Saturday Morning Gaming: Blizzcon
Even if you’re not really into video games, you might have heard about 2018’s disastrous Blizzcon. They had the announcement about a new mobile game instead of an announcement about Diablo 4 and responded to everybody complaining about the mobile game asking them “don’t you guys have phones?” and everybody there was upset. And they left upset.
Keep in mind: These are the type of people who do stuff like “buy tickets to go to Blizzcon”. They’re not focus testing this stuff at the mall. They made this announcement in front of their most rabid fans.
So this year was important for Blizzard because they wanted to have a Blizzcon that had people excited for the upcoming products rather than asking “what the heck?”
So, of course, a month before Blizzcon, there was a Blizzard-sponsored Hearthstone tournament where the winner made some pro-Hong Kong statements and then had his championship money rescinded and he was banned from Blizzard tournaments. Well, the internet saw this as An Opportunity. Within minutes, there were a bunch of memes created tying the most popular Blizzard characters to Hong Kong support. After about four days of the internet going NUTS, Blizzard apologized to the players and returned the money and STILL had to swim in outraged Blizzard fans (because, let’s face it, the only people who do stuff like “watch Hearthstone tournaments” are fans of Blizzard products).
So, last year, the headlines going into Blizzcon were “what’s going to happen at Blizzcon?” and “what games will Blizzard be introducing or improving?” and the headlines coming out were “BLIZZARD TONE DEAF TO FANS”. This year, Blizzard was planning on having the headlines be “After last year’s disastrous Blizzcon, how will Blizzard win back its biggest fans?” but, instead, the headlines were all about how clumsy Blizzard was and how they made stuff worse and, oh my gosh, how crazy was Blizzcon going to be and whether they’d squash even the mention of ANYTHING controversial and, thus, provide fodder for future headlines and memes.
Well… Blizzard seems to have learned something. They opened with an apology. Granted, the apology looked like it went through two legal teams first (one local, one overseas) but they acknowledged that there had been recent missteps. And then they talked about Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV.
And you know what? Half of the people coming out of Blizzcon were talking about how unapologetic the apology was and the other half were talking about Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV.
So… this Blizzcon was better than last Blizzcon. But Blizzard will have to deal with PR headaches from now until, oh, at least when the release dates for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV get announced.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is “Day Twenty-Three: Don’t you go back on me!” by Insulinde. Used under a creative commons license.)
Given the pace at which Blizzard normally makes games, Diablo 4 is going to be out in 2029Report
The crazy thing is that we now live in a place where we’re waiting to hear the date that they’re going to announce the release date.Report
You know, I went to a Tom Petty concert once. It was late in his career. He played several songs from his latest album, but he didn’t lead with that. Nor did he close. I liked the new stuff. I went out and bought the album. But that wasn’t what I came for.
Too often, somebody wants to make their mark as the new marketing chief and really do the big push with customers. And it usually ends just like this. You have to start with what people want.Report
Well, I can’t *TOTALLY* blame them. The main market for the phone game was expected to be China from the outset. They just thought that, hey, maybe we can move some product in the US too.
The problem is that the overlap in the Venn Diagram of “People In The US Excited To Play A Diablo Phone Game” and “People Who Bought Tickets To Blizzcon” consists of maybe a handful of people.
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have brought it out… but, if they were going to bring it out, it should have been an afterthought here “HERE’S DIABLO 4! And we also know that sometimes you want to play Diablo when you’re standing in line at the DMV, so you can do that too. BUT DIABLO 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Fly in the voice actor for Cain and have him walk to the mic and say “Stay a while and listen!” and then point at the video screen and then they wouldn’t even have needed a gameplay trailer. Just the storyline one would have been good enough.
And then, in China, do the same thing except swap it around. “FINALLY! DIABLO FOR YOUR PHONE!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!! (Oh, and we’ll have Diablo 4 for your desktop, if you care about that.)”Report
They shoulda said, “We effed up last year. Sorry. What we aren’t going to eff up is Diable 4 (pause for audience,) and Overwatch 2 (another pause).
Then the big titty dancers come out to entertain everyone.Report
The main take that I noticed after the Diablo 4 trailer came out was something to the effect of “HOW HARD WAS THAT? SERIOUSLY!”
I know that my response to the storyline trailer (entirely CGI) was “that’s all well and good, but where is the gameplay?”
Then I saw the gameplay.
Okay. I’m intrigued.Report
Yeah, I often wonder about some of the video game marketing folks. Like when the xbox one announcement wasn’t really about games and they thought that was going to go over well (I’m sure Sony enjoyed it). They also tend to do things like this:
Game Co: Here’s our product.
Gamers: We don’t like it.
Game Co: You’re just not playing right
Gamers: Different game it is.
(See Destiny, Fallout 76, and many others)
Edit: Diablo 4 looks cool–I hope they keep the same screen co-op so my wife and I can play.Report
I’ve heard rumors that it’ll be Playstation’s turn to pull a bonehead move next E3. They’ll announce the PS5 and Gaming As A Service will be the only game in town but the PS5 will come, automatically, with Fallout 76 2: Even Wester Virginia.
And Microsoft will just have to make one announcement: “The Outer Worlds 2 will be an Xbox/PC exclusive. And, yes, you can date Parvati in this one.”
And then we’ll have a riot.Report
I think the issue is that Blizzard hasn’t yet figured out that people don’t stan them anymore; that gamers aren’t just going to Love What Blizzard Does the way that they did when it was Starcraft and Warcraft 3, and people were inventing entire new genres of games based on WC3 mods (DOTA).
They’re starting to realize it, but they’re still thinking that they can be the Cool Fun For-The-Gamers Guys in the West and Blizzard The Multinational Media Powerhouse in the East and that the two won’t find out about each other.
Anyway. Gaming as an industry has gotten odd recently, and it’s because the gamers won, gaming got the mainstream acceptance (and the mainstream-media-company cash) that they always wanted, but now they’re realizing that the mainstream won’t let companies get away with edgy shit, because the mainstream doesn’t like edgy shit, and so companies have to make money by exploitation rather than by being unique.
As I said on Twitter, “a decade of gamers being oppressed gave us FPS, MMO, Magic The Gathering, White Wolf’s World of Darkness. A decade of gamer supremacy gave us loot boxes, microtransactions, and Gatcha-Waifu grind games.”Report
That’s a really good point.
When I got into RTS vs. Turn-Based Strategy vs. RPGs vs. FPS arguments back in 1998, Blizzard owned the RTS corner of the argument (Total Annihilation had a small group of nutters arguing for it, but Blizzard set the standard).
And now they’re finding that the old standards only still apply in some very, very weird corners.
On top of that, if you go out of your way to court a vocal group of socially connected personalities, you’ll find that pivoting back to “hey, we’re just a video game company!” is going to be one heck of a difficult straddle. (And, so far, I’m not sure that Blizzard has demonstrated that they’re particularly deft.)Report