My Thoughts on Diablo Immortal (and the Reactions to it)

The Diablo Immortal announcement at Blizzcon has caused a significant stir, mostly of ire, within the gaming community. Controversy of this magnitude compares to the ongoing discussion regarding loot boxes, which I weighed in on a while ago. After seeing what others have to say on the game's announcement and what came after, I thought I might weigh in a bit sooner this time especially since I would like to think I've learned a bit about mobile gaming since I last wrote articles regarding that medium in particular.

On the Announcement Itself

I personally found the announcement to be obligatory. With Diablo for Switch already announced in mid-August, something else would have to fill the void to ensure Diablo fans weren't left out to dry. A few weeks prior to Blizzcon, there was a blog post that implied that certain major projects such as a Diablo 2 remaster or Diablo 4 were not likely to be announced. This deduction seems to have been confirmed with the announcement of the mobile game Diablo Immortal, which is a new entry in the series taking place between Diablo 2 and 3.

Mobile gaming doesn't particularly have the best reputation and it doesn't take more than a few seconds on the Play Store or App Store to realize why since many of the top games have incredibly questionable monetization and are sometimes lacking in gameplay as well. Needless to say, there was a significant negative backlash in response to this announcement since it was featured at Blizzcon to an audience that is more receptive of the PC platform. What followed, while understandable, was a remark from one of the developers that has since been incorporated into memedom where he asked people whether they actually had phones or not. I personally believe he was attempting to be humorous, but I can see why his remark comes off as incredibly tone-deaf, even though having a smartphone is almost necessary nowadays.

Before I move on, I have some food for thought regarding the announcements themselves. Since it's very clear there's more projects than Diablo Immortal when it comes to the franchise, it's likely that any of the other projects are years away from seeing a release. These projects may never reach full fruition much like the cancelled project Titan. In fact, it seems that nowadays, major projects are teased about two years in advance and then there's a working demo about a year or less before the full release. Classic WoW fits pretty well into this timeframe, as it was announced during Blizzcon 2017 and a demo was only recently made available at this year's Blizzcon. Overwatch also fits since it was announced in 2014 and was made playable in 2015.

While the lack of an announcement for a different Diablo game is disheartening, it doesn't means the franchise isn't exactly dead, at least not yet. This might just be me, but I would rather wait until a game is in a more complete state before an announcement is made rather than be even more disheartened as it gets cancelled after I was teased. There's also some solace to be had since there's dedicated teams for those hypothetical games due to the fact Diablo Immortal is not being developed in-house. Instead, it is being developed by NetEase, which may sound terrible given the games they're created (there's some controversy surrounding some such as Crusaders of Light), but they have also been in a partnership with Blizzard for over a decade and the game itself is said be to built from the ground up.

A Word on Mobile Gaming

Mobile gaming is a bit of a mixed bag that has earned it a negative reputation. On one hand, there are a lot of games that nickel and dime the hell out of players in the worst ways imaginable. From harmful pay to win to gating players by forcing them to wait hours for structures to build or for their stamina or lives to regenerate, which they can pay to skip, there's no question numerous predatory practices are in play. I've made some fairly strong stances against these practices in the past and emphasized how detrimental they are to gameplay.

However, while there are an overwhelming amount of bad examples like Lords Mobile, I have also managed to find good games that employ good monetization strategy and genuinely feel like full games to boot. The recent releases of Stardew Valley and Old School Runescape to the mobile platform do a lot to improve player expectations and may help raise standards on consumer friendliness on the platform. Less recent releases such as Fortnite, Plague Inc, Terraria, and Minecraft all come to mind as well. While most of these are admittedly ported from another platform and the popularity of the games helped, that doesn't change the fact they seem to be at least doing well for themselves if download numbers and amount of reviews mean anything. In fact, some are more comparable to games available on handheld consoles and when it comes to handheld console games, I think many could easily transition to mobile without any changes whatsoever (aside from porting the game) and do well.

I bring all these games up because they prove that consumer-friendly monetization models, whether it's a subscription, cosmetic microtransactions, or the game itself is being sold as a product, can be successful on the mobile platform. Furthermore, most of them share similarity to Diablo because they all have name recognition and a fairly large following. Diablo Immortal, on the other hand, doesn't appear to be a port of an existing game (which to be fair, kind of makes sense due to system requirements especially in the case of Diablo 3).

My Predictions for Diablo Immortal

First, the issue of NetEase developing the game needs to be considered. I personally consider the fact that Blizzard is working jointly with NetEase to be a good thing since Blizzard is generally known to monetize in ways that aren't wildly predatory outside of Hearthstone. In fact, I personally consider their greatest sin in regards to microtransactions to be that they overprice their cosmetics and services so much that not as many people are going to buy them, which is a point I've made a few times before. Even when considering the fact a few of their games have loot box systems, one of which is pay to win (I will ignore the fact Hearthstone is a CCG to increase Blizzard's "unfavorability"), this is still significantly better than the practices that seem to be in NetEase's games. Add to the fact Blizzard does at least tend to make decent games relative to the entire industry and I have to imagine NetEase will be under pressure to meet Blizzard's standards both in terms of monetization and game design or risk destroying their long standing partnership.

Second, this game was apparently playable at Blizzcon and while what was featured may not represent the final product, I did get some information on what people experienced, including the author of this rather heated article that sounds about as irate as the commenters responding to the Diablo Immortal announcement. Overall, I have to agree the game sounds very promising in that it doesn't seem like it'll arbitrarily lock players out after they die too much or play too much like most stamina and lives systems do. However, I can't say I'm a fan of a virtual joystick control considering Diablo as a whole is click to move like (Old School) Runescape, which doesn't feature a virtual joystick for its mobile port. I'm also concerned by the lack of depth brought up by Robert Purchese, but I'm sadly also not surprised. At least the ARPG experience sounds largely intact, which is what I expected since that's one of a few genres that appear to work fairly well on mobile (unlike RTS or FPS, for example).

Based on all this information and more, I have the following to say about Diablo Immortal:

• I do not think the game will feature a stamina system or other way that locks the player out of playing the game that forces them to spend real money to continue.
• The game might be pay to win because of Hearthstone's history, Blizzard's partnership with NetEase, and Blizzard's unwillingness to disclose the nature of their monetization.
• The game will probably be fun but won't necessarily be fulfilling for players who enjoy the depth of Diablo 3 and especially Diablo 1 and 2.

This brings me to my advice for Blizzard, even though I know it likely won't be read:

Do not add pay to win. Do not add a stamina system or otherwise force the player to pay to continue like an arcade machine. Remove them if they're already there. Don't even try to market convenience that might even remotely seem pay to win such as faster leveling. Lean towards cosmetic microtransactions instead such as name changes, character skins, and statless outfits. The game could also be sold instead of being free to play, which when paired with cosmetic microtransactions makes it similar to other games developed by Blizzard such as Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft 2. If possible, try to address the lack of depth by adding features from other games in the Diablo series such as skill trees, attribute point allocation, and so on. 

Basically, I want Blizzard to subvert what players are expecting from what they seem to perceive as "yet another mobile cash grab." If there's one company that can do it, it's Blizzard, because they already do it on a daily basis and, as I mentioned before, they can lean on their partner to ensure the game meets exactly the standard they follow.

And Now For Some Perspective...

Given the reaction to the announcement, one would think Blizzard has become one of the worst companies in the gaming industry. However, I think it's also important to take the following points into consideration.

For a start, Blizzcon has announced quite a few things for their other games. While some may not like the other announcements, between WoW Classic, Warcraft 3 Reforged, and new content for WoW (Patch 8.2), Heroes of the Storm (new hero), Hearthstone (new expansion), and Overwatch (new hero as well), there's definitely a lot to look forward to. I personally find myself liking most of the upcoming stuff especially Warcraft 3 Reforged and my interest in WoW Classic increased when they mentioned a shared subscription, which I recommended Blizzard adopt a while ago.

This of course isn't much solace for Diablo fans in particular. However, as I mentioned before, there are more Diablo projects on the horizon and because Blizzcon doesn't seem to announce or tease new games until fairly shortly before release when it's less liable to be cancelled and cause even more outrage from fans, they may not necessarily be that far away. Whether there's any patience to wait for even longer for a new (or remastered) PC Diablo game is up to the people themselves. At least there's other options like Path of Exile in the meantime.

This brings me to the outrage surrounding the announcement. It doesn't take more than reading a few comment threads to see that there's a lot of assumptions being made about Diablo Immortal and a lot of admittedly justified anger. This disappoints me, especially when it comes to committing the genetics fallacy. The derisive remarks about a Chinese company working on a game targeted towards the Chinese market is one thing, but one thing that particularly irks me is crucifying a game we know very little about because of the platform it's releasing on.

For instance, people think the game will be full of the aforementioned pay to win and forced gating. While this may end up being the case, and I will make strong statements against the game if it does, there appears to be no information on how the game will be monetized except for the fact there will be some monetization. As I've mentioned before, Blizzard tends to prefer towards monetizing cosmetics, though I'm unsure if the Diablo team will fight tooth and nail to ensure that happens like the Overwatch team, especially since Diablo 3 launched with the Real Money Auction House and Hearthstone has a reputation for being pay to win which I consider to be legitimate to a degree.

Blizzard's announcement and how they handled it after the fact was awful and stupid. I can understand their want to announce a new game that expands upon the Diablo lore, but mobile gaming doesn't have the best reputation and the reactions have made that clear. At the same time, I think it's better to be skeptical of the monetization that makes it into Diablo Immortal instead of assuming the game will feature detestable types of monetization that is common on the mobile platform. In fact, I'm hopeful that this will be yet another game that improves the standards of mobile gaming like the ones I mentioned above.

To that end, I think it is important to remind Blizzard how successful cosmetic microtransaction models and selling the game itself have been for them and pressure them to continue adopting it regardless of the platform they release their games on. I think it is a lot better than the unrefined negative reaction the vocal part of the community is expressing right now that makes me more disappointed in the gaming community than in Blizzard. Perhaps it's fair to say people shouldn't lose their senses when outraged rather than not losing their sense of outrage in situations like this.