Concerning the stagnation of updates

[Ouroboros]

Concerning the stagnation of updates

Hello.

Some who have read my posts in this forum may know that I am no Blizzard hater. In fact I am a self-confessed Blizzard fanboy, if anything.

However, I make this post to seek some insight from the community. According to my personal opinion, and business sense, I can see why blizzard timed the announcement of Diablo III. They had just wrapped up work on the Lich King expansion for WOW, and seeing as how every game will have a finite life time, and thus it is required to keep their audience in suspense with future projects. All this make perfect sense, Blizzard holds a substantial portion of the gaming market, and SCII and DIII wil ensure that continues. They will be massive when they hit stores, make no mistake.

What surprises me is, after timing the announcement of these two monster games with such perfection and rousing up the gaming community into a fenzy of excitement, why would they choose to let the hype stagnate to the point of irrelevance? It would only make sense to keep the hype alive, and to feed it to maintain the level of excitement generated simply by the mentioning of these titles. Especially DIII of course, since this is a DIII forum. If they had a marketing strategy to create hype, they would consider setting up a monthly, or bi-weekly update where a tidbit revealed to the community. It could range from a new screenshot of an environment, a new concept art, a video of a new skill, a new armor piece, a new npc, a new rune, etc, you get the point. Some of these updates are insignificant in terms of matching the excitement generated by, say, a class revelation, but it is still something nonetheless, and will have people log on at update times, and generate conversation, and excitement in the community.

Now my gut feeling is that the game was announced too quickly, and they will follow this model of maintaining hype through frequent updates once the development of the game is more substantial. However, this doesn't explain why they chose to announce it so early, and there's where my question lies.

Maybe someone with business/marketing acumen can discern the reasons for the announcement timing, and the contradictory logic of the consequent drop in updates/info..?

 

[Telzen]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

Yeah they announced it way too early. They should have waited until this year's Blizzcon. That we are going 10 months with no real info is just kind of crazy. Hopefully after this Blizzcon we will be close enough to release that they can do bi weekly updates to keep up interest.

 

[Demetrium]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

I don't think they announced it too early as much as they are being incredibly stingy on updates. If you think about when the announced it they already had two classes built, the entire engine pretty much done, and I think two of the acts finished...thats a lot of work, especially the engine.

I'm pretty confident there is just a ton they aren't telling us; maybe they just don't have the time. I find it hard to imagine there's only like six monsters designed, and they have to have one of the final two classes designed.

 

[Azymn]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

I'm no guru, but I think what initially started as an arbitrary internal timeline on game development has evolved into a cyclical standard for the company.

A timely article released recently on starcraftwire.net provides an interesting overview of the patterns Blizzard has adopted for release dates. I suspect that part of their success revolves around selectively soaking in feedback from the community, and ~2.5 years seems to be the magic number for them. Feedback is easily the primary reason, but also consider that no matter how much hype has fizzled, it's will explosively spike right up again when they announce that release is imminent, just as it has for all their past games.

As for the lack of updates during this period, I think there are several reasons:

Cost
The most satisfying updates involve changes to the website, videos, lore, and time on the part of the staff. Time that in some cases is taken away from direct development. Not that it shouldn't be done, it's just not as trivial matter as it appears.

Expectations
It might seem simple to release a screenshot every once in awhile, but we've seen firsthand how closely those are dissected. The act of providing content is a double-edged sword - Blizzard has to be careful about what is presented because it both sets expectations and creates backlash.

Discussion
Since content seems to always generate reactionary dialogues, longer delays between announcements also serve as natural havens for fringe discussions. Intentional or not, these famines unveil a bit more extended speculation and wishlisting.

Surprises
The more they hold back, the fresher the experience when the game comes out. Also, showing something cool off early makes it much harder to hang onto it for an expansion later.

StarCraft II
And finally, I think this is the big reason right now. Blizzard is preparing for a beta for it's next major release, and I'd be surprised if their marketing departments and tech teams aren't almost exclusively focused on getting Battle.Net 2.0 and the beta ready.

It is frustrating and we'll have a long wait ahead of us, complete with dry spots. After StarCraft II is released, we'll see a lot more regularly released content for D3.

That's what I think.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

Azym pretty much nailed it in my opinion. I was looking after the same article last night when I first saw your post, Ouroboros.

Other than repeating Azym post, I'm going to just add a thought that I feel relevant.

...

It's an unfortunate side effect to the more complex nature of modern games, these will demand a much larger number of human resources and development time. This much we can understand empirically.

However, often more neglected by the fanbase is the thought that often these games couldn't ever possibly exist (or better, couldn't become highly successful) if they had been developed inside the company's cocoon without any community feedback. So much are the expectations around certain titles, that companies feel the urgent need to listen. Even if they are going to "stick to the plan", which is a Bizzard hallmark, they still need feedback for peripheral issues in order to insure a higher success rate.

In this context, an early announcement followed by the opening of public areas for debate and feed with periodical official information releases seems like a good business strategy. The hype itself is generated by the community and when the company feels some of it is reaching dangerous low levels, or a certain tiredness is starting to show up on behalf of the community, they feed some more new information to keep the ball rolling... just enough, or to serve an interest at the time, like needing community feedback on a certain game feature.

 

[Ouroboros]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

Thanks for the excellent replies guys. I just got back from my doctor. I'm having pretty bad allergies this spring, and my eyes are all swelled up. Once I get some relief, I'm goina post again in detail on this. But I like the turn the discussion has taken.

 

[Bryan]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

I think they had to unveil the game when they did. Can't get too far ahead without gauging the public reaction.

 

[ThomasJ]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

No worries Blizzcon is coming and soon we shall be bombarded with a plethora of information.

 

[Orphan]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

No worries Blizzcon is coming and soon we shall be bombarded with a plethora of information.

Indeed. Although it doesn't really explain the past couple of months the closer we get to Blizzcon, the less updates we'll receive in preparation for the big stuff.

Still, this reminds me alot of D2. I didn't follow the early hype much back then but I did pick up bits and pieces, and looking back on those screenshots and images you can see how much has changed when the final product came out (the same can be probably be said for alot of their games, including SC2). Perhaps Blizzard are taking things steady at the moment.

 

[Pyrohemia]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

I like that they announced Diablo III early because without the announcement I would not have come back to Diablo 2 single player and would not be visiting these and the Diablo 3 forums daily hoping for an update.

 

[Telzen]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

I don't think they announced it too early as much as they are being incredibly stingy on updates. If you think about when the announced it they already had two classes built, the entire engine pretty much done, and I think two of the acts finished...thats a lot of work, especially the engine.

I'm pretty confident there is just a ton they aren't telling us; maybe they just don't have the time. I find it hard to imagine there's only like six monsters designed, and they have to have one of the final two classes designed.

Don't think even act one was done then. And they weren't moving on to act two until around blizzcon to december. Bashiok also said once that they just didn't have that much to show. So I do really think that its more that they don't have finished things to show off.

 

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Re: Concerning the stagnation of updates

Im also pretty sure that they werent even done with act one when they announced D3.