IRVINE, Calif. — Writing about a game that hasn’t been released to the public can be risky. It might end up as vaporware or simply not live up to the awesome impression that publishers can gin up in a short, canned demonstration. But when it comes to a new game from Blizzard Entertainment, perhaps the world’s most accomplished and prestigious developer, an exception seems merited.
And if there is one game in the pipeline I can’t wait to play on my own time, it’s Blizzard’s Diablo III.
So on Monday I found myself within Blizzard’s gated, guarded headquarters complex here, navigating my witch doctor and his canine minions through the Torture Chambers of the Mad King. (I didn’t actually fly across the country to preview this game; I was visiting Orange County for a family function and stopped in at Blizzard.) For about an hour I explored the dungeon, hurling lightning bolts, summoning zombies and unleashing swarms of locusts to decimate the waves of bloodthirsty foes standing between me and the next treasure chest.
I don’t think an hour has ever passed so quickly.
And that, of course, is what Diablo is all about: drawing you in so pleasurably, almost hypnotically, that time becomes an abstraction. At that, it appears Diablo III may end up without peer (at least in the electronic realm).
The original Diablo, released in 1997, basically invented the genre of action role-playing video games. While traditional role-playing games can be enjoyably painstaking affairs that test players’ ability to master tactics, complex rule systems and dozens of skills and abilities, Diablo has always been an orgy of wanton slashing and hacking. In the universe of Diablo and its imitators, like Torchlight, you are truly a conquering hero, mowing down evil monsters and raking in loot.
The brilliant, fundamental roots of the Diablo game-play style are both psychological and neuromuscular.
Diablo’s main lure is randomization. Every time you step into a dungeon, it’s different. The layout has changed from the last time, and so have the monsters. Most important, though, each time you kill some slavering, otherworldly abomination, you never know what it may be carrying. Most likely, it will be garbage. But there is a slim chance that you’ll end up with an incredibly powerful relic that no other player in the world has seen. That’s because each piece of treasure is generated randomly.
Call it the slot-machine effect. Every time you pull that handle, you might, just might, hit the jackpot. You probably won’t, but the tantalizing possibility keeps you playing. (The human brain’s eager response to intermittent rewards is well known and explains much of the appeal of sports like golf, where the memory and feeling of one good shot maintains players’ interest even though they are hacking around dreadfully most of the time.)
Like a well-designed slot machine, a good action role-playing game also satisfies the brain’s craving for feedback by rewarding near-constant clicking of the mouse (or the pulling of the entirely cosmetic wooden handle) with a steady stream of little audio cues like chimes and bloops.
To the uncharitable or suspicious, this could all sound a bit manipulative. But every successful mass-market product or service reflects a sophisticated understanding of consumer psychology and behavior.
Yet for all its power, the slot-machine effect is in many ways only a short-term hook. Diablo’s long-term draw is its online community and, particularly, its virtual economy.
Jay Wilson, Blizzard’s game director for Diablo III, has been working on the project full time for five years. (Others on the team have been at it even longer.) Mr. Wilson knows what keeps folks coming back.
“At its core, Diablo is about trading,” he said. Here’s why: in Diablo, the statistics and attributes of each item that drops from a fallen monster are generated on the fly. That means every item is potentially unique. So if you find, say, a halberd that inflicts extra damage to demons, increases your strength, leaches health from your foes and increases the amount of gold you discover (a potent combination), it is possible that no one else has ever found a halberd with that exact combination of goodies.
This is far different from a persistent online game like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, where each item must be individually, meticulously designed and fixed in its attributes so that it is properly balanced for its location in the game universe and the difficulty of obtaining it. Players there want to know that if they get together with 10 or 20 people and spend four hours conquering a certain dungeon, they will certainly reap specific rewards.
Diablo, by contrast, is about jumping in and seeing what fate brings. But what if you uncover that great halberd, and you happen to be a physically feeble wizard who can’t use big, two-handed weapons at all? (The five classes in Diablo III are barbarian, wizard, demon hunter, monk and witch doctor — each with a distinctive style of play.)
That’s where the trading comes in. Now, out of millions of other players, you want to find a magic-fearing barbarian who has come across, say, an enchanted staff that inflicts extra damage to wilderness beasts, increases the bearer’s willpower, leaches magic from enemies and increases the holder’s chance of finding additional magic items (also a potent combination). But how do you find that guy and make the trade?
In Diablo II, released in 2000, you had to sit in any of hundreds of chat channels for hours, advertising the deal you sought. If your prospective partner was in another channel, you might never find him (or, far less likely, her).
Blizzard knows that just won’t cut it anymore. Today’s players will demand simple yet powerful tools to create their own bustling virtual economy without the tedium. Call it an advanced sort of auction house.
Once Diablo III arrives, millions of players will generate items of randomized treasure every day. That can make eBay look like a flea market. Keeping track of it all online and designing trading tools that can handle that kind of volume is a gargantuan programming and design challenge. It is one big reason Blizzard has been working on the game for so long. And it may also be why the company hasn’t detailed or demonstrated Diablo III’s trading systems yet.
It appears distinctly possible that Diablo could be the first Blizzard franchise to make the leap from PCs to consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but Blizzard isn’t talking about that. Blizzard has also not announced a release date — or year — for Diablo III. But as Mr. Wilson put it: “We’re definitely in the home stretch. We’re crunching. This is when the magic happens.”
To my admittedly biased (and eager) ears, that sounds as if the Blizzard folks wanted to get the game out in 2011. What they’ve shown so far looks good. But I, and millions of others, can hardly wait to see the full package of what they come up with.
Wobei... ich mich nun frage, wie denn so eine Ney York Times aussieht -.- oder ist's von der online Ausgabe? Ich mein, ist ja schon seeehr spezifisch, wie die items beschrieben werden. Da blickt niemand durch, der nicht ein klein wenig Erfahrung mit solchen Dingen gesammelt hat.
es kann nicht anderst kommen. D3 wird uns alle packen. Das hat er ja auch schön hervorgehoben. Ahja, ebenfalls sehr passend zum Thread, wie D2 aufs Gehirn wirkt. Hier super klar geschrieben.
Ich denke sowas wird hier gemeint sein.
die items und co. sind halt nach 10 jahren ausgelutscht ... von den bots etc. brauch ich garnicht sprechen ... diablo2 war die ersten 5 jahre ein soo geniales spiel !!!! aber mittlerweile total verseucht und sinnlos ! hoffentlich ( nein ... es wird zu 100% ) auch 10 jahre genial sein, vorallem bei der heutigen anti cheat politik seitens blizzard werden sich die schwarten schaafe sicher in grenzen halten 