TechStuff Gets Caught in a Blizzard

So since we've no place to go, well, you know, yeah, somehow, I you know, he never tells me what the quote is before we start, and I had a feeling actually predicted this one in my head. But there's going to be that particular song. H Well, then, well, before we talk about what our topic is, I have a Jeopardy challenge for you. All right, you ready? Now here is your answer. This popular massively multiplayer online role playing game was featured in a question on Jeopardy is College We

in two thousand five? What is World of Warcraft? You didn't buzz in? So I'm sorry, We're taking all of your money and we're going to break your legs. This is this is how he plays the Predictions game too. That is yes, I will change the rules so that

I win, no matter what. No, that is correct. We are going to talk today not about World of Warcraft specifically Alba, that will definitely be a large part of the conversation, but about Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard, the company behind such big hits as World of Warcraft, Warcraft, StarCraft, and actually I thought we were going to talk about silicon and synapse. That is in fact where we start.

Our story officially begins at u c l A in around n that's the University of California at Los Angeles, thank you for those of you not in the now.

So they were at UCLA, and at UCLA there was a student, a computer science student named Allan Adam who met a fellow he actually, according to him, his official story about how he met, uh Mike Moreheim was that Alan was sitting in the computer lab and was typing away Tappy, Tappy, tappy, and then decided that he needed to get up and get himself a hot beverage and

maybe a quick trip to the gents. So he locks himself out of his computer and leaves and he comes back, turns on his computer again, gets a ray into types of his password and it launches. Meanwhile, Michael Moreheim says, Hey, there, big guy, I have a question for you. How did you make it so that your computer unlocked automatically while you were away? I had to lock it again for you.

And then then the process of their conversation, they find out the most unlikely of coincidences, that Adam and Mike both were using the same password for their computers. That is there, that is That's the way Alan tell the story. Mike tells a different story. Mike story is that he saw this fellow who was in his uh, his a couple of his computer science classes, and this is their senior year at UCLA, and uh he sees this guy and he thinks, this fellow looks like he's from Israel,

and he looks really smart. So he walks up to him and says, what part of Israel are you from? And Alan says, I'm from Egypt. Those are the two stories that they tell. Yeah, there's an official like Blizzard retrospective video which is actually pretty cool. I really recommend you watch it if you if you're into, like just

want to know more about the history of the company. Um. The reason why that video was posted was because this year, when we're recording this podcast is the twentieth anniversary of that of the founding of the company. Because once Alan graduated, he decided he wanted to make video games. Actually, he knew he wanted to make video games even before he had graduated college, and so he wanted to create a company.

And he called upon Mike Morheim to join him, and Mike was working at uh Western Digital at the time, and he left the company because Mike had graduated about three months before Alan did, but he left Western Digital to come and work with Alan at this new company, which probably upset Mike's family a bit because there you were working for alish established company with a with an actual like revenue generating plan and everything, and then striking out to form this this game's company. Uh. It was

probably a nerve wracking experience. Uh that he also called upon a second friend. Alan had met another person in the computer science department named Frank Pierce, and he called upon Frank Pierce as well and said, Hey, I'm starting up this video game company. Would you like to join me. Now, Frank had also gone to UCLA and uh was did not know Mike. So Frank and Mike didn't know each

there the connecting element here is allan yes. But Frank decides to come over and he actually left another established company called Rockwell. Yes, he left Rockwell to go and join this new company, which, as Chris has revealed, was called Silicon and Synapse. Wow. What a catchy name. Yeah, they there are reasons behind that name. Well. First of all, silicon, of course, is the basis for a lot of our electronics. That's the silicon chip. It's the whole the whole foundation

for the modern transistor. Uh. That was that where that's where the whole silicon part came from. Synaps of course, meaning that the connections in your brain, the stuff that fires off that you can complete thoughts. So to them, they thought this is a great idea. But according to their video, other people just didn't get it. First of all, they thought that silicon was the material that went into breast augmentation surgery. That would be silicone. That would be silicone.

But other people were like, why are you calling your company after boobies, And they said, we're not calling our company after boobies. We are calling our company. But you know, you tell that story. And then the other response to

get us what's a synapse? Now? I kind of like the name Silicon and Synapse because, for one thing, it reminds me of other uh companies or other products that have blank and blank, for example, Dungeons and Dragons, And these guys clearly had at least some love for the old Dungeons and Dragons role playing system because a lot of the stuff they worked on had that kind of

flare to it. So the first few years they're working under the title of Silicon and synaps the company name of Silicon and Synapse, and they had done work previously in their college years with companies like Interplay. Do you know what kind of games Interplay made off top of your head? Um? Well, I do remember some Interplay titles yum and uh, but I don't remember any of them off the top of Some big names would include like Balter's Gate and Descent, and the original Fallout games were

Interplay games. Uh. And then they also had done some work for data Soft, which is another game company. They did things like Zaxon and Pole Position and Time and Magic. So um, the following statement is a joke. So then all of a sudden, Silicon and Synapse made World of warcraft and lots of money. No. Uh. First, the first thing they started to do is they started working on ports from certain platforms into other platforms. So so when a game is made for a particular platform, say the

PC or or Windows. Let's say, and you wanted to write a version of it for the Macintosh, you would port the game over, the original code over to work on a different type of computers. What we're saying, which could take quite a bit of time because as we know, these different operators is ms uh don't necessarily support the same kind of models, So you would have to go in and re like you've built all the resources in your code, but now you've got to repurpose it for

different types of code. And uh. They started porting Amiga and Mac titles. Strangely enough, one of their first ports was for a game that I loved back in the early nineties called Battle Chess. Yes, so Battle Chess, in case you have never seen, it was a game of chess.

It was you know, played out on a chessboard. But the the the figures that you're moving, the chess pieces you're moving around are actually three D modeled or well, I guess they were originally two d rendered um uh cartoonish figures, so your ponds look like little foot soldiers. The queen is this slinky uh, deadly woman who who dispatches her enemies in creative ways. And there were different animations when you would take a piece, so let's say, you know, pawn takes pawn, it would play out as

a little battle on your screen for that square. Now, the way battle chess worked was that you would if you made the move to take a square, that was the piece that was going to win every time. It wasn't like it had inserted some sort of element of chance where you would try and take us square and your piece would end up getting defeated. That didn't happen, but the animations were very cute. And so that was

one of the first ports they began to work on. Um. They also uh and they poured that over took for windows in the compose sixty four. Actually even that late in the game, so to speak. And then the first do you know what the first game they developed was the first the first game they developed, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a port. It was a game that they created from the ground up. It was it was called RPM Racing. Okay, all right, I thought you were going to mention Death

and Return of Superman before you got to that. Oh no, I don't know this. Why don't you talk about that? Well, I don't know a ton of uh, you know, a ton of information about that specific game, but uh, one of the the articles I used as a reference mentioned Battle Chess two and and the Death and Return of Superman, which was released in an example of a port that they had done. And they were sort of cruising along before they got to the point where they were developing

their own titles. Well, they did develop a couple of titles before that, but it was for the S and S Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the Super Famicom if you prefer um, because the first one they did with that was in ninety two for RPM Racing, and then in ninety three they released one called Rock and Roll Racing, which was one of the first games for the Nintendo to feature the Supernintendo to feature rock and roll music.

But that was like again, that was for the Super ne S. That wasn't a PC game or or mad game whatever. It's not a computer game. That was a console game. So they've done a few console games just a few they're more known for, at least today, they're more known for their their computer titles rather than their con soul titles. UH. But this was kind of where they started to develop their art style and they hired a few artists. Had some great stories in that video.

I was talking about about the weird interview process and they're playing it really fast and loose because these were all guys who were fresh off college and had never really done this before. So they had a kind of relaxed way of going about business. But they really working

for them. And the titles that they developed ended up winning awards for RPM Racing I think, or maybe it was Rock and Roll Racing one, uh, the title the best racing Game of the Year that came out and uh and and so they were doing well, but they still hadn't moved on to doing computer games. They also developed a game for the Supertantendo entertainment system called The Lost Vikings, which ended up being very popular. It was originally so the the original idea was that was going

to be kind of like Lemmings. And if you don't if you're not familiar with the game Limings and Lemmings, you your task is to guide a group of little limings from one side of a screen to another side of the screen, and uh, and you assign specific tasks to particular livings to try and create a pathway for

the livings to get there safely. And the livings will just walk in a in a in a direction until they encounter an obstacle or they die, and of course some of them are doomed another in order to make the rest of the herd, you might have to explode

one on purpose. So yeah, now, now Blizzard did not make Limings, but when they thought that the Livings game was really interesting and so originally The Lost Vikings was going to be a game where you would have, you know, around a hundred different kinds of vikings that could do

different tasks. But through the development process they decided to narrow that down and then they got down to five vikings, and then by the time they actually got to the point where they're putting the game together, they just it on three vikings, and using the three vikings you would go through a series of puzzles. So it ultimately was

a puzzle game, but again it was very popular. One an award for the Best Puzzle Game that year, and then and ninety three, uh Silicon sonerhaps throws in the booby towel and decides to rename their company Chaos Studios, Yes, which lasted for a few months, and then they changed your name again to Blizzard Entertainment. All this stuff. While it's not as glamorous as some of the stuff they've done in the last say, fifteen years, over those first three or four years, they really were making a name

for themselves. And then no pun intended with the name changes names for themselves, um because a company named Davidson and Associates acquired the company in ten and also for ten million dollars um. So you know, just even as a a fledgling company, uh, Chaos Studios was becoming known for its work and it was obvious that these these guys knew what they were doing. Yeah, And actually that that ended up getting really complicated too, because so Blizzard

gets purchased by Davidson and Associates. Davidson Associates gets purchased by a company called c U C International see you see International then goes on to merge with a company called h F S Corporation, and the new parent company is called Sendent c e N d E n T and oh do you Oh I have D E N T. Interesting, But anyway, it's uh, that's the company that also owns

Sierra Online. So now you've got Sierra Online and Blizzard Entertainment are kind of mashed together as a division within this parent company called Sendant and uh, we'll get back to send It and a little bit, but we're still in right now. And that's also when demos begin to circulate in that summer for a new game called Warcraft Orcs Versus Humans. Yes, this is the game that really

really puts Blizzard on the map. I mean, Blizzard had already won awards for its Super Nintendo Entertainment System games, but these are the games that make it a name in PC gaming and Matt gaming eventually. Yes, yes, as a matter of fact, well, of course ORCS really sort of come from um to yeah, the Lord of the

Rings and uh and really they're sort of borrowing that idea. Um. Now, this actually in a way goes along with the story of Nintendo not directly, but um one of the things that they were doing with this title was too basically levin the computer game with story. This the the story of the War between the Orcs and the Humans isn't just a computer game. It's also got a backstory about how the Orcs are being used by another power, and

that will eventually develop later in other titles. But um, they had they had a new sort of game on their hands with the real time strategy game and m and let's let's explain what a real time strategy game is, just in case some of our listeners don't know. So, typically a real time strategy game plays out in real time. So there it's not turn based, so you don't you don't uh make a move then wait in order to make another move. Everything's going on around the same time.

While you're preparing your armies to attack, your opponent is preparing his or her armies to attack at the same time, right, So unlike games like Risk or Civilization where it is turn based, it's all going on simultaneously. Then, uh. The way you create your armies as you build a resource gathering uh units, you build special buildings that allow you to create military units, and so you have to build buildings with various types of characters that you have. So

you might have some characters that are not warriors. They're like farmers or or woodcutters or whatever. They go out, they gather the resources you need to build the other stuff you need, and then might fol right, and then you might have to build something like a barracks which will allow you to produce troops. And then there's certain specialized units that you can only produce if you build

other buildings as well. So it becomes a balancing act of creating military units and also creating the resources you need to produce the units you need. Um. And you know all of this is coming from the same raw materials. So the strategy is is multifaceted. You have the production strategy like how many how much effort do you put towards gathering resources, how much do you put towards producing basic units, how much do you put towards enhancing the

buildings you already have? Uh? And then also how do you explore and defeat your opponent? Now, in the original Warcraft game, you pretty much could see everything on the map, but uh, the the other Another development comes up a little bit later that changes that. Also, it was top down, so you're looking it's as if you were directly overhead of the map. In the original Warcraft game, it was a top down view, um and it it Actually there was a game that came out before Warcraft. You're thinking

probably of Westwood Studios due to Yeah. Dune two was another real time strategy game that that that follows the same general philosophy as Warcraft. Has a totally different feel to it than Warcraft, but um uh it became like a kind of a battle between Blizzard and Westwood to see who was gonna win out. But the art style of Warcraft, the the backstory to Warcraft, the whimsy really of Warcraft all helped to really push that game ahead.

I loved. One of the things that I loved about that game and and the game's like it that followed is just it's not even part of the game. It's continuing to click on people after you've because when you want to have a unit do something, say you want to uh, one of your one of your units to go chop wood so that you have wood for your buildings, you click on it and you say, you know, okay, I want you, and then you click on the trees to go over here and cut, you know, cut down

wood for lumber. And you know, when the Blizzard had the idea to um to basically give you a verbal acknowledgement, Um, yeah, my lord, and then you But the thing is, somebody said, you know what, you need to keep clicking on the guy. So I said, all right, and I did and I and as as you continue to click on that one unit, they become increasingly annoyed with you. Well you will, you will,

And as far as I know that continues. I don't have StarCraft Tube, but even in the StarCraft game they would do that, and I it's one of the things that I just love about it because it goes along with the game. Of course, you can waste time while the other guys building up his army, but it's just I thought there was a kick to do that. So we're still in right now. At this point, Blizzard has about twenty five employees. Uh. They've only been in business

for three years and they've got twenty five employees. They created a small booth at c e S that year, and that's where they kind of showed off the idea of Warcraft and UH and got a lot of attention there and so it created a lot of buzz um And then of course later in the year Warcraft came out was a big Hit and then near the end of just a year later, they released Warcraft two Tides of Darkness, and that's where they introduced the idea of

a fog of war. Now, if you're not a gamer and you don't really know these terms, what fog war means is that part of the map is intentionally obscured from your view as a player, and you only can uncover that part of the map part of me once

you start it's sending units in to to explore it. Yeah, basically, I think that that is sort of a role playing game addition, because if you think about your players as characters, uh, and yourself as a character in the game as the if you will, the general behind behind your troops, you

haven't been there yet. Your troops haven't been in this part of the forest yet, so they don't know what's there, right And and because you don't have any eyes there, it's not like you can you know, if you were on the ground, you would not be able to see that far like. So the idea is that the fog of war limits what you can see until you start sending units and to explore. So that gave the option of creating things like scouting units things like that changes

the strategy a lot. You couldn't just immediately glance in the maps see what your enemy was up to and then adjust. You had to h anticipate what your enemy might do and try and and head them off. Um. And and also Warcraft had already introduced this the idea of being able to play against human opponents, not just the computer opponents, but human opponents, either over a modem or over a local area network. That I can't stress enough how important that was to the success of Warcraft,

because playing against the computer is fun. Playing against your friends as a blast, right, I mean, you know, there's the whole element of smack talk. There's bragging rights. Uh, they're the great stories that you tell where you know, it looked like all the way up until the last half hour of that game, it looked like you were gonna lose, but you somehow turned it around just because this this crazy tactic that had just a sliver of a chance to work actually paid off. That kind of

stuff is really invaluable for a game. I mean, it really pushed it too into a phenomenon. And Warcraft too continued that. Uh. And also players were taking it upon themselves to find creative ways to create matches against each other online. This predates Blizzards own online service. So what they were using was a service called Collie k a

l I and they were creating matches over that. But that sort of served, you know, Blizzard took took notice that and they that sort of served as a model for them, and they began to develop their own online service, which would become known as battle Net or battle dot Net if you prefer. UM. Just an interesting note, and we were talking about the serendipitous nature of the founders

of Blizzard UH meeting one another. UM. Actually there's something else it's about to come up that has its roots back at a C E S. When they were when the company was developing titles for the S N E S. UM, they had been asked by a company called Sunsoft develop a d C comics fighting game for the S N E S and they had a copy of it to

show off at C S. Well. As it turns out, a company called Condor UH Condor Software UM had been asked to do the same thing for the Sega Genesis and the two companies didn't know one another, but they the founders at the CUP and he's met at at c S and they basically stayed in contact with one another. In fact, from what I understand, Um, Dave Brevick of Condor was given an opportunity to beta test Warcraft, the early version of Warcraft, because he liked what he saw

and thought it was really cool. Um. So this game, this game company called Condor, Yes, were they developing a game that would become a worldwide phenomenon? Do do do? Do do? They might have been, and and did Blizzard uh get into the opportunity to actually acquire said company Condor? Well? Was? It turns out the Warcraft games were a hit and hit and they brought a lot of money into if you'll pardon my pardon my joke, Blizzards war Chest. Nice,

I didn't say battle chest. Actually that's why I picked up my first just as inside I picked up my first Warcraft. I got the battle chest with Warcraft Aircraft two and the expansion, and I played the living daylights out of those three. Um. But anyhow, yes, they with with that money, they contacted Condor and said, hey, you know, we're friends. Why don't we work together? Work together? And and so yeah, Blizzard acquired Condor and they came Blizzard North.

They renamed it Blizzard North. It was located in San Mateo, California, and uh and Condor was working on a game that it would become insanely popular, so much so that there that right now as we record this podcast, there are people begging to get into the beta of the most current version of that game. And that game was a dungeon crawler and a mouse killer. Yes. As a matter of fact, it from from what I understand, people credit this game with with launching the dungeon crawler. Yeah, and

also launching Battle neet. Uh. It is, of course Diablo a game where you created a fantasy inspired character and you would have various weapons. You would go into dungeons and you would click on things to kill them. And really, when you get down to the gameplay, it was pretty simple. You know, it's not of clicking, but it was addictive because the for lots of reasons, the game design was fantastic. The art was great, the leveling system was cool, the

loot system was very satisfying as a gamer. So everything in this game, considering how simple it was, was done correctly, just to the point where people just fell in love with it. And it launched with the battle Neet service, which was a free online service where people could go and make matches to play online together. Um and it made money through online advertising through web advertising. Actually made quite a bit of money because it was incredibly popular.

Now around n a couple of different things are happening. For one Blizzard to start starts to develop a game that would be you know, actually they were supposed to release the game in ninety seven called Warcraft Adventures. Now, this was going to be a game that was going to be an adventure based game. So adventure games when we talked about that, that that those are games like the Monkey Island series um or the Old King's Quest series or Space Quest. These are games where you solve puzzles,

you wander around, you interact with other characters. Um. Generally you have to collect a lot of items and then combine stuff in your inventory in order to uh to achieve certain tasks, to complete certain tasks. Um And it was fairly popular for a while. So Blizzard thought, well, why don't we create a Warcraft adventure kind of in the model of the Old Monkey Island games and flesh out this mythology we've created about the Orcs, and this will give you more of a backstory about what the

Orcs are and why they are the way they are. Um, and they started developing it. But here's the thing about Blizzard. They take game development very seriously and if a game is not ready for release, they will not release it. So they don't release games prematurely. They don't want to have they don't want to introduce a buggy, bad game into the market because it all it's a black eye for the company. Yeah, they have a they're they're famous

actually for their release date when it's ready. Yeah. So they learned that less in the hard way because they had announced that this game was going to launch and it didn't and as the there were delays in the development process, the the adventure model changed. For one thing. Companies started to develop three D adventure games. So, uh, one of the Monkey Island games, one of the later Monkey Island games, was in a was rendered as a three D style game, so that the characters were no

longer this kind of flat animated look. Grimm Fandango is another example. So at that point, the Warcraft Adventures was starting to look dated because it was doing the old two D design and because of that other other reasons, Uh, Blizzard decided ultimately to kill the product and and it never it would never reach store shelves. Um do that. And that same year, in ninety seven, that's when you had the scandal at scindent UH, the company that the

parent company that owned Blizzard. So here's the scandal. Apparently the company had sort of fibbed about its income and inflated it by about a third because analysts had expected the company to do incredibly well, and so in order for it to look like the company had met those expectations, they cooked the books over at Sindant And in the wake of the scandal, they ended up selling off Sierra Online, which included Blizzard Entertainment, and they sold it to a

French company called Havas UH. And then that company then was bought by another company called the then d the Plumbers. So I know that yet another company that's in video games now that was in something completely different essentially. Yeah, we'll get back to we'll get back to their their adventure in a few years. So yeah. Again, what was remarkable though, is through all this corporate change where they're being acquired and merged and sold off and reacquired and

all that kind of stuff. While all this is happening, Blizzard remained remarkably cohesive. Uh. The at this point, the three founders are all still there, um and uh. And they were still working on on games. Now. That same year, in nine seven, they were developing a new real time strategy game and they showed it off at the second ever E three conference. And this was an isometric view

science fiction real time strategy game called StarCraft. Uh. Isometric view meaning that it's instead of being a direct top down view, you're viewing at an angle, kind of like iagine you're hovering over the landscape and you're looking down and ahead of you. That's kind of what we're talking about here, and isometric you and um uh. The StarCraft game featured three races, the pro Toss, the Terran, and

the Zerg. And and it's kind of interesting because unlike other games and in Warcraft, in Orcs versus humans, you had Orc units and you had human units, but they were essentially analogs to each other. Yeah, you had the same essential buildings. You had you had to mind gold.

You had a barracks where you produced your your warriors. Um, you know, they used the same buildings, but they looked different and spoke differently different arts style, but they behaved very much the same way, So not the case with StarCraft. StarCraft each race had its own unique units, its own unique UH strategies, so a strategy that would work for

one race would not work for another one. You'd have to develop a totally different race depending upon a totally different strategy rather depending on what upon what race you were playing and UH. They also had some other cool features, like the game would it would feature your mission objectives might change in the course of a mission, which meant

that you had to be flexible. You couldn't you couldn't commit all of your resources to doing a specific task because if that task changed halfway through, then you might be stuck. So it meant that you have to be really quick on your feet when you were playing this. And in fact, there are professional gamers who specialize in StarCraft to this day. Yes, as a matter of fact, South Korea as a huge StarCraft following. There are StarCraft TV shows. Yeah, and we've talked about that a little

bit when we talked about a professional gamer podcast. But yeah, these StarCraft it was a huge Actually, this this game helped launch that movement. Yeah, they're like professional athletes in some countries and they and and when if you ever watch a truly adept player, it is it's it's incomprehensible to me. I mean, they're they're they're executing so many commands per second that I can't Like, I'm thinking, like, where's my little guy who says hello when I click

on it? And the meanwhile they've they've wiped out half my units, And I like, what happened. By the time that you find him, he'll be the only guy left. Yeah, I'm yeah. So StarCraft became a worldwide phenomenon and and it was a big hit when it launched. It it didn't it wasn't like a slow burn. It it took off pretty quickly, although it's popularity was grew exponentially once it went overseas. So in Blizzard announced Warcraft three. Now, originally Warcraft three was supposed to be a new type

of game. It was supposed to be a role playing strategy game, not a real time strategy game. And the idea again because Blizzard was very much interested in the storytelling aspect of video games and conveying a kind of a tale to hell and that the the gamer is part of that story and helps generate that story. Um. They thought that this was going to be a really immersive game that would connect the player to the game in a way that had not been done in previous

Warcraft games. So the announced in Unfortunately, really by the time it came out, I mean, although Warcraft three is an amazing game, it was not the same sort of game that they had talked about back in ninety nine when it finally debuted, because again, you know, they found what worked what didn't work, and they were not going to release a game that was just okay. They wanted it to be the best that could be based on

their resources and their knowledge. I know, Warcraft three, if you've played the first two Warcraft games in StarCraft for that matter, um, StarCraft one, well we'll see somewhat familiar and somewhat unfamiliar because um and that where you could actually play, uh through a long game where you had many many scenarios, you were also required um and Warcraft three to take a turn with each of the races. UM. And again, Warcraft three took the StarCraft model where each

of the races has a little bit of a different ability. Um, the things that work for night Elves won't necessarily work for you know, I'm dead. And they introduced the hero classes as well, so that changed things of the hero units rather. Yeah, and and there was a story that goes to the game. You start off with the human units and you're working there, uh with a prince who's your hero, leading your units through battle. And well, I won't have a story spoiler, but the story continues as

you go through the other races. And I think it's more of at least in my opinion, it's more of a battle Neet type game where you're, um, yeah, you can play it, uh, just yourself, but the real value and that game is to play it online or with other people. Um, because it was really designed to be an expansive online, real time strategy as opposed to something that you spend hours trying to solve yourself. So between when they announced Warcraft three and when Warcraft three actually debuts,

which is about three years. In that three year period, they're not just trying to create Warcraft three and and

switching things around. They also in two thousand released Diablo two, which was again very hugel and and they started releasing expansion packs for their games, and those expansion packs were also very popular, and that's one of those things where, you know, Blizzard was one of the kind of pioneering companies to show that expansion packs could really help you extend the lifespan of a title and to really enhance the the player experience for those titles. It was like

a win win for everybody. The players loved it because there was this game that they were truly emotionally invested in that they got to play more of, and the you know, of course Blizzard liked it because it meant more revenue coming in and they didn't without having to develop an entirely new game. You you develop an expansion pack that's built on the foundation of the game that

it's expanding. But in a I'm sorry, go ahead, I was going to note that, according to Blizzard, UM, Diablo Too set a record at that time for the fastest selling PC game ever. Um. And then in two thousand one, when Diablo two, Lord of Destruction, the expansion pack was released, that sold more than a million copies in its first month.

That's pretty impressive. Yeah, And uh, two thousand one was also when Blizzard went to the European Computer Trade Show and announced the development for a game that would take that kind of dwarfed the success of all the other games combined, ultimately called World of Warcraft. And this actually shocked people that Blizzard was going to get into the massively multiplayer online role playing game game because at that point, really there were there had only been two big m

m O RPGs in North America at that point. There was Ultimate Online, which was kind of the first one, but by this time Ultimate Online Star was in serious decline, and there was ever Quest, which was a Sony property. Yeah, and ever Request was still going on strong, and people were a little skeptical that Blizzard could create a game that could compete against ever Quest. Now, granted this is

two thousand one when they announced it. It wouldn't be till two thousand four when the game actually launches, So between two thousand and one and two thousand four there's massive development being put behind World of Warcraft. Also in two thousand two, there was another story about a failed attempt to bring another Blizzard game to market. In this case it was a console game. Yeah, they were the

re emergency the console uh attempt. But also you can tell by this point that Blizzard gets the idea that their franchises. By expanding on their franchises, they can continue the success of these games and build the universe a little bit more each time. With each iteration, I believe you're talking about StarCraft Ghost. Yeah, StarCraft Ghost. This was

supposed to be a first person for that. Yeah, it's supposed to be a first person shooter game, stealth game, so kind of like uh, you know games, other stealth games we can think of like um, the um except excepted skipped on my head. Let me try this again. Okay, Well, StarCraft Ghost was StarCraft Ghost was a game based on a unit from the StarCraft series. The Ghost is a Terran unit that has the ability to use stealth technology

to hide. Um. And I think the idea would be, uh, that you would be able to become one of these ghosts and sneak up on on your enemies and become essentially a sniper or sapper and get behind enemy lines and and do that which is you know, spy games are are always kind of fun because you have that element of I've got to be sneaky, I've gotta you know, hide out and and sneak up on the enemy and Uh, anyway, splinter cell splindor cell. Yeah. Um. So anyway, this is

what I get for having four hours of sleep. Uh, kids, get your sleep. Um. Yeah. So they first partnered with Nihilistic. Nihilistic was a company that had created a game called Vampire the Masquerade, based off the role playing game of the same name. Uh, done by White Wolf Studios, if I'm not mistaken, located of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Yeah. Nice guys over at White Wolf. I've I've met several of them.

So they had created this game for uh called Vampire the Masquerade, and Nihilistic and Blizzard together we're going to try and bring StarCraft Goes to to market. But there were delays in the development process, and eventually, because Nihilistic had other contract obligations, uh, the partnership had to dissolve. So then Blizzard partnered with a different company called Swinging Ape. Yeah. They actually acquired Swinging Ape in on May sixteenth, two

thousand five. Um. And that was the point, was that they were going to become the Calm Soul team and continue working on StarCraft Ghost. Yeah. Now, at the abandonment process was a long and painful one. First, Blizzard abandoned the plans to create a GameCube version of StarCraft Ghost.

Then they abandoned the PS two and Xbox plans because at the point at that point, the next generation consoles were starting to come out, so now if they were going to develop it, they were going to have to develop it for the next generation ones, and it kind of those have kind of become vapor That game has become vaporware essentially. Yeah, it's it hasn't been, uh as far as I know, officially discontinued, but it's on an

indefinite hiatus. So two thousand and four is when World of Warcraft officially launches, and it launch is late in two thousand four, but by January two five, it had

sold over six hundred thousand units. So for an m m O RPG to sell that, that's pretty that's pretty significant because you've got to remember, a classic computer game, you plunk down your money, you've bought your game, you take it home, and you play it until you're either tired of it or you complete it, or maybe you never stopped playing it, maybe you just love it that much. But an MMO RPG is a continuing investment because you buy the game, and then you have to subscribe to

the service to allow you to continue to play. So for it to make that many sales is pretty impressive. You know that it's they had Blizzard had really made a name for itself, and people trusted that name, and a lot of people bought it. And then again it used that sort of cartoonish style, not a cartoonish so much that it it was like off putting, but just a little bit of the cartoonish style that Blizzard had kind of developed over its ears as a game developer

that really I think appealed to a wide audience. I think that uh, well, of course, Blizzards sort of has a signature style of art that they use, and I think that again Blizzard has enough of a sense of humor that the units can be have a cartoonish l man and it kind of softens the gore of all the slaying that goes on in the game because it's you know, a little a little quirky and a little

uh softer and friendlier looking. Now, after the development was over for World War Crap, but before it had actually debuted, one of the three founders, Alan Adam, actually the guy who was the the lynch pen for the original Glue. Yeah, the glue that held the original team together left Blizzard, although he was still a consultant. Yeah, and and he's still I mean, if you watch the video like I said that I was talking about on on Blizzard site, he's featured very heavily in it, and he has nothing

but good things to say about the company. So it's not like there was any bad feelings or anything. It may have just been that that was it was time to go. It was time to go, time to do something else like that. He had set out to create a successful video game company, he had done that and now was time to move on to the next next thing. So, um, the other two founders are still there at they still

are working there. Um. And in two thousand five, Blizzard through the very first blizz Con, which is a game festival of gaming festival that that focuses on Blizzard titles, and so they'll have things like they'll have tournaments, and they have they'll they'll allow people to play demos of various games that haven't come out yet, and they'll have costume contests and a lot of the people that a lot of my professional peers love to go to blizz Con.

I have never been. Uh frankly, I've I've played several Blizzard titles, but I've never gotten into World of Warcraft. So I'm not I'm not as heavily uh tied to the company as some of my friends are. But folks like Tom Marrin and Veronica Belmont, Scott Johnson, like all these these other podcasters and crazy people love to go there. So I love following Twitter during blizz Con because it

is hysterical and awesome. I mean, you to see that kind of excitement behind game titles is always fun, right, And so, uh, two thousand five was the very first blizz Con, and they've just gotten larger and more elaborate every year. Uh and then in two thousand seven. Keep in mind, over all this time, Blizzard continues to release expansion packs. Yeah, there was one thing I wanted to mention that in August of two thousand five, August first,

in fact, the Redwood City Studio closed. Um, just about everybody got moved to the Irvine, California office, which is where Blizzards based. Um, but they actually closed Blizzard North Studios, the actual building, and quite a few people left Blizzard North at that time to people who you know, left

on their own to found other companies. But in two thousand seven, Vivendi, if you remember, that was the company that had purchased Sierra Online, and thus um um Blizzard Entertainment merged its game division with Activision, which then creates a new branch called Active Vision Blizzard, whis where we stand right now, although you never know by the time

this podcast comes out. And of course Activision was was founded by former Atari people who had worked on titles for the and so then uh, they're old hands in the gaming business too. That's kind of bringing us up to date. StarCraft two came out in again massive massive hit. Another big expansion pack called Cataclysm came out for World of Warcraft, which which dramatically changed the game it was.

It was supposed to be this this essentially a world altering event within the game world, so that places and and activities that had been familiar now suddenly weren't. Um it was and it was designed to be that. It was really designed to shake things up so that people have been playing the game forever would suddenly have new stuff to do, and it wouldn't just be like a new map that they could explore because they had reached you know, the level cap and and now they had

nothing else to do. Um. And so that was a big deal when that came out. And uh, and this year, the game Diablo three is in beta. It's one of those those betas that people are really I can think of two games off the top of my head that have had gamers scrabbling at the chance to be in the beta. One of them is Diablo three, the other is The Old Republic. So those would be the two big games I would think of even that people are

trying to get into. And Diablo three, of course, just has this huge history behind it and uh, and people are eager to play a new Diablo game. I mean it's been years since Diablo two came out, so um, that's something that's going on right now. And something that happened earlier the week that we're recording this podcast I thought was interesting is that Blizzard auctioned off some of the original server blades from its first server for World of Warcraft. Um, and they auctioned it off in a

charity auction that would benefit St. Jude. St Jude Children's Research Hospital. So that was kind of cool that you know this, This piece of video game computer game history went on sale in order to benefit a charity. Um. And also there's I should add that there is the rumor it's not so much a rumor, it's just in development limbo of a Warcraft movie. Oh, interesting World of Warcraft movie. And and Sam Raimi is uh is inked to direct this film should it ever actually get into

true development. Uh so Sam Ramy of course famous for the documentary Evil did Ah. And uh of course the blizz con announcements this year included, uh, the Defense of the Ancients game called Blizzard Doda d o t A

being Defense the Ancients um. And also a couple of expansion packed StarCraft too Hard of the Swarm and there's going to be new units in that apparently, and uh what World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria, which features a new monk unit and creators that are Pandas Apparently, if I'm not mistaken, this actually started as a joke, and uh they decided to go all out with it and make an expansion. So again, I hope I love that

about Blizzard. I hope would they attack now? Actually the Pandarin Race apparently debuted long time before uh Kung Fu Panda did, so I maintain my statement. Okay, all right, but Blizzard has has really set itself apart, not just for the quality of its games, but for its willingness to add a little humor and mix it up in

their plus uh um. I've always found it kind of nice that they released a Mac version of the game, you know, long before OS ten, back when Apple was considered a a a very an endangered species of computer. They were, but Blizzard was still releasing the Warcraft and StarCraft and Diablo games for the older versions of the Mac os and I always you know, it seems like they're not afraid to take chances with things and just to get a few, you know, to give other people

an opportunity to to play the games. So they're one of my favorites. It's a pretty remarkable company as as video game companies go. And I'm curious to see, you know, how things pan out in the future. And I'm sure that World of Warcraft will continue to be a juggernaut. Uh And I'm really curious to see what their next totally new product will be. There's there's a a rumor about something called Titan and I'm not certain whether or

not that is a tie into something else. So well, that's kind of where we are today, and we're gonna wrap up this discussion about Blizzard. If you guys have any companies you would like us to to highlight, or people within tech, or if you just always wondered how something works and you really wanted us to talk about it,

let us know. You can email us. Our address is tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or you can let us know on ebook for Twitter are handled there as tech Stuff H s W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Okay. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House

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