Alan left Blizzard about 5 years ago and was the head Game Director for HOTs from around 2016-late 2018 (this post). This was a crucial time for HOTs development when HGC, Heroes of the Dorm and e-sports were just taking off and the fan base was swelling. The game felt alive then. Blizzard was pouring a ton of support and financial backing to the game. I believe at this time more people were working on HOTs than any other franchise in Blizz’s stable and the player numbers were great. As we know, Blizz took a look at profitability, and while it was profitable, it wasn’t as profitable as other franchises and that is when we started seeing developers leave the HOTs team or move on to other projects.
In the quote above, Alan mentions not being afraid to try new things. We saw a lot of positive changes come with HOTs 2.0 and it seems like a step in the right direction, but would ask him now what he would do different in development in hindsight that would have changed HOTs’s trajectory in a manner that would have kept e-sports and development going?
To me, the monetization of the game (or lack-thereof) was the biggest misstep. The suits up top slowly started to pull funding and direct it at other games. I firmly believe that if the monetization was done differently, the game would have continued development and have a healthy share of the moba community player base and be as profitable (or more?) as some of those other top MOBAs.
What spurred this was seeing a recent post Does anyone open loot boxes anymore? and many people chiming in that they have hundreds unopened. There is really not much need to spend money, unless you are a brand new player working on hero unlocks.
Not expecting an answer from Alan here as he has moved on, but wondering others think? Would you rather have a free to play game not in development with endless supply of loot, or would you rather have options like: buying unique skins, buying new heroes, season passes/rewards or other avenues to support a free-to-play game and continue development?
I would choose the latter.