Mike Morhaime Interview

[Hamshank]

Fox Business interviews Mike Morhaime
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/mar...mike-morhaime/

Blizzard Entertainment is one of the world’s largest PC game makers, known to the public primarily for developing the massively-multiplayer game “World of Warcraft,” which has upwards of 11 million subscribers.

Michael Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, sat down for an interview with FOX Business while at the E3 video game expo to discuss a variety of topics ranging from upcoming products to potential competition from other developers.

Massively-multiplayer games, also known as MMOs, continue to attract interest from video game industry executives and developers because the games have ongoing subscription revenues long after the game hits store shelves.

Now in its sixth year and second expansion, “World of Warcraft” remains the dominant MMO in the business, with a 70% market share by some estimates. The game is essentially Activision-Blizzard’s (ATVI: 11.36, 0.21, 1.88%) cash cow, bringing in more than a $1 billion in revenue annually. A third expansion called “Cataclysm” is expected later this year.

See FOXBusiness.com's full 2010 coverage.

Blizzard will release a sequel to its “Starcraft”” franchise next month, nearly 12 years after the first game was released. “Starcraft” remains one of the most popular real-time strategy games in the world, selling nearly 10 million copies since release.

Question: “Starcraft” is essentially finished at this point. How does it feel to get that first installment out to the general public after 12 years?

Morhaime – “Starcraft” continues to be one of my personal favorite Blizzard games. I’m thrilled with how “Starcraft 2” came out; the team did such a phenomenal job. They really kept that original “Starcraft” feel when it comes to multiplayer that made the original game great; but what they have done with the single-player experience, it is the most epic single-player experience Blizzard has ever done.

Q – You seem to be breaking the game up into three pieces.

Morhaime – We’re releasing “Starcraft 2” and following it up with two expansions. Normally we would not pre-announce expansions, but we decided to do it this time because we decided to tell the story as a trilogy. This time, we felt we could tell a better story and deliver a more epic experience by focusing each installment on a particular race.

Q – Did you plan on breaking it up that way or did the development process lend itself to a main game and two expansions?

Morhaime – As the development process went along, we realized we could scale back the type of ambitions we wanted to do. [We talked with our player base] and told them ‘we could scale back or we could go with this expansion plan.' It’s always sort of dangerous asking our player base because you don’t know what they are going to say.

Q – Was there any pressure from [Activision] to break the game up to increase revenues?

Morhaime – Activision doesn’t tell us to break up a game or to release a game on a particular day. One thing you have to understand is ever since we launched the “Brood War” expansion to the original “Starcraft,” players have been asking for a second expansion. We decided to make two expansions for the sequel, it was just a matter of if we tell players or not.

One other point, unless you plan to do two expansions, it’s very difficult to go back. The developers working on the original game become experts at that game. Working on an expansion, you want your experts working on that. If our developers move from “Starcraft” to “Warcraft,” it’s very difficult to move them back.

Q – “World of Warcraft” has the largest market share of the massively-multiplayer genre, but there are two major franchises under development: “Star Wars” and “Final Fantasy XIV.” When you see these new franchises, are you concerned?

Morhaime – [MMOs] are a very complicated genre to compete in, there’s so many variables that go into making a game feel polished. You polish certain parts of the game but then run into aspects of the game that leave players stuck or not knowing what to do. It’s a very challenging genre to compete in and that’s why you haven’t seen that many MMOs. There’s the back-end infrastructure which is very expensive and very risky.

We’ve never been afraid of competition, we welcome it; it might be good for the MMO industry to have more than one successful MMO that’s attracting players.

Also, regarding Star Wars, this isn’t the first Star Wars MMO we’ve had to compete with. Star War Galaxies came out three months before World of Warcraft.

Another challenge for Star Wars is that they are working with a licensed property, which makes it more difficult. We have flexibility with our own canon that Star Wars does not.

Q – A broader industry question: We saw Microsoft’s (MSFT: 26.37, 0.05, 0.19%) Kinect this week, which has players use their whole body to play a game. You guys are a PC game company, but what are your thoughts on this fully-interactive push on the console side of things?

Morhaime - I think that type of interaction works in certain types of genres. It doesn’t work in every type of game. It does open up the door to new innovative ideas that we haven’t thought of yet.

[Todie]

i expected more. i guess i shouldnt have.

its fox business.

[Gifted]

Fleshed out main post for reading ease. Remember, just LINKING isn't a sufficient post here man >.< Thanks for sharing it though (The appreciation for the share is what motivated me to flesh it out actually)

[Hamshank]

Fleshed out main post for reading ease. Remember, just LINKING isn't a sufficient post here man >.< Thanks for sharing it though (The appreciation for the share is what motivated me to flesh it out actually)

Good point, I'll remember for next time.

[JohnUcrazy]

Q – Was there any pressure from [Activision] to break the game up to increase revenues?

Morhaime – Activision doesn’t tell us to break up a game or to release a game on a particular day. One thing you have to understand is ever since we launched the “Brood War” expansion to the original “Starcraft,” players have been asking for a second expansion. We decided to make two expansions for the sequel, it was just a matter of if we tell players or not.

One other point, unless you plan to do two expansions, it’s very difficult to go back. The developers working on the original game become experts at that game. Working on an expansion, you want your experts working on that. If our developers move from “Starcraft” to “Warcraft,” it’s very difficult to move them back.

I find it interesting that Fox would ask something like this. Either the guy doing the interview is a Starcraft player, or he has done his homework in concerns with the Activision-Blizzard merge.

[Triceron]

I'm actually happy they asked that question and put down the fears that Activision is controlling Blizzard's actions.

[DemolitionSquid]

I'm actually happy they asked that question and put down the fears that Activision is controlling Blizzard's actions.

Because lying is unpossible, especially when dealing with millions of dollars.

[LordofAscension]

I love how StarCraft is one of his personal favorites - how many franchises has Blizzard really made? 4, 5?

~LoA

[DemolitionSquid]

StarCraft
Diablo
WarCraft
RPM/Rock'N'Roll Racing
Lost Vikings
Blackthorne

I think that's all the IP's Blizzard has made.

[hyde]

Because lying is unpossible, especially when dealing with millions of dollars.

Think we got it all figured out , don't we Demolition Squid? He isn't lying, if you look into the merger details and corporate governance, he gets the word on Blizzard's internals. But that doesn't mean he wants to make money just as much as Bobby Kotick, he just has a low profile.

Did it ever occur to you that Blizzard maintains a certain level of autonomy and stake in the holdings because they are good at bringing in cash? Mike Morhaime is the CEO of the Blizzard side and he still has to keep the company fiscally responsible and profitable. If they can draw in more revenue, create more content for the players, and generally make the capitalism machine work as it's intended - why all the disgruntled talk?
Do you seriously want a generic brood war campaign again? Go destroy this, go do that. Blah blah. The WarCraft 3 campaign was pretty stale from a gameplay perspective. Asides from a few cinematics and etc, I remember I spent most of my time just massing an army to destroy the enemy base. That sort of gameplay doesn't fly well today. Look at Modern Warfare 2, it was only 5 hours - but 5 solid damn good hours - not a minute wasted.

Like they have said before, each game has more than enough content to warrant it's price. The other two expansions have the equivalent single player content and at expansion pack pricing.

Look on the otherside of the beast, Activision charged 15$ for 5 maps on modern warfare 2. I'm looking at 49.99$ for an expansion + an entire campaign. And I think everyone knows Mike Morhaime is looking out mainly for himself, then Blizzard. Do you think he wants to see his company he help bring up end up like the mess Infinity Ward became? No.