Live service games have undeniably, and unfortunately, taken center stage in the gaming industry in recent years. Blizzard, a company at the forefront of the live service movement, has offered its perspective on the evolving and demanding needs of players – and it’s in line with the increasingly arrogant AAA tone towards consumers.
Blizzard as a studio maintains several of the biggest live service games today with Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, and World of Warcraft. Even with its extensive experience in the segment, it still struggles to meet the ever-present demand of players for new content.
In an interview with The Verge, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra weighed in on the demands of players. He says that gamers want new content regularly. While he didn’t say that the demand was bad, Ybarra mentioned that players have little patience these days.
“Players have no patience,” Ybarra said. “They want new stuff every day, every hour.”
Demand is a good thing for the live service model games as it shows that players are still interested in a title. It also means that players consume content very rapidly and are logging many hours into a game. This poses a challenge for studios in keeping up with player demands, but Blizzard claims to be up to the task.
Blizzard’s solution to the increased demands from players is assembling large teams to rapidly deliver content. According to Ybarra, monetizing content should be done properly with players being satisfied with every dollar they spend in-game – not something they’ve been successful with thus far.
“We want to serve players with more content in our universes,” he explains. “At the same time, we want to make sure we’re responsible and meet their expectations. I think we’re still fine-tuning a lot of those things as we go forward.”
Blizzard has big plans for its live service offerings with World of Warcraft adding three expansions in the next year or so. The first DLC for Diablo 4 was also recently announced at BlizzCon. Overwatch 2 continues to add new characters, maps, and game modes with each new season.
Despite Blizzard’s success in the segment, the company is also open to proposals for games that aren’t live service. “We’re not afraid to create new IPs,” he says. “We’re not afraid to turn models upside down.” They have, however, in recent years done none of the sort.
Ybarra also notes that mobile is a growth area for the studio, since we all “have phones” as established at BlizzCon 2018. Blizzard just recently launched Warcraft Rumble and Diablo Immortal is doing well, earning $500 million in its first year. Ybarra says he would love to see Blizzard games “everywhere.”
Finally, if you are hoping for a new StarCraft game, then you are out of luck. Despite being mentioned by Phil Spencer in his recent keynote at BlizzCon, there has been no discussion about a new installment for the popular RTS game.
“StarCraft is something that we love,” Ybarra shared. “We hear the feedback from players about it. But we’re not talking about anything just yet.”
