Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, Blizzard started work on a project known as Titan. The game was set to be another MMORPG from the company behind World of Warcraft (WoW), but take place in a completely new and original setting.
There have been a few stories about the game’s development, the problems behind the scenes, and it’s ultimate cancellation. But many of it had been hearsay
Now, thanks to Jason Schreier’s new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, we have more of the story as to what happened with the project. Ahead of the book’s October 8th release, Polygon posted details from a section of the book that dives head first into Titan and its development problems.
According to the book, Blizzard didn’t want to wait for another game to come and be a “WoW killer”. Instead, the intended to create another MMO to do it themselves but keep players within the same ecosystem. There had been talks of doing something like a World of StarCraft game, but the internal belief was that StarCraft could fit into an MMORPG setting.
The decision was to then try something new.
Led by Blizzard vice president Rob Pardo, the team working on Titan started as a “small team of top developers” with an eventual goal to bring in the best developers, artists, and others over to the project. After a couple of years in development, it was being viewed as an “all-star team” being built.
The game was set on an alternate version of Earth in 2070 and was said to be “two games in one.”
“[P]layers [take] control of superhero-like characters who lived normal lives during the day and secretly battled against evil forces at night,” the Polygon story reads from the book. “An early presentation showed the player, as a professional chef, popping a dish into the oven before going off on a secret mission. When they returned, the dish was perfectly cooked and ready to serve.”
As the game started playtesting, the game was “fun in isolation” but finding the core gameplay loop was something that just never found footing. The game’s combat had superhero classes with unique abilities but the continued engagement of players was a struggle to for the Titan team. There were also issues with the technology built specifically for Titan causing issues with the game’s development causing lag when use or problems that caused development to pause altogether.
It also didn’t help that Riot Games was hiring developers from the project over to work on League of Legends, which was in development at the time and released in 2009.
Regarding the design of the game, it was said that things would regularly change or be moved in entirely different directions. There were also issues with a bloated art repository with artists working on something without realizing or being informed that it had already been completed in the past.
As the struggles during development continued, developers on Titan ultimately pointed the blame at Pardo. They stated that he was viewed as an “absentee game director” due to him also overseeing StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 at the time. It left him little time to lead the brand new IP.
Pardo, according to developers, would come in and out during the project’s development. When he would show up and get involved, it would often lead to months of work being thrown out after he wasn’t around for long periods of time.. The development team became demoralized as Pardo would shoot down ideas for the game without offering reasons or guidance of where the team should go next.
In 2013, it was then announced internally that the game was going to be rebooted before it was cancelled in 2014.
After the cancellation of Titan by Blizzard, Pardo appeared to blame others for the game’s failing rather than taking accountability, according to the book. His actions throughout the development and beyond led to a loss of trust from other management at Blizzard. This had a number of executives and directors demanding Pardo’s removal from a position of leadership. Pardo took a sabbatical from the company after Titan was ended. He never returned as Pardo resigned from Blizzard at the behest of then-CEO Mike Morhaime.
Overall, development of the cancelled Titan project cost Blizzard roughly $80 million. However, rather than lose everything that was done, the company was able to repurpose various elements of the game into what would become Overwatch.
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