I have these conversation one day when I was having a lunch with one of my friend.

M :          I think Blizzard is going to postponed their WoW film, although at first they announced it to be released this year.  They will appoint a new director and scripwriter.

F :           Ah it is so Blizzard, postponing their project.  But their work is awesome, so I think it’s worth to wait.

M :          I agree. I heard they will make the timeline of the film set before the event of Warcraft.

F :           Wait, is it going to be the time when Orc tribe hasn’t been corrupted, or is it going to be the day they invade Azeroth?

M :          Well, I don’t know about that.

(And so on, we carry on talking about many characters story such as Thrall, Cairne Bloodhoof, Arthas, and how the great battle between many heroes, Sylvanas Windrunner,  and Arthas as the Lich King will become)

So, in the middle of our conversation, a stranger that overheard it, suddenly ask a question.

S :           Hey, sorry to interupt but, are you guys are talking about World of Warcraft?  Is it true that Sylvanas is seeking vengeance for what Arthas has done?  I never read their story.

We are quite surprised being interrupted like that, and we are looking at each other before we say almost at the same time to him the word yes.  So we carry on the chat with our new friend and we start talking DOTA also, because he is also a DOTA player.  It’s amazing how games can give us new friends.

Some games are really successful that they can make cult out of their market (please refer to wikipedia for the word “cult” meanings, I’m not gonna explain it in here).  So what element of game that can make a cult?

Storyline

It is so often that a game only focus on features and forget that in the long run, storyline is one of the most important element to build a cult.  Blizzard is one of many companies that really pay attention to their series.  People are really attached to their characters.  When you say names like Illidan, Deckard Cain, or Zeratul, most of Blizzard’s series gamers will already know what you are talking about.  It is so important that your character become “alive” in the mind of gamers if you want to build a cult.  And Blizzard really put effort on building their game’s world.  They event held a fanfic competition lately.  No wonder they are successful in building cult out of their market.

There are other titles that successfully build cult using this element, and one that I can mention is the Final Fantasy VII (although there are so much question about the story).

Vast Variety and Possibilities of Gameplay

There are days when electronic RPG were having their dark age.  Low sales, bad ratings, small fans.  Gaining so much players in the late 80s and going down during early 90s.  The only successful game at that time is Diablo.  Why?  Because, at that time, RPGs were only offering 1 possibilities of gameplay.  And the only game with high replayability is Diablo, with their random map and random options of items drop.  That’s why a game like Diablo is becoming a cult while other were just a passing by title.  The way you experience the game were varied even if you re-play it.

The reason why DOTA has become cult is because there are many possibilities of outcome.  I’m not talking about the final outcome, because we know that it would be scourge or sentinel that win the game.  But I’m talking about the killing number of game, items that crafted for each hero, number of creep being denied, and much more.  This can be a sleepless night talking topic.  Even for 1 hero, you can have many variants.  For example: if you choose Leviathan, you can build him to be a tanker, and build sange and yasha, and then go for tarasq, or any other strength based items OR you can build him as a huge area stunner by building his intel and go for refresher orb OR you just want to be a damage dealer and go for battle fury or radiance.

DOTA’s Leviathan, pic taken from Chidanand blog

Well hopefully, in the future, these two elements will always be major considerations for developer to create a game.