Do You Guys Not Have Phones?
An Analysis of the Diablo Disaster
While the uproar has since died down, as a marketing student at the time and a budding gamer, I could not help but be both amused and disappointed. There were so many elements in place to get this right and yet, the infamous announcement at BlizzCon 2018 still failed.
Understanding the Segment
The gaming community’s presence on the internet is remarkable. Of course, Gen Z and Millennials are all competing to make their presence felt on social media, but Gamers have been here even before Web 2.0. They have been able to maintain a tight-knit community, overcoming geographic boundaries, and they were able to do this without Instagram, Twitter or even Facebook, as there were already a few online forums created by publishers.
Nowadays, video game developers use more mainstream social media platforms like Facebook to post updates about their projects and ads for their products and merchandise. Gamers, however, still use more exclusive websites and apps like Steam and Discord to communicate with each other, and Twitch to stream their gameplay or make gaming-related vlogs. Another more commonly used, platform among Gamers and video game developers is Reddit. For Blizzard fans, in particular, the site MMO-Champion is popular for announcements on primarily World of Warcraft and other Blizzard projects as well (Earned Social Media) as well as their own forums, Battle.net, available on their website (Owned Social Media). (Barker & Barker, 2017)
Even with minimal exposure to the internet and all it has to offer, it is not difficult to conclude that Gamers as a consumer base are relatively easy to find. And given how tight-knit they tend to be, Gamers can all usually be found frequenting the same watering hole.
It is therefore unforgivable for a company as big and reputed as Activision Blizzard to have so grossly misread their fanbase.
Diablo
Activision Blizzard is a holding company based in California. Some of their most popular titles are Warcraft, Overwatch, StarCraft, and Diablo. The company was formed in the early 2000s after Activision, a video game publisher, had merged with Vivendi Games, the holding company for Blizzard Entertainment.
The Diablo series is one of Blizzard’s most popular titles, with a lot of the fanbase having grown up on earlier versions of the game. While Diablo II is considered the most popular game in the series, Diablo III, which was released in 2012 had mixed reviews.
Since the Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls, Blizzard had not released any new content for the Diablo series. As per conventions in the Gaming industry, 6 years is a long time to wait for a new sequel. On August 8, 2018, Blizzard released a video on YouTube, which was later posted to their Twitter, to announce that they (Blizzard) “have multiple Diablo projects in the works. Some of them will take longer than others. But (they) may have some things to show (their fans) later this year.” (Camel, 2018)
Fans were noticeably hyped just from that single video; ecstatic that there was finally some attention being given to a beloved series. There had been a lot of speculation on Reddit as to what those new projects might be. Based on the information available from the video, the three most common assumptions were a Nintendo Switch port of Diablo III, a remaster of Diablo II, or, even better, the release of Diablo IV, some of which were expected to be announced in at Blizzard’s exclusive annual convention for all their main titles, BlizzCon.
The portable console, Nintendo Switch, has been phenomenal in changing the way video games can be played, with it’s easy swapping between docked mode on the television, and handheld mode. Video game publishers have hence wisely been making the decision to make ports available for their titles for the Nintendo Switch. Blizzard was also wise to make that move, especially for Diablo III, which was the first anticipated announcement that reached fans on it’s November 2nd release.
BlizzCon 2018
The second most anticipated announcement for Diablo was expected at BlizzCon 2018, on November 2nd, the same day that Diablo III Switch had released. It was scheduled as the main announcement. That is when things had taken a turn for the worse.
The tickets for BlizzCon, like most other conventions, are expensive. People plan and budget much in advance, and spend a lot of money on travel, merchandise, and products at the event. The kind of fan who would attend BlizzCon would typically spend 12 to 16 hours a day playing the game and have a very sophisticated computer, or a console to be able to do that. (Dixon, 2019) Needless to say, the most loyal and intense fans of the series were present at the event.
Fans had been waiting anxiously only to be told that Blizzard was going to release a new Diablo game, called Diablo Immortal, exclusively on mobile. When asked if there were plans to release the game on PC or a console, Wyatt Cheng, one of the project leaders on Diablo, had confirmed that there weren’t any plans of that sort — to which the crowd booed — to which Mr. Cheng said, the now-infamous line, “Do you guys not have phones?”
Mistakes and Corrections
It was not the fact that Blizzard was launching a mobile game that was the colossal mistake that had insulted their fans. Most gamers would agree that it is only natural for a publishing company to try to get into the mobile market, given how co-dependent we are on our phones. However, the segment of customers that have devoted their time and resources into building custom rigs to play an RPG for hours; are not the ones who would play the same game casually for a few minutes on a tiny screen. (Dixon, 2019)
The latter is a completely different segment and should have been targeted differently. Blizzard “should (have paid) attention to the cultural differences across target markets”, i.e. the hardcore gamers vs. the new market of mobile gamers; “because social media campaigns need to be adjusted across sub-cultures to be effective…” (Johnston et. al., 2018).
To release Diablo Immortal as a smaller version of Diablo III to draw in a new segment would have been a sound business decision. However, it is highly unlikely for a gamer to have been active in the same watering holes and not have already heard about Diablo. Hence, the intended segment is non-gamers or mobile gamers, who would still play games casually, but on their mobile phones. This target market would have been very easy to target on mainstream social media channels like Instagram and Snapchat. Whereas, the hype around the big announcement was building on more exclusive social media channels like Reddit, where the more traditional segment of customers would be the only ones participating in the conversation.
One of the ways that Wyatt Cheng and the team were able to save Diablo III from the minor initial problems, was to monitor their owned and earned social media channels and listen to the conversations. (Schreier, 2017) According to Jason Schreier, who had been able to speak with former and current employees of Blizzard, there was indeed progress being made on Diablo IV. The panel should have disclosed this at BlizzCon — or at the very least, not have created buzz around the announcement for a game that nobody asked for. Listening to conversations on social media can be a very powerful tool, whose power is often underestimated.
Hence, it is quite surprising that nobody seemed to have bothered this time around, even as customers were very explicitly stating their expectations. In the aftermath of BlizzCon, while fans were expressing how disappointed they were with the new announcement, articles online were criticizing customers for being “entitled”. Blizzard’s PR and Customer Service teams could have stepped in and defended both their customers and their development teams, and used the opportunity to address concerns about their plans. “OSM (Owned Social Media) that is targeted toward helping customers post-purchase — addressing their concerns, reinforcing their purchase decisions, and thereby reducing cognitive dissonance — is much more valuable than OSM crafted to persuade customers to buy the firm’s products” (Colicev et. al. 2018)
If there is one thing we can take away from the Diablo Immortal Campaign, it’s that one does not simply enter a new market without prior research, even if it means taking a poll on Instagram or browsing Reddit. Learning to distinguish between each segment of the target market, understanding their media behaviour, knowing how to target them, and position your firm, by listening to the tone of the community (Barker, 2017) are some of the key steps in building trust in your new customer base and maintaining good relationships with the existing ones.
References
1. Johnston, W. J., Khalil, S., Le, A. N., & Cheng, J. M. (2018). Behavioural Implications of International Social Media Advertising: An Investigation of Intervening and Contingency Factors. Journal of International Marketing, 26(2), 43–61. doi:10.1509/jim.16.0125
2. Barker, M. S., Barker, D., Bormann, N. F., Roberts, M. L., & Zahay, D. L. (2017). Social media marketing: A strategic approach. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
3. Colicev, A., Malshe, A., Pauwels, K., & Oconnor, P. (2018). Improving Consumer Mindset Metrics and Shareholder Value through Social Media: The Different Roles of Owned and Earned Media. Journal of Marketing, 82(1), 37–56. doi:10.1509/jm.16.0055
4. HolyKnight3000 (2018). Diablo Immortal #1: Diablo [Digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.deviantart.com/holyknight3000/art/Diablo-Immortal-1-Diablo-771576756
5. Diablo (2018, August 08). The Future of Diablo [Digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwVaqS_bd-8
6. Schreier, J. (2018, November 21). The Past, Present, And Future Of Diablo. Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195
7. Schreier, J. (2017). Blood, sweat, and pixels: The triumphant, turbulent stories behind how video games are made. New York: Harper.
