Summary

• Hearthstone celebrates its 10th anniversary with new content and future plans for continued innovation.
• The game's success can be attributed to its constant evolution, unique digital features, and ionate development team.
• There is a focus on providing value to players through strategic updates and expansions while maintaining game health.

While Perils in Paradise is the exciting latest content update coming to the digital TCG, there's something even bigger occurring for the game - the ill-fated Artifact - Hearthstone has remained a popular and well-loved stalwart of the digital card game space.

If you transported someone playing the Hearthstone beta a decade ago into a computer chair with the game's client loaded up now, however, they might ask what game they're playing. Over the years, Hearthstone has been iterated on endlessly, taking full advantage of the ability to tweak card rulings, game modes, and other mechanics in a way that physical games simply can't because of logistics. That ability alone isn't a big enough reason for Hearthstone to have persisted and thrived for as long as it has, however - it also has a ionate and dedicated development team made up of ex-community content creators, pros, and other people who have made the game a large part of their lives prior to ever deg a card.

We recently had the chance to sit down and interview Nathan Lyons-Smith, Hearthstone's Executive Producer, and Tyler Bielman, Game Director, to discuss the future of the game. We chatted Arena, recent Standard bannings, card design philosophies and power level, Battlegrounds as its own game, and much more - it really is a rare deep-dive on a game with a lot of moving parts, and players will want to see what the two team had to say about Hearthstone!

I think when Year of the Pegasus is complete and you look back, there will be some things that you never would have expected from Hearthstone and I can't wait for those to arrive for players.

The Future Of Hearthstone

Where The Game Is Heading In 2024 & Beyond

Screen Rant: Hearthstone is a very different game to the one that was released 10 years ago, and the TCG market both physically and digitally is remarkably different. Where do you see Hearthstone slotting in amongst competitors moving beyond 2024? Also, if you don’t mind introducing yourself, that’d be lovely!

Nathan Lyons-Smith: I'm Nathan Lyons-Smith, I'm the executive producer here on Hearthstone. I've been playing Hearthstone since beta, so more than 10 years ago now, and totally agree. I when Blizzard announced Hearthstone and how excited I was that my favorite online game developer, who also made probably the game I spent more time in than anything else, World of Warcraft, was now going to tackle the online, digital card game that no one had really made anything great in at the time, and they knocked it out of the park. Hearthstone's been awesome, surprised and delighted millions and millions and millions of players over 10 years, and I am personally - as a player - invested in the next 10 years of Hearthstone, and, of course, as career invested in making the next 10 years of Hearthstone awesome.

One of the things that I think's been a good strength of ours, like a pillar of the game, has been the surprise and delight, leaning into the digital space, and what makes us unique and fun from the paper genre. We've also been leaning heavily into characters in Warcraft, and bringing new characters into Warcraft from our vantage point here in the tavern, and so we're gonna continue with a lot of that. That's the bread and butter. That's what's been working and what's been keeping our players in the game. But we're also going to continue to experiment like you've seen over the last 10 years.

We started with the Constructed game, and then Kobolds and Catacombs released and we had this thing called Dungeon Run, it was awesome. Then we made different versions of Dungeon Runs, and then we saw the auto battler genre explode, and we thought, "Hey, what would that kind of representation look like in Hearthstone?" and we made Battlegrounds, and that's now a huge part of what you're playing in the box in the tavern. We've experimented with different modes and different formats, and we're going to continue to experiment in parallel to provide that great Constructed card game content, such that there is the next 10 years of Hearthstone, and millions of players continue to play and engage and have fun in this world inside a World of Warcraft that's been created.

Screen Rant: Over the last few years, we've seen Hearthstone kind of shrink a little away from sunset modes like Duels and the classic iterations of ranked play and more into a stable, relatively contained number of options. Where do you and the team stand on the modes currently on offer? Are there plans for more, plans to shrink down even a little further to focus on what works?

Tyler Bielman: Yeah, I appreciate the question. The key I think in the question is the word focus. I think focus is really important for us to over deliver for players. In order to provide that focus, we have to be really strategic with who's doing what on the team, and we're in a pretty good spot. Now in of, as you mentioned, a high degree of focus on Battlegrounds, doing things like Duos to really enhance that mode, give players something exciting, a new way to connect with each other, a new way to play, compete, and win with Duos and Battlegrounds. We're very excited about Arena, we have some really exciting things happening in Arena. You'll be able to preview and play Perils in Paradise next week in Arena and get an early look at those cards. I think in recent Arena seasons, you've seen some really interesting things happen, and we've got a great year for Arena planned. In of other plans, for more plans to shrink down to focus on what works, we have nothing to announce at this time about any other modes. But I think your question is right on in the sense that we have been making an explicit effort to focus so that we can really double down on the value for all of our players.

While we have planned out what we're working on in of that content that's down the road, we also keep a steady hand on the live game and make sure that we're reacting as fast as possible, and we have different folks looking at those different aspects.

Screen Rant: How much of Hearthstone is future content is already prepared? Are we talking months, years down the road?

Tyler Bielman: Yeah, we do work quite a bit in advance. We know what the next three core expansions are going to be thematically, and then each of those are different phases of development; so we know most of the mechanics for the next set, and then less of the sets that are still further afield. We know what the next Battleground seasons are going to be and we're working through those. One of the things about being a digital trading card game - as Nathan mentioned - is that ability to react in the moment and go quickly and give players what they're asking for. While we have planned out what we're working on in of that content that's down the road, we also keep a steady hand on the live game and make sure that we're reacting as fast as possible, and we have different folks looking at those different aspects.

Desiging Hearthstone Cards In 2024

The Mechanics & Gameplay Philosophies That Make Up Blizzard's TCG

Screen Rant: It feels like a lot of Hearthstone mechanics have settled down into predictable but still interesting variations - a lot of Discover, for instance, or cards that create other cards. What would you say the core gameplay philosophy is in Hearthstone now? Is it the same as a decade ago or have things changed a lot since then?

Tyler Bielman: I can't speak a ton to the origins. I wasn't here for that, but I can tell you that when I came in the door a little over a year ago, the team has a great understanding of what makes Hearthstone unique, what makes it compelling. Just to use an example, Hearthstone's gameplay has quite a bit of board churn. The board, turn over turn, is very different, as opposed to a lot of other card games, where it's a steady state of building and building and sort of edging people out. It's part of what makes Hearthstone exciting, this sort of explosive reset every turn that gives you a different puzzle on every turn. Philosophies like that are still in place, and I think were put in place really early on. You mentioned something like iterating on a concept like discover - one of the things that we do is we look at things that work and then we expand on it, or we tweak it and we move it forward.

An example of that in Perils in Paradise - well, there's a couple examples, certainly Tourist as the next version of a way to play with multiple class cards at the same time. We have done dual class cards in the past, but they were they were limited somewhat by the card needing to reflect both classes simultaneously, and there's a very small amount of design space for cards like that. With Tourist, now you're getting sort of a more pure idea of dual class, because you're getting cards that are very specific to the class, but you could put them in other decks. We expect players to discover and build and compete with a wide variety of decks when Perils comes out. I think that we do build on the knowledge that we had, we try to learn our lessons and we we share that knowledge among the design team, so the core gameplay philosophy of what makes Hearthstone great I think has been really stable, but we will always continue to push the envelope and deliver exciting and surprising content for players.

Screen Rant: I think there's been a lot of discussion among standard players about the game's balancing over the past year; some decisions have felt heavy handed and others perhaps a little short sighted. The rise of Dragon Druid and emergency banning of Splish-Splash Whelp stick out as a kind of prime example of player's fears over the last several sets. Has the design team been pushing the envelope on card design recently deliberately, or were there just a few over performers that designers weren't ready for?

Tyler Bielman: Yeah, the recent situation with the Druid deck and Splish Splash Whelp is kind of unique. It's unusual to see a deck emerge as powerfully as this deck has emerged in this late in the cycle. It's only happened maybe one or two other times in the history of Hearthstone, so this one absolutely took us by surprise, and that's just the nature of the beast. We have millions of creative, smart players that are building decks in Hearthstone. I don't think it's indicative of any sort of philosophy of the team.

Certainly we are always riding the line between cards that are exciting, and inspiring, and allow you to test your skill inside of the game, with pushing the envelope too far and creating things that are essentially broken, like, must-play cards or else you're behind in the meta. That's just the nature of the beast with a live game like ours, but we have the best design team in the world, and we talk every day about the live game health, and about what the next set is going to do to the live game, and how it's going to address the meta. I would say that is not symptomatic of a recent change in our design philosophy; in particular, Splish-Splash was just sort of an outlier. Then when Perils in Paradise comes out, there's going to be an incredible tool set for players to merge together cards that are very fundamental to the class in a unique way, and can't wait to see what players do with it.

We're looking constantly at analytics at play rate, win rate, and, and using all of those inputs together with our own best judgment to figure out how to make the game as healthy as possible.

Screen Rant: To build off of that last question, how much does the team pay attention to the really invested, high skill level players' ? I'm thinking of data aggregates like Vicious Syndicate for Standard or streamers like Dog and Thijs for Battlegrounds and Constructed formats, respectively.

Tyler Bielman: Yeah, we have a really incredible community team. Our community team has a lot of direct interface with high-level streamers, and players that are very serious about the game as well. We have certain channels and communication lines with different groups of players, especially high-end skill players, but really importantly, a lot of our design team came from the community. They came from the streamer community, they came from the competitive play community, and so they are really tied in with those players. I think we do a great job of listening to that's coming from individuals in the community that we have connections with, but as well we have a great data team. We're looking constantly at analytics at play rate, win rate, and, and using all of those inputs together with our own best judgment to figure out how to make the game as healthy as possible.

Experimenting With Hearthstone's Presentation & Formats

How Much Variation Has The Design Team Already Considered?

Screen Rant: How much of the playerbase is committed to Battlegrounds versus Standard or Arena? Has there ever been a temptation to break out Battlegrounds into its own standalone client or game?

Nathan Lyons-Smith: We have two large communities of players that are playing Constructed and players that are playing Battlegrounds, and a good amount of players that play both, so really excited and thankful that Battlegrounds was as successful as it's been and has carved out yet another really meaningful way to play the game Hearthstone that we know and love. We talk about all sorts of future scenarios of what we want to do, and how to best serve those communities, and what best might look like. Nothing to announce on the specifics of future games, but we do recognize that there are large player bases in both, and the trick is always to find the thing that ties them together and really serves the majority of all our players.

Solo content has been a big part of Hearthstone over the years, and added a lot of fun for players. We don't have anything to announce now, but we are always tinkering with what new experiences and new expressions of this card game that we can create, and so it's not off the table to come back in some other form again in the future.

Screen Rant: We've seen plenty of experimentation with Solo content, specifically Mercenaries, and the sort of roguelike deck building modes of past expansions as well. Is Solo content part of the future plans for the game as well?

Nathan Lyons-Smith: Earlier I answered about the 10 year journey of Hearthstone and all the experimentation we've done, and solo content is a great example. I think I had just started Blizzard a little bit after Naxxramas, and got to go through that experience and then see a bunch of the solo content. Really excited with Dungeon Run, and the Blizzcon reveal of that with the kind of like choose your own adventure with the audience in the keynote that the team attempted and pulled off. Solo content has been a big part of Hearthstone over the years, and added a lot of fun for players. We don't have anything to announce now, but we are always tinkering with what new experiences and new expressions of this card game that we can create, and so it's not off the table to come back in some other form again in the future.

Screen Rant: Speaking of new experiences, has there ever been any consideration to a physical version of Hearthstone? Obviously that'd have to look pretty different, RNG elements and deck manipulation mechanics mean it would have to be a dramatic departure from what we know, but there's certainly still a market for cardboard TCGs and Hearthstone has a pretty established identity.

Nathan Lyons-Smith: We get asked this from time to time, and it's a lot of fun to think about, like, "What would that look like, and how would it work?" If I think about the initial launch of Hearthstone, there was RNG in that that would have meant different side rules of how to decide which target Ragnaros hits at the end of your turn with his eight damage, or which minion Tinkmaster Overspark turns into another minion, and then another dice roll of whether you get the 1/1 squirrel or the 5/5 Devilsaur. We don't have any plans to do that, it does come up. It sounds really fun.

Both Tyler and I have played a lot of tabletop and card experiences in the past, and certainly if there was the perfect answer to that, it'd be something we'd be excited to talk more about and explore. This comes up from the team too, and so I think that on the team just as like a team gift, somebody's going to make some playing cards with some of our characters on them. Not Hearthstone the tabletop card game, but like your normal Bicycle playing cards with some different art on them, and just even having that will be fun given the background nature of our game was a card game.

Screen Rant: Say everything that could go right for you and the team does go right for the rest of 2024. Where does that leave Hearthstone to start 2025? What is the vision?

Nathan Lyons-Smith: That doesn't leave us, it builds us. We've got even more players in, we've welcomed them in to Perils in Paradise and the expansions that we know we've got on the slate for the rest of the year. Some really exciting characters and heroes that we don't expect players are expecting, as well as a bunch of fun mechanics and gameplay, settings that we often see pop up in wants and desires. No spoilers, of course, but in a really good spot to carry that momentum forward and continue building, continue attracting more players in and having the tavern feel as bustling as ever.

Tyler Bielman : Yeah, I think you'll continue to see us focus on what's most impactful, most fun for players. I think you'll see us continue to take bold and big swings. I think when Year of the Pegasus is complete and you look back, there will be some things that you never would have expected from Hearthstone and I can't wait for those to arrive for players. Ultimately, I think you'll continue to see the game be dynamic, and the game be exciting, and the game blow you away with the kind of fun that only Hearthstone can bring you as the best digital TCG out there.