The Weekly Raid: Are Hero Shooters The New MOBAs?

Today marks the start of the Founders Program for The Amazing Eternals, a first person hero shooter by Warframe developer Digital Extremes. While we have no hard number on the level of interest for this title, the fact that their homepage crashed day one indicates at least some buzz.

The Amazing Eternals follows a in the footsteps of several hero shooter launches, or rather early accesses, so far this year. Paladins, LawBreakers, and Quake Champions are all following the path cleared by Blizzard's smash hit Overwatch which itself has its roots in Valve's Team Fortress 2.

While the genre has certainly been around for a long time, its only this year that we've entered the gold rush phase. For veterans PC gamers, this may all look familiar. We had a similiar scenario play out during the MOBA rush not so long ago. Dota pioneered the genre, but it was Riot Games that brought it to global dominance. After League of Legends rocketed to the top, many studios started developing their own MOBAs with various degrees of originality. We got games like Smite and Paragon that managed to establish their own niches. Other titles like Infinite Crisis and Strafe fell on their faces and were quickly shuttered.

Are we seeing a replay of the MOBA gold rush play out today? While it does look similar, there are good reasons to believe things may go better for the hero shooters. First and foremost, the learning curve of a FPS is far lower than a MOBA. That may make it both easier to try new games, and for players to juggle multiple hero shooters at the same time rather than sticking exclusively to one.

Where do you stand on the issue of hero shooters? Is the market big enough to accommodate them all, or will they get crushed by Overwatch? Share your thoughts below!