Underseer
Contributor
https://www.polygon.com/blizzcon/2018/11/3/18059222/diablo-immortal-blizzard-response-blizzcon
So for the benefit of anyone not so steeped in PC games, lemme spell this out:
So at Blizzcon, Blizzard made a major announcement about a new Diablo game coming out. (Diablo is a huge franchise that brought back the dungeon crawler and pretty much invented the RPG subgenre now known as action-RPG or hack-n-slash.) The announcer's job at these things is to face giant crowds of Blizzard fans and get them really excited about some upcoming game or expansion to an existing game or whatever. The fans show up for this announcement and it's[ent]hellip[/ent] a mobile version of Diablo?
Don't get me wrong. This announcement was probably a big deal for Blizzard. They are probably hoping this thing will make as much money as Fortnite.
The thing is, Blizzard fans are almost exclusively PC gamers with maybe a few console gamers. No doubt those fans entered that hall expecting an announcement about an expansion to Diablo III, or maybe even an announcement about Diablo IV, but instead they got an announcement about a mobile game. Worse, the mobile game isn't even made by Blizzard, but by some third party famous for making Diablo knockoffs for mobile phones. Worse, with the recent Activision merger, Blizzard fans are probably expecting sleazy monetization strategies.
The announcement landed with a thud. During the Q&A, things got pretty heated between the announcer and the fans. Someone complained about the fact that it was a mobile game instead of a PC game, and the announcer snapped back "What? You don't own phones?" Another fan asked if this announcement was a delayed April Fools joke.
Any hopes of the mobile version of Diablo being the Fortnite-killer Blizzard executives were no doubt hoping for died in that convention hall. The first thing the public hears about this game is going to be the testy exchanges between Blizzard and fans during that Q&A segment.
This happened because Blizzard didn't understand their fan base well enough. A lot of PC gamers are dismissive of smartphones as a gaming platform. I myself have soured on mobile games due to the sleazy monetization strategies that generally go with mobile games. Blizzard should have known that announcing a mobile game was a tough sell for their fans, but they assumed that any game announcement would be well-received because they are Blizzard and that hall was full of Blizzard fans.
Mind you, Diablo III is one of the two video games I ever play at all anymore. I like it. I've been massively addicted to various Blizzard games in the past. I like the fact that they refuse to release a game until they think it's good enough, when most other publishers will push games out the door in a semi-finished state and expect customers to wait for a lot of patches (or worse, paid DLC) before the game becomes truly playable. I genuinely like Blizzard and (many) Blizzard games. Having said all that, I'm feeling a bit of schadenfreude here. Admit it: the taller and more proudly someone stands, the funnier it is when they face-plant.
Polygon article said:
So for the benefit of anyone not so steeped in PC games, lemme spell this out:
- Blizzard may have started out as a console game developer, but they've been pretty much the premier PC game developer for a long time now. If you play games (other than Solitaire and the like) on a Windows machine, there's a pretty safe bet you were addicted to at least one Blizzard game for a time. Their business model is pretty simple. They take a PC game genre that is considered hard core, dumb it down for the masses, then polish the shit out of it (usually with endless production delays) until everything gleams. Many PC gamers know that a game from Blizzard is going to be reliably good and come to expect it.
- Sometimes Blizzard games get ported to other platforms (e.g. Diablo getting ported to the consoles), but the average Blizzard fan probably doesn't give a rat's patootie about anything other than PC games.
- Blizzard is so successful at developing PC games that they have a big conference every year called Blizzcon in which Blizzard fans get together, cosplayers show off costumes related to Blizzard games, they have a variety of gaming tournaments, and Blizzard announces stuff they're working on. Fans really look forward to these things, especially that last part, where they get to find out what is coming in their favorite games in the future. No other conference by a single game developer is so large nor so well-attended.
So at Blizzcon, Blizzard made a major announcement about a new Diablo game coming out. (Diablo is a huge franchise that brought back the dungeon crawler and pretty much invented the RPG subgenre now known as action-RPG or hack-n-slash.) The announcer's job at these things is to face giant crowds of Blizzard fans and get them really excited about some upcoming game or expansion to an existing game or whatever. The fans show up for this announcement and it's[ent]hellip[/ent] a mobile version of Diablo?
Don't get me wrong. This announcement was probably a big deal for Blizzard. They are probably hoping this thing will make as much money as Fortnite.
The thing is, Blizzard fans are almost exclusively PC gamers with maybe a few console gamers. No doubt those fans entered that hall expecting an announcement about an expansion to Diablo III, or maybe even an announcement about Diablo IV, but instead they got an announcement about a mobile game. Worse, the mobile game isn't even made by Blizzard, but by some third party famous for making Diablo knockoffs for mobile phones. Worse, with the recent Activision merger, Blizzard fans are probably expecting sleazy monetization strategies.
The announcement landed with a thud. During the Q&A, things got pretty heated between the announcer and the fans. Someone complained about the fact that it was a mobile game instead of a PC game, and the announcer snapped back "What? You don't own phones?" Another fan asked if this announcement was a delayed April Fools joke.
Any hopes of the mobile version of Diablo being the Fortnite-killer Blizzard executives were no doubt hoping for died in that convention hall. The first thing the public hears about this game is going to be the testy exchanges between Blizzard and fans during that Q&A segment.
This happened because Blizzard didn't understand their fan base well enough. A lot of PC gamers are dismissive of smartphones as a gaming platform. I myself have soured on mobile games due to the sleazy monetization strategies that generally go with mobile games. Blizzard should have known that announcing a mobile game was a tough sell for their fans, but they assumed that any game announcement would be well-received because they are Blizzard and that hall was full of Blizzard fans.
Mind you, Diablo III is one of the two video games I ever play at all anymore. I like it. I've been massively addicted to various Blizzard games in the past. I like the fact that they refuse to release a game until they think it's good enough, when most other publishers will push games out the door in a semi-finished state and expect customers to wait for a lot of patches (or worse, paid DLC) before the game becomes truly playable. I genuinely like Blizzard and (many) Blizzard games. Having said all that, I'm feeling a bit of schadenfreude here. Admit it: the taller and more proudly someone stands, the funnier it is when they face-plant.
