[justicezyx]

I am particularly confused by Blz's rationale.

Valve basically own a significant fraction of its success to community: CS (based on modder produce) Dota2 (bought from a modder); these 2 are their big revenue sources.

While Blz seems always intended to disallow any modder involvement at all. Most Tower Defense games own their popularity to the early days of SC and warcrfatIII. And Dota is basically just a warcraft III mod.

If Blz can learn anything from Valve, it's that they can capitalize on the fan/moder based community, really easy. They just never did anything like that.

On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...

This does not sound rational to me...

[nomercy400]

The source code shows all details of one of their most popular products. If it got out you can guarantee there will be new exploits, new ways of breaking the game, which in order to keep the game 'fun', will have to patch.

Also, don't forget they re-released Starcraft with better textures recently, so having your sources out there isn't going to improve that game.

Plus, it's their stuff, they decide what to do with it. You can ask all you want about the source code of a piece of software of 1995, but I bet you won't get it from any company just because it is part of history. I don't see the source of Windows 95 lying around on the internet either.

[scrollaway]

They did capitalize on the modder community in World of Warcraft (almost by accident, thank you Sam Lantinga! and what a success it turned out to be).

But what you need to understand about Blizzard is they are extremely conservative about the game experience. They're proud of their work and while they never consider it perfect, they want the one experience for all their players to be consistent and to have the consistent feel of Blizzard polish (which lacks with mods). They're the Apple of game design.

It's also a bit of a different question when you're talking about pre-wow and post-wow Blizzard. Pre-wow it's also a matter of "it's hard". Nowadays it's easier, and their philosophy is I believe slowly changing.

[eropple]

> On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...

While they've missed a few here and there, their development strategy has served to make them approximately a hojillion dollars.

As a fan (I built tower defense, RPG, and Diplomacy maps as a kid--MAN do I miss Diplomacy maps, those were great), I kinda wish they would return to encouraging that stuff and push it to the fore. But I get why they don't.

[derefr]

What is/was a Diplomacy map? Anything to do with the strategy board game of the same name?

[eropple]

Inspired by and vaguely similar to. Widgets (usually those gray domes) would be placed on a map that may or may not look like, say, Europe, and you'd have N players whose goal was to possess (own structures by) as many of them as they could manage. Structures were usually super expensive, and resources (or, in some versions, units themselves) were acquired only by owning those control points. No allied victories.

Once the balance was dialed in (lots of maps had nation-specific special units and stuff, which made it tough), it could create some of the most interesting, dynamic UMS games I ever played. Sometimes they'd go literally hours. Early land grabs followed by huge back-and-forths, usually only limited by the sprite limit (my own maps avoided sprite-y units like Carriers, Goliaths, and Valkyries because of it; lots of Marines and Firebats, trying to make them feel like Diplomacy "armies" that could plausibly bounce off one another).

The only games I can recall that were more fun were Last Man Standing Regicide ("Shimo-style") games in Age of Empires II.

[Sacho]

Kinda. I remember mods which featured a World map, where units would spawn at your capital in set intervals, and you would use them to capture everyone else's cities.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

>Valve basically own a significant fraction of its success to community: CS (based on modder produce) Dota2 (bought from a modder); these 2 are their big revenue sources.

I simply do not understand this. Moders created an entirely new genre and basically brought Competitive Gaming to the masses, yet Blz won't allow modding on Overwatch. I've had discussions with people who support this and their rationale basically boils down to (1) they don't want to fracture the userbase and (2) they love the design and don't want to upset it. Both are ill founded. The userbase is in the millions and mods would get ppl like me to play again. Also, any graphical mods can simply run on my local machine, exactly like DotA2.

The game engine itself is superb and possibly hanfles/plays better than any other FPS with maybe Destiny being the only competition. There is no doubt modders would create a superior gaming experience. Learn from Bethesda

[taurath]

I'm not so sure. Skin sales are the entire business model of Dota2 and LoL - the difference is who develops the skins. Valve has shown they rarely want to be involved in dlc and skin creation, they've always been community first in that sense.

An RTS or an RPG lends itself to modding tools better than an FPS in general.

[ajmurmann]

> An RTS or an RPG lends itself to modding tools better than an FPS in general.

We got some awesome FPS mods in the past though. Team Fortress and Counter Strike stick out as the most prominent examples.

[croon]

Left 4 Dead too. I see a pattern.

But other stuff like modes in games: Capture the flag, Gun Game, etc would probably not be a thing without mods for Quake and original Counter-Strike.

[ajmurmann]

Sorry, I'm a little confused by your response. Are you saying L4D started out as a mod as well and using the "but" in an unusual way or are you unaware that both CS and TF were originally Quake and HL mods?

[croon]

Sorry, I realize the phrasing was bad.

"But" should've probably been an "Also". I was only trying to point at the difference between TF, CS and L4D starting as mods and ending up as full games and CTF and Gun Games starting out as mods (even though the CTF concet has existed outside of games long before) and ending up as only game modes in other full games.

I'm not a native :)

[chickenfries]

See, I think there's a huge difference between Activision Blizzard games and either Valve or Bethesda games. Sure, Valve and Bethesda have probably contributed more gaming experiences to the world across their many games and their liberal policy towards modding. There are only a few Blizzard games, but they're better and they make much more money. It's a tightly controlled experience, but the quality control means Blizzard fans will at least try almost every Blizzard game at some point. Can't say the same for Bethesda. Valve has fewer games, but the experiences are not as different as say, Hearthstone and Overwatch.

[BigJono]

>but they're better

Citation needed.

I've played a ton of AAA multiplayer games over the years. Hearthstone is hands down the worst one that I've given a fair chance to (>20-30 hours of playtime). To say that it's better than Counter-Strike (which many regard as the epitome of competetive FPS gaming and has stood the test of time in that role for almost as long as Starcraft has done the same for RTS) is an absolute joke.

[scrollaway]

To compare a turn based CCG to a competitive FPS is an absolute joke.

To generalize your dislike of a CCG, one of Blizzard's multiple games, into an argument against GP is a joke.

Whether modders would make as positive an impact in HS as they did in Valve games is very unclear, and I say that as the author of a Hearthstone simulator and founder of a community and company heavily involved in Hearthstone modding, reverse engineering and third party tooling.

[BigJono]

GP outright stated that Blizzard's games are better than Valve's and Bethesda's because of their strict control over quality/lack of community content.

My point is that Hearthstone is an objectively worse game than Counter-Strike is, in the same way tic-tac-toe is inferior to Chess in almost all respects. I'm not denying Hearthstone is fun, and makes a metric ton of money. I play it a reasonable amount and have spent money on it. But it's not a good game.

I don't see how providing a direct counter-example to an argument is 'generalising', but whatever.

[scrollaway]

Overwatch is a far, far better game than TF2 (also a far better comparison) and I would definitely say that one of the drivers for that is Blizzard's quality control.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

Methinks you're a Blizzard fanboy.Diablo 3 was a critical and personal dissapointment. Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm aren't exactly in my list of top PC games either. And they make more money? I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.

As for the diversity in types of games, you're suffering from recency bias. Until basically a couple of years ago, Blizzard only made point and click type games/RTS-like controls (Star/Warcraft, Diablo). WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement. Portal (a unique puzzler), Left 4 Dead(unqiue co-op, multiplayer experience, progenitor to Destiny), DotA2(an entirely new genre/RTS evo), and Half-Life(FPS) are at least as diverse as Overwatch(FPS), HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team. just like some of us are 10x devs, some are 10x MOBA players), Hearthstone(card game), and WoW.

Their quality control is excellent, I will concur. They rank up there with Nintendo for having extremely polished games with few if any bugs...none gamebreaking that I remember. But the reality is a tightly controlled xperience is just less satisfying and has far less replayability. The crowd is just going to make a better game, period, because they can suit a variety of gamer's preferences. I barely scratched the surface of any campaign in Starcraft 2, didn't like vanilla multiplayer, but played the shit out of the modded custom games.

Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.

I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.

What's really infuriating is that I enjoy modding and creating new game modes and OVerwatch's game/gunplay is so sublime that I have tons of ideas. One of the low hanging fruits is adding a MOBA mode with creeps, stat-based leveling and items. Another one is creating maps with more open spaces. or a co-op puzzle mode where you must use certain team configs to solve challenges. There's so many possibilities and with the core engine being so buttery smooth, I see no reason why modders couldn't make the game relevant for 10+ years

Again, I am mystified as to their strategy. Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools? I'm being hyperbolic a bit...they're entering uncharted territory by making a competitive FPS and want to tread carefully. As I researched, I read they are soon releasing modding tools. Looks like I might be playing overwatch again soon!

[chickenfries]

> Methinks you're a Blizzard fanboy.

I like their games. I like Valve and Bethesda games too.

> I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.

I don't have exact figures either, but whatever people spend on hats cannot possibly approach what people have spent on WoW subscriptions...

According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion. Obviously, one produces many more games, but I still have a hard time picturing something like TF2 coming close to the amount of revenue that WoW or Hearthstone generates.

> WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG. When I called Valve/Bethesda games are similar, I was talking about how Valve games all feel like thin skins over the Source of Gamebryo engines. It feels like you could walk out of the facility in Portal into City 17.

> Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.

Counter Strike is a great game. I've been playing it all my life, since 1.6. But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.

> HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team

As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).

> I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.

They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins. I'm not interested in it, so I haven't played, but it sounds like it might be up your alley.

> Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools?

Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota.

I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious. Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.

[FullMtlAlcoholc]

> According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion.

It's not just Blizzard. You're forgetting about the huge juggernaut that is the Call of Duty franchise.

>I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG.

Obviously, WoW has an army of creatives making content and developing an immersive world, but WoW is using the Warcraft engine. You can have diverse experiences using the same engine. I was just stating that Blizzard didn't begin to branch out until a couple of years ago.

>But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.

Anecdotal data not withstanding, Coutnerstrike still gets roughly 1.7x the viewers on Twitch

> As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).

Different strokes for different folks I guess. The other major sport with 5 players (basketball) is superstar driven. Teamwork is cool, but I just find spectating a singular talent who turns the tide of a game by him/herself more fun and entertaining.

> They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins.

And it's over!!!!! Grrrr

>Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota. I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious.

Valve may be smaller, but they seem to have a lot more freedom and a lot more diverse business interests...hardware company, the defacto online pc game store, sometimes game developer

>Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.

Sigh, don't get me started. The Switch was such a massive dissapointment to me. Of course it's going to have top quality games, but I find their decision to not include a $5 gps chip a huge missed opportunity. It's dissapointing that Nintendo won't be the trailblazer for AR, location based, or VR games. MArio 64 and Zelda 64 basically set the standarrd for how to develop 3D games while no one on the PS had figured it out at that point.

I could also go on for days about how much of a letdown AR Pokemon became. It captured the attention of the dev community like no other game has. I marvel at what the game could've become if Niantic had allowed this completely self-organizing group of disparate devs to continue hacking away...it could've been a transformative moment that forever changed how games are created and revolutionized the social aspect of it. Sure, the bots were a pain but let's be real. The gameplay was absolutely terrible, the UI even worse. I've seen better core gameplay scrapped together in a 24 hour code jam. Single devs made improvements over the base game, and it took them only a couple of days to redo certain features I was praying for Nintendo to step in as consultants after the game spread like wildfire...

Then again that could have been disastrous too. Nintendo still has not figured out online multiplayer gaming

[chickenfries]

I actually completely forgot about how much of a flop Pokemon Go was once the hype wore off. I was actually thinking more about whatever the Mario game that came out was.

The Basketball analogy is interesting, and I definitely think that watching Dota is a lot more interesting than HotS, no contest.

You've made a lot of good points, and I hope Overwatch's modding tools are awesome. I think we both agree that opening up Blizzard games for modding would be great, but we can both only speculate as to the effect that snubbing modding has on their business. I think I'm undecided on that issue now.

[EGreg]

Warcraft 2 Map Editor :)