Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer for
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: you know, in the world of computer games, there are
Speaker 1: few companies that have as big a claim to fame
Speaker 1: as Blizzard. I think Valve might be the best comparison,
Speaker 1: but these days Valve is known more for its Steam
Speaker 1: platform than for making games. Blizzard would swoop in to
Speaker 1: redefine the genre of massively multiplayer online role playing games,
Speaker 1: taking the torch away from pioneers like ever Quest and
Speaker 1: Ultimate Online and becoming the dominant presence with the truly
Speaker 1: enormous hit of World of Warcraft. And it would also
Speaker 1: court some major controversies and criticisms in twenty nineteen, would
Speaker 1: involve politics and globalization. But where did the company come
Speaker 1: from and how has it evolved over time? How has
Speaker 1: its acquisition by Activision changed things. In the next two episodes,
Speaker 1: we're going to explore the story of Blizzard Entertainment. Now,
Speaker 1: I should point out that way back in the day,
Speaker 1: Chris Palette and I did an episode about Blizzard that
Speaker 1: episode published all the way back on December nineteen, two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. Not only has a lot happened since then,
Speaker 1: text Stuff itself is a very different show from what
Speaker 1: it was like back in those early years, So I
Speaker 1: figured this one merits a full revisit. The history of
Speaker 1: Blizzard Entertainment can be traced back to the computer lab
Speaker 1: at the University of California, Los Angeles. Now, one day,
Speaker 1: in this computer lab, there was an electrical engineering student
Speaker 1: named Mike Moreheim and there was a computer science student
Speaker 1: named Alan Adam, and they were sitting next to each other.
Speaker 1: They didn't really know each other, they just happened to
Speaker 1: both be sitting in the computer lab. Now, Alan Adam
Speaker 1: sent a job to a printer. But here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 1: The printer was on a different floor from the computer
Speaker 1: lab they were in, so he was going to have
Speaker 1: to leave his computer, walked to a different floor of
Speaker 1: the building, and go retrieve his print out. So he
Speaker 1: locks his computer terminal like a good responsible computer user,
Speaker 1: and heads off to retrieve the print out in question. Now,
Speaker 1: Moreheim said that after about ten minutes of him being gone,
Speaker 1: Adam's computer unlocked automatically. So Moreheim relocked it, and to
Speaker 1: do that he had to put in a brand new password.
Speaker 1: He chose the word Joe j O E all lower case.
Speaker 1: He figured it was both responsible for him to do this,
Speaker 1: because otherwise Adam's terminal would remain locked or unlocked while
Speaker 1: he was gone and anyone could use it. But he
Speaker 1: also could do this as a prank, right, he could
Speaker 1: lock this with a brand new password, a very simple one,
Speaker 1: and when Adam would return, he would himself unable to
Speaker 1: get back into his computer session. Ha ha ha prank.
Speaker 1: So Adam finally returns with his print out, He sits
Speaker 1: down at his computer and he types in his password
Speaker 1: and he's right back into the computer session. So Moreheim
Speaker 1: is shocked he had changed the password. So how did
Speaker 1: Adam know what he changed the password to? Or was
Speaker 1: it possible that Allan Adam had had some other tricks,
Speaker 1: some sort of administrative level password, some uber password, a
Speaker 1: skeleton key. So Moreheim asks Adam, how did you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: Allan Adam e's he's confused, says, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you mean. So then Moreheim says, well,
Speaker 1: what was your password? And Adam says, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you my password. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's against the whole point of having a password. So
Speaker 1: Moreheim says it was Joe, wasn't it. Well, I'd surprise Adam,
Speaker 1: and Moreheim came clean with his intended prank, saying no, no,
Speaker 1: I tried to change your password to Joe, and the
Speaker 1: two laughed about how they both just coincidentally picked Joe
Speaker 1: as a quick password, and then they continued to have
Speaker 1: a conversation and it was the beginning of a close friendship. Now.
Speaker 1: During summer breaks when he was in school, Alan Adam
Speaker 1: had taken up temp jobs working for various video game
Speaker 1: development studios. He provided code for different video games and
Speaker 1: he loved games. He loved playing them, he loved working
Speaker 1: on them. He had already set a goal for himself
Speaker 1: to work on video games professionally after he graduated college,
Speaker 1: and he was ambitious. He didn't want to just work
Speaker 1: for some other studio and grind out code based on
Speaker 1: their wants and needs. He wanted to make games of
Speaker 1: his very own. So he graduated u c l A
Speaker 1: about six months ahead of Moreheim, and when Moreheim graduated,
Speaker 1: he took on a job at a company called Western Digital. Now,
Speaker 1: his main job at the time was to build test
Speaker 1: software for network cards, which I'm sure was just as
Speaker 1: exciting as it sounds. But Allan Adam kept in touch
Speaker 1: with Moreheim and invited him to help form a brand
Speaker 1: new video game devel element company. Now, this took some convincing,
Speaker 1: but Moreheim eventually agreed after talking to one of his cousins.
Speaker 1: His cousin essentially said, hey, you're young. If it all
Speaker 1: goes pear shaped, you can get another job. So he said,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm on board now. Meanwhile, Alan Adam also
Speaker 1: tapped his buddy Frank Pierce, whom he had also met
Speaker 1: back in You See l A. So he was another
Speaker 1: college friend of his. When it comes to the founders,
Speaker 1: Frank Pierce tends to be the one that people talk
Speaker 1: about the least. Uh. He just is one of those
Speaker 1: people who tends to be kind of quiet and in
Speaker 1: the background for a lot of these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But in the end, Frank Pierce would spend twenty eight
Speaker 1: years with the company spoiler Alert, and he was incredibly
Speaker 1: important in the development of many of Blizzards big games.
Speaker 1: He's a more soft spoken founder of the company than
Speaker 1: the other two, but he would be just as important. Now.
Speaker 1: I say this because a lot of company histories tend
Speaker 1: to gravitate more toward Moreheim, who Sir of the sort
Speaker 1: of the face of the company. He would lead the company,
Speaker 1: and he was the most forward facing of all of
Speaker 1: the three founders. Now, they formed a company that they
Speaker 1: originally called Silicon and Synaps, and they founded it on
Speaker 1: February eighth, n in Coasta Mesa, California. Their original office
Speaker 1: was a thirty six hundred square foot office space, and
Speaker 1: Frank Pierce would later say that Allan Adam was really
Speaker 1: the founder of the company. He was the one with
Speaker 1: the drive to make games, and he was the one
Speaker 1: with the powerful personality that would attract Pierce and Moreheim,
Speaker 1: and they were on board largely because Alan Adam was
Speaker 1: just so passionate and enthusiastic about making video games. Moreheim
Speaker 1: said he met Pierce on the first day of the
Speaker 1: company's existence. He had not crossed paths with Frank Pierce
Speaker 1: when they were all in college, and while Moreheim and
Speaker 1: Pierce were both uncertain about the prospects of the company,
Speaker 1: Allan Adam maintained that if you just got the right
Speaker 1: skills and talent. Together, success would surely follow. Alan Adam
Speaker 1: would take on the job of president of the company,
Speaker 1: Mooreheim's role was vice president, and Frank Pierce would become
Speaker 1: the lead programmer. Now before long they hired on a
Speaker 1: small staff of programmers to join them and some game designers,
Speaker 1: and Pierce would later say you could fit the entire
Speaker 1: company in two or three cars in those early days.
Speaker 1: The first game that they developed was called RPM Racing
Speaker 1: for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or SNSs RBM in
Speaker 1: this case stood for Radical Psycho Machine because the nineties
Speaker 1: were totally radical, y'all. Silicon and Synapps landed a deal
Speaker 1: with a video game publisher called Interplay for that title.
Speaker 1: This was one of the companies that Adam had actually
Speaker 1: worked for over his summer breaks while he was attending
Speaker 1: u c l A, so he knew some of the
Speaker 1: people over there, and he already had some previous relationships.
Speaker 1: RPM Racing would be the very first Super Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System title from an American video game studio, so that's
Speaker 1: two first that the game can claim. It was the
Speaker 1: first game from what would become Blizzard Entertainment, and the
Speaker 1: first American S and E S video game cartridge. The
Speaker 1: title was a racing game, obviously, in which players controlled
Speaker 1: a vehicle from a third person perspective, looking at the
Speaker 1: track from an isometric point of view, so isometric being
Speaker 1: kind of above and sort of an angle to the
Speaker 1: playing field, so you weren't inside the vehicle. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a first person view, and you weren't directly behind the vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's sort of this weird overview and uh, to me,
Speaker 1: that always made racing games hard. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of difficult to judge when you were supposed to turn.
Speaker 1: I could never quite get the spatial relationships right in
Speaker 1: those type of games. Now, a couple of other things
Speaker 1: set that title apart from many of its contemporaries. For one,
Speaker 1: it ran in a high resolution mode on the S
Speaker 1: and E S, or at least higher resolution than the
Speaker 1: standard sick team bit games of the time. But that
Speaker 1: mode also limited the number of colors that could be
Speaker 1: shown on the screen at one time, so it did
Speaker 1: come at a price. In the game, winning a race
Speaker 1: would net you a prize purse. You would win money
Speaker 1: depending upon how you placed in a race. Then you
Speaker 1: could use that money to upgrade your vehicle or pay
Speaker 1: to enter more advanced races which had bigger purses. And finally,
Speaker 1: the game came with a track editor, which allowed players
Speaker 1: to create their own race courses, complete with hills, dips,
Speaker 1: and turns. Now all that being said, the general consensus
Speaker 1: was that the game wasn't really that good and had
Speaker 1: no real sense of speed. The cars just seemed to
Speaker 1: plod along, but did feature some innovative options that helped
Speaker 1: it stand out, even if the actual gameplay was a
Speaker 1: little lackluster. The development for RPM Racer took about five months,
Speaker 1: with the game coming out in late nineteen. After completing
Speaker 1: work on the title, the fled dgling company divided its
Speaker 1: attention on two different strategies. One was to continue developing
Speaker 1: new games. The next original title from Silicon and Synapse
Speaker 1: was The Lost Vikings, which I'll talk about more in
Speaker 1: just a moment. The second strategy was to work with
Speaker 1: other studios to port existing games to different platforms. So,
Speaker 1: in the world of video games, you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of different challenges you have to consider, and one of
Speaker 1: the big ones is which platform you're going to develop
Speaker 1: for when you start making a new game. Now, you
Speaker 1: could try and adapt the game idea you have for
Speaker 1: all existing platforms, but that is going to dramatically increase
Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes to develop the game
Speaker 1: and put it through Q and A testing to make
Speaker 1: sure the experience is roughly the same across all the platforms,
Speaker 1: or as close as you can make it as possible.
Speaker 1: This also requires hiring people with a diverse set of
Speaker 1: coding skills, since different platforms require knowledge in specific coding
Speaker 1: languages and structures, and some of the tools that are
Speaker 1: used to help port code from one platform to another
Speaker 1: they're not perfect, so it requires a little bit of
Speaker 1: hands on work to tweak things and make sure it
Speaker 1: works properly. Another option is to identify the platform that
Speaker 1: you feel will net you the most sales for your title,
Speaker 1: or the platform for which your skill set is best suited,
Speaker 1: and then you developed for just that platform. So you
Speaker 1: might say, you know what, we have some code developers
Speaker 1: who are are great at making games for the PC,
Speaker 1: but they don't do so well when developing for the MAC.
Speaker 1: So we're just going to focus on making a game
Speaker 1: for the PC. Then after the game is finished, you
Speaker 1: can either look to port it to other platforms yourself
Speaker 1: or you can hire some other studio to do that
Speaker 1: work for you. And that's where Silicon and Synapse got
Speaker 1: a lot of its early work to act as this
Speaker 1: studio that would take some other game developers work for
Speaker 1: one platform and adapt for a different one. The company
Speaker 1: landed deals to port games to various platforms, including To
Speaker 1: Win Does, the Amiga and the Mac, and they included
Speaker 1: games that are some of my favorites from those years,
Speaker 1: like Battle Chess, which originally was an Amiga game, and
Speaker 1: Silicon and Synapse took the Amiga game imported it to
Speaker 1: Windows and the Commodore sixty four. The Amiga version was
Speaker 1: superior by the way. Other games included a Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings game, there was a medieval warfare strategy game
Speaker 1: called Castles, and there was a sports game in the
Speaker 1: form of micro League Baseball, among others and all the
Speaker 1: company ported eight titles to other platforms between nineteen two
Speaker 1: and ninetee. Also in nineteen two, the company released The
Speaker 1: Lost Vikings, aside scrolling platforming game with a truly odd storyline.
Speaker 1: So in the game, three Vikings are kidnapped by aliens
Speaker 1: led by the evil Tomatour. They must find their way
Speaker 1: back home and the player could control all three vikings
Speaker 1: one at a time. You could cycle through them through
Speaker 1: in a level, and each Viking had his own special abilities.
Speaker 1: Those abilities were needed to solve different puzzles throughout the levels.
Speaker 1: That really helps set the title apart. It showed off
Speaker 1: this innovative thinking at the company. It wasn't just another
Speaker 1: side scrolling clone of a game like Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 1: The game's art style and sense of humor were much
Speaker 1: more indicative of the overall company's culture than the earlier
Speaker 1: RBM Racing or the Ports had been. The game also
Speaker 1: featured incidental dialogue and cut scenes that would become hallmarks
Speaker 1: of Blizzard games in the future. It was also the
Speaker 1: first truly original title, as RBM Racing was built on
Speaker 1: top of older code for other racing games. Silicon and
Speaker 1: Synapse developed the title for several different platforms, including the
Speaker 1: S and E S, the Amiga, and later the Genesis.
Speaker 1: Like RPM Racing, Interplay would serve as the publisher for
Speaker 1: this game. Interplay would also publish the third original title
Speaker 1: from Silicon and Synapse, which was Rock and Roll Racing.
Speaker 1: Interplay published that game in This was another isometric point
Speaker 1: of view. Racing game for the S and E s
Speaker 1: and for the Sega Genesis or the Mega Drive if
Speaker 1: you're not in the United States now. Originally this was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a direct sequel to RPM Racing, but
Speaker 1: Interplay stepped in with a major tweak. The company licensed
Speaker 1: music tracks from various rock bands to be included with
Speaker 1: the game. The companies decided to name the video game
Speaker 1: to reflect this big get, the fact that they were
Speaker 1: able to land these licenses. The music consisted of many
Speaker 1: orchestrated covers, so they were all instrumental versions of songs,
Speaker 1: and they include songs like Born to Be Wild, Bad
Speaker 1: to the Bone, and the theme from Peter Gunn, which
Speaker 1: was also made famous in the arcade game World by
Speaker 1: the video games Spy Hunter. Up to two players can
Speaker 1: play simultaneously in this game, and each race has four participants,
Speaker 1: so the non player participants would be controlled by the
Speaker 1: games AI. The game also featured vehicle mounted weapons, and
Speaker 1: destroying your opponents would net you cash bonuses in a race.
Speaker 1: You would respond in a race, so you wouldn't just
Speaker 1: get blowed up and then your games over. You would
Speaker 1: actually be able to rejoin the race after a brief
Speaker 1: period of being you know, evaporated. Real life race announcer
Speaker 1: Larry Huffman recorded audio tracks to serve as commentary for
Speaker 1: the races. Like RBM Racing, players could dedicate the cash
Speaker 1: they want in Racist towards upgrading their vehicles or buying
Speaker 1: new ones as an easter egg. The programmers included ohl Off,
Speaker 1: the stout from the Lost Vikings as a possible driver,
Speaker 1: and he has some pretty boss stats to boot. The
Speaker 1: game got pretty good reviews. Both The Lost Vikings and
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Racing were hits for the Young studio,
Speaker 1: but modest ones. It did set them up pretty nicely
Speaker 1: for n which was the year where things would really
Speaker 1: come together for the company. I'll explain more in a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. So let's close
Speaker 1: out before we get to the big four. That year,
Speaker 1: Video Games Magazine would name Silicon and Synaps as the
Speaker 1: Developer of the Year, but internally, the three founders were
Speaker 1: reconsidering the company's name. According to Moreheim, the problem was
Speaker 1: that they were having issues pitching games because no one
Speaker 1: knew what a synapse was, so they were having real
Speaker 1: problems landing business deals with publishers and potential clients. They
Speaker 1: wanted to get more traction, and they decided that rebranding
Speaker 1: was the way to go, and originally they renamed themselves
Speaker 1: Chaos Studios. There was just one small problem. There already
Speaker 1: was a company with that name in New York, and
Speaker 1: the owner of that name was not going to sell
Speaker 1: the rights to it for less than a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: bucks a princely some that was a bit too steep,
Speaker 1: And by too steep, I mean way too expensive for
Speaker 1: these guys, because at this stage the company was struggling
Speaker 1: to meet overhead, to meet payroll despite its commercial and
Speaker 1: critical success. The three founders had resorted to maxing out
Speaker 1: their credit cards and asking their parents for loans so
Speaker 1: that they could meet payroll for each pay period. Clearly
Speaker 1: something needed to change if the company were to remain solvent. Now,
Speaker 1: in the brief period when they were known as Chaos Studios,
Speaker 1: they got a heck of an offer. Actually it was
Speaker 1: two offers. One offer came from Interplay, the publisher that
Speaker 1: had been responsible for actually publishing their games. The second
Speaker 1: offer came from a software company called Davidson and Associates,
Speaker 1: and both offers were to acquire Chaos Studios. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much the Interplay offer was for, but
Speaker 1: the founders ultimately turned that one down. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: the money wasn't right, but rather they were worried that
Speaker 1: by join Interplay their company would just become one small
Speaker 1: part of a larger computer game enterprise and they would
Speaker 1: lose their creative freedom as a result, so they would
Speaker 1: have to take orders from Interplay. Davidson and associates specialized
Speaker 1: in educational software, not video games, so that actually seemed
Speaker 1: like a safer bet. It was an acquisition offer that
Speaker 1: was worth around ten million dollars or six point seven
Speaker 1: five million dollars. It really depends upon which source you're citing.
Speaker 1: I've seen all ranges in between those two. Either way,
Speaker 1: it would give them the stability they needed to keep
Speaker 1: the company going and to develop more games with a
Speaker 1: minimum amount of interference from upper level management. Husband and
Speaker 1: wife team Bob and Jan Davidson, had founded this educational
Speaker 1: software company back in the early nineteen eighties. Jan Davidson,
Speaker 1: a teacher, felt that computers could create unique educational opportunities
Speaker 1: because using a computer is by its very nature interactive,
Speaker 1: so by making lessons and interactive experience, Davidson felt students
Speaker 1: would grasp concepts and develop skills much more easily than
Speaker 1: if they were to sit in a classroom and passively
Speaker 1: experience a lecture. Their company was generating revenues of around
Speaker 1: forty million dollars and they wanted to expand into other
Speaker 1: types of software. So the idea was that Chaos Studios
Speaker 1: would become the entertainment division for the software company. They
Speaker 1: promised Adam Mooreheiman Pierce, and that, you know, they and
Speaker 1: their team of developers would retain autonomy they could develop
Speaker 1: the types of games they wanted to make. So Chaos
Speaker 1: Studios decided to take that deal, but the name was
Speaker 1: going to have to go, so it was back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board. They toyed with the idea of renaming
Speaker 1: the company Ogre Studios, but that was an early case
Speaker 1: where their new owners weren't that crazy about that idea.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, after a quick scan of the dictionary, in
Speaker 1: which the three would debate between seven different words that
Speaker 1: were picked more or less at random, they hit upon
Speaker 1: what would become the company name from that point forward,
Speaker 1: Blizzard Entertainment. Now, during this whole process, the company was
Speaker 1: still creating games, so Chaos Studios slash. Blizzard Entertainment developed
Speaker 1: a game called Blackthorn for the S and E S
Speaker 1: and for the PC, later porting it to other platforms.
Speaker 1: This was another side scrolling platform er with cinematics throughout
Speaker 1: to tell the story of the game, which featured protagonist
Speaker 1: Kyle Blackthorne Vlaros returning to his home planet after having
Speaker 1: been sent to Earth for safe keeping, a story pretty
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the Superman story. Blackthorn has to overthrow an
Speaker 1: evil ruler named Sarlac, guessing they were Star Wars fans.
Speaker 1: The game received positive reviews, both for its gameplay and
Speaker 1: for its dark tone, which was kind of new to
Speaker 1: video games. To get the animation for Blackthorn, the team
Speaker 1: actually shot video of Frank Pierce moving around, and then
Speaker 1: they animated on top of this footage in a process
Speaker 1: called rhodoscoping, which is frequently used in animation. The company
Speaker 1: released the game in December. Around that same time that
Speaker 1: they were developing Blackthorn, they were also working on the
Speaker 1: Death and Return of Superman for sun Soft Games, based
Speaker 1: off a storyline in d C from back in the
Speaker 1: early nineties. This was a beat him up game in
Speaker 1: which players would at certain points in The game storyline
Speaker 1: control Superman and the various characters who appeared after the
Speaker 1: villain Doomsday killed Superman in a comic book storyline that
Speaker 1: included characters like Cyborg Superman, or a more hard edged
Speaker 1: anti hero version of Superman called the Eradicateur, and a
Speaker 1: self made man of Steel named uh Steel. This game
Speaker 1: is one of many largely forgotten superhero video games. It
Speaker 1: received mediocre reviews, which is still a lot better than
Speaker 1: a lot of superhero games managed, at least until more
Speaker 1: recent titles like the Arkham series. This game came out
Speaker 1: in June. One other game the company worked on around
Speaker 1: this time was Justice League task Force, which was another
Speaker 1: DC superheroes fighting game, sort of like techn or Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat d C characters. So this was not a Blizzard
Speaker 1: lead project. Rather, the company Sunsoft produced the game and
Speaker 1: Acclaim would act as publisher. Blizzard was credited as a
Speaker 1: code developer on the project and worked specifically on the
Speaker 1: S and E S version of the game. Now, there
Speaker 1: was another party involved in Justice League Task Force, and
Speaker 1: that was a company called Condor. Condor was a Bay
Speaker 1: area video game company, so in the San Francisco area,
Speaker 1: and it was responsible for this Sega Genesis version of
Speaker 1: the video game Condor will become an important part of
Speaker 1: the Blizzard story later, So I thought it'd s been
Speaker 1: just a little time giving a bit of background on
Speaker 1: what Condor was now. The founders of Condor Incorporated included
Speaker 1: Max and Eric Schaeffer and David Brevic. The name came
Speaker 1: from a secret project and a digital clip art company
Speaker 1: that Brevick had worked for. Now that company went belly up,
Speaker 1: and Brevic and the Schaefer brothers decided to form a
Speaker 1: video game development company, with the goal being to make
Speaker 1: role playing games for computer systems. They took the name
Speaker 1: Condor from that secret project. Their goal was to produce
Speaker 1: the game called Diablo. They were naming it after Mount
Speaker 1: Diablo in California. But they were encountering a lot of
Speaker 1: resistance from publishers when they were pitching their idea for
Speaker 1: this video game. So to make ends meet, they worked
Speaker 1: on co developing games with other studios. That's how they
Speaker 1: got the gig of designing the Genesis version of the
Speaker 1: Justice League Task Force. Now, the story goes that neither
Speaker 1: the Blizzard team nor the Condor team knew about the
Speaker 1: other company working on this video game. They found out
Speaker 1: when both companies attended ce S, the Consumer Electronics Show.
Speaker 1: Because this was before E three became a thing. So
Speaker 1: at CES that's where video game companies would go to
Speaker 1: show off demos of their upcoming titles, they were frequently
Speaker 1: shoehorned way in the back of the showroom floor. Now,
Speaker 1: according to most histories, this happened when Blizzard was still
Speaker 1: technically Silicon and Synapse, so it must have been at
Speaker 1: least a year out from the publication. Since Justice League
Speaker 1: Task Force would come out anyway, this would be the
Speaker 1: first contact between these two companies, but it would not
Speaker 1: be the last one. Blackthorne, the Superman Game, and Justice
Speaker 1: League Task Force would all publish after the announced Davidson
Speaker 1: and Associates acquisition, but none of those would be the
Speaker 1: first game released under the Blizzard Entertainment label. They would
Speaker 1: follow behind a different game, one that would end up
Speaker 1: being an iconic starting point for Blizzards rise to true superstardom,
Speaker 1: and the first game to come out post acquisition was
Speaker 1: one that had been inspired by a different companies games.
Speaker 1: Now that different company was Westwood Studios. Emphasis on was
Speaker 1: Westwood Studios because the studio no longer exists it would
Speaker 1: get folded into a division of Electronic Arts in two
Speaker 1: thousand three. But back in this video game company developed
Speaker 1: a real time strategy game called Dune two. This was
Speaker 1: based off the film adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune. Now.
Speaker 1: In this game, players would assume control of one of
Speaker 1: three houses or factions attempting to gain dominion over a
Speaker 1: planet called Aracus. Players would manage resources to build out structures,
Speaker 1: they would produce military units, they would explore the map,
Speaker 1: and they would try to defeat enemy forces. It's the
Speaker 1: basic structure that many other RTS games would follow in
Speaker 1: the years to come, but it was a pretty new
Speaker 1: idea back in. A good player learns how to balance
Speaker 1: rees was gathering production and troop movements without over extending
Speaker 1: themselves or putting their home base at risk. It's a
Speaker 1: skill I do not have. Dune Too received a great
Speaker 1: deal of praise for its innovations in gameplay, and it
Speaker 1: should come as little surprised that other studios wanted to
Speaker 1: emulate those innovations that Westwood Studios had introduced. However, by
Speaker 1: not a single other game that was following the same
Speaker 1: game design and mechanics of Done two had yet to emerge.
Speaker 1: So the crew at Blizzard thought that Doune two was
Speaker 1: particularly compelling and innovative. They decided they would make a
Speaker 1: game that followed a similar approach, though with several differentiating
Speaker 1: features so it wasn't like a direct copy or anything.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest differentiating factors was that Done Too
Speaker 1: had been a single player game. Blizzard wanted to create
Speaker 1: a game that would allow two human players to compete
Speaker 1: against each other if they wanted to. They could play
Speaker 1: as a single player or play competitively against another human.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind this was in ninete before most
Speaker 1: people didn't even know much about the Internet, yet a
Speaker 1: lot of us were still calling it the Information super Highway,
Speaker 1: or we were thinking about like it was a series
Speaker 1: of tubes. If you wanted to play against another human,
Speaker 1: you really had two options open to you. One was
Speaker 1: to create a direct connection between computers in a local
Speaker 1: area network or land. This wasn't super hard to do,
Speaker 1: but it was beyond tech novices, and it did mean
Speaker 1: that you and your opponent had to be pretty much
Speaker 1: in the same room as each other, so it puts
Speaker 1: some restrictions on gameplay. The other option was to use
Speaker 1: a modem to connect directly to another player's computer also
Speaker 1: connected to a modem. But that would mean you would
Speaker 1: need to know the specific I P address for your
Speaker 1: opponent so that you can make that connection happen. Again,
Speaker 1: for computer geeks, that wasn't at all order, But for
Speaker 1: people just learning about the Internet, you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web itself had just become a thing,
Speaker 1: this was asking a lot. Still, the fact that Blizzard
Speaker 1: was able to take a brand new game type and
Speaker 1: expand it into a multiplayer format was a big deal.
Speaker 1: They also decided to embrace a different aesthetic, so instead
Speaker 1: of using a science fiction setting like Dune two, they
Speaker 1: decided to embrace the fantasy genre. The Finnish game was
Speaker 1: called Warcraft ORCS Versus Humans, and Blizzard released it in November,
Speaker 1: just in time for the holiday season. Now, when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll talk more about how Warcraft shaped blizzards future,
Speaker 1: as well as how it's sequel managed to cement that future.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. So before we
Speaker 1: went to the break, you know, I talked about all
Speaker 1: these different games that Blizzard was working on, and the
Speaker 1: reason I mentioned those other games ahead of Warcraft, even
Speaker 1: though technically Warcraft published first, was that while they were
Speaker 1: important in the early history of Blizzard, Warcraft would play
Speaker 1: a much more pivotal role in the future of the
Speaker 1: company overall. It was also the first game that Blizzard
Speaker 1: Entertainment would publish itself. The company didn't have to depend
Speaker 1: upon an established video game publisher like Interplay. Instead, it
Speaker 1: leaned on the reach of its parent company, Davidson and Associates,
Speaker 1: which over a decade had managed to build up a
Speaker 1: pretty impressive distribution arm of its own. In Warcraft, players
Speaker 1: take control of one of two factions, humans or orcs.
Speaker 1: In either case, the player is tasked with building out
Speaker 1: a base and different buildings, assigning tasks to workers who
Speaker 1: gather resources, or to military units who can scout and
Speaker 1: engage with enemy forces. The user interface allowed players to
Speaker 1: select groups of units, issuing orders to multiple entities at
Speaker 1: the same time, rather than having to set each one individually,
Speaker 1: but it also meant that the UI was getting a
Speaker 1: bit too complicated for the typical video game controller. So
Speaker 1: for that reason, Lizard made the decision to develop Warcraft
Speaker 1: as a PC only game when it first started out,
Speaker 1: with the intended players would rely on the mouse and
Speaker 1: keyboard commands to control their factions. In that first game,
Speaker 1: there wasn't that much that differentiated the Orcs from the humans,
Speaker 1: apart from some appearance differences between the units. Both factions
Speaker 1: had units that did pretty much the same thing with
Speaker 1: the same sort of impact on the game world and
Speaker 1: on enemy units. So a basic infantry unit for the
Speaker 1: humans and a basic infantry unit for the Orcs were,
Speaker 1: for any meaningful definition, identical. They look different, but they
Speaker 1: had the exact same abilities and stats. That first Warcraft
Speaker 1: game did pretty well among both critics and the general
Speaker 1: game buying public. It didn't break any records or anything,
Speaker 1: but the sales were encouraging, and it was enough for
Speaker 1: Blizzard to convince Davidson and associates to allow the team
Speaker 1: to create a sequel. I'll get back to that in
Speaker 1: just a second. Well, things were picking up for the
Speaker 1: company and so they decided they would pick themselves up
Speaker 1: and they moved. They moved from their original office location
Speaker 1: in Costa Mesa to a much larger one of fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand square foot office in Irvine, California. Now these cities
Speaker 1: are in southern California, by the way. In the fall
Speaker 1: of nine, Blizzard launched its website, Blizzard dot com. Sadly,
Speaker 1: the earliest version of the site I could get a
Speaker 1: look at was from December of nineteen nine six, so
Speaker 1: a year after it had launched. I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: use archive dot org to check out old versions of websites.
Speaker 1: You can really appreciate how far the web has come
Speaker 1: when you take a look at what passed for a
Speaker 1: cutting edge site back in nineteen five or ninety six.
Speaker 1: The Blizzard site looked pretty darn primitive back then. It
Speaker 1: also mentioned stuff that I haven't really gotten to yet,
Speaker 1: namely the release of Diablo and the launch of Battle Neet.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about those more in our next episode. So
Speaker 1: Warcraft have been a success, though not a breakout hit
Speaker 1: for Blizzard, and it was enough for them to get
Speaker 1: the go ahead from their parent company, Davidson and Associates,
Speaker 1: which would subsequently get acquired by another company called c
Speaker 1: UC International, which would subsequently change its name to Sendent.
Speaker 1: And don't worry, we'll go through all this again in
Speaker 1: the next episode, and we won't be sticking with them
Speaker 1: for very long. Turns out Blizzard has had a lot
Speaker 1: of different corporate bosses anyway. Blizzards Warcraft two would end
Speaker 1: up being an enormous improvement over its predecessor in many ways.
Speaker 1: The official title for the game would be Warcraft two
Speaker 1: Tides of Darkness. Much of what the game offered were
Speaker 1: refinements to the systems of the first game, but there
Speaker 1: were some big additions as well, such as air and
Speaker 1: sea units in addition to the land units that you
Speaker 1: could command. There was also a persistent fog of war
Speaker 1: feature which might require a little bit of explanation. So
Speaker 1: fog of war describes the area of a map that
Speaker 1: a player is able to see before you exp laura map,
Speaker 1: most of that map is going to get blacked out.
Speaker 1: The only part you can really see is the part
Speaker 1: immediately surrounding your base and your units, and that means
Speaker 1: you haven't sent any units out to reveal what else
Speaker 1: is out there. Now, as you move units around, you
Speaker 1: uncover more of the map and it becomes visible to you.
Speaker 1: Warcraft two took this this step further with persistent fog
Speaker 1: of war, which meant that while a revealed portion of
Speaker 1: the map would remain visible to the player, you know
Speaker 1: once you explored it, you didn't have to explore it
Speaker 1: again to know what was there. Geographically, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to see what was currently happening in any given
Speaker 1: section of the map unless you had units in that area.
Speaker 1: So let's say you move a scout through one part
Speaker 1: of the map and you see it's a very hilly
Speaker 1: section of the map, and then the scout gradually moves
Speaker 1: out of that section into a different section. Meanwhile, once
Speaker 1: your scout has moved away from a certain distance from
Speaker 1: the explored territory, it fade slightly. That indicates that you
Speaker 1: no longer have line of sight in that part of
Speaker 1: the map, and that means anything could be happening in
Speaker 1: that area, like an enemy could move into that area
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't see it because you're not currently there.
Speaker 1: So if you were to move a scout back and
Speaker 1: an enemies moving through, then you would see the enemy
Speaker 1: and it would become revealed to you. But if you
Speaker 1: didn't have a unit there, you didn't have a line
Speaker 1: of sight, you had no way of knowing what was happening.
Speaker 1: So it may not just exploration important, but also maintaining
Speaker 1: positions throughout the map. So that added another element of
Speaker 1: strategy that you needed to keep in mind. Whether you
Speaker 1: were playing against AI or another human. This feature would
Speaker 1: become a pretty standard option for RTS games following Warcraft two.
Speaker 1: It would become one of those hallmarks of the genre.
Speaker 1: The game included more of Blizzards rather ridiculous sense of humor,
Speaker 1: which I mostly remember manifesting as the responses that units
Speaker 1: would have when you selected them. Like if you were
Speaker 1: playing on the human side and you're selecting some human units,
Speaker 1: you might get a response like what do you want
Speaker 1: when you clicked on them. Then you might send them
Speaker 1: someplace and you might hear one of them say something
Speaker 1: like okay. The works were usually a bit more rude
Speaker 1: about things. The game did support multiplayer, and again you
Speaker 1: could play by connecting to computers directly together in a
Speaker 1: local area network or via direct connection with modems, just
Speaker 1: like with the first Warcraft. But Blizzard noticed something else
Speaker 1: that was intriguing to them. There were some enterprising programmers
Speaker 1: who had created a service that they called Collie k
Speaker 1: a l I. This tool that you could download. Collie
Speaker 1: was a bit of a work around, so it would
Speaker 1: allow players to connect over the Internet to play various
Speaker 1: multiplayer games by essentially tricking computers emulating a local area
Speaker 1: network over the Internet. So to the computers. It would
Speaker 1: seem like all these different machines are in the same
Speaker 1: general vicinity and are directly connected to one another through
Speaker 1: a land but in reality, they'd be connecting over the Internet.
Speaker 1: So again, it was a workaround to facilitate multiplayer sessions.
Speaker 1: Blizzard really liked that approach, and they worked to make
Speaker 1: Warcraft Too compatible with it, which would mean that up
Speaker 1: to eight players could participate in different types of multiplayer games,
Speaker 1: ranging from team based competitions to free fur alls. Collie
Speaker 1: itself was an ip X network emulator. I p X
Speaker 1: stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange, but the important thing to
Speaker 1: note is it was this sort of jerry rigged way
Speaker 1: for people to play against each other online. Uh. The
Speaker 1: technical explanation for ip X goes well beyond a discussion
Speaker 1: about Blizzard. Blizzard Entertainment loved the idea of a system
Speaker 1: that would allow for this kind of connectivity as a
Speaker 1: native feature without the need to trick a computer system
Speaker 1: into believing it was part of a local area network.
Speaker 1: So this would become the genesis for battle Neet. That's
Speaker 1: a service that allows players to connect with each other
Speaker 1: and play with or against one another in various games.
Speaker 1: If not for Colie, it might have taken another year
Speaker 1: or two for Blizzard to jump on developing that project.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't just because Blizzard wanted to give players
Speaker 1: more options, so that was definitely a big part of it.
Speaker 1: One of the side effects of the adoption of Kali
Speaker 1: is that Warcraft two started to outperform the sales of
Speaker 1: its predecessor. It was a legit, blockbuster hit, helped in
Speaker 1: no small part by this third party tool developed by enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: which sent a clear message there was a real market
Speaker 1: to support online play if you could just figure out
Speaker 1: a way to do it that wouldn't overtax your infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Another thing that fueled Warcraft Too success was a rivalry
Speaker 1: with Westwood Studios. That's the company that had made Doune Too.
Speaker 1: Westwood developed an awesome RTS game of its own called
Speaker 1: Command and Conquer Westwood, and there didn't really fire that
Speaker 1: many shots at each other directly while competing in the
Speaker 1: RTS space, but they didn't have to because their respective
Speaker 1: fans took care of all that for them. That's one
Speaker 1: of those early flame wars where you either loved one
Speaker 1: or the other, but you couldn't love both of them.
Speaker 1: The resulting Brewjaha raised the visibility of both titles, which
Speaker 1: led to great sales. Warcraft two would eventually cross the
Speaker 1: threshold of one million copies sold. Now today, that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a chartbuster, as popular games can count sales and
Speaker 1: need tens or maybe even more than a hundred million
Speaker 1: copies sold. That isn't always a fair fight either, because
Speaker 1: some of the most popular games land on that list
Speaker 1: not because the game was must have, but because it
Speaker 1: had been bundled with a console or a game system
Speaker 1: that was insanely popular. But a million units sold was
Speaker 1: a huge landmark. This was big enough for Blizzard to
Speaker 1: recognize the opportunity to deliver even more Warcraft goodness two
Speaker 1: players now. At the same time, they had plans to
Speaker 1: develop other titles, so they're just weren't enough resources inside
Speaker 1: the company to create more Warcraft to content using Blizzard
Speaker 1: resources by itself, or so they thought, so they tapped
Speaker 1: a development studio called Cyberlore Studios to lead the development
Speaker 1: on an expansion pack for Warcraft too. Blizzard began to
Speaker 1: focus on another project that I'll talk more about in
Speaker 1: the next episode. But to their dismay. They found the
Speaker 1: cyber Lore team's work to be below blizzards own standards.
Speaker 1: The company made the tough decision to cancel the contract
Speaker 1: with Cyberlore and take over development of the expansion set themselves.
Speaker 1: This also taught Blizzards founders that in house development might
Speaker 1: be the best way to go in order to preserve
Speaker 1: the company's reputation among gamers. The resulting product had the
Speaker 1: name Warcraft Too Beyond on the Dark Portal, so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to run this game, you had to first
Speaker 1: own the base Warcraft two game. If you didn't have,
Speaker 1: Tides of Darkness, Beyond the Dark Portal would not work.
Speaker 1: But it would extend the storyline that had been started
Speaker 1: by Warcraft Too, and it introduced new campaigns and new
Speaker 1: heroes for both sides of the conflict. Not at the time,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really aware that these games even had storylines.
Speaker 1: To me, they were just real time strategy games that
Speaker 1: consisted of matches that had you know, individual objectives, but
Speaker 1: there was no real overarching narrative. This is because I
Speaker 1: was not paying attention. This would also set me way
Speaker 1: back for future Blizzard properties, and to this day I
Speaker 1: can't really tell you what the story was for these games.
Speaker 1: I know that the two sides were designated as the
Speaker 1: Alliance for the human side and the Horde for the Orcs,
Speaker 1: and that was something that would carry over and be
Speaker 1: expanded upon in future Blizzard titles. But we'll chat more
Speaker 1: about that in the next episode. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for future episodes for tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me an email the addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those is
Speaker 1: text Stuff h s W. Don't forget. You can visit
Speaker 1: our website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You'll find
Speaker 1: a link to an archive of every episode we've ever published,
Speaker 1: including the original Blizzard episode. You also find a link
Speaker 1: to our online store, where every purchase you make goes
Speaker 1: to help the show and we greatly appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I'll taught to you again about Blizzard really soon. Text
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