As the company behind immensely popular games like World of Warcraft, Diablo IV, and Overwatch 2, Blizzard Entertainment has always been one of gaming’s megapowers.
Now, a new book delves into the company’s long and complicated history. Play Nice : The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment , is the latest book from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier . It begins at Blizzard’s creation, goes through its success with hits like Warcraft III, and culminates with its recent struggles, including feuds with parent company Activision, the 2021 sexual harassment lawsuit, and the impact of Microsoft’s 2023 acquisition of the company.
Pax Imperia 2 and Crixa Blizzard Entertainment attempted to publish games made by other developers in the 1990s. This included a sequel to the empire-building real-time strategy game Pax Imperia: Eminent Dominant and a “top-down shooter made by a small studio in Boston” called Crixa. Both were canceled, although Play Nice doesn’t go into specifics as to why they were canned.
Sorcerer and Zork Zero designer Steve Meretzky was brought in to see if there was a way to save the game and increase its quality without spending much more money. Meretzky would write up design documents on how to improve the game, but a few weeks after doing so, he got a call that Blizzard had canceled the game.
Diablo for Game Boy After the release of Diablo II, a lot of Blizzard North’s leadership took sabatticals or had a very laid-back management style when present. Play Nice says this meant that there were some developers who “broke off to follow whims that never materialized, like a version of Diablo for Nintendo’s Game Boy.”
Nomad In 1998, cinematics department developer Duane Stinnett pitched a game called Nomad. It was a postapocalyptic game inspired by Necromunda that had some “outlandish concept art featuring surreal depictions of turtles and ostriches.” Stinnett struggled to fully form and explain how its gameplay would work, so Blizzard decided to pursue a Warcraft MMO inspired by EverQuest instead. That project would become World of Warcraft.
Hearthstone and Marvel Snap’s Ben Brode, who worked for Blizzard’s creative development department at the time, tried to convince Blizzard to release the multiplayer portion of StarCraft: Ghost as a budget Xbox Live title. That didn’t happen, with Brode telling Schreier, “Blizzard was not very good at jumping on opportunities.”
Hades Team 3 Director Josh Mosqueira was given free rein to explore what was next for the Diablo franchise. First was a game code-named Hades. “The camera would be over-the-shoulder rather than isometric; the combat would be punchier, akin to the Batman: Arkham series; and the game would have permadeath,” Play Nice explains. Unfortunately, Team 3 struggled to adapt the Batman: Arkham combat formula to multiplayer, and Mosqueira became hard to track down.
World of StarCraft After the success of World of Warcraft, a similar treatment for Starcraft was considered. “The natural next step seemed like a World of StarCraft, but they struggled to envision StarCraft lore fitting into an MMORPG, so instead they decided to develop a new fictional universe,” Play Nice reveals.
Orbis As part of an incubation program Allan Adham started after returning to Blizzard in 2016, a Warcraft game that played like Pokemon Go, code-named Orbis, was in development. Orbis was eventually canceled because of developer attrition, its scope creep, the pandemic, and unengaging combat. The original version of WarCraft III: Reforged Warcraft III: Reforged was originally an ambitious reimaging of the RTS. It would’ve had a rewritten script to bring its lore more in line with World of Warcraft’s and some missions and characters would have been rdesigned. These concepts were eventually dropped due to a lack of time and funding, and Warcraft III: Reforged was hated upon its release in January 2020.
Activision Blizzard Blizzard Entertainment Jason Schreier Overwatch Play Nice Starcraft Starcraft Ghost Titan Warcraft Warcraft Adventures
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