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 with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Love all Things Tech. And in
Speaker 1: our last episode, I talked about the origins of Blizzard
Speaker 1: Entertainment leading up to the acquisition of Condor Incorporated and
Speaker 1: the launch of the battle Neet service upon the release
Speaker 1: of the game Diablo. So we're going to pick up
Speaker 1: from there because it turns out there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that's happened to this relatively young company. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're in a super important time in Blizzard's history
Speaker 1: in this timeline. So Warcraft gave the company momentum and
Speaker 1: set the stage for a sequel, Warcraft Two Tides of Darkness. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the founders of Condor Incorporated reached out to Blizzard, and
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, the two companies had first come
Speaker 1: into contact when they were each developing versions of Justice
Speaker 1: League Task Force. Now, in the time that followed, Condor
Speaker 1: had reached out to a lot of different publishers with
Speaker 1: their idea for Diablo, but they got nowhere then out
Speaker 1: of desperation more than anything else, they turned to Blizzard. Now,
Speaker 1: the pitch was incredibly ambitious. Condor would develop a PC
Speaker 1: based game, which they had never done before, and it
Speaker 1: would be an RPG style game, role playing game, and
Speaker 1: it would marry that with a more action oriented style
Speaker 1: of gameplay. Ultimately, and originally, they were also thinking about
Speaker 1: modeling all their characters using the claymation process. So claymation,
Speaker 1: for those not familiar with the term, is a form
Speaker 1: of stop motion animation. You build the animated stuff out
Speaker 1: of some sort of multiple material, such as you know, clay,
Speaker 1: and you pose them precisely the way you want them
Speaker 1: to look in a particular sequence. Then you take a photo,
Speaker 1: then you adjust the model ever slightly, Then you take
Speaker 1: another photo, and you do that over and over again
Speaker 1: until the sequence of photos follows the entire range of
Speaker 1: motion that you wanted to capture. It's similar to hand
Speaker 1: drawn animation in that way. So if you want to
Speaker 1: show a character swinging a sword, for example, you'll have
Speaker 1: to determine how many frames of animation that will require
Speaker 1: and how far you need to move the model for
Speaker 1: each frame. If you move too far between pictures, you
Speaker 1: get really choppy animation. David Brevic was inspired by an
Speaker 1: arcade game called Primal Rage that used claymation to model
Speaker 1: its characters. Primal Rage was a fighting game akin to
Speaker 1: something like Mortal Kombat or Teken. The monstrous fighters in
Speaker 1: the game, of which there were seven, each required around
Speaker 1: four hundred frames of animation to model all of their movements.
Speaker 1: The process takes a very long time, and it gets
Speaker 1: pretty darned expensive. The end effect can be great, but
Speaker 1: it's an enormous task for even a seasoned video game studio,
Speaker 1: let alone one that had only been around for less
Speaker 1: than two years. Further, dia Blow would require a lot
Speaker 1: more animation than a fighting game with seven characters, unless
Speaker 1: the team were to limit the types of monsters you'd
Speaker 1: encounter in the game. Ultimately, they would choose to ditch
Speaker 1: the stop motion plan. Blizzard was intrigued by Condor's pitch,
Speaker 1: though there may have been some skepticism about whether or
Speaker 1: not Condor could actually pull it off. Blizzard agreed to
Speaker 1: publish the game once it was developed, and they set
Speaker 1: a budget of three hundred thousand dollars for Condor, with
Speaker 1: a goal of publishing in time for the nineteen nine
Speaker 1: six holiday season. Now Condor actually had to build the
Speaker 1: game they had been dreaming of for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: which is a big change from just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: They chose to go with an isometric view, with the
Speaker 1: world being made up of tiles that characters, monsters, and
Speaker 1: objects could inhabit, and originally they wanted to make the
Speaker 1: game turn based. Players would have worked with character limitations
Speaker 1: that would dictate how far they could move during a turn,
Speaker 1: or how frequently they could attack, and so forth. This
Speaker 1: was the game David Brevic wanted to make because it
Speaker 1: was in a style similar to the games he had
Speaker 1: loved playing as a gamer himself. But at some point
Speaker 1: during the development process, the Blizzard team talked to Brevic
Speaker 1: and tried to convince him to change from a turn
Speaker 1: based game to a real time game. Brevick resisted. The
Speaker 1: decision was ultimately put to a vote inside Condor, and
Speaker 1: everyone except Brevic voted to go real time, so Brevick agreed,
Speaker 1: though not before asking for a milestone payment from Blizzard,
Speaker 1: which they agreed to. The Oblow would thus transform from
Speaker 1: a turn based computer RPG into one of the first
Speaker 1: action role playing games, or a RPG acronyms are fun. Also, technically,
Speaker 1: Brevick would say that what he really did was he
Speaker 1: just made the turns last about one a second. So
Speaker 1: it's still a turn based game. It's just those turns
Speaker 1: went really fast. One other thing that was almost a
Speaker 1: part of Diablo, and I found this really interesting. This
Speaker 1: was scrapped before the game would launch, was a concept
Speaker 1: in which players, you know, actual people who would go
Speaker 1: out and buy the game, could then go out and
Speaker 1: buy supplemental stuff to add their games, in the form
Speaker 1: of like a an an expensive c D. You would
Speaker 1: go and buy a CD add on, not a full
Speaker 1: expansion set, but maybe a five dollar c D, and
Speaker 1: and that add on would include things like weapons and
Speaker 1: armor packs or skin packs, stuff like that. It hearkened
Speaker 1: back to the days of trading cards, and it presages,
Speaker 1: it's a great word, right, the oncoming trend of lootboxes
Speaker 1: and video games. You know that stuff that everybody loves.
Speaker 1: It doesn't create legal problems around the world. Well, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't find their way into Diablo. That that feature never
Speaker 1: made it to Diablo, but in future games Blizzard would, um,
Speaker 1: let's just say, take full advantage of this concept, and
Speaker 1: they would tweak it for online delivery rather than on
Speaker 1: optical discs. Now In Dublow, you play a hero originally
Speaker 1: one of three character classes, although expansion sets would expand
Speaker 1: that you know, thus the name, and you would be
Speaker 1: out to defeat a demonic antagonist named Surprise Surprise Diablo,
Speaker 1: who was attempting to gain control of the surface world.
Speaker 1: The game involved lots of clicking with the mouse, like
Speaker 1: lots and lots of clicking like get a new mouse
Speaker 1: every three months. That much clicking. It was a hacken
Speaker 1: slash style game, and advancement in the game is largely
Speaker 1: tied to finding better loot to make your character more
Speaker 1: powerful and more resilient to damage. The maps for the
Speaker 1: levels of the game are created by random generations, so
Speaker 1: that the layout is never the same for different playthroughs,
Speaker 1: which made it really interesting. The game featured elaborate at
Speaker 1: least for the time cinematics. Blizzard had already established a
Speaker 1: reputation for inserting a lot of story into their games,
Speaker 1: but now it was as if you were having a
Speaker 1: short c g I film connecting elements of gameplay, and
Speaker 1: it would become another hallmark for Blizzard, which then got
Speaker 1: a reputation for increasingly elaborate, highly produced cinematic segments, and
Speaker 1: while it was a bit muted compared to other Blizzard games,
Speaker 1: the sense of humor was still there too. If you
Speaker 1: do encounter Diablo, for example, he would say something in
Speaker 1: an incomprehensible demonic language, unless you were recorded and play
Speaker 1: it backward, in which case the demonic one would actually say,
Speaker 1: and I'm not making this up, eat your vegetables and
Speaker 1: brush after every meal. Evil right. As Condor continued development
Speaker 1: on Diablo, things changed for Blizzard. In February, a marketing
Speaker 1: company called c U C International announced it was acquiring
Speaker 1: Davidson and Associates. Now, if you remember from the last episode,
Speaker 1: that was the parent company that owned Blizzard, and it
Speaker 1: was also in the process of acquiring another software company,
Speaker 1: c Era Online game company that I've covered in past episodes.
Speaker 1: The change in ownership wouldn't stop there for Blizzard, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to all that. Several months before the scheduled
Speaker 1: launch of Diablo, Blizzard Entertainment, as part of this larger conglomerate,
Speaker 1: made an offer to acquire Condor outright, which Condor accepted,
Speaker 1: and it would mean that Condor would change its name
Speaker 1: and it would become Blizzard North because it was located
Speaker 1: in northern California, while as you know, the original Blizzard
Speaker 1: they were in southern California. While Condor was now officially
Speaker 1: part of Blizzard itself, the division would still enjoy much
Speaker 1: of the same freedom, at least at first, that Blizzard
Speaker 1: South had experienced when it was bought by Davidson and associates.
Speaker 1: Now this would mean that when Diablo launched, it would
Speaker 1: officially be a Blizzard title, though not developed by the
Speaker 1: original Blizzard team. Blizzard would help out a little bit
Speaker 1: in the development process, particularly when it came to implementing
Speaker 1: a multiplayer feature that wasn't in the original design concept
Speaker 1: for Diablo. The changes to Diablo would mean that ultimately
Speaker 1: it would miss its original deadline for the holiday season
Speaker 1: in ninet. Instead, it would publish in January, and despite
Speaker 1: the inopportune launch date, the game would prove to be
Speaker 1: a smashing success. That smashing was in mouse buttons. I
Speaker 1: might be getting hung up on that. I just remember
Speaker 1: really punishing my mouse playing that game. Diablo's success would
Speaker 1: be linked with the rise of a service from Blizzard,
Speaker 1: and that was of course Battle Neet. So, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the last episode. Warcraft and Warcraft two were both designed
Speaker 1: so that players could go head to head against each
Speaker 1: other on a local area area network, or they could
Speaker 1: direct dial if they happen to know the other IP address.
Speaker 1: But you could also use a third party client called
Speaker 1: Collie to trick computers into believing they were part of
Speaker 1: a local area network when in reality they were connecting
Speaker 1: over the Internet. Now that wasn't ideal, as it limited
Speaker 1: the people who had the knowledge and the drive to
Speaker 1: actually make those connections or download the Colleague client, but
Speaker 1: Blizzard employees noted that some companies were starting to come
Speaker 1: up with alternatives. One of those was another project out
Speaker 1: of Westwood Studios. You'll remember that's the company that had
Speaker 1: created dune To that kind of launched the real time
Speaker 1: strategy genre, and it was called, appropriately enough, Westwood Chat.
Speaker 1: It was an Internet based chat client that allowed users
Speaker 1: to not just chat, but also play games with one
Speaker 1: another online. Blizzard wanted to make something similar to that.
Speaker 1: The result was Battlenet, a server based system in which
Speaker 1: players could log into a remote server and get matched
Speaker 1: up with other players in games like Diablo. In fact,
Speaker 1: Diablo was essentially a launch title for the service. You
Speaker 1: could play Diablo as a single player experience on your
Speaker 1: own computer, and you could you could just avoid going
Speaker 1: online entirely, and in fact, that's how people like me
Speaker 1: tended to play the game. But if you wanted to
Speaker 1: play with other folks in a cooperative style game, you
Speaker 1: could use battle Neet to facilitate the connection and that
Speaker 1: would allow that co op game of up to four players.
Speaker 1: And best of all, it was a free service and
Speaker 1: started off as a very modest endeavor. In fact, originally
Speaker 1: battle Net was a service that existed on a single
Speaker 1: server one PC, a machine that was tucked away under
Speaker 1: a person's desk at Blizzards headquarters, and it was acting
Speaker 1: as a sort of administrator. So in those days, battle
Speaker 1: net was actually a peer to peer networking service. One
Speaker 1: player's computer would become the host machine and the other
Speaker 1: players connecting to that gaming session would be the clients,
Speaker 1: and the battle Neet server just sort of acted as
Speaker 1: an operator to make all these connections. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: actually hosting the game itself. That allowed it to be
Speaker 1: very lightweight, so the service was very lean and it's
Speaker 1: why only one PC was needed to act as a server.
Speaker 1: At least Initially, the player computers were really the ones
Speaker 1: that we're doing all the heavy lifting. And while it
Speaker 1: allowed for easy connectivity, it also opened up some opportunities
Speaker 1: for some shenanigans, because you know, players could pretty easily
Speaker 1: use cheats in their local games. I never really understood
Speaker 1: that myself. I mean, what's the point of playing a
Speaker 1: fake character who now can do incredible fake things against
Speaker 1: other fake characters. But then they would take that same quality,
Speaker 1: that same capability, and they would pour it over to
Speaker 1: battle Neet matches, and obviously that led to some pretty
Speaker 1: uneven matchups among players. It's not much fun to try
Speaker 1: and match your skills against an opponent only to find
Speaker 1: that person has used cheats to create a severely unfair advantage.
Speaker 1: And cheating was so rampant in the early days of
Speaker 1: battle Neet that it threatened to overshadow the service itself.
Speaker 1: While Blizzard South aka Blizzard Prime tried to find ways
Speaker 1: to mitigate the cheating online, it was also hard at
Speaker 1: work developing the next new game that was a science
Speaker 1: fiction RTS that was called StarCraft. Maybe you've heard of it.
Speaker 1: The path to publishing wasn't exactly flawless at E three
Speaker 1: before the launch of Diablo and of Battle Neet, Blizzard
Speaker 1: revealed StarCraft to a pretty lackluster response. The general consensus
Speaker 1: was that they had really done nothing more than take
Speaker 1: Warcraft and then put a science fiction skin on top
Speaker 1: of it. It was such a bummer of a response
Speaker 1: that Blizzard gradually reduced the number of displays that were
Speaker 1: showing early gameplay footage. At that E three they originally
Speaker 1: had three monitors showing this footage of StarCraft. By the
Speaker 1: end of the show, they had reduced that to one,
Speaker 1: and they dedicated all the others to Diablo instead. Based
Speaker 1: off that reaction, I'm sure the company was worried that
Speaker 1: StarCraft would never be more than a footnote in the
Speaker 1: company's history. Making things more complicated was the fact that
Speaker 1: the RTS category was becoming a fully fledged genre of
Speaker 1: its own. So you had games like Warcraft and Command
Speaker 1: and Conquer leading the way, but lots of other studios
Speaker 1: were dipping their toes in the game type. Many were
Speaker 1: adding new innovations to gameplay, which made it even more
Speaker 1: imperative that Blizzard south revisit the design and in concept
Speaker 1: of StarCraft to turn it into something other than a warcraft.
Speaker 1: To clone to do that, they'd have to go back
Speaker 1: to the drawing board, which meant ditching all the production
Speaker 1: that had been done on that game up to that point.
Speaker 1: StarCraft wouldn't totally die, but it would be stored in carbonite.
Speaker 1: Allah Han solo for quite a while. All Right, I've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to say about Blizzard, but before
Speaker 1: I get into that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So Blizzard followed up the release of Diablo
Speaker 1: with an expansion pack, which was actually developed by a
Speaker 1: third party called Synergistic Software. Meanwhile, the team behind Diablo
Speaker 1: was secretly at work on a full blown sequel, which
Speaker 1: would take much longer to develop. Down at Blizzard South,
Speaker 1: the developers were hard at work trying to create a
Speaker 1: worthy game out of the StarCraft concept. Scrapping all their
Speaker 1: work leading up to E three ninety six set them
Speaker 1: back to square one, so they focused on the work
Speaker 1: and rebuilt the game from scratch, getting it ready for
Speaker 1: a Spring of release. While it remained a real time
Speaker 1: strategy game, Blizzard made a big move and that the
Speaker 1: three factions you could play each had different units, and
Speaker 1: each of those units had its own abilities that set
Speaker 1: it apart from the units of the other factions. You
Speaker 1: couldn't play the game and assume your opponents had the
Speaker 1: same capabilities that you had. You needed to plan to
Speaker 1: defend against their strengths and to try and exploit their weaknesses.
Speaker 1: The built in variety meant that strategy would be incredibly important,
Speaker 1: and eager players dove into the game to learn the
Speaker 1: best approach to any given scenario. Battle Net allowed players
Speaker 1: to test their skills against each other. At the same time,
Speaker 1: competitive gaming was starting to gain traction, and StarCraft became
Speaker 1: a banner title for the new sport. It was such
Speaker 1: a hit that sales in South Korea alone were more
Speaker 1: than what Blizzard had seen globally for Warcraft two and
Speaker 1: for Diablo, and ten years later, on twenty years later,
Speaker 1: it's still a very popular game in competitive play in
Speaker 1: South Korea. While Warcraft two was the studio's first breakout hit,
Speaker 1: StarCraft would leave it in the dust. It propelled Blizzard
Speaker 1: into the position of a world leader in video game development. Now.
Speaker 1: Like Diablo and Warcraft two, Blizzard would tap a third
Speaker 1: party studio to develop expansion packs to StarCraft, but neither
Speaker 1: of the expansion packs produced by those third parties enjoyed
Speaker 1: the same success as the base game did, and they
Speaker 1: were criticized for not living up to the standards of
Speaker 1: the original StarCraft game. So Blizzard went and made their
Speaker 1: own expansion set called brood War, which gamers preferred and
Speaker 1: they viewed it as a worthy expansion of the base
Speaker 1: campaign of StarCraft. Once again, Blizzard got the message that
Speaker 1: going outside the company to develop for flagship title wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily a good you know, use of their resources or
Speaker 1: their intellectual property. And a couple of other big things
Speaker 1: happened in for Blizzard. One was that Alan Adham, the
Speaker 1: prime founder of Blizzard, who had been acting as the
Speaker 1: company's president, stepped down from his position. He didn't leave
Speaker 1: the company, he wanted to take a more direct role
Speaker 1: in actually designing games. Mike Morheim, another co founder of
Speaker 1: the company, would then take over the role of president
Speaker 1: and would remain there for many years. Meanwhile, way above
Speaker 1: the heads of the Blizzard crew over at Sendence Software.
Speaker 1: Sentence Software was formed out of the their corporate overlords
Speaker 1: at CEUC International. There was a massive, massive scandal, had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Blizzard, but Sendant, the parent company,
Speaker 1: was at the heart of it, and they found themselves
Speaker 1: in need of a lot of cash, so in order
Speaker 1: to raise it, they sold off their software division, which
Speaker 1: included Blizzard and Sierra Online. They sold it to a
Speaker 1: French company called Havas. Havas was in turn swallowed up
Speaker 1: by the mass media conglomerate Vivendi, also French, which tells
Speaker 1: us that Quagon Gen was right. There's always a bigger fish.
Speaker 1: So now Blizzard, which was still allowed to operate more
Speaker 1: or less autonomously, had brand new corporate overwords, and this
Speaker 1: would become a big issue in the near future. So
Speaker 1: keeping in mind, this ownership question gets really complicated, I
Speaker 1: feel a lot of empathy. Look up the history of
Speaker 1: how stuff works sometime and you'll know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that happened wasn't a great story
Speaker 1: for Blizzard. In this time period, the company had reached
Speaker 1: out to a Russian video game developer to create a
Speaker 1: point and click adventure style game based off the Warcraft
Speaker 1: intellectual property. Players were to take control of an Orc
Speaker 1: in his quest to become a war lord, the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Clans. However, while the game was in development,
Speaker 1: LucasArts announced to adventure games of their own, The third
Speaker 1: in the Monkey Island series. I'm a huge Monkey Island
Speaker 1: fan and also Grim fan. Dango a true masterpiece of
Speaker 1: a computer game. They're both phenomenal, and they have interesting
Speaker 1: stories and they have a great sense of humor. Their
Speaker 1: art style is amazing. Meanwhile, the work coming out of
Speaker 1: Russia wasn't really living up to Blizzards expectations for their
Speaker 1: adventure game, and language barriers were making it challenging to
Speaker 1: manage the project from California, so ultimately, Blizzard made the
Speaker 1: tough decision to scrap the project, even though it was
Speaker 1: probably just a couple of months away from being finished.
Speaker 1: The following year, Blizzard would push Diablo Too back from
Speaker 1: a late release because the game wasn't quite ready yet.
Speaker 1: They also announced plans for Warcraft three, which originally was
Speaker 1: going to have some big changes from the previous titles
Speaker 1: in the series. It would have more of a role
Speaker 1: playing element, so you would still have some real time
Speaker 1: strategy features, but you would control hero units in the game,
Speaker 1: and the story would unfold as your hero completed quests
Speaker 1: and encountered other important characters. After announcing the plans, Blizzard
Speaker 1: got to work, but early demos of their idea didn't
Speaker 1: appeal to anyone on the team. It was generally felt
Speaker 1: that the process just was not working. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand they announced that Warcraft three was actually going to
Speaker 1: be a lot more like its predecessors and also worse.
Speaker 1: This would mean the game would take longer to develop.
Speaker 1: Blizzard South would then split into two big camps. One
Speaker 1: was focused on developing Warcraft three. The other group focused
Speaker 1: on a project called Nomad, which was going to be
Speaker 1: a brand new intellectual property for the company. Unfortunately, that
Speaker 1: one would also get bogged down and Blizzard would exit
Speaker 1: before it ever got publicly announced. Now, Blizzard hasn't really
Speaker 1: ever said a whole lot about what Nomad was going
Speaker 1: to be like, but they did reveal that they intended
Speaker 1: it to be a squad based game set in a
Speaker 1: science fiction genre, and that it was inspired by a
Speaker 1: tabletop miniature strategy game called Necromunda, which is part of
Speaker 1: the Warhammer forty k universe, which might be the nerdiest
Speaker 1: thing I've ever said, and I'm not judging I play
Speaker 1: these games, guys. But part of the problem was that
Speaker 1: the team on Nomad never really agreed exactly where the
Speaker 1: balance in the game needed to be. Some wanted it
Speaker 1: to be more of a strategy game, similar in some
Speaker 1: ways to the RTS genre. Others wanted to have more
Speaker 1: of an RPG focus, a more role playing and story.
Speaker 1: A few folks on the team weren't really crazy about
Speaker 1: the idea at all, and they just wanted to work
Speaker 1: on something else, and since it seemed like there wasn't
Speaker 1: a chance that these visions were going to cohere, the
Speaker 1: company ultimately decided to cancel it. The Warcraft adventure game
Speaker 1: and Nomad weren't the first canceled projects at Blizzard. There
Speaker 1: had been an attempt to make a science fiction shooter
Speaker 1: game called Crixia in the mid nineties, and there was
Speaker 1: a failed collaboration with Change Links Software to make a
Speaker 1: sequel to the space strategy game packs Imperia. Before StarCraft,
Speaker 1: some Blizzard developers were working on a different real time
Speaker 1: strategy game with a post apocalyptic sci fi field called
Speaker 1: Shattered Nations. And we're gonna talk about some more canceled
Speaker 1: games before we finish out this series. Somewhat mitigating player
Speaker 1: disappointment over the changes to Warcraft three was the fact
Speaker 1: that Blizzard North was finally ready to release Diabload too.
Speaker 1: In June two thousand, which, like the first game, was
Speaker 1: an enormous hit. The graphics for the game only received
Speaker 1: relatively minor upgrades, which threatened to impact player perception about
Speaker 1: the title, but there were lots of improvements in other
Speaker 1: aspects of the game and had a larger scale. And
Speaker 1: because the team knew that multiplayer was going to be
Speaker 1: a component from the very beginning, they built it into
Speaker 1: the design process, so it was much better incorporated than
Speaker 1: it was for the first Diablo. This came at a price, however.
Speaker 1: The development process for Diablo two was famously brutal. Programmers
Speaker 1: and designers were working long hours for a full year.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'd be working more than twenty four hours at
Speaker 1: a stretch in a row, all in an effort to
Speaker 1: finish this game. Even when they pushed the game back
Speaker 1: from to mid two thousand, there really wasn't any room
Speaker 1: to breathe. Blizzard, both North and South, were not strangers
Speaker 1: to this kind of cycle. Commonly in the biz we
Speaker 1: refer to it as crunch. You see it in all
Speaker 1: forms of production, but it has a seriously negative impact
Speaker 1: on work life balance, as in there isn't any balance
Speaker 1: between work in life. Today, companies are becoming a little
Speaker 1: more sensitive to going into crunch mode as the optics,
Speaker 1: as they say, aren't very good. There have been some
Speaker 1: rather high profile cases of employees putting their personal lives
Speaker 1: and health at risk just to finish a game. Cases
Speaker 1: like the Diablo to development process would become much more common,
Speaker 1: and not just at Blizzard, as time would go on. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're a general gamer, you know, the average stereotypical gamer,
Speaker 1: you're probably either not aware or you don't care about
Speaker 1: the plight of those actually toiling to create the games
Speaker 1: that you play. But one thing that the average gamer
Speaker 1: does tend to be quite vocal about our problems with games.
Speaker 1: Don't know if you've ever been on the internet, but
Speaker 1: they're not shy about saying that kind of thing. Diablo's
Speaker 1: biggest problem early on was that it was so popular
Speaker 1: that everyone was trying to go online and it was
Speaker 1: crashing the battle Neet servers, Which is the best kind
Speaker 1: of apology you have to give to your public guys,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we're so awesome that you have to play
Speaker 1: our game and you're destroying our server system. We're so sorry,
Speaker 1: thank you, But yes, that was one of the big issues.
Speaker 1: This also would mark when Blizzard would veer away from
Speaker 1: that pure networking approach that I talked about earlier that
Speaker 1: they had created with battle NEETs. So with the old method,
Speaker 1: it was incredibly easy for cheaters to exploit the system.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were hosting games on their own computers,
Speaker 1: so entering into multiplayer games with an unfair advantage was
Speaker 1: very easy. You could grief other players as well, because
Speaker 1: Diablo had friendly fire on so you have an overpowered
Speaker 1: character who blasts fireballs everywhere and then you're the only
Speaker 1: one standing. Ha ha ha. Isn't that fun? Well. The
Speaker 1: way that they decided to address this was by completely
Speaker 1: changing the architecture of battle Neet. So they went with
Speaker 1: a more traditional server clients set up in which Blizzard
Speaker 1: would run the games on its servers and players would
Speaker 1: log in to access the games, and that helped out
Speaker 1: on the abuse that they had seen in the previous
Speaker 1: Diablo game. It's really only possible because we had seen
Speaker 1: a greater rollout of broadband technology at that point. The
Speaker 1: same team that made Diablo two would work on the
Speaker 1: expansion set called the Lord of Destruction, which added more
Speaker 1: features to the base Diablo two game. Blizzard made the
Speaker 1: decision early on to essue third party studios. They had
Speaker 1: not had any good real experiences with that anyway, and
Speaker 1: they said, you know, it just makes more sense for
Speaker 1: us to do it ourselves if we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: So they had the same team that made Diablo to
Speaker 1: make the expansion Set and Low and Behold. People liked it.
Speaker 1: Lord of Destruction launched in June two thousand one, just
Speaker 1: one year after Diablo two had come out, and it
Speaker 1: was another success for the team up at Blizzard North.
Speaker 1: They would then turn their sides on developing yet another
Speaker 1: Diablo game, which would have been Diablo three. But if
Speaker 1: you can tell from that language, it would not turn
Speaker 1: out the way the team imagined it would. That will
Speaker 1: be more uh for part three of this series race,
Speaker 1: but we'll get a little bit into it. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: team that had been developing Nomad were hard at work
Speaker 1: on a brand new project. Their goal was to create
Speaker 1: a game in which hundreds, maybe thousands of people could
Speaker 1: explore simultaneously. It would be a persistent online world. Players
Speaker 1: would control characters they created and explore the world. They
Speaker 1: would take on quests that would join other players, making factions.
Speaker 1: They'd work together and coordinated raids on dungeons and opposing
Speaker 1: player factions. They wanted to make a massively multiplayer online
Speaker 1: role playing game or m m O RPG, and when
Speaker 1: they looked across their collection of i P they decided
Speaker 1: that the Warcraft universe made the most sense to adapt
Speaker 1: into that format, and so work began on World of Warcraft. Now,
Speaker 1: MMOs were not a new thing even in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's. Games like Ultima Online and ever Quest originally
Speaker 1: debuted in the mid to late ease and MMOs were
Speaker 1: a really attractive type of game to develop. I'll explain why. See,
Speaker 1: you design a compelling game. That's step one. It has
Speaker 1: to be something that people want to play. That means
Speaker 1: you can then get, if you're lucky, a nice large
Speaker 1: base of players. Moreover, the general business strategy was to
Speaker 1: charge a subscription fee every month for each player. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that these players were going out and
Speaker 1: buying your game at full price. I mean they were,
Speaker 1: but they were also paying for the privilege to continue
Speaker 1: to play the game. In return, you indicate that you're
Speaker 1: you're going to keep building content and you're going to
Speaker 1: roll out new stuff for players to experience over time.
Speaker 1: But really, what it means is that a game becomes
Speaker 1: an ongoing stream of revenue. Best yet, with most games,
Speaker 1: you would sigh once it became pretty clear you would
Speaker 1: hit your saturation point. Right Like, if you had a
Speaker 1: traditional game, then eventually you hit the point where sale
Speaker 1: are gonna start to drop off, it would be pretty
Speaker 1: obvious you weren't going to see any more dramatic jumps
Speaker 1: in sales figures. But with MMOs that didn't matter as
Speaker 1: much because once you had your initial player base, they'd
Speaker 1: still be paying you that monthly subscription fee, even if
Speaker 1: you only sold a relatively small number of copies. Once
Speaker 1: those initial sales died down, you'd still be sitting on
Speaker 1: a nice monthly revenue stream. Now, that didn't mean the
Speaker 1: game immediately launched right away when they announced it. Nope,
Speaker 1: it would take a few more years before it was
Speaker 1: ready to rule out to players. But the course have
Speaker 1: been laid for one of Blizzard's biggest success stories. But
Speaker 1: before we get to the success, we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: little more heartbreak. It's my favorite part. In fact, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to really revel in this. So let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, I alluded to this before the break.
Speaker 1: We're coming up to one of the big heartbreaks in
Speaker 1: canceled game history. This is legendary in the world of
Speaker 1: computer games when you talk about vapor were so. While
Speaker 1: Blizzard was hard at work developing Diablo three and Warcraft
Speaker 1: three and World of Warcraft, as well as starting to
Speaker 1: lay out plans for a full StarCraft sequel, the company
Speaker 1: also reached out to another developer to make an entirely
Speaker 1: different type of game based on Blizzards intellectual property. This
Speaker 1: game would be a science fiction third person shooter, a
Speaker 1: console game set in blizzards StarCraft universe, co developed with
Speaker 1: a studio called Nihilistic Games. I guess they just didn't
Speaker 1: believe in anything. Blizzard announced these plans at the two
Speaker 1: thousand to Tokyo Game Show, and it was going to
Speaker 1: be called StarCraft Ghost and boy, what a fitting title
Speaker 1: that turned out to be. Now, the goal was to
Speaker 1: make this console action shooter because one of the challenges
Speaker 1: Blizzard was facing was that's real time strategy games were
Speaker 1: hard to translate to a console experience. A controller doesn't
Speaker 1: really offer you the type of speed and precision that
Speaker 1: a keyboard or mouse would, and those are very important
Speaker 1: elements of a real time strategy game. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, Blizzard recognized that console gamers represented a huge
Speaker 1: market and that's one that the company wasn't really able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of with most of the games that
Speaker 1: it was producing, So that helped motivate the team to
Speaker 1: to get this project underway. Now. At the announcement, Blizzards
Speaker 1: stated that they intended for StarCraft Ghost to come out
Speaker 1: for the quote next generation end quote of video game consoles.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand two, if you look at what
Speaker 1: were the state of the art consoles at the time,
Speaker 1: you had the Nintendo GameCube, the original Xbox, and the
Speaker 1: PlayStation two. So the next generation of consoles wouldn't come
Speaker 1: out for a few years, right, They announced it in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, But the Xbox three sixty wouldn't come
Speaker 1: out to two thousand five, and the WE and the
Speaker 1: p S three wouldn't come out until two thousand six.
Speaker 1: So this announcement was made well in advance of any
Speaker 1: game coming out, and sometimes that can come back to
Speaker 1: bite you on the butt, since a lot can change
Speaker 1: over the years. Or maybe they intended to develop for
Speaker 1: the GameCube, the Xbox, and the PS two and maybe
Speaker 1: it just didn't work out. Things did not go smoothly
Speaker 1: on the development front. Now I'm gonna stick with this
Speaker 1: story for a bit, then I'll get back to the
Speaker 1: rest of Blizzard. The company was not happy with how
Speaker 1: things were going with Nihilistic, and then the two companies
Speaker 1: would part ways in June two thousand four, with the
Speaker 1: game still unfinished. Blizzard then signed an agreement with another
Speaker 1: development studio called Swinging Ape Studios to help finish this game.
Speaker 1: Not much was said about the game, other than a
Speaker 1: revelation in two thousand five that Blizzard had decided to
Speaker 1: cancel a version of it for the game Cube, but
Speaker 1: the other versions were still active development. In two thousand six,
Speaker 1: Blizzard published a StarCraft Ghost novel, which to date is
Speaker 1: really the only published piece of content from StarCraft Ghost
Speaker 1: from Blizzard. It became a famous example of vaporware, right
Speaker 1: up there with Duke Knewcombe Forever, which actually did come
Speaker 1: out at one point. It was terrible, but it came out.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be until two thousand fourteen when Mike Moreheim
Speaker 1: would finally say publicly that the game had in fact
Speaker 1: been canceled and it wasn't just in cold storage twelve
Speaker 1: years after they announced it. Now, between the announcement of
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft and the actual launch of the game,
Speaker 1: Blizzard would publish the third full game in the Warcraft series,
Speaker 1: Warcraft three. Now. As I mentioned earlier, the version that
Speaker 1: Blizzard had talked about several years previous was different from
Speaker 1: what the company actually produced. In the original concept, heroes
Speaker 1: in the game would essentially be playable characters, marrying the
Speaker 1: real time strategy and role playing game genres and giving
Speaker 1: players a chance to shape a story. In the actual
Speaker 1: Warcraft three, the hero units were there, but they were
Speaker 1: more like specialized game pieces that could do things that
Speaker 1: other units couldn't. They weren't characters, and there wasn't really
Speaker 1: an RPG factor in the game. It did feature some
Speaker 1: three D gameplay, which was a new thing for the
Speaker 1: Warcraft series, and it also featured the most extravagant cut
Speaker 1: scenes Blizzard had featured in a game up to that point.
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, it was right around this time that
Speaker 1: those of us who were paying attention to Blizzard were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, they could just package up their cinematics and
Speaker 1: release them as a c g I movie. But it's
Speaker 1: actually a little too early in the timeline for me
Speaker 1: to talk about Warcraft the movie right now, but don't worry,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it. So the Blizzard team would then
Speaker 1: go on to work for an expansion pack for the
Speaker 1: base Warcraft three game. It was called Frozen Throne, which
Speaker 1: every time I said it out loud before I recorded it,
Speaker 1: I said throzen Frone, and I was sure I was
Speaker 1: going to do it again. It was actually going through
Speaker 1: my mind just now, just letting you guys get an
Speaker 1: insight into how Jonathan works, because I haven't done that
Speaker 1: podcast yet. Like Rude War and Lord of Destruction, Blizzard
Speaker 1: actually used the exact same development team that worked on
Speaker 1: the original game to make the expansion pack, which helped
Speaker 1: ensure that the quality would remain the same. In two
Speaker 1: thousand three, Blizzard North experienced an enormous shake up. Several
Speaker 1: people in the executive management and lead developer levels had
Speaker 1: grown disenchanted with Vivendi that's the parent company for the
Speaker 1: whole shebang. Right there was uncertainty about whether or not
Speaker 1: Vivendi was going to spin off the game's division, or
Speaker 1: it might sell it off to yet another owner, and
Speaker 1: all of that uncertainty was making it very difficult to
Speaker 1: plan development cycles for games. After numerous communications issues and
Speaker 1: worries about the corporate direction of Avendy and whether Blizzard
Speaker 1: North was even being listened to, a whole slew of
Speaker 1: Blizzard North folks just up and left. That included the
Speaker 1: founders of the company, so Max and Eric Schaefer and
Speaker 1: David Brevic, who all founded Condor Incorporated. They left with
Speaker 1: some other high level employees and they formed a new
Speaker 1: company that they called Flagship Studios. Seems like they were
Speaker 1: maybe thumbing their nose at Vendy a little bit, saying
Speaker 1: that they made the flagship game for Blizzard. Another group
Speaker 1: of influential employees from Blizzard North also left, creating a
Speaker 1: different game studio called Castaway Games. Also seems like there
Speaker 1: might be some shade being thrown there anyway. The departures
Speaker 1: through the development of Diablo three into total disarray. The
Speaker 1: following year, Blizzard South would also see a very big
Speaker 1: name departure. Alan Adham, the founder who was the reason
Speaker 1: that Blizzard even existed, decided he had endured enough stress
Speaker 1: and long hours. You're remember he stepped down from president
Speaker 1: a few years earlier, but he figured now was time
Speaker 1: to try something new it's time to get into the
Speaker 1: exciting world of corporate finance. I'm not even making that up.
Speaker 1: Someone chose to go from video game studio to corporate finance.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand four he resigned from Blizzard. He
Speaker 1: had been the motivating force that convinced the other two
Speaker 1: founders of the company, Frank Pierce and Mike Moreheim, to
Speaker 1: join with him to create this crazy, risky venture. And
Speaker 1: now he was gone from the company, though he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be gone forever. That right, there's what we call foreshadow
Speaker 1: and but I won't get back to that until the
Speaker 1: next episode, so just be patient. Okay. Moreheim had already
Speaker 1: been serving as president, so actually the company didn't have
Speaker 1: too much interruption in its day to day operations. Moreheim
Speaker 1: oversaw Blizzards acquisition of the aforementioned Swinging Apes Studios, the
Speaker 1: one that had been working on StarCraft Ghost, and it
Speaker 1: would get renamed into Blizzard Console. Now, all the turmoil
Speaker 1: might have made it seem like the company that had
Speaker 1: so recently been on top could collapse in on itself,
Speaker 1: but in the fall of two thousand four, Blizzard published
Speaker 1: a game that would ensure their longevity. This was, of course,
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, the M M O RPG that would
Speaker 1: set a new standard of success for the genre. To
Speaker 1: say the game was a hit would be a severe understatement.
Speaker 1: It would become one of the biggest money makers in
Speaker 1: video games history. So in our next episode, I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the evolution of World of Warcraft and how
Speaker 1: Blizzard would periodically inject new life into the game with
Speaker 1: various expansion packs, world resets, and other strategies. I'll also
Speaker 1: talk about the final fate of Blizzard North, which spoiler
Speaker 1: alert is not a happy one, and will take a
Speaker 1: closer look at some of the controversies that Blizzard has
Speaker 1: had to weather more free recently. You know, like what
Speaker 1: happens when a popular gamer suddenly expresses support for Hong
Speaker 1: Kong while your company is simultaneously trying to make a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money in China. But all of that
Speaker 1: will come in the next episode. If you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, well I got
Speaker 1: some suggestions for you, buddy. You can email me addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or draw
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle for
Speaker 1: both of those. For the show is text Stuff H S.
Speaker 1: W don't forget to visit our website, that's tech stuff
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. You'll find a link to an archive
Speaker 1: of every ever love An episode I've ever recorded, all
Speaker 1: twelve hundred of them. So go take a search before
Speaker 1: you suggest something, because chances are I've talked about it already.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll probably talk about it again. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what I talked about if I'm being honest. Also, hey,
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