Blizzard wasn\u2019t ready for the immediate, and negative, fan reaction to the mobile game Diablo: Immortal. But how does a company that has been so consistent for so many years not anticipate fury over an announcement that breaks so many of the studio\u2019s own rules?<\/b>
\nBlizzard wasn\u2019t ready for the immediate, and overwhelmingly negative, fan reaction to the announcement of Diablo: Immortal. And interviews after the controversial press conference indicate that the company may be confused about why fans are so angry.
\u201cThe way I\u2019ve been kind of looking at the mixed comments is what those folks are really saying is they desperately, passionately want the next big thing,\u201d Allen Adham, executive producer and Blizzard co-founder told Polygon in a previous interview . \u201cSo I actually think that those two items are being conflated… It\u2019s pretty clear to us that there is a huge audience around the world that is gonna love this title. So hopefully we\u2019ll get there.\u201d
I disagree with this assessment, and it ignores the expectations that Blizzard itself has spent decades creating in its fans.
So what went wrong with this reveal? How did Blizzard mess up what should have been a fairly standard game announcement? Why is Diablo: Immortal such a bizarre shift for Blizzard, and why is it triggering such rage and anxiety in the audience?
You have to look at the big picture to make sense of all this, because there\u2019s more logic to this situation than it may appear.
To understand Blizzard, you need to understand that it\u2019s a developer that is known more for its execution on existing ideas than its original concepts. Blizzard takes games that people already love, and iterates on them with a focus on lore, character design and polish.
Blizzard doesn\u2019t need to get to a genre first, it just needs to be able to do it better .
\u201cLet\u2019s take a game that we all love playing, do what we want to do to make it ours, just like we\u2019ve done with every single game from the past,\u201d Blizzard\u2019s Sam Didier told Polygon in 2014 . \u201c Vikings was Lemmings. Rock and Roll Racing, name any of those car games out there. Warcraft came from Dune, so it\u2019s the same thing with Heroes of the Storm.\u201d
In this case, Heroes of the Storm was Blizzard\u2019s attempt to create something like Dota 2 or League of Legends \u2014 games that actually spawned from Blizzard\u2019s own Warcraft 3 .
\u201cIt\u2019s like, we take a game that we like and then we make our version of it,\u201d Didier explained . \u201cIf we like it, it turns out that people like it as well.\u201d
So that\u2019s the format for how Blizzard reveals new games, and it\u2019s easy to explain:
Diablo: Immortal isn\u2019t the sequel that Diablo fans wanted, nor is it Blizzard taking a crack at an existing genre. Instead, it\u2019s an example of an external company, NetEase, in this case, taking a crack at a formula Blizzard had seemingly perfected. Fans were at BlizzCon to see what Blizzard can do with the ideas of other companies, not what other companies can do with Blizzard\u2019s ideas.
NetEase is collaborating with Blizzard on Diablo: Immortal, but Blizzard builds excitement by asking questions that don\u2019t yet have an answer. What happens when Blizzard tries its hand at creating a collectible card game? We didn\u2019t know until Hearthstone was released.
Diablo: Immortal asks what would happen if a third-party developer tries its hand at Diablo on mobile platforms, and that\u2019s a question that has been answered many times in the past. The results have always been mediocre. We know what off-brand Diablo is like; it\u2019s not a rare thing in gaming. Blizzard working with NetEase on Diablo: Immortal seems suspiciously like someone replacing the labels on store brand sugary cereal to say \u201cLucky Charms.\u201d
It doesn\u2019t help that the demo given at BlizzCon doesn\u2019t live up to what we expect from Diablo.
\u201cWith Diablo: Immortal, it\u2019s easy to feel like you\u2019re playing Diablo, but it also feels like an illusion,\u201d our own Ryan Gilliam wrote after trying the game . \u201cIt looks like Diablo, it sounds like Diablo, and it even plays like Diablo. And yet it feels like it\u2019s missing the sense of satisfaction that comes each time you crumple a demon corpse in every other Diablo game. The soul of Diablo doesn\u2019t feel present.\u201d
Diablo fans are used to games that look like Diablo but aren\u2019t as fun as the original; it\u2019s almost a genre of its own on mobile platforms. But this may be the first time the fans have had to deal with a mediocre-looking game that\u2019s actually called Diablo, and comes with Blizzard\u2019s blessing.
The assumption being made, and being spread throughout social media, is that Blizzard is selling out its ideals for a chunk of the lucrative mobile gaming market, at the expense of the fans that have been there all along.
And perhaps the worst thing of all? It\u2019s not on PC.
\u201cWe were like, \u2018Oh, PC games. That is what we want to do. We love PC games. We are big PC gamers you know, and we are only doing these projects to kind of pay the bills, but we\u2019ve got this great game idea,\u201d former Blizzard North president David Brevik told IGN in 2017, talking about his company\u2019s first meetings with Blizzard and bonding over doing console contract work to keep the lights on.
\u201cWe\u2019ve pitched it to everybody,\u201d he said . \u201cWe\u2019ve been turned down, you know, 50 times, or whatever it is. Nobody wants to do this game because RPGs are dead, but we got this great RPG idea we would love to make some day.\u2019\u201d
That game became the first Diablo.
Blizzard is known for its PC releases, and Diablo games have always come to the PC and Mac first, to be later ported to consoles. Overwatch is one of the rare Blizzard games to be released on consoles alongside the initial PC launch. Hardcore Blizzard fans are, generally speaking, PC gamers.
You can see the confusion and, yes, hurt coming from a fan when he asks whether Diablo: Immortal will be playable on PC. The answer is no, there are no plans to bring the game to the PC. The fans, predictably, boo.
\u201cDo you guys not have phones?\u201d Blizzard developer Wyatt Cheng said in response. Not only did he misread the room with that question, he missed the point.
These folks have phones, and they probably love playing games on those phones. But Diablo was born, and made popular, on the PC. And now there will be a new Diablo game that looks better than Diablo 3, and they\u2019ve just been told that not only will it not launch on the PC, but that there aren\u2019t any plans to ever bring it to the PC.
Blizzard is once again breaking one of the core expectations the company has built across decades of game releases, and no one from the company seems to grasp why the fans feel hurt by this decision.
Fans are upset, and Blizzard doesn\u2019t have a handle on the situation. J. Allen Brack, Blizzard\u2019s new CEO, is going to have to convince longtime Diablo players that Blizzard hasn\u2019t begun to sacrifice its quality and long-term beliefs for profit.
And that\u2019s going to be a challenge. Blizzard has risen to prominence by applying its strengths to existing genres, keeping quality high while other companies are left chasing its design trends and making sure that PC players are never left out of the experience.
Diablo: Immortal breaks all three of those rules, and we\u2019re all left wondering what happens next.<\/p>\n

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Similarity rank: 3.1<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: -0.2<\/div>\n

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