Matchmaking is another area where Brode is encouraging developers to reconsider the conventional wisdom. "It was super responsive, and that was a very important thing at Blizzard that we spent a ton of time focusing on." "It had to feel as tight as possible, so there was never a moment where you had something you wanted to do but the game wasn't doing it," he said. "It had to feel as tight as possible, so there was never a moment where you had something you wanted to do but the game wasn't doing it" This involved writing a bunch of predictive tech into the client so it could cover the gaps before it heard back from the server, but the results were worth it in Brode's estimation. "Even while animations were still happening, you could play your next card and your next card and your next card, playing the game as fast as the decisions and your hand could allow." Responsive controls are always important, even in turn-based card games "One of the things we did that was difficult to do was to let you play cards as fast as you wanted to," Brode said. "It's a thing you have to, as a designer, pay a lot of attention to on your own if you want to learn the difference between very tight controls and loose controls."Īnyone familiar with Blizzard is likely aware of the company's emphasis on this point, and Brode even mentioned former chief creative officer Rob Pardo's frequent insistence that "control is king." And while it's easy to see that at work in Blizzard's more action-heavy games, Brode said it was no less important for a card game like Hearthstone. "Tight controls are a thing that most players do not notice or talk about," Brode said. The former game director of Hearthstone spoke with recently to go over some of the subjects of his presentation, areas of development whose impact on the players' experience may be underestimated. Second Dinner co-founder Ben Brode spent 15 years working at Blizzard, and in that span he noticed one idea that kept coming back up time and again: "Little things that matter a lot."īrode will be going into that theme in greater detail when he delivers the keynote address at PAX Dev in Seattle later this month.
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