Diablo III

Hey guys!

So something really cool happened this week, the last class for Diablo was announced at Blizzcon! That's right Diablo fans, the classes will be: Monk, Barbarian, Wizard, Demon Hunter and Witch Doctor. Really cool stuff!

Now for the fun part (I know right?, marketing=fun!). I was looking at some old posts about what the 5th class was, so at this time, nobody knew what Blizz had cooking at the time, and I noticed that Blizzard has slowly but surely released classes for 2 years. The game has been in development since 2001, that's 9 years ago! Now, i want to set aside all the other things Blizzard has done to promote D3, and focus solely on the strategic release of characters. Yup, you heard me, the order of release is in fact, marketing. If we look at the order these classes were revealed in, we can notice a couple things: The Barbarian and the Witch Doctor were both revealed when the game was announced in June, 2008. So we have a re-hash from D2, and a completely new class revealed together. Next comes the Wizard, announced in Blizzcon 2008, a ranged magical user. We have the Monk a year later at Blizzcon 2009, the game's second melee class. And finally, we have the Demon Hunter at Blizzcon 2010. So Blizzard reveals 2 when the game comes out, and then one for each Blizzcon after.

The way I see this, Blizzard is trying to keep all kinds of players interested. They release a Melee and Hybrid first, then Caster, then Melee, and then Ranged. Releasing so far apart also entails marketing, raising the hype as much as possible, and rewarding those who stay on top of the game with periodic information about the upcoming game is enough to make hardcore fans crawl. I even read about this guy who created an algorithm or some other nerdy thing so he could estimate the number of letters in the 5th class' name based on the space taken by the tabs of the the other classes on the D3 webiste, what did I just say about crawling?

Starcraft 2

          Now its time to talk about one of my favorite games of all time, Starcraft 2. Yes, this is a relatively new game, but it has already nested deep within my heart to be considered one of the best RTS games of all time. The game shows quality in both graphics and game play, its is amazingly balanced for a game with 3 completely different races, and most importantly, like is predecessor, it takes strategic thinking to the next level. This game is like chess on steroids with a depth so intense, it is mind blowing.
         How did Blizzard achieve this? We will be recurring to the theme of quality related to production time when we talk about blizzard games. It took them 10 years to release this game after the original Starcraft came out, and with good reason, the balancing, graphics and just general quality are impressive and something that I consider deserves a good amount of respect. Time and time again we have seen companies that have great game ideas, but fail in the quality front, but lets not mention any names *cough*EA*cough*. This recurrent theme of quality differentiates Blizzard from other companies and greatly increases consumer loyalty. This makes any new game Blizzard launches and instant success, why? Because everyone knows its going to be a good game. Take me, for example, I never played Diablo and mildly enjoyed the second, but as things are now, as soon as that Diablo3 launches, I'm buying it no questions asked.

Halo Reach

Okay, so this weeks post will be about the new Halo game series that seems to be on everyone's mind: Reach

    I actually had a chance to try out this game yesterday, my roomate brought it over from his place and we sat down and played for about 2 hours, and I have to say guys.... Its just like Halo1,2 or 3. So far, I have not seen anything but a few new weapons and enemies, which got me thinking.... why is this game so popular? Most of my friends are going crazy about it and I do not see any original ideas going into this project. This brings us over to the task that is forcibly imposed on me: tying this in to marketing. Okay, so why would Bungie, a respectable video game company put so little effort into this game? In my personal opinion, Bungie was simply trying to squeeze out a few more buck for their successful Halo franchise, building on a already depleted storyline with minimal effort in making it feel fresh because the brand is already popular. It then follows that in the public eye, the game promises as much freshness as the first three, but the game does not deliver, in my opinion at least. Any other games out there you guys feel fit the description of the "cash cow" franchise? Post it here!