#235 Diving Into MOBA Foundations
Genre Deep DiveSeries
Dirk and David team up with show producer Skye to dive into the MOBA genre, a first in a series meant to explore the design of this popular genre. They discuss the genre’s roots in real-time strategy game mods and give an overview of the most popular MOBAs on the market. Additionally, the trio talks about tabletop and mobile MOBAs, and why they haven’t taken off (at least in North America, that is).
Episode Outline
01:18 Defining and characterizing the MOBA genre
11:39 A brief history of MOBAs
17:35 The hosts discuss their personal connections to different MOBAs
31:45 Discussing mobile MOBAs and why they might have taken off in another areas and not in the US
40:07 Tabletop adaptations of MOBAs and why they are hard to design well
48:37 How esports, streaming, and the metagame influence the MOBA games themselves
53:55 Why do we love the genre?
In this Episode
David V. Heron - @davidvheron
Dirk Knemeyer - @DKnemeyer