Yong Woo and Ben Brode on the Designer Insights Video Series
There's been some talk lately, which grew from the Hearthstone 2017 Wishlist question, about wanting to see more of the Designer Insights video series and why they haven't happened very much. That lead to an explanation of why they aren't done very often and we've summarized it below.
- The team wants to do more designer insight videos.
- Ben does the videos at home in off hours due to not having a good spot at the office to do them at.
- It isn't as simple as talking to a camera for a few minutes.
- Videos go through multiple takes, and then some more after the team provides feedback. It can take days to get one episode right.
- They are working on getting space that is a permanent setup for this type of content.
- More developers being on them could happen, though some don't want to be harassed by the community.
I really don't like to make articles here personal, but the final point is one of much importance. We've gotten to an interesting point where we want more of something but due to the toxic nature of many comments directed at the Hearthstone team, no one from the team wants to come out and talk and it's actually not very interesting at all, just sad.
Although you may not agree with certain philosophies that the team may have about the game, it is important to post with respect and stay constructive. We should be welcoming communication first and foremost, so let's make that more of a priority this year and not feed those who want to cast plagues upon the creators. On the moderation side we can only do so much since we're only one site of many within the community, but as a whole, we need to stop letting the really toxic posts stew.
Anyway, back the to regular scheduled programming of the sources for this post. Oh, and if you want to vent a bit about not being able to win games, we've got our group therapy thread.
Blue Posts
This conversation has taken place over Twitter and reddit.
Tweet to Yong Woo
The initial question was posed by @Spideraxe30 wondering if they'd consider doing more.
Quote from Yong WooHas the team ever considered doing more designer insight videos since i think a majority of the community enjoys them
It takes significant amount of time for people involved to make those but we want to do more for sure!
Ben Brode Responds on Reddit
A thread on reddit which linked the above tweet got some discussion brewing about the topic so Ben decided to chime in on it. He also shared a picture of his setup. Please send us huge Hearthstone backdrops, they're rad.
Quote from Ben BrodeA little more context for you!I make those videos at home after my son goes to bed. Since daylight savings hit last spring my son goes to bed at 8:30 instead of 7:30, so I have an hour less time each night. I have to move my computer because otherwise you see my bed in the background (like in my first video) and that's a bit weird/unprofessional. Also because I record at night, I have to set up my studio lights. Once I have it all set up, I do several takes. Often I flub a line so bad I start over. I hate editing together cuts because I think it looks kind of jarring and distracting.
Once I have something I think might work, I send it to the rest of the people who care about this stuff on the Team, like Jason Chayes (Production Director). Sometimes they remind me of key points I totally forgot to mention, and I have to find another free night to do another take.
This is all pretty dumb, so we've been working on getting space that is permanently wired for making these types of videos at work. It's more challenging than you'd imagine as often we have trouble finding an empty conference room to have a meeting in, much less a room we want to leave empty all the time so nobody messes up our lighting rigs.
Regardless! I love doing videos, and I think I can convince more of the team to get involved, so it's not just me. Not everyone is as excited about being a public face as Yong and I are, though - there is a lot of harassment that comes with being more public.
My 2 month paternity leave ends next week. I'm excited to get back to work!
The fact that he has to record them at home is just dumb - why did Blizzard not set something up for him long ago?
I recently saw a poll about what the community wanted in the new year (can't quite remember it's name?) and players wanting more insights from Brode and other Blizzard devs was on the top 3 most wanted things (at least at the time i voted)
Yep hope this retard die ILR, may be HS will be more balanced after that
Yes, HE is the one bringing negativity to the game.
Sure. Let's go with that. What an enchanted world you live in inside your head.
How much of what we post here on Hearthpwn actually goes to Blizzard? I see that Flux and recently jmxd are "staff" members with blue names and a Hearthstone logo next to their name - are you guys Blizz employees? Clueless, yet honest, question.
No one here on the site is employed by Blizzard. HearthPwn is owned and operated by Curse, a child of Twitch, a child of Amazon. Blizzard does however browse community sites to collect feedback from players and we've always got a line to contact them on if the need arises.
Fun Fact: In the really early days of Hearthstone, Brode himself made a few posts here on HearthPwn about Hearthstone puzzles. Zeriyah on the Community Team even has some decklists (from the first BlizzCon event) and you can see she was recently active a month ago.
Thank you very much for the answer! It's interesting to hear Brode making posts on a non-Blizz community site. (Also congrats to jmxd for the promotion :D )
Theres plenty of places where relevant info(without toxicity) is given away, youtubers, some constructive reddit post, hearthpwn, etc, they are just trying to wiggle away and find ways to excuse their bad behaviour of not looking at any of it
Also we dont need profissional videos on HS design, we want the content yes, but not at the cost of taking years to come out
He also shouldnt be making those videos at home, in his free time, come on... Blizard please...
Would like more insights like the one we just got about drakonid OP we need more of those and Bbrode started doing better videos except the warsong commander one they mostly made sense..
Even managed to calm the purify outrage.
But why make them in his home? Can't the big Blizzard give the hearthstone team SOME credit.. it feels like Blizzard give the HS team less resources than others why does a community manager needs to do his work on his free time?? Blizzard isn't a bunch of plebs it's a big company!
The main issue of hs dev team is that they show lack of resources.. but why? Hs is their most profitable game can't they make a REAL ad (let's take it inside?!?) Or make a preorder card back (srsly?) Or make challenging adventure boss fights.
My main issue are those months without any content at all.. the last expansion period was nicely done, we got a nerf halfway (which fixed some issues) and we got card reveal every day or so( I think they should get rid of the card dumps just reveal more cards over the month of announcement)
Personally I want to know what BB thinks about aggro and if they like how it works ATM.
Yaaaay
"More developers being on them could happen, though some don't want to be harassed by the community."
Maybe a history of condescension and deflection can bite you in the ass when you try to talk to the community, crazy I know! More deck slots would have been confusing, guys! Purify is a card we stand by! We totes have an Arena-guy working on Arena stuff my dudes! Leaving Tempo-Shaman alone for months was a good decision! etc etc etc
Actually it's very good on average that developers don't listen to community, since like 95% of community offers absolute bullshit. Though I personally would be much happier if they listened to the other 5%.
It's real easy to be an armchair designer - you don't have to have knowledge, skill, or a care about the fallout of the decisions you make in your fantasy world.
maybe they should stop making bad cards like Dr. Boom or Purify and answer community questions with "it will confuse new players"?
So you really think harassing people on the internet is OK? Specially, people, who have the courage to present themselves to the public - show their face, voice and thoughts. They come out to speak and to make things better and you are harassing them. WOW.
Cite me where I said that harasment is Ok? Cite me where I harass them? I said they should do better job to avoid harassment. So WOW yourself.
This - what you are doing - is called "victim-blaming": women shouldn't go out, if they don't wanna be raped! People don't wanna be trolled on the internet - don't go to World Wide Web! You are some exceptional person.
And yeah - they avoid people like you and the harassment you bring. They don't wanna communicate with this community. They don't wanna come out and talk. Cause people like you. They can't stop making new experimental cards - and yeah - some of those would fail, maybe even horribly. But it's much easier to come out and discuss it, if you know, you won't be treated like a fat kid on the playground. But they can just avoid the harassment all together. And that's what they are doing. Thank you.
Still no evidence that I harassed HS devs? Nice!
Also you must be a really special for dragging rape into dev/community communication.
Well, you are telling it's OK to harass, if the person "deserves" it. It kinda tells about your mentality.
And I never dragged anything - I just wanted to show you, what are you saying. Or how it comes out. Cause judging by the rating of your comments, I'm not the only one, who sees it.
Ben Brode vids were always fun to watch, please make more vids and more often. I could not understand why we see so few HS dev vids and now I see... B.Brode has to make them at home. Blizzard please, this is such a shame.
The salt of HS community is real and it makes me sad, it is a problem for cummunity and for dev team also, and is not helping anyone. HS is insanly popular game with milions of players, is simple yet fun to play game, everybody can learn to play and can play for free. HS is very addictive game indeed. IMO the salt is comming from this game addiction. Imagine your drug dealer is not giving you the drug like to abuse and from time to time he makes changes you dont like. You are addicted, you still abuse the drug, but you are getting upset about your drug dealer (the salt).
Making more vids would help this imo as these addicted gamers would hear why the game (drug) changes and why it will make the drug (game) better. In other words tell the people what you want them to think instead of letting them make up stupid conclusions.
Sorry for my english, im not native speaker.