Despite all of the money being thrown around at flashy eSports events and conventions, this year has not been a good one for MOBAs behind the scenes. There has been an unprecedented number of closures and cutbacks during 2015 for such a new genre. Although online game closures are fairly common, and probably more frequent in other genres like MMORPGs, the small number of active MOBAs make the percent of closures much higher. Things are likely not going to look good for any new MOBA releases that don’t offer an extremely different experience for players.
Once League of Legends really started to pick up steam in 2011, a lot of other developers started to see the potential in the genre. We’ve had attempts from S2 Games, Valve, Blizzard, EA, Turbine, Hi-Rez Studios, and a number of others to replicate the success of League of Legends, but none have done so. The only game that’s ever close in terms of numbers is Dota 2, but it’s still pretty far behind in both player population and revenue. There are also a few mid-range MOBAs like Heroes of the Storm and SMITE that are doing well enough to survive, but are still majorly lagging behind.
The Golden Age for MOBAs was probably somewhere between 2010 and 2013. This is when pretty much any MOBA that was well put together saw at least a moderate level of success. That’s because there simply wasn’t a huge variety out there and League of Legends hadn’t sucked up a majority of the player population yet. There were obviously some failures, Demigod for example, but even Heroes of Newerth maintained a decent level of popularity for quite some time.
However, things have definitely not been this kind to the genre in the last couple of years. No studio, despite their power or influence, is safe from this fact. Even the mighty Electronic Arts was forced to close their sole MOBA attempt before it even left beta testing. So far from the end of 2014 to 2015, we’ve seen Transformers Universe, Dawngate, TOME: Immortal Arena, and Infinite Crisis completely shut down. Additionally, Strife hasn’t released a patch or news update in months and Gigantic was recently forced to push back its release date while cutting staff.
The reason most of these games aren’t succeeding has very little to do with the actual quality of the game. Many of them are well put together, have interesting mechanics, and are generally fun to play, but they simply don’t have enough to draw players away from what they’re used to. In order to make it in today’s MOBA market, developers either need to do something unique or build upon an existing IP. SMITE succeeded because it was the first to move away from RTS style gameplay, and Heroes of the Storm is using the popularity of characters from other franchise. Games that simply tweak existing mechanics and use a bunch of characters that no one has a connection with are going to have a very difficult time thriving in this market.
On the surface, it looks like almost every other genre is ever more saturated than the MOBA one, but it’s not that simple. The biggest problem with MOBAs is that they’re very shallow games. By this, I don’t mean mechanically, but instead that they only really appeal to one type of audience: PvPers. It’s few and far between that you’ll find anyone who plays a MOBA for the lore or just to fight AI bots. The core demographics are casual gamers that really enjoy fighting each other, and the professional eSports players.
The only other genre that ever solely relied on multiplayer PvP was the arena shooter, which really doesn’t exist anymore in the mainstream Western market besides a few exceptions. Games like Quake and Unreal Tournament have mostly died out. Developers have made attempts to alter the genre with games such as Brink, Evolve and ShootMania Storm, but those all fail to reach the popularity levels studios are looking for. Of course, there are a few exceptions like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike, but these games managed to stand the test of time and have accumulated large communities in the process.
Both arena shooters and MOBAs have a similar target audience and the same flaws in that they have no diversity. Other genres can survive with a large amount of competitors because they’re flexible. Some people play MMORPGs for the story, others like constructing things, and almost all have PvP these days. There are multiple faucets for very different communities to thrive in an MMORPG, and often times completing the story can require hundreds of hours. MOBAs, on the other hand, generally don’t have a living story or any feature besides a couple of different PvP game modes. That means each MOBA is going to be directly competing with every other MOBA, but story-drive RPGs and FPS games aren’t necessarily trying to compete with others in their respective genres.
I highly doubt that League of Legends and Dota 2 will remain the only extremely popular MOBAs in the gaming world, but the genre needs to evolve. I could name a dozen games that are almost exactly like the aforementioned with minor tweaks, but there are a few titles coming out that could potentially draw a sizeable crowd. I personally feel that the MOBA genre is finished with the RTS style combat, and there isn’t much improvement from what is already on the market. Instead, developers should be looking to create more hybrid style games.
There are a few first-person/third-person hybrid MOBAs on the horizon that could make an impact. The first footage for Epic’s Paragon was released this weekend and it combines a sci-fi atmosphere, third-person shooter and MOBA game mechanics. There’s also Battleborn, which is going to have a few MOBA-esque scenarios, and Gigantic should be available early 2016. I’m not saying that all, or any, of those games will necessarily succeed, but they’re definitely putting in the effort.
These attempts are necessary in order to keep the genre alive because it has become completely stagnant. In its current form, Dota 2 and League of Legends will be the only mainstream MOBAs unless developers find creative new angles. However, if the same formula is repeatedly copied and pasted, a lot of time and money is going to end up down the drain.
Related: Battleborn, Dawngate, Dota 2, eSports, Gigantic, Heroes of Newerth, Heroes of the Storm, Infinite Crisis, League of Legends, MOBA, Paragon, SMITE, TOME: Immortal Arena
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