WEBVTT - Things Get Hot for Blizzard 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.000 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.720 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.520 I Heart Radio and Love all Things Tech. And in 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.680 our last episode, I talked about the origins of Blizzard 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.880 Entertainment leading up to the acquisition of Condor Incorporated and 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.720 the launch of the battle Neet service upon the release 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:33.280 of the game Diablo. So we're going to pick up 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:35.760 from there because it turns out there's a whole lot 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.960 of stuff that's happened to this relatively young company. All right, 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.280 So we're in a super important time in Blizzard's history 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.120 in this timeline. So Warcraft gave the company momentum and 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:52.480 set the stage for a sequel, Warcraft Two Tides of Darkness. Meanwhile, 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.600 the founders of Condor Incorporated reached out to Blizzard, and 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.360 as I mentioned earlier, the two companies had first come 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.520 into contact when they were each developing versions of Justice 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.360 League Task Force. Now, in the time that followed, Condor 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.840 had reached out to a lot of different publishers with 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:14.480 their idea for Diablo, but they got nowhere then out 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:18.080 of desperation more than anything else, they turned to Blizzard. Now, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.559 the pitch was incredibly ambitious. Condor would develop a PC 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.840 based game, which they had never done before, and it 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.680 would be an RPG style game, role playing game, and 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.000 it would marry that with a more action oriented style 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:36.600 of gameplay. Ultimately, and originally, they were also thinking about 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:41.319 modeling all their characters using the claymation process. So claymation, 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:44.080 for those not familiar with the term, is a form 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.640 of stop motion animation. You build the animated stuff out 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:51.320 of some sort of multiple material, such as you know, clay, 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.080 and you pose them precisely the way you want them 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.960 to look in a particular sequence. Then you take a photo, 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.800 then you adjust the model ever slightly, Then you take 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.280 another photo, and you do that over and over again 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.640 until the sequence of photos follows the entire range of 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.960 motion that you wanted to capture. It's similar to hand 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.400 drawn animation in that way. So if you want to 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.640 show a character swinging a sword, for example, you'll have 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.679 to determine how many frames of animation that will require 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:21.920 and how far you need to move the model for 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.000 each frame. If you move too far between pictures, you 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.120 get really choppy animation. David Brevic was inspired by an 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.919 arcade game called Primal Rage that used claymation to model 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.880 its characters. Primal Rage was a fighting game akin to 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.680 something like Mortal Kombat or Teken. The monstrous fighters in 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.000 the game, of which there were seven, each required around 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.359 four hundred frames of animation to model all of their movements. 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.200 The process takes a very long time, and it gets 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.440 pretty darned expensive. The end effect can be great, but 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.120 it's an enormous task for even a seasoned video game studio, 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.560 let alone one that had only been around for less 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.959 than two years. Further, dia Blow would require a lot 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.840 more animation than a fighting game with seven characters, unless 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.200 the team were to limit the types of monsters you'd 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.400 encounter in the game. Ultimately, they would choose to ditch 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.960 the stop motion plan. Blizzard was intrigued by Condor's pitch, 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.160 though there may have been some skepticism about whether or 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.400 not Condor could actually pull it off. Blizzard agreed to 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:25.600 publish the game once it was developed, and they set 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.400 a budget of three hundred thousand dollars for Condor, with 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:30.639 a goal of publishing in time for the nineteen nine 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:35.880 six holiday season. Now Condor actually had to build the 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:37.800 game they had been dreaming of for a couple of years, 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:41.400 which is a big change from just thinking about it. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.240 They chose to go with an isometric view, with the 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.360 world being made up of tiles that characters, monsters, and 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.240 objects could inhabit, and originally they wanted to make the 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:55.240 game turn based. Players would have worked with character limitations 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:57.880 that would dictate how far they could move during a turn, 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.240 or how frequently they could attack, and so forth. This 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.680 was the game David Brevic wanted to make because it 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:06.640 was in a style similar to the games he had 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.360 loved playing as a gamer himself. But at some point 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.200 during the development process, the Blizzard team talked to Brevic 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.800 and tried to convince him to change from a turn 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:21.520 based game to a real time game. Brevick resisted. The 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:25.560 decision was ultimately put to a vote inside Condor, and 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:30.960 everyone except Brevic voted to go real time, so Brevick agreed, 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.560 though not before asking for a milestone payment from Blizzard, 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.240 which they agreed to. The Oblow would thus transform from 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.080 a turn based computer RPG into one of the first 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:49.160 action role playing games, or a RPG acronyms are fun. Also, technically, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:51.680 Brevick would say that what he really did was he 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.200 just made the turns last about one a second. So 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:56.120 it's still a turn based game. It's just those turns 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:00.279 went really fast. One other thing that was almost a 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.560 part of Diablo, and I found this really interesting. This 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.680 was scrapped before the game would launch, was a concept 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.240 in which players, you know, actual people who would go 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.400 out and buy the game, could then go out and 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.400 buy supplemental stuff to add their games, in the form 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.120 of like a an an expensive c D. You would 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.200 go and buy a CD add on, not a full 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.520 expansion set, but maybe a five dollar c D, and 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.760 and that add on would include things like weapons and 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.320 armor packs or skin packs, stuff like that. It hearkened 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:33.080 back to the days of trading cards, and it presages, 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.120 it's a great word, right, the oncoming trend of lootboxes 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.960 and video games. You know that stuff that everybody loves. 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.880 It doesn't create legal problems around the world. Well, they 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.360 wouldn't find their way into Diablo. That that feature never 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.080 made it to Diablo, but in future games Blizzard would, um, 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.000 let's just say, take full advantage of this concept, and 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.080 they would tweak it for online delivery rather than on 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:02.279 optical discs. Now In Dublow, you play a hero originally 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:06.720 one of three character classes, although expansion sets would expand 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.680 that you know, thus the name, and you would be 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.839 out to defeat a demonic antagonist named Surprise Surprise Diablo, 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.279 who was attempting to gain control of the surface world. 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.200 The game involved lots of clicking with the mouse, like 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.320 lots and lots of clicking like get a new mouse 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.239 every three months. That much clicking. It was a hacken 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:30.560 slash style game, and advancement in the game is largely 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.400 tied to finding better loot to make your character more 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.880 powerful and more resilient to damage. The maps for the 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.560 levels of the game are created by random generations, so 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.320 that the layout is never the same for different playthroughs, 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.880 which made it really interesting. The game featured elaborate at 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.440 least for the time cinematics. Blizzard had already established a 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.480 reputation for inserting a lot of story into their games, 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.800 but now it was as if you were having a 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.280 short c g I film connecting elements of gameplay, and 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.880 it would become another hallmark for Blizzard, which then got 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:08.440 a reputation for increasingly elaborate, highly produced cinematic segments, and 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.560 while it was a bit muted compared to other Blizzard games, 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.040 the sense of humor was still there too. If you 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.560 do encounter Diablo, for example, he would say something in 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:22.160 an incomprehensible demonic language, unless you were recorded and play 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:26.200 it backward, in which case the demonic one would actually say, 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.520 and I'm not making this up, eat your vegetables and 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:35.720 brush after every meal. Evil right. As Condor continued development 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:41.320 on Diablo, things changed for Blizzard. In February, a marketing 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.000 company called c U C International announced it was acquiring 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.960 Davidson and Associates. Now, if you remember from the last episode, 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.680 that was the parent company that owned Blizzard, and it 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.640 was also in the process of acquiring another software company, 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.560 c Era Online game company that I've covered in past episodes. 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.040 The change in ownership wouldn't stop there for Blizzard, but 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:08.240 we'll get to all that. Several months before the scheduled 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.960 launch of Diablo, Blizzard Entertainment, as part of this larger conglomerate, 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:17.560 made an offer to acquire Condor outright, which Condor accepted, 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:20.320 and it would mean that Condor would change its name 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:24.080 and it would become Blizzard North because it was located 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.440 in northern California, while as you know, the original Blizzard 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.560 they were in southern California. While Condor was now officially 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.800 part of Blizzard itself, the division would still enjoy much 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:38.319 of the same freedom, at least at first, that Blizzard 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.880 South had experienced when it was bought by Davidson and associates. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.320 Now this would mean that when Diablo launched, it would 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.520 officially be a Blizzard title, though not developed by the 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.000 original Blizzard team. Blizzard would help out a little bit 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.960 in the development process, particularly when it came to implementing 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.040 a multiplayer feature that wasn't in the original design concept 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.800 for Diablo. The changes to Diablo would mean that ultimately 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.440 it would miss its original deadline for the holiday season 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:11.079 in ninet. Instead, it would publish in January, and despite 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.000 the inopportune launch date, the game would prove to be 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:19.560 a smashing success. That smashing was in mouse buttons. I 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:21.920 might be getting hung up on that. I just remember 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:26.320 really punishing my mouse playing that game. Diablo's success would 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.880 be linked with the rise of a service from Blizzard, 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.839 and that was of course Battle Neet. So, as I mentioned, 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:35.640 the last episode. Warcraft and Warcraft two were both designed 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:37.600 so that players could go head to head against each 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.800 other on a local area area network, or they could 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.160 direct dial if they happen to know the other IP address. 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.600 But you could also use a third party client called 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.200 Collie to trick computers into believing they were part of 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.360 a local area network when in reality they were connecting 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.960 over the Internet. Now that wasn't ideal, as it limited 0:09:58.000 --> 0:09:59.880 the people who had the knowledge and the drive to 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.480 actually make those connections or download the Colleague client, but 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.200 Blizzard employees noted that some companies were starting to come 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.360 up with alternatives. One of those was another project out 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.199 of Westwood Studios. You'll remember that's the company that had 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.199 created dune To that kind of launched the real time 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:21.120 strategy genre, and it was called, appropriately enough, Westwood Chat. 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.440 It was an Internet based chat client that allowed users 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:26.920 to not just chat, but also play games with one 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.400 another online. Blizzard wanted to make something similar to that. 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.480 The result was Battlenet, a server based system in which 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.439 players could log into a remote server and get matched 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.439 up with other players in games like Diablo. In fact, 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:44.000 Diablo was essentially a launch title for the service. You 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.720 could play Diablo as a single player experience on your 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.200 own computer, and you could you could just avoid going 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.000 online entirely, and in fact, that's how people like me 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.160 tended to play the game. But if you wanted to 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.680 play with other folks in a cooperative style game, you 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.520 could use battle Neet to facilitate the connection and that 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.000 would allow that co op game of up to four players. 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:05.760 And best of all, it was a free service and 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.800 started off as a very modest endeavor. In fact, originally 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.320 battle Net was a service that existed on a single 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:17.000 server one PC, a machine that was tucked away under 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.880 a person's desk at Blizzards headquarters, and it was acting 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:23.720 as a sort of administrator. So in those days, battle 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:27.360 net was actually a peer to peer networking service. One 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.600 player's computer would become the host machine and the other 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.280 players connecting to that gaming session would be the clients, 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:35.640 and the battle Neet server just sort of acted as 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.120 an operator to make all these connections. But it wasn't 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.880 actually hosting the game itself. That allowed it to be 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.079 very lightweight, so the service was very lean and it's 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.920 why only one PC was needed to act as a server. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.439 At least Initially, the player computers were really the ones 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:53.400 that we're doing all the heavy lifting. And while it 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:58.480 allowed for easy connectivity, it also opened up some opportunities 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.160 for some shenanigans, because you know, players could pretty easily 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.560 use cheats in their local games. I never really understood 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:09.520 that myself. I mean, what's the point of playing a 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.079 fake character who now can do incredible fake things against 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.960 other fake characters. But then they would take that same quality, 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.600 that same capability, and they would pour it over to 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:22.840 battle Neet matches, and obviously that led to some pretty 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.280 uneven matchups among players. It's not much fun to try 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:28.720 and match your skills against an opponent only to find 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.080 that person has used cheats to create a severely unfair advantage. 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.360 And cheating was so rampant in the early days of 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.560 battle Neet that it threatened to overshadow the service itself. 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:42.480 While Blizzard South aka Blizzard Prime tried to find ways 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.040 to mitigate the cheating online, it was also hard at 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:48.319 work developing the next new game that was a science 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:53.040 fiction RTS that was called StarCraft. Maybe you've heard of it. 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:58.120 The path to publishing wasn't exactly flawless at E three 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.240 before the launch of Diablo and of Battle Neet, Blizzard 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:07.520 revealed StarCraft to a pretty lackluster response. The general consensus 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.480 was that they had really done nothing more than take 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.839 Warcraft and then put a science fiction skin on top 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.520 of it. It was such a bummer of a response 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.920 that Blizzard gradually reduced the number of displays that were 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.200 showing early gameplay footage. At that E three they originally 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.599 had three monitors showing this footage of StarCraft. By the 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.760 end of the show, they had reduced that to one, 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:34.319 and they dedicated all the others to Diablo instead. Based 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.280 off that reaction, I'm sure the company was worried that 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:38.640 StarCraft would never be more than a footnote in the 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.000 company's history. Making things more complicated was the fact that 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.320 the RTS category was becoming a fully fledged genre of 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.400 its own. So you had games like Warcraft and Command 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.640 and Conquer leading the way, but lots of other studios 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.400 were dipping their toes in the game type. Many were 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:57.120 adding new innovations to gameplay, which made it even more 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.800 imperative that Blizzard south revisit the design and in concept 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.240 of StarCraft to turn it into something other than a warcraft. 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.400 To clone to do that, they'd have to go back 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.800 to the drawing board, which meant ditching all the production 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.120 that had been done on that game up to that point. 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:18.199 StarCraft wouldn't totally die, but it would be stored in carbonite. 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.720 Allah Han solo for quite a while. All Right, I've 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.080 got a lot more to say about Blizzard, but before 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:34.840 I get into that, let's take a quick break. Okay, 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.320 we're back. So Blizzard followed up the release of Diablo 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:41.200 with an expansion pack, which was actually developed by a 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:45.800 third party called Synergistic Software. Meanwhile, the team behind Diablo 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.120 was secretly at work on a full blown sequel, which 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.480 would take much longer to develop. Down at Blizzard South, 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:54.800 the developers were hard at work trying to create a 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:58.520 worthy game out of the StarCraft concept. Scrapping all their 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:00.960 work leading up to E three ninety six set them 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:03.520 back to square one, so they focused on the work 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.120 and rebuilt the game from scratch, getting it ready for 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.880 a Spring of release. While it remained a real time 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.880 strategy game, Blizzard made a big move and that the 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.840 three factions you could play each had different units, and 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.240 each of those units had its own abilities that set 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.360 it apart from the units of the other factions. You 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:25.760 couldn't play the game and assume your opponents had the 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.880 same capabilities that you had. You needed to plan to 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.840 defend against their strengths and to try and exploit their weaknesses. 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:37.160 The built in variety meant that strategy would be incredibly important, 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.920 and eager players dove into the game to learn the 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.560 best approach to any given scenario. Battle Net allowed players 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:47.080 to test their skills against each other. At the same time, 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.680 competitive gaming was starting to gain traction, and StarCraft became 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.720 a banner title for the new sport. It was such 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.480 a hit that sales in South Korea alone were more 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.320 than what Blizzard had seen globally for Warcraft two and 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:06.000 for Diablo, and ten years later, on twenty years later, 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.520 it's still a very popular game in competitive play in 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:14.920 South Korea. While Warcraft two was the studio's first breakout hit, 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:19.400 StarCraft would leave it in the dust. It propelled Blizzard 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:23.720 into the position of a world leader in video game development. Now. 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.560 Like Diablo and Warcraft two, Blizzard would tap a third 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.760 party studio to develop expansion packs to StarCraft, but neither 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.720 of the expansion packs produced by those third parties enjoyed 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:38.920 the same success as the base game did, and they 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.760 were criticized for not living up to the standards of 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.560 the original StarCraft game. So Blizzard went and made their 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:50.080 own expansion set called brood War, which gamers preferred and 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.720 they viewed it as a worthy expansion of the base 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.520 campaign of StarCraft. Once again, Blizzard got the message that 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.920 going outside the company to develop for flagship title wasn't 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:04.600 necessarily a good you know, use of their resources or 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.160 their intellectual property. And a couple of other big things 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:13.679 happened in for Blizzard. One was that Alan Adham, the 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.800 prime founder of Blizzard, who had been acting as the 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:21.000 company's president, stepped down from his position. He didn't leave 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.120 the company, he wanted to take a more direct role 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:27.480 in actually designing games. Mike Morheim, another co founder of 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.240 the company, would then take over the role of president 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:34.840 and would remain there for many years. Meanwhile, way above 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:38.639 the heads of the Blizzard crew over at Sendence Software. 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.640 Sentence Software was formed out of the their corporate overlords 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:47.439 at CEUC International. There was a massive, massive scandal, had 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:51.680 nothing to do with Blizzard, but Sendant, the parent company, 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:55.400 was at the heart of it, and they found themselves 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.280 in need of a lot of cash, so in order 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.200 to raise it, they sold off their software division, which 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:04.240 included Blizzard and Sierra Online. They sold it to a 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:08.600 French company called Havas. Havas was in turn swallowed up 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:13.760 by the mass media conglomerate Vivendi, also French, which tells 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:17.399 us that Quagon Gen was right. There's always a bigger fish. 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.800 So now Blizzard, which was still allowed to operate more 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:25.600 or less autonomously, had brand new corporate overwords, and this 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.040 would become a big issue in the near future. So 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:33.879 keeping in mind, this ownership question gets really complicated, I 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.800 feel a lot of empathy. Look up the history of 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:39.360 how stuff works sometime and you'll know what I mean. 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.439 So the other thing that happened wasn't a great story 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:48.600 for Blizzard. In this time period, the company had reached 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.479 out to a Russian video game developer to create a 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.960 point and click adventure style game based off the Warcraft 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.399 intellectual property. Players were to take control of an Orc 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.080 in his quest to become a war lord, the Lord 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.840 of the Clans. However, while the game was in development, 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:09.280 LucasArts announced to adventure games of their own, The third 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:12.760 in the Monkey Island series. I'm a huge Monkey Island 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:17.200 fan and also Grim fan. Dango a true masterpiece of 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.639 a computer game. They're both phenomenal, and they have interesting 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:23.639 stories and they have a great sense of humor. Their 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:28.040 art style is amazing. Meanwhile, the work coming out of 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:32.400 Russia wasn't really living up to Blizzards expectations for their 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.879 adventure game, and language barriers were making it challenging to 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:40.480 manage the project from California, so ultimately, Blizzard made the 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.159 tough decision to scrap the project, even though it was 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.040 probably just a couple of months away from being finished. 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.120 The following year, Blizzard would push Diablo Too back from 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.960 a late release because the game wasn't quite ready yet. 0:19:56.240 --> 0:20:00.440 They also announced plans for Warcraft three, which originally was 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.080 going to have some big changes from the previous titles 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:05.000 in the series. It would have more of a role 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:07.760 playing element, so you would still have some real time 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.000 strategy features, but you would control hero units in the game, 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.760 and the story would unfold as your hero completed quests 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:19.240 and encountered other important characters. After announcing the plans, Blizzard 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.320 got to work, but early demos of their idea didn't 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.200 appeal to anyone on the team. It was generally felt 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:30.560 that the process just was not working. So in two 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.399 thousand they announced that Warcraft three was actually going to 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.960 be a lot more like its predecessors and also worse. 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:41.920 This would mean the game would take longer to develop. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:46.800 Blizzard South would then split into two big camps. One 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.560 was focused on developing Warcraft three. The other group focused 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.080 on a project called Nomad, which was going to be 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:57.400 a brand new intellectual property for the company. Unfortunately, that 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.320 one would also get bogged down and Blizzard would exit 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.560 before it ever got publicly announced. Now, Blizzard hasn't really 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.320 ever said a whole lot about what Nomad was going 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:11.879 to be like, but they did reveal that they intended 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.480 it to be a squad based game set in a 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.960 science fiction genre, and that it was inspired by a 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:22.919 tabletop miniature strategy game called Necromunda, which is part of 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.639 the Warhammer forty k universe, which might be the nerdiest 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:29.520 thing I've ever said, and I'm not judging I play 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.280 these games, guys. But part of the problem was that 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:36.960 the team on Nomad never really agreed exactly where the 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:39.600 balance in the game needed to be. Some wanted it 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:41.840 to be more of a strategy game, similar in some 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:45.520 ways to the RTS genre. Others wanted to have more 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.520 of an RPG focus, a more role playing and story. 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.720 A few folks on the team weren't really crazy about 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:53.760 the idea at all, and they just wanted to work 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.480 on something else, and since it seemed like there wasn't 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.560 a chance that these visions were going to cohere, the 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:03.920 company ultimately decided to cancel it. The Warcraft adventure game 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:08.760 and Nomad weren't the first canceled projects at Blizzard. There 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:10.959 had been an attempt to make a science fiction shooter 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:14.399 game called Crixia in the mid nineties, and there was 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.119 a failed collaboration with Change Links Software to make a 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:22.160 sequel to the space strategy game packs Imperia. Before StarCraft, 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:24.920 some Blizzard developers were working on a different real time 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.240 strategy game with a post apocalyptic sci fi field called 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:32.240 Shattered Nations. And we're gonna talk about some more canceled 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:37.000 games before we finish out this series. Somewhat mitigating player 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.800 disappointment over the changes to Warcraft three was the fact 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.000 that Blizzard North was finally ready to release Diabload too. 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:48.040 In June two thousand, which, like the first game, was 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:52.000 an enormous hit. The graphics for the game only received 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.960 relatively minor upgrades, which threatened to impact player perception about 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.920 the title, but there were lots of improvements in other 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.520 aspects of the game and had a larger scale. And 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:04.920 because the team knew that multiplayer was going to be 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:07.880 a component from the very beginning, they built it into 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:10.800 the design process, so it was much better incorporated than 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:14.840 it was for the first Diablo. This came at a price, however. 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:20.160 The development process for Diablo two was famously brutal. Programmers 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:24.280 and designers were working long hours for a full year. 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:27.479 Sometimes they'd be working more than twenty four hours at 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.040 a stretch in a row, all in an effort to 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:33.359 finish this game. Even when they pushed the game back 0:23:33.400 --> 0:23:37.640