Guardians of Middle-earth, an upcoming massive online battle arena game based on The Lord of the Rings, is not in competition with PC titles like Riot Games' League of Legends or Valve's Dota 2 because Monolith Productions is publishing the game to consoles, producer Ruth Tomandl told VentureBeat in a recent interview.
I think it's an advantage for us, certainly, to be only coming out on the consoles," Tomandl said. "It's let us focus on making a really good console game, but it also eliminates any question of competing. Because yeah, those games are very established. They've had a lot of time to iterate. They've had a lot of time to polish and come out with new champions and stuff.
"I think being on the consoles gives us a chance to surprise players and give them something that's familiar to them, but also new," Tomandl added.
Matches in Guardians of Middle-earth are shorter and the map is a little smaller, allowing players to move more quickly between areas, call lanes, and engage in more fast-paced battles. Players can also customize and upgrade characters and set up towers for defense.
"PC gamers, I think, have more patience to invest a lot of time and then reap the rewards of it, whereas console gamers want to get in, play a match, get out, and get more expertise that way, by playing more matches," said Tomandl.
In the past, Monolith invited several professional MOBA players to the studio to demo Guardians.
"They said that they felt like it was a separate genre," Tomandl said. "They said that there were enough differences, the controls were different enough, that they didn't really consider it to be in the same genre as the PC MOBAs. I think it's a good place for Guardians to be in. It's something that people recognize, but at the same time we've been surprising people."
Guardians of Middle-earth is coming to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade this fall.