The Path of the Blizzard

Before That MMO...

Given those changes, and the fact that the company's moved from a 30-man development team on the original StarCraft to having its smallest of a multitude of teams being twice that size, is the developer at all recognisable from the pre-WoW days?

"It was much, much smaller," says executive producer and WoW's original lead designer Rob Pardo. "Back then we were working on one game at a time, which was StarCraft, and that was pretty much the whole studio - at least down here in Irvine. We still had the Blizzard North studio, but down in Irvine we all fit in one small building with two floors.

"Certainly on the development side [it's hard to recognise the company from back then]. We have a lot of the same sorts of values, but it's definitely much harder to maintain some things, like company values and gameplay philosophy, once you're as big as we are now."

Talk to any Blizzard employee for long enough and the conversation is likely to come back to those values in some shape or form, because, as both men explain: Blizzard is all about the games.

A Recipe for Success?

In a lot of ways, for anybody searching for that elusive recipe for success, Blizzard's methods aren't of much use. They prioritise the long term view and try to avoid making any decisions that offer only short term benefit, while the internal mantra reads: "Developers rule the day" - a rule which helps the company on any number of levels.

"You'll always find with Blizzard that we have the long-term view on everything," says Sams. "Sometimes, when we sit in meeting rooms and talk about certain things, it's a very common conversation point when we talk about going down a particular road as a short-term decision - and why is it that we think making a short-term decision is the right one for the company, the employees, or the gamers?

"Traditionally what happens is that if we're looking to make a short-term decision it's oftentimes overruled before we do it, because we always have the view that doing the thing that's going to have a mid- or long-term investment for the company, employees and gamers is going to be the right one.

"While it might not bring us the most revenue or benefit immediately, we always take the position that if you do the right thing, that in the mid- or long-term that's always going to be the better answer - the thing that's going to deliver the best results and make people the most delighted... the gamers, the employees, and ultimately because we're a public company, I believe making those decisions is in the best interest of the shareholders as well because they'll see a lot more value creation.

"Short-term target shooting is, in my opinion, not the right answer - it's making sure that the company is built to last, and delivers year-in, year-out on its promises, both on a financial perspective but also on a quality and product experience perspective, which is a key foundation. Blizzard's all about making the best games in the world. All the other stuff comes along with it."

Of course, many will point out, it's an easy view to take when you've got a billion-dollar product in your back pocket - one which, it should be pointed out, challenges the might of the Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto franchises put together.