At the Question and Answer Panel for Blizzcon 2010, a mysterious young man in a red shirt asked a question:
One reason why I suspect the Red Shirt guy became so popular is just how innocent he sounds. Meanwhile, Metzen is all, “Isn’t Falstad dead?” “No,” replies the Red Shirt guy very politely. “He survived!” hahaha. It is comical how this red shirt guy just owned these ‘lore masters’ at their own game. At the end of the video, everyone is laughing and, it seems like Metzen’s face is turning red. (A red shirt NPC appears next to the Falstad character in the game now with the title ‘Fact Checker’.)
But the Red Shirt guy represents a big problem for Blizzard. Not only does it show that Blizzard can’t keep its own junk straight, it somewhat hints an annoyance at someone trying to keep it straight (“Isn’t Falstad dead?”).
Look, Blizzard is in the business of selling books based on the ‘lore’. They want people to buy the expansions in part to see the continuation of the lore. All of this is important. It would be bad, bad news if Blizzard became known for just putting out junk for lore and not caring about it. It would doom the book sales and make no one care about the continuum’s progress in future games.
Apparently, there was an adult at Blizzard (might have been Metzen himself) who realized this was an issue that needed to be fixed. One year later at the 2011 Blizzcon, watch what happens (just look at the start of the video).
Metzen leaves the stage to embrace the red shirt guy! What a surprise! Apparently, Blizzard flew the Red Shirt guy out and made sure he was first in line this time (and probably asked him to wear the red shirt again).
Blizzard is making it known that they are embracing the ‘Fact Checker’. In other words, they aren’t going to be hostile to a fan for fact checking their own game. After all, the fan is only trying to make the game better. And you cannot sell a fictional universe unless you’re consistent with the facts within that fictional universe.
All throughout that panel, they had an ’embrace the Fact Checker’ type attitude. One guy came with a physical screenshot of a tail wiggling from a building and wanted to know what the heck it was. Metzen called the guy up to the stage so he could examine it. And the panel admitted they had no idea what the tail was except that their artists put in crazy stuff.
I thought this story was heartwarming in an era where developers go on ‘creativity quests’ and destroy the franchise or to treating fans like manure. If people want to know why Blizzard’s games remain so consistently popular, it is because you see attitudes from the developers like the above.
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