The head of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, explains how the developers deal with numbers. And why highly played content is not necessarily popular.
In recent days, there have been a number of interviews with the developers of World of Warcraft. During a group interview, the Game Director Ion Hazzikostas spoke about an exciting topic. It was about Blizzard’s financial quarterly reports and what impact they have on the development of WoW. The answer was quite interesting and shows that the developers are very well aware of what this data means – and what it does not.
Monthly users are just a number: First, it’s about how developers interpret the figures from the quarterly “Earnings Call”. After all, there is a recurring opinion among players that developers want to please shareholders and therefore design a game such that players are doomed to spend as many hours in it as possible. However, Hazzikostas explains:
I understand that there is the opinion that people hear a financial report, perceive the numbers regarding player engagement, and then think that this drives us as developers. These numbers are shared with the investment community because they are a way to make comparisons between several games and franchises.
How do you arrive at a single number that encompasses the success of Candy Crush, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch? You don’t; you boil it down to playtime or daily active users.
Developers want what players want: Hazzikostas further elaborates that Blizzard’s financial interests align with those of the players. Because only those who create a fun game can motivate people to spend money on it:
At the end of the day, our financial interests and the interests of the players are aligned. We want to create a game that is fun to play. We want to create a game that we look forward to when we log in, and yes, that means we are creating a game that you think is worth paying a monthly subscription for.
Moreover, game developers are immensely pleased with praise and satisfaction from the players. There is nothing more beautiful for them than satisfied players who enjoy the game:
For all game developers, it feels best when you look at social media, watch streams, read Reddit, or talk to friends and receive praise and see that people are enjoying what we’ve poured our hearts into.
Hearing that someone did the same thing for eight hours and hated it the whole time… that is in no way rewarding. And it’s also not financially rewarding for the company.
Playtime does not mean fun: The developers are also aware that pure playtime is not an indicator of whether an activity in the game is fun. Just because players play something particularly intensively does not necessarily mean that it brings them joy. It could simply be the most efficient method to achieve a specific goal in the game or is seen as necessary to keep up.
We look at such numbers, but they are more indicators of what people spend their time on. If people log in less frequently and play less, it could be a sign that there is nothing for them to do and that they are receiving less value for their subscription. But it does not mean that players necessarily love something they invest all their time in.
This is the “Mechanar Problem”: That numbers are not always a good indicator of whether a mechanic in the game is popular is also demonstrated by what Hazzikostas calls the Mechanar Problem:
We have been joking for years about what we call the ‘Mechanar Problem’. Back then in The Burning Crusade, [the Mechanar] was the most popular dungeon in the game. If we had followed the pure numbers, we should have made every dungeon like the Mechanar.
It was the shortest and easiest dungeon and had the best rate of tokens per hour, which is why everyone played it. But just because people ran island expeditions for weeks to grind artifact power doesn’t tell us that island expeditions were a success. We know that there is a lot of room for improvement here.
Back then in The Burning Crusade, visiting heroic dungeons still awarded tokens and badges that players could use to buy equipment. The fastest way to get these badges was the Mechanar, which is why many only played that dungeon. However, this does not necessarily mean that the Mechanar was particularly good or fun, but simply particularly efficient at achieving a specific goal.
A game should be fun: Hazzikostas concludes the response with a statement that may give some players hope:
At the end of the day, we want to create a game that brings fun and joy with a variety of activities for all play styles that players find fulfilling.
Whether this has been successful with Shadowlands will be discovered by the players in a few days, as the journey to the Shadowlands begins on November 24.
