[disc] The recipe for success? Blizzard cancelled games.

[AzraelKans]

I just read this yesterday and I found it quite interesting

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Blizzard...You_Know_About

Apparently blizzard cancels any game that is not "AAA" potential, focusing in the quality of their main titles instead.

Is that the "recipe for success"? of blizzard, killing minor projects, or half baked ideas to concentrate in large potentially great ones ?

It does seem so, in about 20 years they have 5 IPs, and a handful of published games (about 10) most of them have been incredibly succesfull.

Blizzard winners circle (almost in inverse order of appearance);

Warcraft (1,2,3, WOW)
Starcraft (1,2)
Diablo (1,2)
Black thorn
Lost vikings (1,2)

What do you guys think?

[SaphuA]

If you have the money and the guts you have high chances for such an approach to be a succes. But where's the fun in that?

[renderhjs]

they have very talented people onboard lots of them still from the old days. Not sure but a reasoncould be perhaps that they have only limited skilled people inhouse and dont like to go big scale where they need to give tasks to freelancers/ other companies.

[Squize]

All publishers cancel games, there's a lot of finished games that just never see the light of day, been happening for years ( There's a site just about C64 games which got cancelled for example ).

Squize.

[AzraelKans]

I hate to differ with you squize, well partially ,I mean, you are right even I have a small pile of unpublished games lying around, but the point is, Blizzard has a very limited number of published games (considering they are about 20 years old by now) actually they have almost as many canceled games as those they have published.

[Son of Bryce]

Blizzard's not a publisher, they're a developer. It's uncommon for a developer to have as many canceled titles as they do. It's paid off for them to protect their IP, they're acknowledged for the incredible quality of their titles. Perhaps moreso than any other company out there.

Of course if you're not making those blockbuster hits initially then you can't take the risk with not releasing games. You've got to keep people buying your back catalog years after release.

Valve operates on a similar model, releasing high-quality games every now and then and relying on that devotion to their back catalog to keep things rolling while they diligently develop their next blockbuster.

Things would be better off for the game community if more companies were willing to take the time to release good games instead of having publishers twist arms and make them release games when they still need work done. In a perfect world maybe?

[ImprisonedPride]

Diablo (1,2)

Should be Diablo (1, 2, 3)

There was an expansion.

[tonypa]

I am quite sure no developer makes bad games on purpose. They dont decide one morning "hey guys, I have an idea, lets make really bad game that nobody wants to play and buy". They still hope to make profit from every game, thats why you can see dozen re-skinned versions of same version - its cheap to reskin a game and even when not so many people buy it the developer can make profit.

If developer is successful like Blizzard they have enough money not to bother with medium-quality spinoffs and dont need to create games like "Mickey Mouse Starcratf" or "Lost Barbies". Again, making games is costly and most developers never have money to spend 5 years on single game. So they push out some sort of copies of same old idea every couple of months to earn little bit cash again. You can find many examples of developers spending huge amount of time and money on title that flops eventually and developers goes out of business. It is very hard to tell if game is going to work based on first idea on paper so making some sort of playable demo is required, now if trying out the demo shows the game does not work well the developer can do one of two things: scrap the whole thing and not spend any more money on it or continue on the project wasting even more money in the hope that it will eventually improve. Blizzard knows when to shut it down.

[hatu]

Should be Diablo (1, 2, 3)

There was an expansion.

How does that make any sense? Most of their games had expansions. It was Diablo 2 expansion not Diablo 3 which I still believe(hope) is coming out one day even though the team is scattered now.

Blizzard is known for high quality now so they can pull that sort of thing off. I guess they had a lot of luck if they scrapped as many games when they started out and could still make money

[VENGEANCE MX]

I think Hellgate:London somehow ended up being considered the 'sequel' to Diablo II...

[smith1302]

I liked hellgate london, but Diablo 2 was still my favorite. The Iso. view in diablo 2 was better then the 3d in hellgate IMO. I just like iso.

[hatu]

Maybe but I don't believe they'll give up on one of the most succesful PC titles just because of a mildly succesful MMORPG made by another company.

[AzraelKans]

Imprisoned Bride.
In that case there would be Warcraft 4 since they also had an expansion pack for that one, "The frozen throne" btw that one is Better than the original game. . Expansions dont count as sequels.

Thats exactly the point, theres no Diablo 3 (yet), and it took forever for them to release Starcraft 2 (they still havent) the quality control in blizzard is simply impressive.

Son of bryce:
You are right, I meant "released" not published. And you are also totally right in the rest of your post. Valve does work like that (one can only wish to reach that level)

[ImprisonedPride]

I say 3 (LOD) because you could play solely the expansion cd. Sure you needed 2 installed prior, but 3 could be played on it's own.

[Ray Beez]

Funny how easily people forget stuff they made that wasn't all that great, like Blackthorne, Lost Vikings, Justice League, Death and Return of Superman...

[ColbyCheeze]

Blackthorne and Lost Vikings were pretty damn cool IMO. I was actually playing them the other day on my emulator.

[Son of Bryce]

Funny how easily people forget stuff they made that wasn't all that great, like Blackthorne, Lost Vikings, Justice League, Death and Return of Superman...

Blackthorne's one of my favorite games. I guess you haven't finished it?

Back in the day my friend got it for Xmas and we played it non-stop during our break. And were compelled enough to actually finish it. A very challenging game! The stages were basically like action puzzles, you had to make sure ever step you did was the right one and timed properly. Just from memory, I remember some incredible design that I haven't seen matched in 2d since then.

On top of that it has some incredible visual design and an erie mood that you just didn't get in a SNES game. It was a dark game and being able to do things like shoot the innocent chained up prisoners stood out in my mind.

I'd known about but never played Flashback until using an emulator afterwards. Seem like Blackthorne just follows in its footsteps but I never got into Flashback so I can't speak much for its design.

[ColbyCheeze]

Also kind of related..but since we are on the subject of cool SNES games...I just beat Out of This World (otherwise known as 'Another World') and that game was amazing. I'd like to see somebody make something like that in flash...wouldn't be too hard either. (took a guy 2 years to make the snes one hehe)

[AzraelKans]

Son of bryce:
Blackthorne was a pretty descent flashback clone that made it all the way to the snes (instead of flashback we have a definition of irony right there) and Lost Vikings was an excellent game that had quite a following including a sequel, lots of clones (remember the "goblins" games?)and even a snes port. (both games were originally made for pc's) considering blizzard was almost a startup when those launched thats not so bad.

You are right about Death of superman though, my brain must have blocked it oh well... that proofs not even Blizzard can pull a good licensed comic game. (just kidding, just kidding)

[Son of Bryce]

Wow, it's hard to believe that even Blizzard made a cheesy licensed beat 'em up game.