Blizzard Entertainment used to have an incredible track record, with almost everything they released being a success. But over time, the studio’s quality began to decline, and they started releasing more and more games that didn’t live up to expectations.
I’ve covered a few ambitious game projects that didn’t quite work out. There was the Odyssey, which I discussed last July and ultimately failed to make an impact. I also looked at StarCraft: Ghost over a year ago, and now there’s Project Titan, a massive online game intended to compete with and even surpass World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, it also ended up being canceled. We now have some insight into why these projects failed.
From “World of StarCraft” to a vision
The game now known as Titan started as an online multiplayer role-playing game planned within the StarCraft universe. Eventually, the developers decided to create a completely new and original world for the game instead. Development began in 2007, led by Rob Pardo and Chris Metzen. Despite their successful past collaboration on StarCraft: Brood War and World of Warcraft, their working relationship actually contributed to the project’s ultimate failure.
They had very different ideas for the game. The core concept of *Project Titan* was to create a world set around 2070 where players would experience the lives of heroes who also had to handle ordinary, everyday problems. Metzen imagined these heroes as traditional superheroes, while Pardo pictured them more like undercover agents.
Two worlds
The game *Titan* would primarily be played from the player’s point of view, though the camera would occasionally shift to a wider, third-person view. The game was designed around two main parts: players would live normal lives as people like chefs or business owners in the real world, but would also be heroes saving a futuristic world in a place called the Shadow World.
The previous version aimed for a more dynamic world where characters would remember player actions and have realistic relationships with the main characters. To achieve this, Blizzard brought on developers who had previously worked on the popular life simulation game, The Sims.
So, the devs originally wanted to build a class system – think a Jumper who could teleport around as a scout, a super-tough Titan tank, and a Ranger sniper who could basically turn invisible. We were all excited because they were planning to really flesh out these characters and make their abilities awesome. But apparently, from what I’ve heard from people working on the game, the system became way too complicated. It ended up making the gameplay feel chaotic and messy, instead of fun.
Chaotic development process
The development process was also incredibly disorganized. Without a clear plan – and with rumors swirling that *Titan* might even allow time travel – the developers worked in separate directions, and the artists produced a massive amount of content, much of which ultimately went unused.
After six years of work, the project was restarted in 2013. As part of this change, 70% of the team was moved to other projects, and some developers were let go. The small team that remained was tasked with completely rethinking and redirecting the project’s development.
Eventually, the initial idea of simply updating the project evolved into scrapping it altogether and starting fresh with a completely new game. Blizzard Entertainment’s then-president, Mike Morhaime, confirmed this in 2014.
Not all of me will die
The team of 40, previously working on the game *Titan*, has been given six weeks to start development on a new project. The game will be a multiplayer shooter, significantly smaller in scope than *Titan*. The creators are drawing inspiration from games like Team Fortress 2 and the MOBA genre, and they’re able to reuse some of the technology they built for *Titan* in this new direction.
That’s the story of how Overwatch was created. It was first revealed in 2014 and released in 2016, quickly becoming popular with both critics and players. After that, its success continued to grow.
Despite plans for a lot of visual content, none of it was ever finished for the game *Titan*. A recent Kotaku article described the intended look as being somewhere between *StarCraft II* and *The Incredibles*. This suggests *Titan*’s visuals would have been similar to what we ultimately saw in *Overwatch*.
Consequences
The cancellation of the *Titan* project had significant and lasting repercussions. It diminished Blizzard Entertainment’s power relative to Activision, ultimately allowing leaders like Bobby Kotick to exert greater influence over Blizzard’s direction. While Mike Morhaime, a former Blizzard leader, has said that turning *Titan* into *Overwatch* was a brilliant move, the negative effects of the original project’s failure are still being felt at the company today.
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2025-10-05 22:03