The great MMORPG “Project Titan” by Blizzard is known only in detail by a few. Now there is new information about the game that we will never see.
At Blizzard, there has always been the peculiarity that they announce games relatively late and often bury them while still in development.
Over the last 30 years, there have been many projects that never saw the light of day. One of them was a StarCraft game centered around Nova, another a point-and-click adventure in the Warcraft universe featuring Thrall as the main character. A planned survival game has also been canceled.
The largest of these canceled projects was likely “Project Titan,” which was developed in the early 2010s and was discontinued after about 7 years of development work. It was supposed to be a new, large MMORPG from Blizzard – but it was never released.
Project Titan – The MMORPG hope that died early
Although Project Titan is well-known in the gaming world, many details about it remain shrouded in mystery. Broadly, we only know that out of the remnants of the game, Overwatch was eventually born – the character designs were largely retained.
Journalist Jason Schreier discussed some internal matters at Blizzard in a podcast with the Limit Break Network, which he obtained for the research of his new book. This revealed new details.
According to Schreier, in Titan, players would assume the role of a character who engaged in ordinary daily activities during the day – almost like in a life simulation, similar to The Sims or Animal Crossing. This included activities like fishing, photography, and even full-time jobs.
However, this changed drastically at night, as players revealed their role as superheroes and could fight crime. Different hero classes were supposed to provide varied experiences.
Titan was the beginning of the end
According to Schreier, the failure of Titan was the trigger for Blizzard’s decline afterwards. The situation demonstrated to “Bobby Kotick that the promise of ‘You let us do our thing and we will create a hit for you’ was no longer valid.”
This was precisely why Bobby Kotick tightened the screws at Blizzard, as Kotick began to exert more and more influence, and fought more with Mike Morhaime, among others.
Morhaime tried for a long time to protect the teams from this influence but ultimately gave up after several years and left Blizzard as well.
According to Schreier, Titan not only cost $80 million by the time of its cancellation but also incurred high opportunity costs. These are costs arising from the fact that something was not pursued – so during the time Project Titan was in development, other titles were not being worked on. A large part of the 7 years of development time was wasted.
Not only did the developers have to be paid during this time, but they also did not work on other games that could also have been completed.
Ultimately, Titan’s demise was partly due to the high expectations that Blizzard had. It was supposed to be a game that could compete with World of Warcraft and elevate the MMORPG genre to the next level – before other game studios could beat them to it.
