When stories are written for games like World of Warcraft or Overwatch , this happens under certain conditions. And that is important, according to Blizzard.
What is it about? The game studio Blizzard is known for creating interesting stories. This can already be seen in the Warcraft universe, which is constantly expanding its story in WoW.
When important decisions are made in the story, it can be received very positively by some fans and not so well by others. They then loudly share their opinions on social networks like the Blizzard forums or on Reddit.
Blizzard recently stated that negative feedback from fans will not affect the stories of their players. Therefore, these stories are created in a kind of holy place. A protected space.
They do not want to be swayed from their original idea just because fans are loudly calling for something different.
What is this holy place? According to Blizzard, to create good stories, one needs a clear mind. Clear thoughts.
Influenced by negative feedback, one may not be as free in the decisions made in the story.
During the developer conference “Reboot Develop”, Blizzard’s Director of Story and Franchise, George Krstic (via VG247):
Specifically about World of Warcraft, our Creative Director Alex [Afrasiabi] said a wonderful thing. He said, our story rooms are dojos. They are holy places. And we try to tell a story as well as we can and make our players as happy as possible. But we try not to let negativity into the dojo.
Moreover, he says that they listen to the fans. But they do not let themselves be distracted from the goal of the expansion or the new patch.
They hear the voices of the fans. “But these voices can become very loud.” Therefore, such a protection mechanism is likely helpful to not block the work on the story with negative thoughts.
What do you think of Blizzard’s attitude? Is this a good thing?
Fans were worried that a character would get a boring “ending”:
