Part I to this aimless ramble is here.
By not allowing users to distribute their custom maps and requiring authentication to get a map hosted on their servers, Blizzard make themselves the middleman. They want to control the types of games you can play. Censoring out ones they don’t like so much, you know, with the iron-not-quite-gentle-fist-of-oh-watch-out-almost-Godwinned-this-post of corporate control.
But it’s really, I suspect, a way to monetize content. To take advantage of novel games that might get far more popular than one could reasonably expect; and even more harrowing, free.
This is how short-sighted companies see 'free'. The disastarous "Battlefield Heroes". Not, as you might suspect, an WW2 themed LGBTI MMO.
Free is great if it leads to some sort of micro-payment or advertising parallel industry intra-vertical restructuring of proactive creative pardigm shifts. Free is fantastic if it really means ‘a really shitty version of the paid game’. Free is the best thing ever if it’s really just a Trojan Horse to get at your personal details. But free just… you know, without any other angle? Without any more money coming into the coffers besides buying the original game?
Abhorrent. Like Gordon Gekko at a Poetry Slam.
Blizzard seems to be trying to get a weird combination of Apple’s strategy (content control) plus Valve’s (mod friendly, relatively open, hands off, at least, at first blush).
In some ways, it’s a matter of ‘getting it’, and ‘got it’. Take Valve: they ‘got it’, they make excellent products that people want. They take their time. Like your odd Uncle Earl (who rarely visited and smelled of Lamb’s Rum, Brylcreem, and wet grass) who made a killer chili used to say, ‘It’s ready when it’s ready’.
Anything they release breaks charts, and keeps selling for a very, very, long time. They aren’t games, they are dynasties, they are major cultural milestones in video game culture.
Valve also ‘get it’, they play the long haul, they allow an open modding platform that gave rise Counter-Strike and TFC (which birthed, eventually, Team Fortress 2), as well as at least a half a dozen multi-player and single player mods that have seen more ‘customers‘ than many retail games. They sell their products as a service, continually updating to get their customers friends on board, and their friends friends… Valve’s strategies are seemingly generous but, more accurately, long-sighted.
This marvel of Maya wizardry netted Blizzard $2 million in 4 hours.
Blizzard ‘got it’. Whatever they make is gold. The unclean neigh hell-wrought lucre that flows into their coffers monthly from WoW is what makes every other studio attempt an MMO.
Products are released when they are ready. Starcraft II took 10+ years to be released. Sold over 3 million units in the first month.
But they don’t ‘get it’. They want to lock down the system so that the games that people are making for them will mean more money for them. Suddenly your most favourite map, say, DoTA2, is now locked. You need to give Blizzard a micro-payment.
Imagine if Blizzard had this for DoTA, assuming the often used figure of 10 million users/sometime players, now let’s put a price tag of 10 bucks on it, and assume 1/2 of the players buck up. Well… that’s a lot of Celestial Steeds.
But by locking it down they make it that much harder for the enthusiasts to make their wonderful weird custom maps, and play them with their friends. They make it difficult for users and players to create and foster a community around the creation and playing of these maps.
By making hoops to jump through, they only stagnant the community-sourced work that, I assume, they value.
The kicker however, is even if Blizzard doesn’t ‘get it’, I’m not sure it matters. Instead of being absurdly successful like Valve and being able to breach entirely new industries (like game publishing, for instance), they will merely be a highly profitable games company that can do no wrong.
They won’t be able to shape the very future of video gaming, the rebirth of the indie studio, the rich tapestry that is niche gaming on the PC platform. They won’t be able to dictate to all the formerly ‘heavy hitters’ how and when they will produce their product. At least not to the extent that Valve does. But they’ll still make enough money to rival, say, the combined GDP of the former Eastern Bloc.
‘Getting it’, it seems, doesn’t speak to the bottom line.
Waaaiiit a second, didn't Valve sell a zillion copies of this?
But hold on. Are we really to blame Blizzard for their attempt to monetize user-made content? Valve, famously, made a shedload of cash monies off of Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. They wisely waited until they were ported from HL1 to the HL2 engine, of course. They brilliantly employ user-made maps and items to keep Team Fortess 2 new and fresh even two years on.
But somehow, it seems different. For one thing, they certainly pay for the maps, if not outright put the fledgling map-makers in their employ. And another, they offer a compelling reason to buy. Entire game engine update is nothing to scoff at.
I guess it’s just another illustration of how Valve ‘gets it’, and how Blizzard, likely, won’t.
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CAN I YELL ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATE BATTLEFIELD HEROES AND ALL IT REPRESENTS HERE?
No, I probably shouldn’t. It’d just be the beer talking at this stage.
But the same sort of mentality you’re warning about here is the same sort of thing that’s popping up like buboes on Baron Harkonnen’s face — where his jowls are PC gaming…
alright I lost my thread there. But: yeah.
I think Blizzard “gets it” … it’s only since their deal with Satan Activision that the monetizing/controlling aspect of their products has gone spiraling out of all control.
Even before their hellish pact with Activision Deathwing Himself, though, Blizzard never really created anything new in terms of games or gameplay. They just polish and polish and polish and polish their products some more. Ten years between sequels? No problem. It’ll be ready when it’s done.
This attitude, which has served Blizzard so well in the past because their partners corporate overlords pretty much left them alone to do what they do. And what they do makes money.
But Evil Overlord and Master of All Things Horrific To Gamers Activision CEO Robert Kotick is definitely anti-gamer and anti-game developer. In its current incarnation, Activision is nothing more than a strategic acquisitions group. It’s all about the money, and greed is good, and as long as we gamers continue to shell out our monthly WoW access fees and tolerate creeping “social network integration” and buy gaysparkleponies, it’ll be same as it ever was.
I still bought a gaysparklepony though. I am weak.
I obviously cannot use the proper HTML tags to make my points. My kingdom for a preview, stav!
YOU ARE FEEDING THE BEAST WOLFIE.
IMHO, Activision isn’t anti-gamer,they’re just super-prop short-sighted profit. Being anti-gamer and anti-community and anti-privacy anti-whatever is just a byproduct.
And Blizzard is like what Japan used to be for electronics. They didn’t make anything new, they just took existing ideas and polished the hell out of them. The whole WoW world, from what I’ve read, is kinda based off of Warhammer 40k.
Stav: ARGH YOU MADE ME THINK OF HARKONNEN! ERGLE!
Between the high price tag, this, and the fact that I’m terrible at it, I get less and less interested in picking this game up as time goes on.
Yeah, I have no real desire to pick up SC2, or even Diablo III for that matter.
Also: I kind of hoped against hope that the walls between Activision and Blizzard would be as high and thick as they promised. Unless this is less a case of outright arm twisting (which at least leaves blizzard the good guys) and more a case of some bleedover corporate culture, which… eh. I never really understood what Bliz gained from getting into bed with Activision in the first place.