Blizzard can't make Street Fighter, so it made Blizzard DOTA

Blizzard DOTA, the developer's take on the MOBA genre spawned from its own mod tools, is Blizzard's wish-fulfilment for some kind of fighter game.

"This is our Blizzard fighter. We can't make a Street Fighter style game right now, so this is our Blizzard fighter," senior art director Samwise Didier told Joystiq.

"The Blizzard All-stars, is what I like to call it."

Didier's comment is probably half-joking, as he added that Blizzard loves the MOBA genre for itself.

"All of that great artwork and stuff that we built made a whole new genre, and Blizzard loved it so much that we wanted to make ours too," he said.

It's not the first time Blizzard has adored an existing game and decided to tackle the genre for itself.

"We all loved Dune 2. Great things have happened since Dune 2 because we loved that game. We all loved Everquest," he explained, telling of the genesis of Warcraft and World of Warcraft.

That's not to say Blizzard DOTA is a direct rip; the developer is taking a kind of casual-friendly approach in some ways.

"We've kind of taken out a lot of that kind of invisible high level gameplay that you needed to know to be the best, and we just started worrying about let's just make this a fun game," Didier commented.

Blizzard DOTA is expected to launch in free-to-play form through Blizzard Arcade. No firm release date has been set.