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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
