MARCH 29, 2013 • The online battle arena segment is getting rather crowded. In addition to Defense of the Ancients (DotA) and League of Legends (LoL), a slew of challengers are in the works. Among the competitive online F2P titles in development are DotA 2 (Valve), Blizzard All-Stars, Command & Conquer (EA), and now Total War Arena from Sega’s Creative Assembly. While the Total War RTS franchise has a reputation of fielding thousands of units in massive historical campaigns, Arena will give players but three units in 10v10 online multiplayer battles. With so few units to command in comparison, Creative Assembly is experimenting with a far larger set of command controls for players. The game was revealed during the Game Developers Conference, but no information on release dates or online items for sale were announced. The title is far enough along for signups for an upcoming closed beta to be taken.
Impact: We have questions regarding how many of these online battle arena titles can co-exist and thrive at the same time. The closest equivalent is real-time strategy titles used in esports. Yet even during the heyday of PC RTS games that featured competitive online matches, only two or three titles seemed to be hugely popular at any one time. When all of these arena titles are launched there will be a culling, yet we are challenged to say now which of these titles will succeed over the others. Established brands have the potential to play a big factor with wider audiences, but the competitive factor of this new genre suggests more of a core player base. If that hunch is correct, then overall feature set might have a larger impact on popularity than brand association. Right now we cannot predict what those critical features might be. If more than a few of these arena titles are to be big hits, then localization will play a big part. We can see a scenario wherein players in some parts of the world will gravitate toward servers hosting matches in their own languages, which could lead to various regional favorites. All this is supposition, however. There is a lot of investment funding being channeled into the arena segment based on the success of League of Legends. That flood of money won’t abate until consumers decide the winners and losers. Before that winnowing gets rolling, we will likely see still more arena project announcements crowding in during the months ahead.
