When they first posted the Barbarian/Witchdoctor video last year I said "Oh it won't be out until 2011". Because, you know, that's how Blizzard roles. Slowly. Very very slowly.
It really was silly of them to announce this game so early. They could have just waited until Blizzcon this year to say anything about Diablo 3 and then a two year wait wouldn't seem so bad. It just seems odd that they announce it, then only update the website 3 times in the past year.
But, I am just angry that I have to wait so long to play this :).
Isn't that SOP for Blizzard? Why are people surprised by this? Or do they normally announce a sooner release date and then just keep pushing it back?
Keeping in mind this is Blizzard we're talking about here, I wonder how much of the projected 2011 release date is to keep it from competing with Cataclysm. Just about everyone I know in WoW in extremely excited about Diablo 3, myself included. If there's one game that could suck up all my time and make me drop WoW at this point it's D3*.
And throw me in the camp with those who wish they hadn't announced the game so far out.
* - Standard disclaimers in affect...assuming it lives up to the hype, etc.
As i understand it - from War3 onwards Blizzard's lead team is formed by completely different people, isnt that right ? So, i dont know if just two released games, War3 & WoW, can give enough insight into their SOP.Isn't that SOP for Blizzard? Why are people surprised by this?
Yeah it's generally a three year wait.Originally Posted by Hanacker
Which I actually think is really freakin' lame from just about any perspective. 18 monthis is plenty of time to build awareness, you don't need to announce your tentpole franchise three years out and then dribble out tiny little bits of information for two-and-a-half of those years. They may have their finger on the pulse of making games, but that's crummy marketing.
Why is it crummy marketing? The only people who are pissed off are those who really want the game and are going to buy it no matter what.
I don't know enough about the inner staff of Blizzard, but the issue at hand is one of marketing, and announcing games earlier. Those kind of decisions aren't done by the lead/core teams, but by the executives and the marketing divisions, which might not have changed at Blizzard, I don't know.
I have to say: it's worked for them so far. Announcing 3 years in advance has worked and their games sell really well. That's not to say that announcing 18 months before release might not also work equally as well, but why change things when you're happy with the marketing strategies that have worked so well so far?
I also think it follows their philosophy of adding polish early in the development process. By making all of their milestones presentable and marketable, then actually showing it in public they are kind of enforcing quality standards.
If people are upset about your marketing tactics then they are poor. Plain and simple. They are whipping people into a frenzy for a product that is 2 years away. You could almost hear the collective groan of fans when they announced that 2010 isn't going to see D3. I've seen a lot of pissing and moaning from people on various message boards and in person about the wait in front of them.
Will it cost them sales? I can't imagine it will. But it's kind of a dick move to dangle that carrot in front of people. There's a reason that they don't start running movie trailers the minute that they start production on the film. As they said in my marketing class, there's only two kinds of people: customers and potential customers. Potential customers don't give a shit about a game that's 2 years away. Old-style customers are already invested, so showing them a preview of a game that's 2 years away and in huge flux is just jerking them around. In my opinion.
Edit: It would seem the MTV Multiplayer blog shares my view. http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/...helps-us-cope/
Last edited by DDB; 08-24-2009 at 05:27 PM.
It's crummy marketing because you have a limited amount of hype mana that you can tap the community for. If you start showing a game too early and you don't do it EXACTLY right, you risk leaving your audience bored with the idea that it's supposed to be coming out by the time it happens. It's also kind of a waste of money from one way of thinking - what earthly good does it do them to get me excited now about a game I can't buy for two years?
Now, Blizzard has shown in the past that they can do this sort of thing right, so I assume they've got a plan here, but above and beyond the dickishness of the move, from a conventional PR angle it doesn't seem to me to help a lot.
It's funny to see so many people trying to teach Blizzard on how to market games. :)
2 years away, 3 years away, 10 years away, I don't really care so long as in the end there will be barrels. Cause I am going to spend DAYS kicking open motherfucking barrels.
(there better be barrels)
Keeps Diablo 2 in the top ten, anyway.
Which is probably part of their strategy. My post wasn't meant to criticize Blizzard directly - just to show why it's not always the best idea to start waving your game around two years before anybody will be able to so much as poke it with a long stick. For Blizzard, with their track record and their catalog and their history, I expect that they've got a plan.
Keep in mind the other aspect of it, which is that the entire internet has been begging for Diabloiii information for years now. Basically Blizzard either had a choice between formally announcing it, or having a constant stream of leaks followed by a not commenting on unannounced products. I can see why, after a certain point, you'd decide that ultra-secrecy isn't worth it.
I don't suppose Blizzard provided any updated information about the Diablo II 1.13 patch during Blizzcon, did they? My google searches are not coming up with anything concrete, which is probably bad news.
The Diablo III team was the one at all those Blizzcon panels, of course. They were asked about the Diablo II patches, and said that that's handled by an entirely different team; the teams communicate of course, but are completely separate.
As for the development time of the game, there's still an awful lot to be done on Diablo III. They haven't even gotten into any of the battle.net features, or many other aspects of the game, since they're still focusing on development of the classes and base areas. From what was said, it sounds like they won't be delving into battle.net for it until that's been fully revamped, with the Starcraft II release.
Blizzard does well because the games are good, not necessarily because the marketing is great. Learn to tell the difference.
I don't know. I've seen a lot of good games die to bad marketing. And Blizzard seems to be pretty good at both. Do you know of any marketing mistakes Blizzard has made?
I just don't think Blizzard has bad marketing. I don't know how they do it, but Blizzard builds this mystique around their games over time, long before they're even released. At the company I used to work in around the year that Starcraft was supposed to be released, I realized early on that there were no fellow gamers working at the company. And yet, a couple of the women there were really excited about the release of Starcraft. I just couldn't understand how Blizzard managed to do that: turn casual computer users who mostly play solitaire into people interested in Starcraft, because they've heard from various sources that it's going to be so good. At that point, what were the games they had done in the past? Warcraft, Warcraft 2, and Diablo. That's it, right? So how did they get this huge reputation and build-up for Starcraft so that everyone and their grandmother seemed to be looking forward to it?
I don't know, I think their marketing team has a lot to do with their success.
Every marketing team makes mistakes. Those mistakes may not cause damage, but they may result in wasted costs.
Announcing a game so far in advance, as others have indicated, is a "dick move", and has very little in terms of marketing payback vis-a-vis the consumer. If there are other reasons for an early announcement, it's not immediately apparent.
And, no, I'm not looking forward to Starcraft 2 with eager anticipation. It looks like more of the same, boring mechanics, compared to the newer gen RTSes like World in Conflict and DoW2. Funnily, the same is true for Diablo 3 I would think, and I am looking forward to it. Maybe visually Starcraft 2 doesn't really seem that much more of an upgrade as opposed to D3 vs D2.
That said, I'm looking forward to seeing the cutscenes on youtube though, and yes, I'll probably buy it when it comes out just because it's Blizzard.
Marketing doesn't have to be bad - I find Blizzard's marketing just ordinary, and this early announcement just seems badly thought out.
People are confusing "bad marketing" with "Damnit I want the game now!"
Also what mkozlows said.
No we aren't. My non-Diablo playing friend flat out asked me "Why are you talking about a game that comes out in two years?" Gave me a little perspective.
Nobody new cares about a product 2 years out, so I don't know why they are releasing any information at all. It serves no purpose...other than to drive sales of Diablo 2, I guess?
"Dick move" or not the question is if announcing that early leads to increased sales (of the game announced and related games) or not. I don't know the answer. I suspect you think it doesn't and Blizzard's marketing believes otherwise.
If I had to guess I would fall on the side of longer is better. That gaming companies typically do better when they announce when they have something impressive to show. The reasons being:
1. The market is broken into fanatics (us) and the casual. The fanatics are the ones who are upset that they want a game and have to wait for 3 years for it. But they are garunteed buys anyway so Blizzard doesn't really care if they are disgruntled.
2. What Blizzard really wants is the fanatics marketing for them. They want to give the fanatics as much time as possible to tell the casual, who have never visited Blizzards site, all about how cool the next game is going to be. So that when the game does release even casual people who dont follow game release schedules are aware enough to pick it up.
3. A long release cycle with new information every few months starts a new cycle of conversation about the game each time. Keeping it in eveyrones mind.
4. Early announcement of games in extremely long release cycles allows people to see and awe over the engine when its still cutting edge. By the time Blizzard games release they look dated. To counter the dissapointment maong the fanatics in reporting that the game doesnt look as cool as they imagined (compared to some other current release) they announce early and set the visual expectations.
5. They have news to release to their base. Some of which actually pay to receive it.
6. It helps their stock price. Having announced games out there that they can track and report on in their public business plan is much better than just saying they have an unannounced title a team is working on.
Thats my personal opinion at least. I dont think they lose a single sale from announcing early and they tend to pick up extra sales. Its all conjecture though so you are free to disagree.
No one cares about a piece of media that's coming out in two years, so there's nothing to "sell".
To put the amount of time between the release date and announcement in perspective, if Blizzard had announced Diablo 3 just one year after WoW came out initially it would be being released RIGHT NOW.
But I agree with some of your other points. Particularly on the engine being outdated upon release but impressive at the time of first showing.
Kael, you cockweasel! *grin* Couldn't resist bringing up what bahimiron has asserted about you, sue him!
Marketing is not an exact science. But presuming I'm your average non-casual gamer (and that's one of those logical fallacy traps of course) and I think this is an annoying move, then it stands to reason maybe their marketing tactic of announcing this early isn't achieving very much.
In fact, if anything, I am already half-suspecting that by the time Diablo 3 gets out the door, there's a pretty good chance that it's going to look fairly dated, and my interest level has plummeted dramatically.
I would have to agree that announcements would have the benefit of showing publicly a release plan and that may or may not have stock impact. But God help them if they slip to 2012.
I would counter that the amount of discussion going on about this game (this thread included) disproves this. You are, after all, reading this thread.
Excellent post up there Kael. I think that explains a lot about how and why I had co-workers who only played Solitaire on their computers who were excited about the release of Starcraft. Information about the game had been out there for soooo long, it had permeated down to casual computer users, not just gamers. And I think that's what this really long publicity cycle gives them.
Exactly.
The main benefit IMO is that, in casual gamers' eyes, it turns Blizzard from "the company who made WoW" (and I am sure a lot of people don't even recognize them as that) into "the company who makes WoW and a whole bunch of cool games, which I should be buying the minute they come out". Every time something new is released about Diablo 3, it inevitably generates some publicity for Starcraft 2 and the new WoW expansion. Hell even Diablo 2 as evidenced by this thread.
It's a mistake to think they are marketing Diablo 3 right now. They are marketing Blizzard.
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