Diablo III Game Director Steps Down

[Andy Chalk]

Diablo III Game Director Steps Down

Long-serving game director Jay Wilson is moving on to a new project at Blizzard.

Jay Wilson has been riding herd on Diablo III for an awfully long time, and he's in the mood to spread his wings a bit. "I recently celebrated my seven-year anniversary working on Diablo III, and while it's been one of the most challenging and rewarding periods of my life, I've reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new," he wrote in a message on the Battle.net forums. "The powers that be at Blizzard have been gracious enough to give me that opportunity. Over the course of the next several weeks, I will be moving off of the Diablo III project and transitioning elsewhere within Blizzard."

He emphasized that Diablo III is in fine health, and said that the development team's plans for the future will go ahead uninterrupted. He also acknowledged making "many mistakes" in managing the relationship with Diablo fans, but added that his intent "was always to provide a great gaming experience, and be as open and receptive as possible, while still sticking true to the vision the Diablo team has for the game."

That Wilson is a polarizing figure among the Diablo fan base can be seen clearly in the response to his announcement, which contain plenty of best wishes but no small amount of acrimony as well. Even so, he said his decision to leave was not an easy one, and he goes with no hard feelings.

"I'm proud of Diablo III, and despite our differences at times I will miss the community that has formed around it," he wrote. "I know some of you feel we fell short of our promise to release the game 'when it's ready.' While we're not perfect, we try to make the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time. That doesn't mean we always make the right decisions, but if we made a mistake then I feel we've made an exceptional effort to correct it."

What Wilson will get up to next has not been revealed.

Source: Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7592242994?page=1]


Permalink

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Bye, Jay. Better luck next time.

 

[Uratoh]

Ya know, I've been wondering this for awhile. Is this the same Jay Wilson that was so disliked by the Ultima Online design team they made a slime monster rare spawn named 'Jwilson'?

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Never had anything to do with the game, but it's hard not to take notice when a figure who elicits deep affection from some in a community and nothing but bile from others moves on from the project that made him so divisive. Good luck wherever you're headed, sir.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Except the opportunity to keep his bad ideas quarantined to the one game.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Except the opportunity to keep his bad ideas quarantined to the one game.

Ugh. Good point.

Ya know, I've been wondering this for awhile. Is this the same Jay Wilson that was so disliked by the Ultima Online design team they made a slime monster rare spawn named 'Jwilson'?

If I remember correctly it was actually a reference to Johnny Wilson because of a negative review he wrote for the game in Computer Gaming World.

 

[Sylveria]

Yay.. now Mr. Wilson can make other games that launch unfinished, with always on-line DRM, exploited and exploitative cash auction houses, and then dropping the development of features that were promised to be added later.

 

[Zenn3k]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out Jay.

Thanks for ruining one of my favorite game franchises btw, as well as completely turning me off of any future Blizzard products (partly out of fear you might now be involved with one of them).

 

[Zenn3k]

Ya know, I've been wondering this for awhile. Is this the same Jay Wilson that was so disliked by the Ultima Online design team they made a slime monster rare spawn named 'Jwilson'?

No.

http://uo.stratics.com/database/view.php?db_content=hunters&id=220

 

[Zenn3k]

Without checking, I can already tell exactly zero people will be sad about this news on the Diablo 3 official forums.

Oh they certainly are...I already managed to get a thread deleted by the CMs in less than 15 minutes.

Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

 

[RicoADF]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out Jay.

Thanks for ruining one of my favorite game franchises btw, as well as completely turning me off of any future Blizzard products (partly out of fear you might now be involved with one of them).

Damn it you ninjad me!
Yeah good riddence to him, I wasn't a fan of previous games as I had never played one but even as a new commer this has been stupid.

 

[Tamrin]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Except the opportunity to keep his bad ideas quarantined to the one game.

I wouldn't be so sure that all the design decisions of Diablo 3 were entirely his. 'Sides, he's moving off to another Blizzard project. Why anybody would care about that getting ruined at this point, I don't know.

Agreed. After Wings of Liberty and Diablo III my expectations from Blizzard are pretty much shot to hell.

Without checking, I can already tell exactly zero people will be sad about this news on the Diablo 3 official forums.

Oh they certainly are...I already managed to get a thread deleted by the CMs in less than 15 minutes.

Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Shot in the dark here. I'm guessing your deleted thread looked something like this?

Spoiler

And thus is why they felt it warranted said deletion?

 

[Zenn3k]

[

Without checking, I can already tell exactly zero people will be sad about this news on the Diablo 3 official forums.

Oh they certainly are...I already managed to get a thread deleted by the CMs in less than 15 minutes.

Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Shot in the dark here. I'm guessing your deleted thread looked something like this?

Spoiler

And thus is why they felt it warranted said deletion?

Nay.

I think it was the "Fuck that loser" - Jay Wilson; sign off that did it

 

[teh_gunslinger]

A quote from Jay Wilson springs to mind. Something about a loser. I can't remember what it was.

But on a serious note, I suppose it was bound to happen. I don't think people in general feel like keeping working on the same project year on end. In this case a rather bad one too.

Guess we'll see what happens next.

 

[Lunar Templar]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Except the opportunity to keep his bad ideas quarantined to the one game.

I would raise the question of how anyone would notice? It's not like Blizzard is a fount of 'great ideas' to begin with.

 

[Artemis923]

Don't let the door hit you on the way out Jay.

Thanks for ruining one of my favorite game franchises btw, as well as completely turning me off of any future Blizzard products (partly out of fear you might now be involved with one of them).

My thoughts exactly.

Damn near word for word, in fact.

 

[Scyla]

Hopefully he gets allocated to database management or web-page design or something like that were he cant do much damage.
Wait there are still people playing D3 because he mentioned something about "in fine health".

 

[danon]

Thanks Jay Wilson for utterly destroying one of my favorite franchises of all time i almost hate you. We had a chance to stop always online drm money auction house character creation removal bullshit. But people just had to buy this steaming pile of shit and then be unable to play the first day because of error 33. /rantend

 

[Tamrin]

Without checking, I can already tell exactly zero people will be sad about this news on the Diablo 3 official forums.

Oh they certainly are...I already managed to get a thread deleted by the CMs in less than 15 minutes.

Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Shot in the dark here. I'm guessing your deleted thread looked something like this?

Spoiler

And thus is why they felt it warranted said deletion?

Nay.

I think it was the "Fuck that loser" - Jay Wilson; sign off that did it

Priceless.


I wouldn't be surprised if Chris Haga's email was flooded with feedback. I know the forums were.

 

[Tamrin]

Without checking, I can already tell exactly zero people will be sad about this news on the Diablo 3 official forums.

Oh they certainly are...I already managed to get a thread deleted by the CMs in less than 15 minutes.

Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Shot in the dark here. I'm guessing your deleted thread looked something like this?

Spoiler

And thus is why they felt it warranted said deletion?

Nay.

I think it was the "Fuck that loser" - Jay Wilson; sign off that did it

Priceless.

Wow what a load of horse shit from IGN.

This is what incgamers asked Brewik.

IncGamers: Do you think they bought the wrong people in? As we understand, Jay Wilson, for example, his background was RTS. From our point of view it looked like they misunderstood what kept people playing, The type of loot drops, which has been a big issues. One of the other issues is they have not listened to their community, and they have not analysed what makes up that addictive Diablo experience. What are your thoughts on that?

This isn't "asking what he thinks of the game".

He quite literally answers his own question and makes Brewik comment on that answer. If that isn't leading the question I dont know what is. And Brewik gets dragged along. Jay felt he got thrown under a bus because he damm well was. He was marked by name as why the game "failed" by some hack journalist in an effort to keep the "D3 sucks" circlejerk rolling that was up and running from the second the first screen were released.

Yeah Jay didn't deal with it very professionally, but he didn't throw the first stone here.

Dude, that's not horse shit. All IGN did was take what was out there, throw it up on the web, and ask what people thought.

Also, the full transcript.

Spoiler

IncGamers: You are very well known in the world of ARPGs, and I am going to ask you, Diablo 3 is probably the most anticipated PC title in 10 years. What?s your opinion on the final product?

David Brevik: Honestly, I think that they did a lot of the things the best they could, it was a very different game than I would have created, the team and personalities, the people, the talent and all the design philosophies of the people that worked on it in Irvine, we called them Blizzard South, those people have their own style and the their own way they like to design. It was very, very different from the Blizzard North.

So I think that when Blizzard South took over the development of Diablo 3 it was inevitable that they were going to create an experience that was in the Diablo theme but concentrated more towards the things that they liked to experience. Including more story and things like that.

When Blizzard North shut down they lost a ton of experience with why the Action RPG works and what about it works. That?s really difficult to recover from. They didn?t have the experience of people that knew it well. This is why you do things with random levels for example, and so when you lose that experience you are going to create a very different experience in the end than we would have created.

IncGamers: Do you think they bought the wrong people in? As we understand, Jay Wilson, for example, his background was RTS. From our point of view it looked like they misunderstood what kept people playing, The type of loot drops, which has been a big issues. One of the other issues is they have not listened to their community, and they have not analysed what makes up that addictive Diablo experience. What are your thoughts on that?

David Brevik: Well, the loot system. They made some decisions with the loot system that were very different than the way that we did it in Diablo 2 and I think that obviously the community has been upset with some of the decisions they made. Having all of your powers work off your main weapon and things like that, to having blues that are more powerful than yellows. Eventually the auction house and how that worked, even something as simple as when you equip an item and it?s bound to your character permanently would have totally changed the dynamic of the game.

It seems odd that they have not really responded in a quick fashion to some of these things. I think they are very well aware of the problems at this point and are trying to fix some of this stuff. It?s a shame that they had to learn some of these painful lessons

IncGamers: As you created Diablo, how do you feel about it? Do you feel a little let down that the legacy has kind of been mashed up?

David Brevik: I have very mixed emotions about it (laughs). On one hand I am sad that people haven?t enjoyed Diablo because it?s a love, a passion, and its obvious people still have a giant love and passion for Diablo and they are speaking out about it because they have such love for it. That makes me feel great.

I am sad because people are outraged and, you know, some of the decision they have made are not the decisions I would make and there have been changes in philosophy and that hasn?t gone over very well. I think in that way I am a little sad.

I am also a little happy, which I hate to say, it shows that the people that were involved in Diablo really did matter, and so I am happy that it has come to light that how talented that group was and how unique and special that group was. I am hoping that, as this happens very often in the industry, you see it with Call of Duty and things like that , when the people leave the game changes and it shows how critical people are in this industry.

IncGamers: One of the questions the Gazillion guys asked me to ask you was, where did the name Diablo come from?

David Brevik: I thought of the game when I was in high school and I lived in the east part of San Francisco in a town called Danville and I lived at the base of Mount Diablo and that?s where the name comes from. Once I found out what the mountain name was, I thought that was awesome, I didn?t speak Spanish, so I thought I wanted to use that as a title for a nemesis in a videogame. It?s simply from where I lived.

IncGamers: Well thanks a lot David, you?ve brought a lot of pleasure to millions of people over the years and hopefully you?ll continue to do so.