Blizzard's 'Titan' gets reset.

[Paelos]

I had read about someone who used to work at Blizzard saying that the reason it was canceled was because it was too close to Destiny in look and feel.

That would make total sense to me. In reading it, it sounds like Bungie beat them to the punch.

Which is really sad if you think about it, because Blizzard had to have been kicking around this idea forever. They can't get anything to market on time.

[Malakili]

I had read about someone who used to work at Blizzard saying that the reason it was canceled was because it was too close to Destiny in look and feel.

That would make total sense to me. In reading it, it sounds like Bungie beat them to the punch.

Which is really sad if you think about it, because Blizzard had to have been kicking around this idea forever. They can't get anything to market on time.

A Destiny aimed at the PC would probably still do pretty well.

[Maven]

According to Kotaku's sources, this is what the game was:

http://www.kotaku.com/heres-what-blizzards-titan-actually-was-1638632121

That sounds way less interesting & ambitious than I was imagining from the game given all the rumors surrounding it for years. Less sad to see it shelved now.

I don't want to go into detail, but that Kotaku report is perhaps the most accurate description of what Titan is that's been made public so far.

[Nija]

I couldn't imagine working on something for 7 years of my life and having basically nothing come of that, that must be a bit of a kick in the nuts on a personal level. At least they were smart enough to say "Ok we're done", although I would be willing to bet they probably could of canceled it some time ago and not waited 7 years...

A friend of mine worked his entire 35 year career at HP in the printer/printing R&D department and none of the projects he worked on were ever turned into commercial products.

He retired at 50, despite that fact. I guess that helps it sting a little less.

[Ironwood]

According to Kotaku's sources, this is what the game was:

http://www.kotaku.com/heres-what-blizzards-titan-actually-was-1638632121

That sounds way less interesting & ambitious than I was imagining from the game given all the rumors surrounding it for years. Less sad to see it shelved now.

I don't want to go into detail, but that Kotaku report is perhaps the most accurate description of what Titan is that's been made public so far.

No wonder they canned it.  That sounds shite.

[Maven]

The artist concepts were amazing, if that matters. But Blizzard artists always put out amazing work.

[Merusk]

Yeah the art would be gorgeous but the game itself sounded like ass. The blurbs on kotaku were enough that unless it played far differently than it sounds I'd have given it a pass.  I'm not into crafting. 

[Speedy Cerviche]

I stopped reading when they said TF2 style art.

[Maven]

Easily identifiable character and weapon silhouettes to allow faster recognition by players.

[Kail]

I dunno, sounds like it could work to me.  Sounds like an attempt to balance the virtual world / sandbox players (Have a job!  Be friends with NPCs!  Engage in the player economy!) with theme park players (Play CTF matches!  Class based gameplay!  Small group content!).  It sounds like it would be a ton of work to integrate all that stuff in to one game, but if anyone's got the resources to do it, it should be Blizzard.

[Fordel]

I have zero faith in Blizzard's ability to balance anything adversarial and competitive.

[Ingmar]

I have zero faith in Blizzard's ability to balance anything adversarial and competitive.

Has there been a problem with Starcraft 2 in that respect?

[Ironwood]

Have a job! 

No.

[Merusk]

Triple no. 

[Fordel]

I have zero faith in Blizzard's ability to balance anything adversarial and competitive.

Has there been a problem with Starcraft 2 in that respect?

Yes, almost all of Blizzards attempts to make the three sides balanced have resulted in stagnate gameplay that is both horrible to play in AND watch. Probably most worrying is some of the worst matches are the mirrors. Like for awhile now ZvZ has devolved into ww1 style trench warfare, where lines of swarm hosts just endlessly send their minions at each other canceling out... while at the same time the first side that flinches and tries something different is immediately at a disadvantage due to how the unit works.

I haven't really followed SC2 in like a year now though, maybe its totally awesome and dynamic now! I doubt it though as tournament interest in the game keeps dropping.

Basically the game stopped being about out thinking your opponent maybe a year into the base game, and became purely about execution. A Stupid plan executed flawlessly is superior to a brilliant one executed poorly.

[Kail]

Have a job! 

No.

It's ultimately just speculation about a dead project, I suppose, but the article gives me the impression that it's an option, not a requirement.  There are plenty of people who like that kind of thing provided it's done right, games like Harvest Moon and Papers, Please are fun to me because they handle a "job" in a fun way.  It looked to me like they were going for a "trying to please everybody" kind of design (something with an even bigger draw than WoW), and that only works if you allow people to choose what they want to do.

[Maven]

In general, all MMOs have tried to make both the gameplay *and* the social aspects of their game interesting and engaging for their audience. I believe one of Titan's focuses was attempting to innovate on this concept, predominantly in the social realm.

[Fordel]

It took Blizzard like five years to figure out people like dressing up their characters.

[Margalis]

I couldn't imagine working on something for 7 years of my life and having basically nothing come of that, that must be a bit of a kick in the nuts on a personal level. At least they were smart enough to say "Ok we're done", although I would be willing to bet they probably could of canceled it some time ago and not waited 7 years...

I worked on something for about 3 years that was cancelled - really sucked and basically the reason I do contracting / work for myself now.

That said from what I heard one of the biggest problems with Titanfall was huge staff churn, so I suspect most people working on it didn't work for the full 7 years.

[Merusk]

It took Blizzard like five years to figure out people like dressing up their characters.

Which is why they should stick with gameplay and stay away from social aspects.  They are former hardcores and still want to cater to that group. They don't understand us filthy casuals.

[Venkman]

In general, all MMOs have tried to make both the gameplay *and* the social aspects of their game interesting and engaging for their audience. I believe one of Titan's focuses was attempting to innovate on this concept, predominantly in the social realm.

Titan was started so long ago, subs-based Western MMOs were still the thing. Big budget, huge staff, new IP, all still fine at the time.

But very soon after, I remember earlier versions of the "next big Blizzard MMO" where a few of us continually asked "wait wuh? Why?". It was obvious for years this was never coming out. It's not just any one reason. It's the combination of the end of big budget non-IP subs-based Western MMOs as a byproduct of even the big IP MMOs not being all that, Starcraft 2 not completely replacing 1 with all the hype, Diablo 3 being fine but not the decade+ forever-game Diablo 2 was, WoW shedding players that weren't staying with this kind of game, the rise of a new class of game players that weren't and aren't gamers that the current navel-gazing industry continues to focus on, and so on.

Any two of those reasons were enough to kill Titan.

Now people are wondering what next big thing they're working on. I personally wonder if they're working on anything big at all.

[Maven]

I would imagine with Pardo gone and Metzen neutered that the employee landscape is different compared to 10 years ago.

I don't completely agree with the Why's of Titan, but I'm in a position where I have to be careful about how much engagement I have on this subject.

As I said, Blizzard does need something 'big' within the next three to five years, but without looking at the numbers I'm guesstimating that they are still making ridiculous amounts of cash to cover their expenses and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This 7 year R&D project that didn't pan out is something they can write off -- and whose to say that something didn't come out of all that research they could apply elsewhere?

I do think that Pardo leaving the company and Titan's failure to launch are related.

[Scold]

Their concept sounds even more boring than Destiny, and that's a feat.

[Merusk]

This 7 year R&D project that didn't pan out is something they can write off -- and whose to say that something didn't come out of all that research they could apply elsewhere?

I do think that Pardo leaving the company and Titan's failure to launch are related.

These things are linked, and Mr. Kotick wants widgets, not design development. Many folks have asked in the past, "Why would ActiBlizzard kill the goose that laid the golden egg?"

They wouldn't. They would, however, ask, "Well, where's the eggs?"

I think 3-5 years is too generous a timeline. If HOTS fails, expect heads to roll. Even if they've been there a long, long time.

[Maven]

If things don't work out and they have to reduce staff, it'll be peaceful dismissal with generous severance packages. You're mistaking the rest of the games industry for Blizzard.

But yeah, I agree. It felt important to me to make that distinction because of how great a working environment Blizzard can be.

[Margalis]

A lot of the people who work at Blizzard now are Blizzard superfans, and in particular WoW superfans.

Employees being fans is ok in moderation, but in extreme cases can lead to a situation where everyone is content to badly recapture the past. I assume the "next big thing" from Blizzard is going to be another IP remix.

[Fordel]

It took Blizzard like five years to figure out people like dressing up their characters.

Which is why they should stick with gameplay and stay away from social aspects.  They are former hardcores and still want to cater to that group. They don't understand us filthy casuals.

I'm not convinced they know how to do that anymore either! 

[Paelos]

I still believe that Blizzard would make millions ripping off Mount and Blade mechanics and creating a new IP around it, or by making Warcraft 4 a ripoff of Total War mechanics, but without all their current issues.

[Maven]

I can't see Blizzad making a sandbox. They are an Invisible Hand of the Designer company.

[Margalis]

Blizzard is the Extremely Visible and Obnoxious Hand of the Designer company.

How many times have WoW and D3 been changed because players were having a fun time in ways designers didn't intend? It seems to genuinely make Blizzard designers angry when players enjoy their game in the "wrong" way.

[schild]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/23/6834203/blizzard-titan-cancelled-hearthstone-heroes-of-the-storm

That is literally the most unnecessary article ever written. Every single fucking day companies kill games.

Every day.

Blizzard was stupid enough to keep this shit in development for seven fucking years. HOTS is the one that needs to die. Fuck, in seven years empires in gaming have risen and fallen. The fucking Wii came out 7 years ago! We're two generations into fucking consoles! Goddamnit, games journalism. Go back to writing about how we're all dead.

Edit: At least they come out and say what we all say about them:

"Let's take a game that we all love playing, do what we want to do to make it ours, just like we've done with every single game from the past. Vikings was Lemmings. Rock and Roll Racing, name any of those car games out there. Warcraft came from Dune, so it's the same thing with Heroes of the Storm," Sam Didier, a senior art director at Blizzard told me when discussing Heroes of the Storm.

They are not a company of original ideas.

[Merusk]

So in 5 more years we'll see "Blizzard does Minecraft" then.

[Maven]

How is Kuchera still relevant. That man has controversy nipping at his heels.

[Fordel]

Games journalism is only relevant in the sense that it burns Schild like elven rope. 

[Fabricated]

Blizzard could probably just port more of their shit to consoles and coast on that seemingly forever. If they could make a playable version of Diablo 3 run on the 3DS that'd make a shitzillion dollars.