Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime sat with media representatives for a 20-minute long press conference during the second day of BWC. Morhaime hypes HotS, says how Blizzard handle competition, what is the next step for eSports and more.
After going through all the difficulties around running a worldwide event such as the WCS and what direction will Blizzard be heading in 2013 in terms of eSports, Morhaime is shot a question about Heart of the Swarm, SC2's oncoming expansion, and his answers do well to keep the hype growing. The casual component of the game is also addressed after an earlier question.
Well, we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from the community around HotS. We think it’s a great expansion. You know it has so many things. The campaign is incredible. I think it’s our best campaign ever. The cinematics team outdid themselves. I can’t wait to share the work that they’re doing. And then on the multiplayer side, I think that we have a great development that’s working on the polish and balance of multiplayer, which obviously is critical. And I think some of the additional features we’re adding will help make the game more enjoyable for casual players and just more fun, more accessible and more fun.
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It’s also a big focus of ours to make our games more accessible to new players and to casual players. So a lot of the features you’ll see in HotS are intended to do that.:Better training missions, training section of the game, unranked matchmaking, making it easier to find and meet up with their friends online. I think there’s a lot of good suggestions and comments about the social experience on battle.net and we’re really trying to work to improve that.
[...]
It’s also a big focus of ours to make our games more accessible to new players and to casual players. So a lot of the features you’ll see in HotS are intended to do that.:Better training missions, training section of the game, unranked matchmaking, making it easier to find and meet up with their friends online. I think there’s a lot of good suggestions and comments about the social experience on battle.net and we’re really trying to work to improve that.
As a topic that has often been brought up at interviews and press conferences, the question about the future of StarCraft as eSport was got its befitting, broad response from Morhaime, who believes that the next step for the industry is being given a helping hand by the mainstream media.
I think another area that actually is the next level, the next step in terms of mainstream acceptance is, media needs to help us. Like, mainstream media really needs to start acknowledging these types of events as significant sporting events, and reporting on them on the level that they would report on other sporting events. Even like tennis, and golf, and things like that, you see reports on TV about what's happening at those things, even though everybody doesn't follow tennis and golf.
You hear about it, and it legitimizes the sport, and I think that when we start to see more of that, where the sports page starts to report on who's winning these major events and doing profiles about the top pro players, not just in gaming press, not just in gaming circles, but actually starting to do that in mainstream circles, I think that that will also help legitimize esports.
You hear about it, and it legitimizes the sport, and I think that when we start to see more of that, where the sports page starts to report on who's winning these major events and doing profiles about the top pro players, not just in gaming press, not just in gaming circles, but actually starting to do that in mainstream circles, I think that that will also help legitimize esports.
The entirety of the press conference - including if Blizzard fears other games like LoL and what's the state of Blizzard All Stars - can be found below in video form or in text transcript here.
