Now I though that they had a lead designer - Greg Canessa, who you might know as "that xbox live guy" or from (left side, short hair).
So, did they sack/demote him? Do they have multiple lead designers (or the guy had multiple roles/titles)? I don't try to understand their title system, but he's named as Lead Designer in a fewinterviews... so... basically...WTF?
There are typically 3 divisions of job offers in software engineering: Junior (Starters - but sometimes already requires 1year experience) , Senior (Experienced) , Lead (Senior with team management)
From what I understand Greg Canessa was most known for his work with popcap games and his influence was a bit evident with the incorporation of bejeweled in starjeweled. It made sense to bring him on considering they wanted a battle.net system that could sell lots of minigames, something popcap has had boatloads of success with.
I don't need to tell you guys that things didn't work out for multiple reasons, and i don't think any 1 person should shoulder the blame for any of this, but their prior vision of battlenet obviously isn't a foreseeable goal any more and it's pretty obvious that things are changing, likely in us mod maker's favor (which is pretty cool). But the dream of possibly selling maps on a marketplace is all but dead.
Edit: Now that things seem to be in a bit of an upswing i want to predict POSITIVE changes for once. Sorta feel bad for being negative ALL THE TIME for the past few months following the custom map competition. Just considering how much emphasis they put on esports and recently becoming hopelessly addicted to starcraft 2 commentated games myself, I'm guessing their going to try to unify starcraft 2 with casting and tournament matches so you can really build the starcraft 2 community from within the game. This serves multiple purposes. 1 it's just frickin' fun to watch commented maps, and secondly in promotes learning and community in the player base for a game that requires a lot of both being as advanced as it is. It gives blizzard an iron fist on the esports community, something they have been fighting for for a while now and it just makes plain common sense to get this in game. I'm all for securing your servers and intellectual property so long as it ADDS VALUE TO THE GAME! This is precisely what this would do.
Oh and of course changes to make user made content playable and enjoyabe which i'm sure we'll all be happy with :)
Another Edit:
Just watched that 20 year video myself it was really touching and great to see where blizzard came from. Reminds me a lot of myself and lots of my buddies trying to make things work right now. I especially liked the part where Samwise rips on HR for ruining the company and thought it was awesome they left it in. There's obviously still really good people at blizzard, it's this new element that's driving me crazy.
While watching Blizzard's 20th Anniversary video I checked out their jobs page and it turns out that Battle.net is in need of a Lead Designer...
Now I though that they had a lead designer - Greg Canessa, who you might know as "that xbox live guy" or from (left side, short hair).
So, did they sack/demote him? Do they have multiple lead designers (or the guy had multiple roles/titles)? I don't try to understand their title system, but he's named as Lead Designer in a few interviews... so... basically...WTF?
doesn't every game has its own lead designer?
@Tolkfan: Go
There are typically 3 divisions of job offers in software engineering: Junior (Starters - but sometimes already requires 1year experience) , Senior (Experienced) , Lead (Senior with team management)
From what I understand Greg Canessa was most known for his work with popcap games and his influence was a bit evident with the incorporation of bejeweled in starjeweled. It made sense to bring him on considering they wanted a battle.net system that could sell lots of minigames, something popcap has had boatloads of success with.
I don't need to tell you guys that things didn't work out for multiple reasons, and i don't think any 1 person should shoulder the blame for any of this, but their prior vision of battlenet obviously isn't a foreseeable goal any more and it's pretty obvious that things are changing, likely in us mod maker's favor (which is pretty cool). But the dream of possibly selling maps on a marketplace is all but dead.
Edit: Now that things seem to be in a bit of an upswing i want to predict POSITIVE changes for once. Sorta feel bad for being negative ALL THE TIME for the past few months following the custom map competition. Just considering how much emphasis they put on esports and recently becoming hopelessly addicted to starcraft 2 commentated games myself, I'm guessing their going to try to unify starcraft 2 with casting and tournament matches so you can really build the starcraft 2 community from within the game. This serves multiple purposes. 1 it's just frickin' fun to watch commented maps, and secondly in promotes learning and community in the player base for a game that requires a lot of both being as advanced as it is. It gives blizzard an iron fist on the esports community, something they have been fighting for for a while now and it just makes plain common sense to get this in game. I'm all for securing your servers and intellectual property so long as it ADDS VALUE TO THE GAME! This is precisely what this would do.
Oh and of course changes to make user made content playable and enjoyabe which i'm sure we'll all be happy with :)
Another Edit: Just watched that 20 year video myself it was really touching and great to see where blizzard came from. Reminds me a lot of myself and lots of my buddies trying to make things work right now. I especially liked the part where Samwise rips on HR for ruining the company and thought it was awesome they left it in. There's obviously still really good people at blizzard, it's this new element that's driving me crazy.
Mo' Money Mo' Problems.