![]() Blizzard and Epic are not of course the firsts to do this but 2016 seems to be a year of strong push to see if the MOBA market can be expanded through this way. One thing that seems to be constant in the MOBA genre - isometric or first person - is the strong focus on unique characters (cf. What Overwatch, Battleborn and others are doing are changing some of these “ 3Cs” (Camera, Character, Controls). It’s the ARTS heritage that has given the MOBA genre its current generation’s isometric camera view, unique characters and control schemes 6. What the term MOBA hides is the lineage of DOTA and League of Legends from the real-time strategy ( RTS) and Action RTS games like Blizzard’s 5 Starcraft and Diablo series. By a strict literal meaning, there’s nothing in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena that would not make even Team Fortress 2 or Unreal Tournament 4 fit that category. What this reveals is that there seems to be surprisingly a lot of overlap between the genres. That’s just a short summary of the many games that are somewhere on a MOBA – arena shooter spectrum. What Ubisoft's Esports looked like before Siege Although, let’s see what For Honor will turn out to be. Not much needs to be said about EA’s now shut-down MOBA, Dawngate, or of Ubisoft’s non-violent arena shooter Shootmania Storm. ![]() It seems to be much more narrative driven and will have a single-player campaign 4 in stark contrast to the other games on the list. On the more firmly in the premium game category there’s also Gearbox’s “ Borderlands- MOBA”, Battleborn. Also missing in action is their WW1-styled Battlecry from which very little has been heard since last years E3. It’s not entirely fair to mention DOOM here as it’s more riding on a wave of (fake) nostalgia than MOBA-craze. The larger publishers have traditionally stubmled here, as seems to be future of Bethesda’s lackluster DOOM reboot. As a side note, the Chinese publisher Perfect World does have F2P shooter Blacklight: Retribution, and the exclusive rights to Dota 2 in China, but not other known ambitions for MOBAs and content with their MMORPGs. Nexon has some experience from challenging Team Fortress 2 with their more realistic team shooter, Dirty Bomb. ![]() This is an interesting change of direction from a publisher that focuses on free to play games. What was originally a much more Unreal Tournament styled free to play class based shooter has now transformed into a more Overwatch challenger with a premium price and a more stylized art direction. Lawbreakers from Cliff Bleszinski’s new Boss Key and Nexon has been a moving target. This is what Lawbreakers looked before they repositioned themselves Not to mention Tribes: Ascend, which for unexplained reasons is still alive. This is of course something that Hi-Rez has already tried with their SMITE and are now coming up with their more straight class based shooter Paladins which will also be for consoles. We should soon see Paragon from Epic that tries to bring MOBA to third person. On PCs, the space is being entered by games from all directions, but mostly from the free to play monetization model. Like in all other shooters, including other premium priced games like R6: Siege, and, more importantly, other MOBAs, cosmetic microtransactions are a very visible element of the games. Where Overwatch will not differ from previous Blizzard games or other competition will be microtransactions. On PCs, on the other hand, R6 was not a real match against Counter-Strike.įor this viewpoint, I would see that Blizzard is aiming at widening the CoD market on consoles with a more approachable shooter. The console space has been dominated with Call of Duty like shooters, although Rainbow Six: Siege tried to bring something new but still firmly stayed within the realistic law enfrocement fantasy. The other key difference is that Overwatch, in my opinion, is targeted for the consoles which are acutely lacking in the class-based arena shooter genre 3. Many believed that Overwatch would have been free to play, which was an easy assumption given the previous games Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm were and so is Team Fortress 2. It’s easy to see Overwatch as direct competitor to Team Fortress 2 but I think this is widely misleading 2. This positioning means they create new markets to their games instead of competing for a niche. In my opinion, Blizzard’s core skill is finding a genre 1 and making it way more mainstream. The main contender by hype is Blizzard’s team-based shooter Overwatch. There are many attempts in widening the wildly successful MOBA genre not only to shooters but also to the consoles. This year is going to be an interesting year for the shooter genre.
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