially gotten shoddier and shoddier. It’s known now that Starfield was mostly outsourced to a wide range of foreign companies and put together like a soulless humpy dumpty, relying on machine learning for world-filling.

Capcom also had a pretty bad run in the not-so-distant past due to outsourcing

It seems like they were able to get back on track by going back to having in-house devs and a more hands-on approach on the overall dev process

However I don't think that Capcom was bought by a different company...
Here's hoping that Bethesda can also turn things around in the future

[Mad Max]

Bethesda was always known for making janky, buggy, but fun games that are propped up by the massive modding community.

Blizzard was known for high quality, excellent RTS and ARPG games with iconic art direction and story. Now all they do is chase your wallet and release substandard products.

So that's not a fair comparison.

[finaljedi]

Bethesda has made pretty consistent games since the start, Starfield keeps with that sort of Bethesda consistency. Blizzard went from making well loved highly polished RPG games to money grubbing sloppy games with microtransactions and loot box ♥♥♥♥.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by finaljedi:

Bethesda has made pretty consistent games since the start, Starfield keeps with that sort of Bethesda consistency. Blizzard went from making well loved highly polished RPG games to money grubbing sloppy games with microtransactions and loot box ♥♥♥♥.

bethesda hasn't?

maybe they aren't fully there yet, but it's certainly not for lack of trying. they been trying to monitize mods since skyrim. fallout 76 obviously is full with microtransactions. ESO has cash shop afaik, that mobile game prolly has too.

and if you tell me you are 100% certain they won't add a cash shop to this game 6 months down the road, i would really like to see the argument to back such a claim up.