What will happen to Blizzard? Call of Duty manager becomes president – INDIAN

Under Bobby Kotick he was Blizzard were left behind and were not given the opportunity to further develop less profitable games such as real-time strategy games StarCraft and Warcraft. After Microsoft’s acquisition, gamers promised that developers would be able to breathe more freely and experiment. But so far they have only experienced layoffs, the departure of President Mike Ibbar and the cancellation of an ambitious survival project. Although it won’t be surprising here that the project took six long years to create and still required several years of development.

Now, it would seem, there was another blow. She will become the president of Blizzard Joanna Faris. She started working for Activision in 2018 as senior vice president and general director Call of Duty. She was almost before 12 years in the NFL. This may come as a shock to many Blizzard employees. Firstly, Kotik forced them to release their games more often, just like Activision does with Call of Duty. Now the Call of Duty manager has become their president…

But to avoid painting the devil on the wall too early, Faris reached out to employees via email about the different cultures, communities and games of Activision, Blizzard and King. He seems to recognize the need to approach each department differently and reports that he takes on his new position as of 02/05/2024 with a sense of the different dynamics that Blizzard has.

Microsoft’s head of gaming research, Matty Booty, said of Blizzard’s new president: “Joanna brings with her extensive experience in business and entertainment, a history of building talented teams, and an inclusive approach based on trusting the people around her to help their work shine. I’m thrilled to work with Joanna and all of you to expand these rare worlds and find new ways for people to experience them.”

It’s true that Blizzard needed a break after the past few years of failure and constant player dissatisfaction. Only time will tell if Faris, in collaboration with Booty and Phil Spencer, can make Blizzard what it once was. Personally, I’d like to see Blizzard go back to Warcraft and StarCraft and experiment with smaller, less complex games, much like Obsidian did with Grounded And Pentiment or Tango Gameworks with Hi-Fi Rush. These are studios that are also owned by Microsoft.