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Highlights
- Blizzard President Mike Ybarra believes players lack patience, wanting new content constantly, making it challenging—but not impossible—to maintain quality standards.
- Constant content begets large teams and sensible monetization, Ybarra said.
- Ybarra, who previously left Microsoft to join Blizzard, also revealed he still doesn’t know how Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition will affect the developer moving forward.
Blizzard President Mike Ybarra believes that players are lacking in patience, which makes the developer’s efforts to maintain quality standards more difficult, albeit not impossible. The executive offered this perspective as part of a wider reflection on what’s next for the company following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
As tends to be the case with developers focusing on eSports and live-service games, Blizzard’s recent track record saw its fandom develop an appetite for consistent content. And while that’s not the sole factor affecting the players’ expectations for the studio, the public scrutiny that its projects invite continues to grow proportionally to their success. Even critically lauded and massively successful titles like Diablo 4 hence remain a frequent target of criticism among the most hardcore portion of the fandom.
Reflecting on this state of affairs in a recent interview with The Verge, Ybarra opined that gamers lack patience. “They want new stuff every day, every hour,” he asserted, adding how the World of Warcraft maker is doing what it can to react to those demands “while holding the Blizzard quality bar high.” But incessantly churning out content comes with a large team requirement, which, in turn, makes sensible monetization imperative, according to the executive.
Monetization itself has its own set of challenges, with the Blizzard President noting how he’s always advising his teams to think about the end user experience. Elaborating on that point, Ybarra said he wants players to “feel good” whenever they spend money with Blizzard, no matter the sum. And while the company has long been focused on live-service offerings, it’s not opposed to returning to more traditional publishing models, with Ybarra insisting he’s open to any and all pitches from his teams, including those for new IPs. As for its existing franchises and accompanying expectations from the fans, the Blizzard President recently promised that the wait for Diablo 5 won’t be as long as the Diablo 4 one.
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.
Asked how the Microsoft acquisition might change Blizzard and its output moving forward, the executive candidly said that he doesn’t know. The $68.7 billion transaction was officially completed in October, but Ybarra revealed that he’s yet to discuss the next steps with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.
The acquisition itself puts the industry veteran in a not-everyday position, as Ybarra left Microsoft to join Blizzard in late 2019, only to find himself back under the tech giant’s leadership four years later. That’s not to say that the executive isn’t optimistic about the future, having appeared at the 2023 BlizzCon in early November to label the show as the start of an exciting “new era” for Blizzard.
