Blizzard prefers face-to-face work: “teleworking does not allow organic communication”

Working from home would be a model enemy of creativity.

Although it has registered historical sales numbers, the video game industry has also had to overcome many obstacles as a result of the health crisis, especially in the field of development. While some companies may operate better or the same via telecommuting, for J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard, that not the ideal way to make video games.

As part of a chat with 3DJuegos, Brack acknowledged that they have known how to adapt to remote working conditions, but clarified that it is an operation model that kills organic creativity and spontaneous communication, essential for learning and design, so that As soon as things improve, the company would find a way to return to physical space.

There are no organic conversations in a telework situation“There are no organic conversations in a telework situation. Everything is very formal, you have to schedule a meeting, use a tool, and there is more friction in that environment,” said Brack, not without first remembering that even without a health crisis, teleworking it is something that development professionals look for frequently. “You talk to a person who, throughout their entire career, people have said, ‘hey, I want to work at home.’

That said, Brack celebrated the versatility of the studio and acknowledged that the cones will never be exactly the same. “When I think about what the world will look like when we go back to normal, or rather post-pandemic, it’s clear that the world is going to operate differently in the ways that people do their jobs. that is what we are deciphering now. As we see the development of vaccines and the numbers go down [de infección]there will come a time when we can ask ourselves what it’s like to go back to the office and how it will work with the work we do. “

A separate industry

As soon as the health crisis began, multiple companies sent their teams home, including those dedicated to localization, an area that was particularly affected and generated some controversy due to their way of dealing with the situation.

Around this, Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, recognized last year that the development of video games, especially in the early stages of creation, would suffer the consequences and it is true that there have already been multiple delays attributed, explicitly to the obstacles presented by teleworking. That said, studios like Treyarch knew how to adapt and even published videos of how they did it, while publishers like Square Enix have assimilated teleworking as a permanent model of operation.

More on: Blizzard and BlizzCon 2021.