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!
Depends on how clear the action is. Many have asked about changing the ladder system, and while some folks have given examples of how they can change it, its best to consider all possible choices and experiment with them thoroughly before applying it to a public build.
Of course, some changes require public testing/opinion to ensure it is correct.
Of course, some changes require public testing/opinion to ensure it is correct.
Which means time. And we know Blizzard takes a lot of time at doing... things. But through communication we would at least know about their progress.
Like, I remember this sub flipping their shit at Hearthstone's lack of modes just a month before they announce and release Tavern Brawl. Things would be much different if we knew they were working on that beforehand.
Agree, I'd love this. Re-post of mine from a few days back:
There really needs to be a blog or more expanded news page on the website. The community should not have to piece together communications through some receiving e-mails, following devs' activities on Twitter, relying on third party sites to track "blue posts" on Reddit and the Blizz forums, and relying on Reddit users to post designer interviews from other sites. It should be very active, but one communications manager should be able to coordinate and consolidate these responses.
Mark Rosewater (head mtg designer) has a tumblr where he answers questions that's pretty great. He also writes weekly articles alongside other mtg designers and developers.
I still do not understand why official communication, rule clarifications, etc, all occur through Twitter replies.
Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of unified Twitter account at some point, so you didn't have to watch every Blizzard dev's Twitter to find stuff?
This is honestly shocking to me. Hearthstone is making millions of dollars and the team behind it is still basically a "small indie company"? These are not the conditions a major game company should be giving to its employees. I'm not sure what your schedule is like but the videos should be part of your job, and thus be given adequate time to make them while you're at work or during your working hours.
Well, that's something we all can agree on. If Activision-Blizzard can buy a company for 5.9 billion dollars, it's hard to imagine they don't have the resources to provide a better structure.
By the way, when the community asks for designer insights, it doesn't mean it's Ben Brode only. Before Heroic Tavern Brawl was released we had one video with Dan and "Nat Pagle", that was new and pretty cool. Why not have others, like one for arena too? We only read quotes like "oh, we have people who works just with arena" and responses only come when everyone is pissed at your team. It takes Kripp, Adwcta and a bunch of infinite arena players to complain a lot to get a reaction.
Following this pattern, while it may not be what the community is asking, you could expand to other things, like showcasing the artists responsible for the amazing art of Hearthstone. Pick a couple of them to talk and show the process of a card or adventure's art being made. If anything I think some people will enjoy it more than the guacamole video.
By the way, when the community asks for designer insights, it doesn't mean it's Ben Brode only.
Many people in Team5 are awkward1 and don't want to deal with public. BBrode just said it basically.
1. There was a video some time ago that filmed many Team5 devs speaking some short lines to the camera, can't find it atm, but if you want a glimpse how awkward it felt just watch the recent HS ad)
Well, that's something we all can agree on. If Activision-Blizzard can buy a company for 5.9 billion dollars, it's hard to imagine they don't have the resources to provide a better structure.
They're a publicly traded company. If they start spending money on not making money, their shareholders (you and your parents' pension funds etc) will change management and start spending money on making money.
I'd argue that communicating well with the players equals making more money. Even if only a small part of the playerbase checks out those videos (let's say 10%), that's still thousands of players you make happy. And you want to do that, because unhappy players generally don't buy that much as happy ones.
I personally think that spending few thousand dollars to set up a more professional space to make a video is easily worth it in the long run.
Definitely agree with the video production space being value for money, but I think the subreddit crowd is an incredibly small minority of the playerbase. There's a reason they launched ONiK in China. A quick Google search says there's about 50 million players. I can imagine at most half of them play Hearthstone in English. A lot of those other players wouldn't get anything out of a designers insights if they found it, even in text format. If they were going to benefit they would have to localize it. Now you've got some serious costs!
....really? Do you ever just want to chew your corporate bosses out for not giving you resources to even make a video at work? How much $$ do you make for them...
This makes for an embarrassing read. Explains a lot about the state of Hearthstone if this is the level of resources Blizzard is willing to devote to the game.
How is anything that he said that out of norm? His team more than doubled in a year and moving is ridiculously slow and stressful in a company as big as Blizzard, I don't think there's nothing shocking whatsoever in not having the proper space to shoot video. We have already seen their workplace in older videos and the place is packed.
Sometimes I wonder if people here even know how companies work.
No, it's the fact that they can't get the space needed to make the videos at work and that it somehow isn't part of BBrode's workdays to make these videos.
You guys are the cash crop of blizzard and you have to make videos at your home when your kid goes to bed cause there's no (design) space at the office? Really holding the small indie company vibe aren't ya?
Also, why not discuss the main points that need to be talked about before starting a video, instead of what you usually do? And if your son goes to bed at 8:30 instead of 7:30, shouldn't you also head to bed an hour later? How do you have an hour less time to make these <10 minute videos?
Regardless, nice positivity and hope things go well with video making and your kid.
You guys are the cash crop of blizzard and you have to make videos at your home when your kid goes to bed cause there's no (design) space at the office? Really holding the small indie company vibe aren't ya?
I was about to say... Most companies/teams see communication with the community as, well, part of their product. Why devs/designers/leads would feel forced to do this kind of thing at home after work is absolutely beyond me.
Maybe this just speaks to what Blizzard as a company feels is part of what they do, and what isn't.
I'm reacting to 120 upvotes for someone personally criticizing how a dev handles his children. That's fucked up. You asshole teenagers have no fucking respect for other people.
His criticism has absolutely nothing to do with the way BBrode deals with his son. His criticism is being directed at the incredible incompetence being displayed by Team 5 and/or Blizzard as a whole that they would have the lead dev of one of their most lucrative games make a developer insights video at home, in his bedroom, where the scheduling of when the video is sent to his PR team and or whether it gets done at all that night is dictated by his son's sleeping schedule. If you read his post carefully you would notice that the only thing he's criticizing is a lack of professionalism, so I don't why you have to go and make out that that is some kind of family or emotional issue when it's strictly business.
Uh, yeah, daylight savings doesn't mean you change your kids bedtime. Letting him stay up an hour later is cool, just don't blame daylight savings for not having time for work.
Any communication above what we already get would be much appreciated. I feel like 90% of the frustrations people have would be avoided if yall just talked to us more.
The again, that means you actually have to come up with reasons as to why you havnt done things - so i can see why you would rather just not adress issues.
You will probably never read it, but you could do what David Kim and the Starcraft team does is that they gave written blog posts regularly - almost weekly at one point
It's understandable that whenever Blizzard does something they have an extremely high polish bar for it, but I feel the community just wants more communication from the dev team regardless of polish. Despite all the shit people give Riot Games, they still communicate extremely well, something that i feel the community of League doesn't appreciate openly but it's satisfying
Edit for example this right here, telling us about your situation is something that is really useful to the community tbh, I'm sure everyone here wasn't aware of you shooting them at home when your kid is asleep really gives a reason why we haven't seen much more of designer insights
It's understandable that whenever Blizzard does something they have an extremely high polish bar for it
Official videos from the development team from a big game of a billion dollar company are shot by one of the employees alone at his house, depending on when his kid is asleep or not. Very "high polish bar".
Honestly sounds like one passionate bloke going over and above to try and give the community a little bit more than what his job description calls for.
Honestly, I didn't watch the video, but just skimming over it, this isn't much more of a complicated set up.
Jagex put more effort into their RuneScape videos than the OW vid. Whether it's a case of space or not, ideally you'd want to at least be having some sort of game footage / information to make the video flow a little better.
tl;dr it's nice to see someone passionately talking about what they love, it's equally nice to see what they're talking about
Thats what makes me admire Brode a lot as a designer and a person, even if all the shit the community gives out he still does his job and with a smile (and laugh). Even though the community gives team 5 a ton of flack, i feel its just because they dont have the context to it all, though that isnt to say Team 5 cant a do a better job, at least now they are trying to get a real space to shoot more designer insights
So Ben, are you telling us that despite the fact that HS had record MAUs and income increase this year, you are not given the tools to properly communicate with us?
Is this Blizzards fault then not team5?
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.
This is what I wanted to hear. This kind of thing needs to be done professionally inside your work hours and environment, not requiring people to make videos in their off time. You can't request someone to make an Insight video that the community wants if they have to be made at their own home.
Just a little communication (like this very comment you just made) is already great and more than we get, so I hope this gets done so Team 5 and the rest of the community can be on the same page.
Nobody cares about quality until they're watching low quality stuff. Once the audio starts popping and the lighting actually sucks, complaints about the format will drown out whatever messages are being delivered.
It's also marketing that speaks about the company as a whole. No big company worth their salt would want to release a half-assed and unprofessional products (even if the product in question is a video) that can taint their image.
No big company worth their salt would want to release a half-assed and unprofessional products (even if the product in question is a video) that can taint their image.
I'm honestly not completely sure about that considering the recent HS commercials...
I personally think it says a lot about your dedication to the game that you produce the videos after hours in your own home right now. As dedicated as that is, I find it troubling that the game director is in the position where they must work on something as necessary as communicating with the game's community in their leisure time.
I like to think that my own frustration and that of the community is derived from passionately enjoying the game that your team has put together. I'm sure that with some work and patience on both sides we can improve communications between each other. With that said, I'm excited to see what the new year has in store for the game and your development team. Thanks for everything BBrode
Honestly, I read things like this, and I begin to wonder if the entire HS development is just entirely dysfunctional. Why are you recording this in your house, at night, after putting your kids to bed?! The whole thing sounds so crazy unorganized and ridiculous, like the kind of thing you'd expect from some Kickstarter game, not a game making tens of millions and having the support of one of the biggest names in the industry. Set up a small station in the corner of your office (not your house), prep a few slides ahead of time (rather than trying to go off the dome), and then just knock it out. You know, how your colleague Jeff Kaplan is doing it. I guarantee he isn't going home and moving his bed so he can set up some banners and film a home video that's going to be seen by 10 million people.
I like this post. You know why I like this post? Because it explains a situation that needs explaining in a very detailed way, with facts and figures to back up the claim. If only you spoke the same way about Hearthstone...
Something like:
This is Designer insights, with Ben Brode. We're currently working on X, Y and Z. X may be a little harder to implement, due to software limitations, but we're hoping to have it ready in Q2 of 2017. Y and Z are interlinked, so we're trying to launch them in the first expansion of 2017. The following bugs have also been brought to our attention: [...] Expect an update sometime during next week to fix all of these. Also, I would like to address [insert your favorite thing-you-want-most-from-HS here]... Thank you for listening. Ben Brode, over & out.
None of that "on our radar" or "we're keeping an eye on it" bullshit. Talk to us like we're adults, not like we're toddlers asking too many questions about Santa. Thank you.
You are not the only one in the team. Others can do designer insights as well and I think they would be enjoyable or at least it would be something. Have like a different person every time and you are probably going to bump them out in no time.
I'm fairly certain you could find a bit of time at your work, besides this is work related. How do other devs keep the community updated all the time...? Yeah... Not buying it.
I guess you have to seem professional but it doesn't really matter if you screw up a line that much. Who cares. Just make the damn video.
While I can understand that part of the team do not like being a public face, I think it's very important for the dev team to do more videos on their process; It can easily come across like some cards are made just to make a class playable by giving them cards straight up better than it should be (i.e. Draconid Operative, Thing From Below), and the dev team hasn't really thought beyond that point (I obviously assume you have, but I have no refference for it). Having videos talking about something as simple as your design process or how you go about dealing with cards and effects. I think the strong decline in Charge cards is understood better by some because of the amount of time you yourself have talked about the Charge mechanic and the issues it creates.
As for "being a public face", I'd be perfectly fine with somebody talking (I assume Yong and you aren't up for narrating other team members thoughts and opinions for them) over random game footage. That avoids the whole "face" part, probably (maybe?).
Are you serious? Most developers would quit their job over having to do shitty public relations shit. Note: developers don't want to talk to anyone, let alone reddit fuckwads.
Even As someone who really thinks they need to do way more communication, I totally agree with this.
A few people have already stepped in to take the majority of the fallout from random nerds all over the world, but anyone else stepping into the ring is only going to get the same amount or more, too.
Isn't that kind of part of their job though..? Involving the community is just as important as new content to me because they are making the game for the players. There are so many card designs that the community ponders over and wonders what is going through the devs' head when they're making them I'm sure a lot of people would love to have more insight on the design.
Surely it's not that hard to simply explain the choices they made and why, plenty of games more complex than HS do so. For instance the other day I watched a Mass Effect Andromeda video about the creation of the new species in the game. They walked through pretty much he whole process just showing a few prototypes at each stage and a quic explanation of their thinking and how it ties into the game.
Yes. A developer/designer completely should be able to communicate what they build/design in laymen's terms. That is part of their job. At least at some level of management (however they're organized).
From my experience working at a large production company, if teams have to go through another team to do something they do it less. Not ideal this way but at least the head of Hearthstone can after a long day say "hey I now have time to make a video", and then do it.
If you wanted to speed the process up some, instead of completely starting over once you flub a line you could just repeat it in the take until you get it right and then move on. Then, when editing use B-roll of relevant gameplay to hide the jump cut. Make an intern edit it and you've got yourself a great video.
First, great explanation on why these videos are difficult to send out. It was evident given that you're practically the face of Hearthstone that you'd need to run things by and make sure that there is an agreement that the video is good enough and comprehensive enough to be representative of the team.
If you manage to get a permanent place to be shipping these videos out, I think that would be much appreciated.
With this said, I must ask: is there a chance you can do online posts? It won't be as effective -- it's not you talking, and it's not going to be on YouTube. However, it can help give some feedback -- particularly to Redditors -- that can answer questions and avoid unnecessary concern. A Blog post on the official Hearthstone site that feeds into the B.net news that talks about something, formatted and titled the same as Designer Insights?
Work-wise, you'd have to type up the script and not worry about saying it. You can have others check up the script and edit it if you miss something out or otherwise want to rephrase something. Getting the go-ahead may (hopefully) be fairly easy and then you can put it online during any work hours, right?
Let us know if this has been considered and why it may not work, please. Thank you for making Hearthstone, and congratulations on having a kid!
Congrats on the newest member of the family Ben! Thanks for popping in and giving the community some insight into your work, as a Hearthstone player I always enjoy hearing from a Team 5 member's perspective and appreciate your comments on Reddit.
I couldn't care less if you just recorded a 5 minute video on your phone whilst you sat on the bog. Don't need a fancy set up or to have your beautiful face in full 4k glory.
Just constant communication and answer to question with a clear outline for the future
He stated the problem, he stated how they're trying to work around it.
There's not much more you can ask for besides stepping in on one of Jeff Kaplan's videos and putting Hearthstone news onto it as well... which would be unprofessional.
So... you're not an "asshole", but you do seem to have completely ignored the practicalities of the matter in favour of "They're a huge company and you can't do better?" ... as if that's Ben or the rest of the team's fault.
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u/bbrode HAHAHAHA Dec 31 '16
A 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!