Esquire: Inside the Tumultuous Making of Diablo IV

vestan · Jun 13, 2023

To Hell and Back: Inside the Tumultuous Making of 'Diablo IV'

How did one of the year’s best video games go from a crisis to a comeback story? More than two dozen current and former Blizzard employees told us the unbelievable tale.

www.esquire.com

Great article by Esquire on Diablo IV's rocky development and the incredible turnaround. I think it goes without saying especially with a piece as long as this, there's way more in the link above. I'll post a few excerpts.

On Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree and the early script:

"Working on Diablo IV was one of the most traumatizing game experiences of my life," a former Blizzard employee tells me, speaking of the early years under the game's first director and lead designer. Compare that quote to this one from Naz Hartoonian, a producer who joined the team in August 2021: "I've been treated with nothing but the utmost respect, and everybody has been an absolute joy to work with."

Two Warcraft alums, Luis Barriga and Jesse McCree, became Diablo IV's original game director and lead designer. Over the next eight months, Barriga, McCree, and Stępień rewrote the core story of Diablo IV in a conference room with five other men. Soon, a schism formed between Stępień and Barriga. "They were fighting all the time and we could hear it," says a former employee. "They were asked to keep [their issues with each other] buttoned up because it was affecting the team." But the office tension increased when early scripts included elements former employees say were ableist and misogynistic.

But the most upsetting part of these early script ideas, as Shannon Liao reported in the Washington Post last year, was a female character labeled "the raped woman." Another former employee tells me the eight-man story room in 2019 did not push back against the "rape version" of the script until a female producer, who was in the room keeping notes, voiced her concerns. In Liao's report, a company spokesperson said that the rape version was "character backstory, not game content," and that all references to rape were removed before the game launched.

"Wars were fought to get underwear on one of the women in the game," another former employee tells me. "For the longest time, Taissa was the only woman-of-color character, and it was very important to [Stępień] that she only wore a single piece of white cloth — no bra, no underwear." A female team member fought an "exhausting battle" to cover up more of Taissa's body, and only "at the 11th hour" was the character's wardrobe finally changed.

On the reaction to the sexual harassment lawsuit:

"When the story dropped, [our Slack channels] blew up," a former Blizzard employee tells me. "It made me sick," another says. "For the women, it was pure elation that people would finally believe us, combined with horror about what the repercussions would be for us." Over the next few days, employees were invited to emergency all-hands meetings with their individual teams. An all-hands for the entire company with corporate leaders at the Activision Blizzard level was also planned, but later canceled.

"A lot of the men on the calls were like, 'We knew these guys were assholes, but we didn't know they were abusive," a former employee says. "And the women were like, 'Did you not think that those two things were related? And how did every single woman know about the abuse?'" Since some of the worst allegations in the lawsuit had been levied at former World of Warcraft creative director Alex Afrasiabi, former employees say some men in the Diablo IV all-hands questioned the need for a meeting. "Why are we even talking about this? This is a World of Warcraft problem," one employee reportedly asked.

On employee-led efforts and leadership changes following the walkout:

When Luis Barriga was fired in 2021 and Shely was asked to take his place as game director, Shely says it felt like a huge responsibility. "A lot of incredibly talented and creative people are working together to make a single thing, [and] I need to make sure I don't let all these people down." Even the former employees with negative experiences under Barriga speak very highly of Shely.

"He's a very talented designer, and at heart, he's a good man," one of them tells me, though they're also cautious about contributing to a "white man savior" narrative when so much of the progress made at Blizzard is a direct result of underrepresented people in the gaming industry. I ask Shely and Fergusson how things have changed for the better on the Diablo IV team under their leadership. They both point to a quarterly survey Fergusson provides to employees, where anyone can give anonymous feedback. "We get all the responses and come up with ways to address concerns," Shely says.

Former employees tell me the earliest versions of these surveys in 2020 featured "atrocious" satisfaction scores, and that the slide decks presenting their findings included bullet points like "feedback is often not heard," "concern about cliques forming," "poor listening, transparency, and communication," and "slow decision-making, unclear approval process." But this feedback was collected during the final year of Barriga and McCree's leadership, not under Shely. According to Fergusson, Shely, and several employees I spoke with, survey responses have significantly improved since then.

On the recent Kotick interview and the culture at Blizzard:

"Everyone is livid," a former Blizzard employee told me the day after Kotick's interview was published. Both current and former members of the Diablo IV team were furious and depressed that Kotick would undermine the progress Blizzard has made mere days before the launch of the game. "Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for [Activision Blizzard] leadership to do things like this."

And while employees say conditions on individual teams have improved since 2021, some say relations with Activision Blizzard's corporate leadership has actually gotten worse. "Once we started unionizing, the company got very hostile," a former employee told me. Back in Irvine, I didn't ask the current Diablo IV team about Kotick specifically, but I did ask them if things have changed for the better. They all said yes, and they all spent more time lifting up their colleagues than talking about themselves. "I'll tell stories about this game for the rest of my life," John Mueller said near the end of my visit. After a quiet moment, he pivoted in his chair and looked me in the eye. "Great stories," he clarified. "Really, honestly, wonderful stories."

WhySoDevious · Jun 13, 2023

They fired Señor Barriga?

Chanfle!

Esquire: Inside the Tumultuous Making of Diablo IV

vestan

#REFANTAZIO SWEEP

To Hell and Back: Inside the Tumultuous Making of 'Diablo IV'

WhySoDevious