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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! |
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.