In a new interview with PowerUp, Hearthstone’s Lead Effects Artist Hadidjah Chamberlain revealed that some Blizzard developers once prototyped a VR version of Hearthstone over two weeks at one of the company’s annual ‘Free Your Mind’ events.
The Hearthstone Tavern is an often-mentioned location when talking about places or scenes people would love to explore in VR. While the popular Blizzard card game is playable on PCs and smartphones, playing a round of the game in a VR recreation of the fictional tavern itself would be a whole different experience. Think PokerStars VR, but for Hearthstone.
Well, it turns out that the idea was thrown around by Blizzard developers at one of their annual ‘Free Your Mind’ events, which are essentially internal hackathons for employees. One year, two developers made a very basic version of Hearthstone in VR. “You could walk around The Tavern and sit down to play a game with someone,” said Chamberlain, while speaking to PowerUp. “They only had two weeks, so they only got as far [allowing you to] throw cards at the table and you could flip the table over!”
The prototype wasn’t developed any further than that, so it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever get to see any footage and even more unlikely we would ever get to try it out. Ultimately, it might be an idea that sounds great in theory, but would be less satisfying in execution. In the same interview with PowerUp, Hearthstone Principle Narrative Designer Dave Kosak said that he felt even though the idea sounds fun, he thinks players would still end up preferring using a tablet or a computer to play Hearthstone games.
What do you think about Hearthstone in VR? Would you be interested? Let us know in the comments below.
