What Class Should a Five-Year-Old Play in Diablo IV?

A conversation with Diablo IV game director Brent Gibson about playing and making games as a parent.

Gonna tell my five-year-old this is what detention looks like. Credit: Blizzard

One of the questions I’ve been obsessed with for years, even before kids, was whether a game was worth my time. Defining “worth” is tough, but for me, it often means progression. Beating a level. Defeating a boss. Minor accomplishments are even more important with two kids around, as my free time has become even more precious. 

I wonder, then, what it means to make a game where the people playing it could be looking for different things: a game that satisfies someone with infinite hours to spare and someone hoping for a little fun during the precious minutes they before sleep.

A few months back, I had a chance to ask Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred game director Brent Gibson this very question, plus a whole lot more over the 30 minutes we spent chatting. Gibson worked in a leadership capacity on the original Diablo IV, but took over the game director role for the Vessel of Hatred expansion that came out last fall.

Gibson, importantly, is the father to an 11-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son. Not only does he work on a game trying to please both players, but he has the perspective of a parent, too. He’s making a game that, in theory, works for 1,000 hours or far less.

What follows is an exchange between Gibson and myself on Spawnpoint, the official Crossplay podcast that, regrettably, hasn’t had an episode in a minute. We talk a little bit about Diablo IV, but it’s mostly in the context of designing a live service game for players with different expectations, what Gibson’s kids think of his work, and more.

If you are a parent, you’re good. You don’t need to know about Diablo IV to listen!

If you’d rather just read some of what we talked about, check it out below:

Crossplay: My first question: my four-year-old isn't sure which class to play in Vessel of Hatred. I was wondering if you had any recommendations.

Brent Gibson: Ah, well. First off, this is quite the mature game, so I'm going to leave it up to your discretion as far as playing the game in general. However, for beginners, playing a rogue or playing a sorcerer—it's pure adrenaline and fun. They're classes that are super easy to get into and understand. Their class mechanics are very straightforward. I feel like a lot of the younger players really love how quickly those classes play as well, so it's just constant action. If you want to get them and hook them early, that’s definitely the place that you're going to want to go.

Crossplay: You mentioned that the seasonal model is something that can work for gamer parents. You're making a game that for some players, they want to extract a million hours out of it. For others, they have 90 minutes a night—or a week.

Gibson: We break down our game into several different player cohorts. 

We know we have a very hardcore audience that will play the game for hundreds of hours a season. Then, we have our casual players who just love getting into the fantasy. Weekend warriors, like you said, they have 90 minutes and we want to make sure that when those players come in, that even if they don't have 300 hours to play, their time is valued in that 90 minutes. You're making progression right away. You're feeling the fun immediately. We have lots of activities that come in doses of anywhere from two-minute experiences up to 40-minute experiences. You can get in and actually make meaningful progress, regardless how much time you invest into it. 

As a gamer dad, I want to be a good dad in the sense where I don't want to finish work and then just go play video games. It's not like a part of my life anymore. But when they do go to bed and before I pass out from exhaustion, I can get in and get a couple levels on my character. And I do that just a little bit at a time. Before I know it, my character's at max level. I've got a bunch of cool gear. I feel really good about the investment that we've put into the game. We try to reward players for that time investment and respect that as much as possible.

Crossplay: I suspect as someone that works on Diablo IV, you've played other games that are trying to accomplish a similar arc. Some are probably more successful than others. I feel this all the time. When I go to How Long to Beat and I see 80, 90 hours—I just put my head in my hands. Because one, I feel excluded. I'm sorry! I don't have 80 or 90 hours! But also I worry. Once a year, I can really commit to a game. Is this game going to respect my time?

Gibson: I think there's a couple of different things that fall into play. First is what I was mentioning before, which no matter how much time I put into it, I feel like I've made some kind of progress. There are some games that play really slow, and if you don't feel like you're making meaningful progress in an hour, that's an immediate time out for me as a game parent. Oh, no, no, no, it's fine. You just got to get through the first 30 hours and you'll really like this game. [laughs]

Crossplay: That's where a tear slowly runs down my cheek

Gibson: You pay attention to the pacing. I think another thing is games and how accessible they are. How many games have you played where you put down the controller, you have all of your obligations for three weeks, you pick up the controller and you can't remember what the controller does, right?

Being really intuitive with the game systems and making sure that your memory isn’t an overly critical part of remembering how to play again, getting back in. Oh, where was I at the story? Even when we write our stories, we try not to go overly nuanced, we really want it to be a fun digestible experience paired with really easy to understand combat that even if you're not a really good player, it feels really good.

I don't know about you, but as a gamer parent, I want to have games that just make me feel really good, regardless of my skill levels, because my dexterity in these thumbs are slowing down year after year. Learning curves are a really big deal to the way that we look at this, too.

Spawnpoint has been on a quiet hiatus while I’ve been thinking through its future. Also, co-host Keza MacDonald has been sick! The podcast isn't dead, I have a few episodes in the chamber. I’ve been thinking of doing them in batches? It’d be a season model, where you would get an episode every week for a month. Share your thoughts!

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• I’ve played little Diablo IV, but man, I dug the hell out of Diablo III when it came to consoles. I played many hours with a buddy during early parenting times.

• My first encounter with Diablo, I think, was a PC Gamer demo disc where you could work your way through a few rooms and fight that damn Butcher boss.

• I remember having a fascination with PS1 ports of PC games, resulting in many hours with compromised but weird versions of Diablo and Command & Conquer.