Blizzcon took place last week. What was it, and why should you care?
It’s a convention hosted by Blizzard – one of the world’s major brands – but one that you might not have heard of: unless you’re a gamer.
Blizzard, also known as Blizzard Entertainment, is one of the world’s most successful computer games companies. One of his key title games, Starcraft, has been a huge part of South Korean culture. Its games are often runaway successes, and one of its franchises, World of Warcraft, is the highest grossing video game of all time, having as at 2012 earned through over 10 billion dollars, with over 100 million accounts created over the game’s lifetime to date. Despite coming out in 2004, it is still currently the world’s most subscribed MMORPG. It counts celebrities among its fans, including Henry Cavill (who was reportedly playing it when he got the call that he had been selected to play Superman) and Vin Diesel.
Blizzard has also decided to release its own movie (above). Rather than bother with game expos like other game franchises, Blizzard is probably the only game company that holds its own, a two-day event that attracted 25,000 fans this year at a cost of $199 per ticket.
During its event, Blizzard typically launches cinematics for its upcoming games, like the latest World of Warcraft expansion:
and for its latest Starcraft 2 game, out this week:
Why are Blizzard games so successful? Aside from the amazing cinematics, the great gameplay and storylines is the use of data-driven design:
Blizzard probably has more data about what players actually do in their game than any other developer on earth (with the possible, but arguable, exception of Zynga). As developers have come to grips with the idea of using that data to drive design, the general idea I’ve heard expressed is one of continual and gradual refinement – the concept being that there’s one “best” way of doing things, and you’re using the data fed back from your players to gradually hone and refine the game so that it gets closer and closer to that ideal system […] Blizzard uses that data to suggest and implement entirely new approaches, allowing it to keep the game experience fresh and challenging – preventing single, over-optimised approaches to play from emerging and players from getting bored.
It’s also made a game for the masses – even willing to cater for them over so-called ‘hardcore’ players. Data-driven design, and using data to create design to optimise for the best target audience: these are two key things that have made Blizzard games so wildly successful. It’s something worth thinking about.