It’s no great secret that the games industry at times can feel like a race to copy the homework of whichever company gets acclaim from fans – it happened before in the glory days of League of Legends and DOTA 2, it’s debatably still ongoing with Fortnite and the battle royale genre, but it seems as though time truly may be a flat circle, as MOBAs seem to be on a massive rise once more.
Returning from obscurity and failure there came Gigantic, with Gigantic: Rampage Edition having just been available for free earlier this month via the Epic Games store (this writer in particular has had fun playing it); Predecessor (the MOBA built from the bones of Paragon) got its 1.0 release; Smite 2 went into its closed alpha, and of course, Valve finally revealed Deadlock, which continues to trend and host a massive player count despite not being officially released.
But what’s actually going on here, and what are game developers taking away from the situation?
Alex Cantatore, executive producer of Smite 2, thinks the trend of soulslike games has prepared players for greater challenges – and great rewards, which lends itself well to the genre.
He said: “I’ve often described MOBAs as the soulslike of multiplayer genres – they’re really hard. You’re going to die a lot to learn the game.
“That same feeling you get when you take down Malenia? Like you were rewarded for deeply mastering the game? That’s the feeling you get from winning every game of Smite 2.
“Now that more players understand that it feels great to master a difficult game, I think more are willing to take that journey.”
As for what the takeaways are, it’s difficult to swallow but simple to see for Cantatore, who said: “I think player expectations just keep growing, and we think the only way to meet those expectations is to get your name out in the public earlier than you’re really comfortable with, so that you can get feedback on exactly what players think and what they want.
“During the last MOBA boom, you saw a lot of fine games that didn’t really evolve the formula and so they didn’t stand out compared to established competitors – Smite survived because it threaded the perfect balance.”
As for those still seeking to establish themself in the MOBA scene, particularly during this boom, Robbie Singh, the CEO of Predecessor developer Omeda Studios agrees with the latter part of Cantatore’s thoughts – it isn’t a comeback we’re seeing, it’s an evolution.
Singh said: “In our view, MOBAs never really went away in the first place. It could be that a new generation of farmers is just now coming to realise that there’s also a new generation of MOBAs that look and play better than the ones they may be used to.
“These days, we’d say that to be successful as a modern MOBA you need a solid foundation of heroes and core mechanics, but we also want to step back and look beyond the genre itself.”
There looks to be some truth to his words: Gigantic, Predecessor, Smite 2, and of course Deadlock are all moving away from the traditional top-down gameplay of PC MOBAs, instead pumping some action into the genre with third-person gameplay (thanks, PC Gamer).
What do you think of this trend in MOBAs? Is it a fad or here to stay? Let us know in the comments below.