Blizzard - Working on a New Survival Game

Blue's News reports that Blizzard is working on a new game.

Blizzard Planning New Survival Game

Blizzard News puts out the call for applicants interested in working on a new unannounced survival game, inviting them "create a new universe with us" (thanks Thermight). There's not much to go by right now, but we can see that it is set in a brand-new universe and will come to PC and consoles:

"Blizzard is embarking on our next quest. We are going on a journey to a whole new universe, home to a brand-new survival game for PC and console. A place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored.

Every story needs a teller. And every world needs builders. What if that could be you?

For thirty years, Blizzard has been creating universes for millions of players around the globe. This requires a diverse team of developers willing to lend their voices, to listen and to be heard. That is our mission.

Do you like survival games? Do you want to join a collaborative team of experienced developers at the early stage of a new project in a new world…and help write the next chapter in Blizzard's story?

This is your call to adventure. Will you answer it?"

More information.

(that being said, we all knew they were playing at their very own survival game )

Makes sense.

Blizzard MO = Take popular concepts and make them more mainstream and polish them to near-perfection.

Not a big fan of "survival games" in terms of a stand-alone genre, but I do think some games can benefit greatly from certain features from that paradigm.

I don't know how many quality craftsmen are left in Bliz - but they should have enough financial support to pull off pretty much whatever, so it'll be interesting to see.

At least they haven't done a 180 and come up with something original

Well it's actually still more original than I was expecting from Blizzard these days. The survival genre is fairly broad, there's potentially still plenty of room for creativity in how they do it. But knowing Blizzard they will probably aim to make a shinier version of Valheim or something similar rather than going in their own direction. I would be especially surprised if they made anything with a single player focus at this point.

WOW v3.0 ?
Or even 4.0 ?

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Makes sense.

Blizzard MO = Take popular concepts and make them more mainstream and polish them to near-perfection.

Not a big fan of "survival games" in terms of a stand-alone genre, but I do think some games can benefit greatly from certain features from that paradigm.

I don't know how many quality craftsmen are left in Bliz - but they should have enough financial support to pull off pretty much whatever, so it'll be interesting to see.

At least they haven't done a 180 and come up with something original

So the Ninja Dartagnan threw us another smoke bomb, vanishing once again. Too soon.

Full loot open world PVP MMORPGs always flop. People don't like losing their gear they worked so hard to get.

I remember back in Ultima Online people wouldn't ever wear their good armor and often wouldn't even risk running around in normal platemail. They might just wear a breastplate under a robe to appear like a worthless target.

But, now we see survival games and battle royales appear and full loot open PVP has started entering the mainstream.

Instead of waiting for the MMO that will never come, maybe it's time to look to other genres?

Seems like a very niche market for Blizzard. I can't see them making huge profits. But maybe they'll prove me wrong.

If they still have the ability to take a genre and make it the best accessible and streamlined version of it, they might have a chance. Personally I think that survival games are too niche and most people won't play many of them if at all.

On the other hand if they are able to make it scale-able on the survival bits (on/off toggles for food/thirst/etc) and can put it in a living breathing world (so not a true sandbox) it could be a success.

The survival game is based on being an employee in a game company that devalues their employees. The object is for you, as an employee, to try and make a living developing the game that the CEO assigns to you.

Originally Posted by Luethar
The survival game is based on being an employee in a game company that devalues their employees. The object is for you, as an employee, to try and make a living developing the game that the CEO assigns to you.

Yeah, that'd be a hard pass for me.