"Players have no patience", says Blizzard president - "they want new stuff every day, every hour"

People who play videogames want "new content literally almost every single day", according to Blizzard president Mike Ybarra - indeed, "they want new stuff every day, every hour". I do not want new stuff every day, every hour, Mike. Frankly, the idea makes me want to burn my possessions and go spend the rest of my life under a pine tree.

Ybarra's pseudo-apocalyptic observations came during a chat with the Verge about all things Blizzy under new owner Microsoft. Asked about Blizzard's current approach to live service gaming, Ybarra noted that "players have no patience. They want new stuff every day, every hour. We're trying to react that way while holding the Blizzard quality bar high."

Blizzard has a fair few live service irons in the fire at present, from the troubled Overwatch 2 (which is about to get a new Samoan tank hero) through the less-troubled Diablo 4 (whose first, Diablo 2-themed expansion is due late 2024) to no less than three expansions for the unkillable OG MMO World of Warcraft.

One obvious question is how to keep up that avalanche of New Stuff without making Bad New Stuff. Ybarra's answer, as may be deduced from Blizzard's current operations: set up vast teams increasingly fuelled by the power of in-game monetisation, with a lot of effort dedicated to ensuring that buying things in a Blizzard game feels enjoyable.

"We know players want new content literally almost every single day," Ybarra went on. "At the same time, it takes large teams to be able to deliver that. So you have to monetize it in the right ways. At the same time, I always tell the teams, 'When someone spends one dollar or a penny with Blizzard, I want them to feel good after they do that. How do we get to a world where we know that's always going to be the basis of what we're doing?'

"We want to serve players with more content in our universes," he added. "At the same time, we want to make sure we're responsible and meet their expectations. I think we're still fine-tuning a lot of those things as we go forward. But it's something top of mind for me as we go forward."

Blizzard's execs do remain "open" to proposals that aren't live services, Ybarra commented, be it "a four-hour experience or a 400-hour experience". Nor are they "afraid to create new IPs" or "turn models upside down." Still, the publisher's current portfolio suggests that the majority of chips are on service gaming for the moment.

It's interesting/harrowing to think about how live service games both react to and actively cultivate player behaviour. Ybarra doesn't discuss the role publishers and developers have played in teaching players to expect and demand New Stuff every day, via such habit-forming mechanisms as sign-in XP and events with exclusive rewards on top of compulsive design loops and feedback such as the jingly noises you get when you open a lootbox. A lot of this kind of thinking comes from the world of mobile gaming, which Ybarra described elsewhere in the chat as "a hyper growth area for us". Ybarra also doesn't talk about the sustainability implications of this expectation of constant New Stuff - for instance, the risk of mass layoffs when those big-team service games don't perform as well as shareholders wish.

I know, I sound like a scold. But looking at it from a more dispassionate armchair-designer point of view I'd love to hear more about live service projects that try to limit the player expectation of novelty and discourage daily engagement, with a view to creating something that isn't the equivalent of an artificial black hole remorselessly devouring the energies of all concerned. One of the most enjoyable live service games I've played lately is Might & Delight's Book of Travels, a "tiny MMO" with a far-from-Diablo-esque update cadence, in which you spend lots of time ambling from teahouse to teahouse. I sign into the game regularly just to have a nice stroll through the game's painterly countryside. Perhaps there's a tree I can live under there.

Activision Blizzard are currently the subject of a number of legal actions, labour disputes and allegations of workplace harassment. Rock Paper Shotgun will continue to write about these issues, as well as covering Activision Blizzard games as part of our commitment to cover subjects of interest to our readers. The latest news can always be found under our Activision Blizzard tag.