Blizzard's path to success: exploring cross-game marketing

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When it comes to success in the gaming industry, we easily think of the famous Blizzard Entertainment; each of its games is a well-known independent brand. Such a scale of fame and recognition is what many other gaming companies dream of, and this is what Blizzard has been working towards. Through its five well-known brands, Blizzard has used a very smart strategy to develop their fans from "Diablo fans" or "StarCraft fans" to "Blizzard fans."

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Multi-game marketing

Blizzard's overall brand is currently divided into five major games (the sixth is under development), but the important thing is that these five games are of different types: ARPG (Diablo 3), MOBA (Heroes of the Storm), MMO (World of Warcraft), RTS (StarCraft 2), and CCG (Hearthstone). This allows each game to serve different groups of players more effectively without worrying about one game stealing fans from another game.

Blizzard has been actively working to develop fans of its different games into loyal fans of the Blizzard brand, attracting players through the strength of the Blizzard brand rather than a single game. Their first attempt was to release limited collector's editions of games; each different collector's edition of the game will include a unique collectible with a "Blizzard label". For example, the Diablo 3 collector's edition includes a rare pet from World of Warcraft and a rare Battle.net avatar from StarCraft 2.

This synergy is an extremely clever marketing strategy that successfully kills two birds with one stone. First, it rewards consumers with items with a "Blizzard label". The more products it has, the more prizes it can give back to players.

Secondly, the players who benefit from this method must be playing at least two Blizzard games at the same time, or encouraging players who only play one game to enter another game can enable players to try more types of Blizzard games.

In any case, Blizzard is the ultimate winner, because they let players see all the games, and at the same time, they are a strong integrated brand composed of all the games under their umbrella. Blizzard is slowly approaching this step, and in recent months has created a series of amazing marketing strategies through five games.

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At first, the Collector's Edition was just a promotional gimmick, but now Blizzard is more about providing virtual rewards across games.

Cross-game

In Blizzard's games, cross-game interaction is no longer achieved by simply buying the Collector's Edition and giving away virtual gifts. Now you can also develop promotions for different games by playing one game. Recently, Blizzard has begun to operate promotions and incentives between different games. Take Hearthstone as an example. Players who reach level 20 in its BETA test can get a rare mount from World of Warcraft.

Not long ago in Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard announced that players who have purchased Diablo 3 can unlock the character of Diablo in Heroes of the Storm for free. There are also other promotions where players can get rare pets in World of Warcraft and mounts in Heroes of the Storm by playing different games.

This cross-game marketing model can attract players more effectively. It is not only a simple reward for players who buy different Blizzard games, but also a promotion of other games through more content. Blizzard has announced that in the first season of Diablo 3, players can get mounts in Heroes of the Storm through the game; at the same time, players can also get pennants in Diablo 3 through Heroes of the Storm.

Interestingly, Blizzard is the only company that can think of doing this. Other game developers don't have a unified sales platform and completely different game genres to effectively carry this out.

This requires going back to what was said at the beginning of the article. This cross-game marketing model has effectively promoted the development of the Blizzard brand.

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In the next season of Diablo III, players will be able to earn Heroes of the Storm mounts through gameplay.

Five games launched simultaneously

The goal of Blizzard's cross-game marketing approach is to try to integrate fans of independent games into loyal fans of the entire Blizzard brand: some players don't just play "World of Warcraft" or "Hearthstone", they may play all Blizzard games.

If Blizzard continues to promote cross-game marketing, the impact could be huge. Imagine if a player reaches level 70 in Diablo III and gets an expansion pack or arena challenge in Hearthstone; reaching a certain level in Heroes of the Storm can get experience bonuses in World of Warcraft; in other words, one Blizzard game will drive the development of all its games together.

Any game attracts players by building long-term, stable and good content. If players can have fun playing and get different virtual rewards by playing different games, and when players get tired of a game, they are willing to try more Blizzard games, which forms a virtuous circle for its products.

However, this marketing model is also risky. It requires a balance: virtual rewards must be unique and attractive to players, but must not affect the inherent balance of the game, let alone those players who are unwilling to obtain virtual rewards.

This is why when setting virtual rewards for games, the best performance is the reward mechanism and reward content. The former only improves the basic experience of the game, while the latter has no impact on the gameplay experience.

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Blizzard's F2P games such as Heroes of the Storm and the ongoing Overwatch will make further efforts in the field of cross-game promotions to allow players to try out new game concepts.

Good prospects

Blizzard is actively working to organically combine fans with the brand, using an effective way to promote the entire Blizzard brand to a large fan base, rather than a single game. Based on the efforts Blizzard has made with Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, I bet they will definitely do similar marketing work with Overwatch to quickly integrate its new work into the Blizzard family.

Blizzard has figured out a good way to promote the common development of its games and brands, unifying independent games in a "Blizzard brand" in a cross-game marketing manner, providing more valuable content to more players, and attracting them to become the backbone of Blizzard fans. So far, we have seen many companies' efforts to improve fan loyalty (such as Nintendo Club), but Blizzard's approach is undoubtedly the most innovative.