Hearthstone turns 10: Bielman explores what lies ahead

Rubs eyes. Checks watch. Wait… ten years? Wasn’t 2014 just the other day? Not even close, with Hearthstone, the digital card game that set the tone for what a digital card game could really be, having celebrated its 10 year anniversary in recent months.

As a game that lives a hybrid existence as both a mobile and PC experience, seemingly keeping both audiences happy, it’s an impressive run in the dog years of gaming tastes – especially in that mobile category. Its familiar theme tune and warm tavern vibes have remained the same throughout, but its expansion into new modes, chief amongst them Battlegrounds, has kept things fresh and appealing to newcomers and long-timers alike.

So how have they thread the needle? And what’s the road ahead look like? We sat down with Game Director Tyler Bielman to pick his brain on what has made the game special and what’s in store. While Bielman is relatively new to the Hearthstone team, he’s got plenty of thoughts to share on its past – and some big plans for its future.

Hearthstone has built quite a tradition for itself and obviously we’ve just hot the 10 year mark. What was it like to come in and take the reins? 

Tyler Bielman: An incredible opportunity. I actually started my career in tabletop games, worked on Magic the Gathering, was a designer on several sets, was the Creative Director for a little while. Then did a lot of licensed trading card games as well. So my grounding in tabletop gave me my foundations as a game designer. I did board games, did a lot of weird sort of stuff with that. And then I was at Xbox for about 12 years and working on and learned how to make digital games and that side of the business.

The level of connection the team has to the players and the level of passion they have for the Warcraft franchise? That part has just been a joy. It’s been a learning journey for me, I’m still on it, I’m still learning stuff every day which is great. That’s part of why I wanted to take the job. It is a game with a lot of history, and a lot of tradition.

With that card game background, when Hearthstone emerged it was that realisation there’s things you can do if it’s digital that you just can’t do physically. I remember the first time a mechanic came in where it’s like, “oh, and it’ll give you a card that you don’t own! You can do that!” 

Tyler: Totally. Hearthstone’s the best digital card game there is. And the ‘magic moments’ come in a few different stripes. One is, like you mentioned, things that are almost literally impossible to do in a tabletop. But how the game presents itself is very physical and grounded. So when you have a magic moment, it actually feels extra magical because the game feels very grounded and physical.

So those come into play through effects and legendaries and the sound effects and the voiceovers and the care that the team puts into those beats from a presentation point of view is great. And then if you get in the nuts and bolts of the bookkeeping of the game, the things you’d have to do with 20 dice and 50 counters, and you’d have to deal this and that and shuffle and show your, whatever, all that’s just handled because it’s digital.

The team’s done a great job over the years of leaning into those elements a lot, and we still think a lot about it. But honestly, it’s now in the bones of the team and the game and the DNA to try to reach beyond what you could do in a physical capacity. It was definitely an unlock for me as well coming in and seeing how the team thinks about it.

Were there any moments where you wondered “oh, why don’t we change this?” But the team said “Oh, no!” I always think of the front door of Hearthstone. The box. It seems sacred.

Tyler: There are things that are institutional knowledge, right? Things have been passed down from designer to designer and there are traditions, right? I think that while all those things are super important. The box, the tavern, Hearth, all of those things are part of what makes Hearthstone special. The tone, in particular. That very specific, whimsical tone. Fourth wall breaking, referential stuff. All those things are excellent.

But if you look over the course of the ten years, one of the reasons I think you’ve seen a different pattern with Hearthstone in its longevity than you see with a lot of free to play games – we’re both a mobile free to play game and a PC strategy game at the same time.

Which is very unusual. And in mobile free to play there’s a lot of spike and quick decay, right? If you’re lucky you can get two years out of a game like that. But we’ve been around for ten years because we fall outside of the traditional patterns of that.

I think that while the tradition and the elements of how they design the game, and what makes the game great on a mechanical level, they’ve also taken a lot of great chances. Like introducing something like Battlegrounds. Keeping something like Arena vibrant. There’s so many different ways for players to express themselves in the game, and if you’re really competitive you can be really competitive in the game.

That canvas to paint on has been really broad. I think that’s contributed to that longevity and going into the future we will definitely continue to do experiments in different ways. But I think that’s a credit to the team that they have stayed with the patterns that have made them successful, but they’ve also branched out. And when they have a success like Battlegrounds, like explosively popular, they’ve been able to double down and invest in it. Like we saw with Duos this year. 

Perils in Paradise just launched and the flavour is one of those really strong, super fun, crazy vibes that feels very Hearthstone. Sometimes they’ve been “we’re doing a year long story” idea, but then, sometimes it’s like this where we’re throwing a summer party. 

Tyler: One of the things that Hearthstone does is interpret the Warcraft IP through a lens of ” What if?” Sometimes we stay closer to canon and more serious. I think Titans was closer to the canon and really impactful, more serious sort of look back in the time machine.

Then you take something like Perils, and Perils was first conceived as a pirate themed set. And then we started talking about it and it became clear that was too narrow and it didn’t feel quite right to just do that. And so the team was like well what if we just took Hearthstone on vacation? Everybody lights up because it’s very accessible, we’ve been on vacations. Good ones, bad ones. We’ve dealt with tour guides, and what have you.

Can you talk a bit about the mini set cadence as well? Lots of things have been tried over the years, but it really feels like there’s a great rhythm in terms of how the mini sets mix things up and give people a different way to buy. There’s lots of those subtle aspects to it that seem to serve different aspects of the community. 

Tyler: I think we’ve settled into a nice rhythm. I think the mini sets allow us explore around the edges of what the core set was able to provide. Cards that didn’t quite make it or cards that weren’t quite fully baked.

But definitely shaking up the meta in the middle of the season is really good. We’re also looking at ways to continue to shake up the meta in the dot 6 going forward as well. But the ability to just buy the cards outright, and it’s a more approachable price point. We’re happy with the structure of the product right now.

It’s not to say we won’t try different things in the future, but I do think that we are still learning every time out. What is the right power level for the mini set? What is the best way to deliver to players the riffs on the game design that will work best?

Nintendo has this great game design in three steps. You introduce a mechanic in a safe way. Like Mario, you introduce jumping in a way where you can’t fall in a hole. And then you test that and you iterate it and expand on it. Now you’re jumping over holes or multiple jumps. And then you put a twist on it? Okay, now you can double jump with a backflip or a backflip jump. I think that rhythm of three beats is universally across a lot of different kinds of games.

I think having the mini set gives us that opportunity to put the spin on it or put the twist on it or just expand it in ways that for the players whose class might not have gotten what they wanted or things like that. So yeah, I think we’re in a really good spot with the mini sets.

With the 10 year anniversary, what’s your sense of community feedback? Has it created a way for you to reflect on that larger arc of what this game is and what it means to the players?

Tyler: We knew going in that we wanted to have a celebration. We dressed the [Blizzard] campus up. We’ve been putting together special events for the team. But obviously the centre is the players and it always will be.

I think the idea of making the Hearth Stonebrew card and having that harken back to popular deck archetypes from the past was a really cool idea. I really like the gifts that we gave out on the reward track. I think that it’s been a celebration of where we’ve been. And it’s been great to be a part of that even though I haven’t been on the journey very long with the team.

It is also the five year anniversary of Battlegrounds which is mind blowing. It’s amazing. The Battlegrounds team may have some things up their sleeve. Nothing to announce at this time. But it just goes to show how the Warcraft universe is diverse and compelling and it has the best fans in the world. And for me on a personal level, I’m humbled by that and also just being able to come in at this hour of the journey, I’m just appreciative of being here.

I think that the celebration will continue. We’re not done yet. 

I remember an old story once of somebody who made themselves a physical Hearthstone set out of paper because they worked in the military. There’s these wild stories of the things that people would do to engage with the game. 

The flight safety video we did for the Perils in Paradise expansion. We did the marketing video, you’re going on your flight to the Spiral Isles. And the idea when we first heard it was just like, “Oh, this is such a cool Hearthstone idea”. And then to be able to put content creators and cosplayers in the video. We also saw the responses from the fans of ” Oh, I know that person, or I know that person, I’ve been watching that person play”. It’s not related to the 10th anniversary specifically, but it is in the vibe of that level of connection and the amount of passion that players have for the game.

The marketing team dropped this off. [Pulls out a physical Hearthstone logo badge] This is from the video. This is the safety belt from the video. And so this is part of the joy of being in my job, sometimes I get to see stuff ahead of time. I get to be like, oh my gosh, the players are gonna flip out when they see this. We’ve got some things coming over the next bit of time, the next year, that I think are gonna just really blow people away.

One other thing I always love to touch on is the art in this game. It has evolved in recent years too with the full art cards. It feels like there’s new ways to show off the talent of the artists you’re working with.

Tyler: Trevor Jacobs, our Art Director, has been with Blizzard for 27 years and has worked on all the iconic titles. And so we’re so lucky to have him and our Outsourcing Managers and our Art Directors are all just top of the line and they have really cultivated a great pool of artists for the card art.

I think the signature art, the full art cards, the story of those, at least the short story of those, also points to how much we listen to the fans and listen to the audience. We put them out in the first iteration and they weren’t quite what people wanted and so we adjusted and we pivoted a bit and then subsequent release and then we found the sweet spot. Now we’re in this great lane where we’re just trying to move those forward and use them to showcase the art as best we can.

I think what we’ve done with our hero skins now, these big animated things. We have a few coming that are just unbelievable. The presentation of the game across the board, but really the teams that cultivated that art culture are really special.

So there’s always the “What’s the next 10 years look like?” question. But I think it’s more a question of how a game like Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft itself, have reset what it means to be a live service game. The idea that there ever is an end. You can find this right rhythm where if you serve your community, right, and this is their hobby and the place that they live with you in their pastime. Right?

Tyler: There’s a term, lifestyle game, right? You’re a lifestyle game. And a lot of the time what that represents is, yes, you play the game. But how much that game influences the time you spend outside of the game. Whether you’re a content creator, or a cosplayer, or you go to conventions, or you’ve created friendships, the elements of the game that create a social network and a social web for you are really important.

There’s certain kinds of games, certainly WoW is chief among them, where people build relationships, those relationships evolve past the game, become bigger than the game.

I think role playing games in general, whether it be tabletop or collectible games. I think there’s just something in the nature of it that’s different than Battle Royale, or different than some other some other genre. There’s something about the persistence of it and your level of investment in emotion and time. And your investment in your character or your deck or your performance. So the lifestyle components of it, I think, are very unique.

I think Blizzard has done a great job of cultivating fans, making fans understand what the Blizzard quality means, and what the Blizzard stamp means. There’s an expectation around what Blizzard provides. I think Hearthstone has been right there the whole time providing that level of quality and that level of interplay between players and really listening to what players want so we can superserve them in the areas they want to be.

It hits me talking about that too, from that early era of Magic the Gathering that there was so much “Oh, it’s not going to last”, all those kinds of just early theories. But clearly it’s lasted. It’s a different context, but that same thing, right? Look after the people who’ve fallen in love with your game and it becomes part of their life.

Tyler: We have to cultivate a lot of different inputs in our business. We definitely have great community managers, community folks. A lot of our design team came from streaming or are still very connected to that player base. And we listen very carefully.

We also look at all the data, what are people doing, what’s the actual numbers of this kind of deck, or this kind of mode is getting X amount of play. Then we’ve got a global audience, so we have to balance all of that. Then we have our own sniff test and sense of it and each member of the team is a kind of a different player archetype in some ways and so we have a lot of like personal inputs there.

When Battlegrounds launched, and it’s been so big, is there a Battlegrounds player who doesn’t really touch ladder and vice versa? I remember in the early days there were Arena players and there were Standard players, but now Battlegrounds is this other door for a whole different style of play. It seems you don’t have to necessarily even try to convince someone “you should try the other mode”, just let them love the mode they love. 

Tyler: Yes, there are definitely players that play predominantly Battlegrounds. Or players that play predominantly Ranked. There are also players who are predominantly Wild, and we talk about them sometimes in that context. A lot of the time, a way that looks at it in a more robust way is we have a series of metrics, right? Retention. We want people to come day over day.

What they’re doing when they come is certainly part of the story of trying to super serve all of our players. But if they’re coming in every day and they’re playing Battlegrounds or they’re playing Ranked, they come in every day and we have a daily active user count or a monthly active user count. Then there’s what are they engaging with? What modes are they doing? But also how are they engaging with the reward tracks or the tavern passes and those kinds of things.

It’s very tempting, and we fall into this trap sometimes, of thinking about it as two things. But really Hearthstone is one big tavern. And as long as we’re able to reach our goals and satisfy the metrics we’re trying to reach as a team, then we dive into how to best super serve each of those players in the modes that they care about.

We have an incredible data insights team. We have incredibly user research teams. We do everything from one on one conversations to surveys, to everything you could imagine to get the best insights into who our players are and what’s most important to them. 

Can you give me a parting thought for the long time players and a message for the people who for some reason have never played Hearthstone yet? 

Tyler: Let’s start with the players who’ve never played. We worked really hard over the last year to change our first experiences. Like the first six hours of the game. We reduced the barriers to get playing. We have loaner decks you can get running with immediately. And that’s true also if you’re a player who’s just not been around for a while.

It can be intimidating to come back. We overhauled all those systems over the last year. And a lot of players wouldn’t see it because they’re not brand new, but we’ve made a lot of changes. We’re really successful in that area.

So I would say, never been a better time to come to the tavern. It’s never too late to jump in. The loaner decks are really good, and they won’t get you necessarily to Legend, but they will absolutely get you going and help you understand what’s happening in the card game. Battlegrounds, you just push play and go, and it’s a very fun, cool experience. You can play Duos with someone else to help you. So for new players, there’s a lot of different inroads into Hearthstone. I would say we can’t wait to have you in the tavern.

For the longer term players, I think my message would be, first of all, thank you. Because I certainly wouldn’t be here without you. But also, you should really look forward to exciting things in the next 12 months around the expansions that are coming.

We’re gonna do some really exciting things with Arena. I can’t get too deep into it… but we’re doing some really exciting things with Arena… I don’t want to get in trouble… [He seemed really close to letting something slip!]

I would say we are really committed to focusing on what’s the most fun for you as players, but also providing you with surprises and things that you maybe thought you’d never see in Hearthstone that might be coming.