There was big news last week as the entertainment world’s current leader of diversity and inclusion Blizzard Entertainment celebrated a straight white cisgender male, and sci-fi writer returning to the celebrity center at the Irvine mothership. We are not talking about the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. Rather, we are talking about none of than the glorious return of the architect of Azeroth and Overwatch’s Walt Disney: Chris Metzen.
General Manager of Warcraft, John Hight (He/Him) made the announcement on LinkedIn:
Here some possible reasons why Chris has returned to Blizzard:
- Blizzard is in Trouble and Needs a Savior — After a series of scandals and poor-quality releases, Blizzard has been going downhill without Chris. World of Warcraft has never been the same since Chris was assigned to Titan and stopped focusing on WoW. It’s pretty obvious that Steve Danuser is no Chris Metzen and is in over his head. Blizz has been begging him for years, so Chris to the rescue!
- Metzen Needs the Money — Although Chris has a purported net worth of $15 million and made a helluva lot of money over the years with Blizzard, living in an opulent mansion in Orange county is not cheap.
- Metzen Needs a Challenge — It’s not easy living at home and working remotely at the same time. Chris, like any red-blooded American male, is probably chomping at the bit to leave the bliss of domesticated life and get back in the game at the office in Irvine.
- Trouble in Paradise — He’s tired of being forced to watch endless reruns of The Handmaiden’s Tale on Hulu while he does the household chores. Tired of being low T, he wants to start wearing pants again. Enough said.
- Metzen is Upset at Blizzard for Being too Woke and Aims to Fix it — It’s an undeniable fact that Blizzard’s descent into wokeness has been accelerating at a rapid pace and tarnished Chris’s legacy. Over the past few years, Blizzard has traded in their white male fans for Trump hating (now Elon Musk hating) communist pansexual cat lady types. Perhaps the warchief is upset and angry that this is happening and wants to set things right? We can only hope.
Conclusion
I always admired Chris Metzen. He was the real deal in the video game industry. His accomplishments with the Warcraft franchise are monumental. But something happened to him when he was working on Project Titan. Eventually, Blizzard released Overwatch salvaged out of the smoking ruins of Titan, but Chris and the team were never the same. Having his own family probably had an impact on him and he started to become more sentimental, feminized, and philosophical.
The same thing has happened to other Blizzard old guard. In their 20’s the Blizzard devs were bold, confident, cocky, and full of bravado. After Titan failed, they realized that they too were only human and as a result, they had lost their machismo and swagger. They seemed like shadows of their former selves. To compensate, they latched on to the new religion of wokeness. And, it was with release of Overwatch, that heralded the beginning of the end for Blizzard.
No longer a citizen of America — the horrible nation that gave him the freedom to live out his dreams and become a millionaire — Metzen now identifies himself as a “citizen of Earth.”
This aspirational title gives us a possible insight into his worldview. The citizen of the earth movement is a loose organization of guilt-ridden, privileged, progressive white people who hate Trump, love Star Trek, reject borders, and any form of nationalism. Living in their gated communities with their Mexican landscapers and maids, they have evolved beyond the old-fashioned notion of borders, language, culture, and firmly believe in eradicating “racism” and “climate change” and embrace any and all woke fads on the horizon. But at least Chris doesn’t have pronouns in his Twitter bio, so there is hope.
The big question remains: will Metzen’s return as a creative advisor save Blizzard? I really don’t think it’s possible at this point. Everything Blizzard stands for now, is diametrically opposed to what they used to stand for 20 years ago: making the very best games.
Today’s Blizzard wants to make everyone feel welcome, teach the world to sing, have a Coke, and save the world. Activision-Blizzard is in the entertainment industry’s vanguard of anti-white, anti-male diversity, inclusion, and equity ideology corporations. In a way, the Blizzard of today mirrors the decline of California which leads the world in oppressive, dictatorial, neo-Marxist social engineering.
At this point, it’s reasonable to ask if Blizzard is even worth saving? My answer is no. It needs to die a slow and painful death as a cautionary tale.
If, by some off chance, Metzen happens to save Blizzard from their own ideological and cultural excesses, and gets back to making great games, it would be poetic justice for real gamers to see a white straight male become the savior of a company that ruined their studio by throwing white male devs under the bus by pandering to pink haired gender fluid feminists and rainbow flag waving trans militants. Only time will tell if Metzen has the stones and the clout to save Blizzard from itself.
I cannot better sum up the hypocrisy and stupidity than you did:
“Living in their gated communities with their Mexican landscapers and maids, they have evolved beyond the old-fashioned notion of borders, language, culture, and firmly believe in eradicating “racism” and “climate change” and embrace any and all woke fads on the horizon. But at least Chris doesn’t have pronouns in his Twitter bio, so there is hope.”
Well, no pronouns. So not totally beyond hope. Hope for himself. For Blizzard? No chance. Even as a major player, it was a team that made the game. And about everyone else who was still involved at Blizzard when the Wokehammer fell is still disgraced, up to damnatio memoriae and their names being removed from WoW and other games.
The Cosby Suite thing… accusations abound, they said lewd and sexual things. It being a boys club. Seems someone took thorough revenge by presenting them in the worst manner, but there is still no crime. But mission accomplished, people and Blizzard destroyed. In another era it would easier for them to continue and recover, but it is a woke nation these days, the media and activists going like buzzards for anyone non-compliant.
There is also a story to the fall of Titan, I hope that it will one day be told. Such failures are trouble for creative guys, stepping away to regain distance and recover is not unusual.
I would really love to know why he is returning now. And I mean not the official version but the truth.
I read a comment at Kotaku wondering if he was helping “foster the toxic environment” at Blizzard or innocent. So that’s important for people these days.
Wonder if he goes full woke. If not, he might have gone into woke hell and will need balls of steel to change that. I judge it more likely he will not go full Danuser mode and rather focus on game design and will try to make a better game with the freshest snowflake now at Blizzard.
If you read between the lines and figure out the clues I have left in my article you may solve the mystery as to why so many Blizzard old guard became woke.
I read a comment at Kotaku wondering if he was helping “foster the toxic environment” at Blizzard or innocent. So that’s important for people these days.
This is a good observation and another possible explanation as to why so many men became woke in the last decade: to strategically immunize themselves against claims of sexual harassment
As the number of females increased at Blizzard, this presented a terrible temptation for males. Males and females are not meant to work together because there is sexual tension. As Jordan Peterson has said, “this men and women working together is very new”. Nobody really knows if it’s tenable over the long haul.
Hint: it isn’t. I do not think it’s possible for men and women to work together.
Many men who misbehave at the office with women, suddenly become woke as way to immunize themselves. They say all the right things on Twitter, LinkedIn, and at company gatherings. It’s all performative bullshit. They are doing it to protect their careers. U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was a notorious womanizer, he even killed a woman, but because he supported abortion and other feminist causes, he got a pass.
If you are going to hire women in the video game industry, make sure they are as ugly as possible. You don’t want men to become simps and white knights. Attractive, ambitious, scheming women frocking around the water cooler can destroy a company in short order. I do not recommend hiring American women. Most are entitled, woke, feminist brats. Period.