GamesBeat: What do you think of the proliferation of MOBA games?
DeForest: It’s a lot of, “Hey look, this genre is exploding! Hey look, these games are huge! They’re making tons of money! They’ve got gobs of players! Oh, I want some of that.” So what they do is they jump on, grab a hold of the coattails, and hope that they make decisions [about] why things are the way that they are, and the way that they can garner players and actually create something that is fun and has hooks and will draw people in. Well, proof’s in the numbers.
And it’s not just the maturation of the MOBA genre that you see that in. [Developers] make mistakes. They don’t even know why they’re making mistakes. They don’t even know where they’re making mistakes. But they’re making mistakes. And then they realize that they pop up, they get a little bit of light shown on them, and the media talks about them and people are like, “Oh, have you seen this?” And then … [these games] aren’t sticky. Everything is just kind of bouncing off of it. It’s almost made of silicone. And then it withers away and dies. Would you agree with that assessment?
So to me, that’s kind of what the landscape looks like. You got a lot of people saying, “Big genre. Lots of money. Chase the dollars. Let’s go make a game in this genre.” Then you have us. …
And we’re making Strife because, through being students of the genre, through being a pioneer of this genre, through being the first — now, we didn’t launch before LOL [League of Legends], but as the first commercial standalone game in this genre, people were able to play HON before they were able to play any of the other games, including LOL. We’re a pioneer in this genre. As we said, there are some things we would like to address in how these games are played and how they attract players. And it wasn’t through just time — [it was through] time, information, analysis, and assessment that we could come up with a really good formula that we felt like we need to execute on this now.
This is the time. Let’s execute on it. And we get to do it from a perspective that nobody else gets to. The guys making Infinite Crisis, the guys making Dawngate, the guys making the next thing — if it’s their first go-around in this, they’re not privy to the same information that the people who already developed one of these games and have already operated these games for a very long time. We have access to a lot of different information and perspectives because of where we’ve been.
GamesBeat: The trend kind of reminds me of the massively multiplayer online craze when World of Warcraft became popular and how so few of the MMOs that followed it actually succeeded. Do you see MOBAs heading in that direction? Is there room for only a few games at the top?
DeForest: I think it depends on how these developers and other people bringing games to the market approach it. … There’s an incumbent that sits there, or there are a few — it’s slightly different in this genre, you have to admit. It’s not just one incumbent. And while League of Legends is significantly larger than HON, and while Dota 2 is growing and is slightly larger than HON, HON is still a really, really, really big game.
So it’s not like there’s just one that sits on top and everybody else just grovels underneath and hopes. There’s kind of like a trifecta up there. And there’s definitely room for another one to come up and say, “You know what?” Here’s the thing: If Blizzard had made another WOW, or another MMO, would it have been good? Probably. You would assume it would’ve been good. Would it have garnered players? Would it have garnered interest? You would have to assume.
And while we’re not the incumbent that’s as big as what WOW is, we’re coming to the table and saying, “We are a big game right now. We have been recognized as that. We are a player. And we know how to think about these issues. And we know how to approach this kind of game. And here’s our next take on it. Give it a try. See if you like it.” And we’re really confident people are gonna really, really like it. And we also want to get the message across of: Did you try LOL? Did you try Dota [Defense of the Ancients]? Did you try Dota 2? Did you try Heroes of Newerth?
Was there something about them that didn’t seem right? Was the community too hostile? Was it too hard to jump over that barrier of entry to get in there and actually enjoy it? Well, give this a try. … Hopefully we did a good enough job at solving some of those problems and difficulties that we can usher in some of those people who kind of tried it and didn’t stick.