Deadlock leads the MOBA boom

It’s no big secret that the gaming industry can sometimes feel like a race to copy the homework of the company that’s being celebrated by fans – it happened back in the glory days of League of Legends and DOTA 2, it’s questionably still going on with Fortnite and the battle royale genre, but it seems like time really might be a flat circle, because MOBAs seem to be on the rise again in a massive way.

Gigantic has returned from oblivion and failure, with Gigantic: Rampage Edition being made available for free via the Epic Games Store just earlier this month (this writer in particular had fun playing it); Predecessor (the MOBA based on the bones of Paragon) getting its 1.0 release; Smite 2 is entering closed alpha, and of course Valve is finally revealing Deadlock, which continues to trend and garner massive player count despite not being officially released.

But what is actually happening here and what are the game developers taking away from the situation?

Alex Cantatore, executive producer of Smite 2, believed that the trend of Soulslike games has prepared players for greater challenges – and great rewards, which lends itself well to the genre.

He said: “I’ve often described MOBAs as the Soulslike of the multiplayer genres – they’re really hard. You’re going to die a lot to learn the game.”

“The same feeling you get when you beat Malenia? Like you’ve been rewarded for thoroughly mastering the game? That’s the feeling you get when you win every game of Smite 2.”

“Now that more players understand that it feels great to master a difficult game, I think more are willing to take that journey.”

What the takeaways are is hard to swallow, but easy to recognize for Cantatore, who said: “I think the expectations of players are always growing, and we believe the only way to meet those expectations is to get your name out there earlier than you really want so that you can give accurate feedback on what the players think and what they want.”

“During the last MOBA boom, you saw a lot of good games that didn’t really evolve the formula and therefore didn’t stand out from established competitors – Smite survived because they found the perfect balance.”

As for those still trying to establish themselves in the MOBA scene, especially during this boom, Robbie Singh, CEO of Predecessor developer Omeda Studios agrees with the latter part of Cantatore’s thoughts – it’s not a comeback we’re seeing, it’s an evolution.

Singh said: “Our view is that MOBAs have never really gone away since the beginning. It could be that a new generation of farmers are just now realizing that there is also a new generation of MOBAs that look and play better than the ones they may be used to.”

“Today we would say that to be successful as a modern MOBA you need a solid foundation of heroes and core mechanics, but we also want to step back and look beyond the genre itself.”

There seems to be some truth in his words: Gigantic, Predecessor, Smite 2, and of course Deadlock all move away from the traditional top-down gameplay of PC MOBAs and instead pump some action into the genre with third-person gameplay (thanks, PC gamers).

What do you think about this trend in MOBAs? Is it a fad or is it here to stay? Let us know in the comments below.