On a broader level there’s 2 trends that I am hopeful about.
One is that Live Service games are generally not being very successful anymore. Gamers just don’t favor the design anymore. We’re generally good at seeing the design for what it is now. And so the Live Service games that do have success tend to be the ones that have had it for a long time and have already gained an established audience.
So there’s some hope here that game development is starting to shift a bit back toward exceptional gameplay and less toward gambling and FOMO and collections.
I think the last few years of top-selling and award-winning games have shown that as well. There’s a shift starting to happen. Not so much within Blizzard, but in gaming at large.
I also think we’re slowly starting to see legislation here in the EU become more than just wishful thinking. Not so much because oldschool gamers are concerned about these issues, but because parents of younger generations are. That’s where the real concern comes from. These kids are not being introduced to Super Mario Bros. on the NES as their first experience. It’s Fortnite, CoD, WoW, and Candy Crush. And thus naturally the parental oversight is starting to push in the direction of more regulations and laws to curb these predatory game designs that feel very akin to what we see in the gambling industry.
But for WoW I think we’ll see this trend continue into the next expansion and beyond. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer talked about how these triple A companies, like Blizzard, are in a bit of a crisis, because they don’t really know how to compete in the gaming market anymore. They can’t really beat the indie scene on gameplay or price, so they’re kind of stuck just doubling-down on their established IPs and milking them for all they’re worth. And that’s unfortunately also what we see Blizzard doing. For however many years WoW has left Blizzard are going to squeeze the playerbase for all they’re worth. Because they don’t know what else to do.