{"id":63928,"date":"2018-11-21T21:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T21:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/331242"},"modified":"2018-11-21T21:53:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T21:53:00","slug":"diablo-immortal-exists-because-china-really-wants-it-says-blizzard-dev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/11\/21\/diablo-immortal-exists-because-china-really-wants-it-says-blizzard-dev\/","title":{"rendered":"Diablo Immortal exists because ‘China really wants it’, says Blizzard dev"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe reaction inside the company to\u00a0Immortal<\/em>\u00a0is very different than the reaction outside the company. Part of the thinking on a lot of these is, people want to work on smaller projects. Smaller projects in mobile tend to make sense.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– An anonymous developer at Blizzard Entertainment discussing Diablo Immortal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Kotaku\u00a0recently published<\/a> a piece examining the history of Blizzard Entertainment’s\u00a0Diablo\u00a0<\/em>franchise, which recently came under fire\u00a0after the announcement of\u00a0Diablo Immortal,\u00a0<\/em>a mobile game<\/a>\u00a0being developed in tandem with China-based studio NetEase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Players were confused as to why the company chose to reveal\u00a0Diablo Immortal\u00a0<\/em>as opposed to\u00a0Diablo IV\u00a0<\/em>during this past BlizzCon. If Diablo IV<\/em>\u00a0supposedly exists and is currently under development, why is Blizzard choosing to keep\u00a0silent about its progress?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of unannounced games, so much can change over the course of development based on how we\u2019re feeling about the progress and direction of the project,\u201d Blizzard explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u00a0try not to share details about unannounced projects before we\u2019re ready. Our preference is to have a clear announcement plan with some concrete details and hopefully a playable demo of the game when we announce. That applies to our\u00a0Diablo<\/em>\u00a0projects and our other games as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

A current Blizzard employee echoes the statement above, explaining how a majority of the\u00a0Diablo\u00a0<\/em>team is (understandably) a little paranoid about announcing things too soon. “The\u00a0Diablo<\/em>\u00a0team is very paranoid about saying something too soon and then getting stuck in a loop. They don\u2019t want to show the game until they have a trailer, a demo.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a lack of\u00a0Diablo IV\u00a0<\/em>news, attention shifted toward its mobile counterpart. The game is partially being developed by NetEase and a small group of Blizzard employees working under the company’s new “incubation” department.<\/p>\n

The incubation\u00a0department was created to\u00a0help cultivate new creative projects for the company, with many veteran developers moving there to work on smaller games– and in this case, smaller meant mobile.<\/p>\n

It made sense for Blizzard to collaborate with NetEase\u00a0after their partnership to bring\u00a0Diablo III<\/em>\u00a0as a free-to-play game in China, where it was very successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially it exists because we\u2019ve heard that China really wants it,\u201d revealed a current developer. \u201cIt is really for China.”<\/p>\n

“The quality bar in the Chinese market, especially for framerate, is extremely low,\u201d said another\u00a0anonymous dev. \u201cYou can release something that\u2019d be considered alpha footage here and it\u2019d be a finished game there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, Blizzard said that\u00a0Diablo Immortal<\/em>\u00a0had been developed for both Western and Eastern markets but was vague on whether the game was originally planned to launch in China first.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our core values is \u2018think globally\u2019 and our history has shown that we strive to make our games in as many languages as possible so more players can enjoy them,\u201d a spokesperson said. \u201cWith that in mind, we quickly knew that we wanted to bring\u00a0Diablo Immortal<\/em>\u00a0to the global audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be sure to read the entire piece over at Kotaku<\/a>, which dives into more detail around how Blizzard’s canceled projects affected current projects.\u00a0It’s well worth it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe reaction inside the company to\u00a0Immortal\u00a0is very different than the reaction outside the company. Part of the thinking on a lot of these is, people want to work on smaller projects. Smaller projects in mobile tend to make sense.\u201d – An anonymous developer at Blizzard Entertainment discussing Diablo Immortal.\u00a0 Kotaku\u00a0recently published a piece examining the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}