We have seen a lot of trends emerge in gaming. Genres like Battle Royales, CCG (Collectable Card Games), and more have had a huge dominance in gaming. These new genres have inspired publishers to push forward with their own implementations.
In the case of Battle Royal we have seen Epic come out on top with Fortnite. Creating what can be described as a game that defined a generation, the Battle Royal genre has had several big name titles follow in the craze including Call of Duty and Battlefield.
When it comes to collectable card games we saw Blizzard come out on top with Hearthstone. The CCG genre generated a ton of profits for Blizzard and looking to not fall behind several companies also decided to follow suit. CD Project Red made a CCG based on the word of The Witcher called Gwent and even Microsoft OK’d Fable Fortune.
Ofcourse if a company does not capitalize on the latest genre fast enough some gamers may react negatively to what can be seen as a jump to the bandwagon. An example of this was Valve’s attempt at the CCG genre with Artifact, the Dota based card game.
Now a new genre has come forth. Its origin comes from Valves Dota modding community. After a few modders used Valves modding tools to make their own twist on the multiplayer arena game Dota 2, big game execs took notice of the new creation. It’s easy to see why the mod got a lot of attention. It took popular elements from the CCG genre, Dota, and mobile games and put it together.
A game of Auto Chess has you place characters on a chess like board. You can upgrade them and change their position for a strategic vantage point and more. Like a CCG game, placing characters on a board requires using resources such as coins or mana. If that sounds too confusing think of the hologram game in Star Wars.
Riot one of the biggest companies on the planet known for League of Legends, the game that is usually #1 on Twitch everyday, also caught onto the Auto Chess craze. According to Riot “…folks around the office have been playing an insane amount of Dota Auto Chess in particular. We love it, and it actually got us inspired to create something new as a mode in League.” The result is a League of Legends based Auto Chess game mode called Team Fight Tactics.
Once news came out that Riot was also on the Auto Chess train, it was clear both companies were competing to get their version of Auto Chess. With Valve looking to release Dota Underlords, their version of Auto Chess, onto mobile devices on PC’s it was clear Auto Chess was here to stay and if it’s financially successful. We will soon see it explode to other games and even consoles.
