The structure of the market can be changed, and so can the rules of the market game. It turns out that the competition in the rules of the game can become irrelevant, and through the strategy of stimulating demand, as well as through the strategy of value innovation, the market can be expanded and can be created. Value can be gained through innovation, not competition.

And when Blizzard implemented the blue ocean strategy for Hearthstone, how did they carry out specific operations?

It's actually quite simple.

First of all, it is necessary to be clear that there needs to be poles.

What are the previous tabletop card games? MTG, aka Magic, has Yu-Gi-Oh, and that's right, and Warcraft TCG, that's right.

However, when Hearthstone was first established, did it want to win over these players?

Of course not, if they go for these players, then isn't this entering the Red Sea strategy with companies like Vitz? Isn't it to compete with a market that is already infinitely mature? You know, it is basically impossible to compete in an infinitely mature market and win.

For example, if Apple had continued to make feature phones, would they have been able to take a piece of the pie when Nokia was dominant and the market was infinitely mature? Of course not, but they have opened up a whole new market for smartphones.

That's their blue ocean strategy.

The success of their blue ocean strategy not only allowed them to open up a new market, the market dominated by them, but also allowed this new market to encroach on the old market, completely destroying the old market.

In other words, when Blizzard first developed this Hearthstone game, their target audience was not these card game lovers who already had zài. Rather, it is aimed at those who have never been exposed to card games.

Having said that, let's move on to Hearthstone's blue ocean strategy.

Basically, in the previous discussion, Jester can boil down Hearthstone's success to three basic aspects.

The first one, although Blizzard or Blizzard fans don't want to admit it, the entire structure of Hearthstone is still derived from MTG, which is the entire card battle system that Magic has perfected over more than 20 years, so to speak. All card games, it is impossible, especially this kind of trading card, can be put another way, no trading card game, can get rid of the system established by MTG.

And this reason accounts for about 30% of the success factor of "Hearthstone".

Because it's like this overall architecture, it's like the foundation that must be used to build a house, even though it's underneath. Most people can't see it, but its importance is probably unparalleled.

And the second reason is the embodiment of the capabilities of Blizzard's designers.

The first is their casual-oriented design route. This allows the card game to retain players who may just be curious about card games, and who are usually light players who don't have the same requirements for the game as deep players. Moreover, in the previous MTG card games, it was too tiring to play. It can even be complicated so that people who like this genre don't want to play too many games in one day.

But in Hearthstone, this really doesn't need to be thought about at all.

Secondly, they are actually his reasonable changes to the game system, as mentioned earlier, Blizzard is referring to the entire system of MTG card games, but then again, MTG's card game system is too complicated, and it is not cute at all, and the so-called cuteness here, that is, this system, is not likable.

And Blizzard doesn't want to make this kind of boring system game, what they want to do is to be able to make people understand, understand, and play as soon as they get started, and they should be able to play it, and they can play cool games, so this system must change.

To be precise, to simplify.

However, after simplification, MTG is still full of various charms.

At this point, it probably accounts for about 20 percent of Hearthstone's success factor.

Third, I have to admit that here, I still have to take out the children of the storm that I have said many times before, because they are so good, these world's top artists, have contributed to players one by one, allowing players to pour out unlimited collection of ** cards.

You know, an MTG-oriented game, that is, a trading card game, the most important thing about him is that there are cards that allow players to collect cards, which can be said to be the foundation and core of this game.

This point, about the same as the first point, is also 30 percent.

One last point.

In fact, this is also the most important, and it is the most helpful for the hero aspect of this game, that is, the design background of this game.

You know, the full name of the game "Hearthstone" is like this - "Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft", and World of Warcraft, as we all know, is one of the greatest MMORPGs in the world, no matter how unwanted the fans of UO, or EQ fans are.

For example, there are a lot of EQ SB fans who are constantly clamoring that WOW is just playing EQ and playing the leftovers.

It's too lazy to refute this.,It's unrealistic to go to a National Geographic to flip through a post more than ten years ago.,For example,The fans of the so-called EQ said,The concept of the earliest copy was completed in EQ first.,And then Blizzard copied it in WOW.。

I don't deny this, but if EQ still has the so-called copy shadow of EQ, then since BWL, Blizzard has completely stepped out of one of its own copy halons, and their design of the copy is not at all comparable to EQ's workshop-style studio.

Moreover, the design of Blizzard's dungeon AI is unparalleled.

For example, Gao someone, the chief designer of NetEase's Tianxia 2, once said this, and he said this at the time, some games, not that you can plagiarize if you want to, take WOW's copy AI, in China, no game company or game team can complete WOW's copy AI.

Let's not talk about this matter first, just say that it is a copy.

You know, it's true that the so-called EQ pre-made Zuò copy is true, but why would they think of making a copy of Zuò?

Because the concept of the copy was before EQ launched the copy, in an interview, a certain WOW designer specifically mentioned the concept of the copy when he revealed a little about the design of WOW in an interview, and explained it aside.

You know, EQ was facing a very strict problem at that time.

It's in the large-scale raid in the wild.,There are many people and few strange situations.,Of course,No one dares to say.,EQ went to make the copy system because of this interview with the designer of WOW.。

But just state this fact.

That is, EQ did not have a dungeon system at the beginning, and then the designers of WOW first proposed the concept of a dungeon system in an interview, and finally, EQ added a new and groundbreaking dungeon system to the game, which has not been seen in any previous MMORPG.

This is evidenced by a post translated and reprinted at that time by Penguin, one of the founders of National Geographic, that is, the person who translated Illidan into Yudian, and all players who lived through that era are extremely clear about this matter.

Of course, I didn't say that EQ made a copy of Zuò because I saw an interview with the designer of WOW, I just said that this is the order in which things develop.

As for what the hell it is, hehe.

Brain-dead EQ players SB can be seen everywhere, and it's not just that.

To put it far, let's just say that the biggest success of "Hearthstone" is that at the beginning, it borrowed the huge fans that "World of Warcraft" has accumulated over the past ten years, if it weren't for such a group of fans at the beginning, it might be difficult for "Hearthstone" to get through the initial period of "entrepreneurship".

This, in Jester's heart, can probably account for the remaining twenty percent.

That's it, Blizzard's Hearthstone was a huge success, and after the withdrawal of the mobile version, the number of players reached 30 million, which can be said to be a miracle.

Jester recovered from his deep thoughts.

It was in the afternoon of the same day.

Jester held a separate discussion with the development team of Warcraft: Humans & Orcs.

He didn't have anything to hide, and said bluntly that they were now unhappy with Jester's spending a large part of his energy on Outlander Requiem, and that Jester's prestige in Martian Entertainment was unparalleled.

Basically no one dared to question what he said.

Therefore, this matter was simply suppressed by Jester, but Jester also knew that there were pros and cons to such a thing, and he could certainly use his prestige to suppress this kind of rumor that affected the development progress, but this was actually overdrawing his prestige.

If "Requiem for an Outland" is really a big hit as I expected, it will be fine.

But if this fails, then it must be a severe blow to their prestige, of course, this is the disadvantage of dictatorship, the advantage of dictatorship is that it can concentrate all its forces to do big things in the research and development stage, and it can speed up the team's research and development progress. (To be continued......)