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Blizzard North Co-Founders Leave Company
Thanks to several readers for pointing out a Reuters/Yahoo story discussing the departure of four key employees from Warcraft and Diablo developers Blizzard Entertainment. The article elaborates: "In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment said Blizzard North co-founders Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and David Brevik, along with a fourth employee, Bill Roper, 'resigned from the company to pursue other opportunities.'" With Bill Roper often the public face of Blizzard, and the Blizzard North co-founders being the original Diablo developers, this is a big deal for Blizzard owners Vivendi, as well as gamers everywhere, especially as Blizzard "is widely seen in the games industry as one of the most attractive assets of VU Games, which has been languishing on the auction block for months."
Could a reason for their leaving possibly be in reaction to Blizzard's handling of the battlenet controversy? Just a thought...
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
I don't play many Blizzard games... someone care to tell me what this means?
This is the equivalent of Hawkins/Dubinsky/Collings leaving Palm to found Handspring in 1998. Or Alan Cox saying he's bored with Red Hat and going to do something else. (Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.)
I'm wondering what is happening with Chris Metzin. Wasn't he a mover and shaker in the Warcraft/Starcraft arena? (All the artwork is credited to him in the manuals, and didn't he help with the story line?)
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
In FreeCraft, whilst using the FreeCraft Media Project, a farm can generate "Penguins" and you can control these livestock penguins to move around the map and spy; at the cost the penguin required one farm resource point. This said, I think they are trying to imply that by killing the Freecraft Penguin Spy, they may be king of the iceberg of gaming again.
This means War! FreeWar(non-registered foreign TM) for you, Blizzard!
Many of blizzard's key employees left to start Arena.net. Now with Arena.net using innovative techniques to make online gaming better, Blizzard is languishing with World of Warcraft, a "me too" MMORPG. Their last few core members are now gone. Now it's just a bunch of interns and code monkeys with the rights to Blizzard's brand name.
I'm interested in seeing where these folks go. Will they join their brethren at arena.net? Will they found their own company? Will they walk off with their massive paychecks from Warcraft3 and sit in Hawaii sipping drinks with 3 digit proofs all day? Only time will tell.
The question I think everyone is concerned about is what is going to happen to the Diablo II Lord of Destruction patch V1.10? I heard some speculation that some hire-ups ordered this promised patch cancelled and those mention resigned rather than do this!
Actually, this is not a huge deal for Vivendi. When Blizzard was initially bought it was bought for its franchises, which companies can own. Though game companies act like they own employees, they know the employees can leave. Likely, when Blizzard was bought, key figures signed multi-year contracts to stay and ensure the franchise succeeded under the new ownership. Likely, the contracts are up and the key people feel they can do it again on their own, only better.
It's fairly common for key figures to leave the nest after experiencing some success; this is why exclusive contracts exist. Though usually only founders are placed under such deals. It's almost as common, however, for key game developers to start again elsewhere and flop in a large way.
Note that EA, perhaps the most successful games publisher, has been successfully buying franchises for years (Sims, C&C, etc).
On the subject of these employees leaving... Well, I'll just quote Cain.... "This does not bode well..."
Heh... at least, not for Blizzard... But I'm sure their talents will be put to just as much use wherever they end up.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
SW:G overpromised, underdelivered.
incorrect. you just haven't the skill to take advantage of the game. i know a LOT of people who say this and they all say it for one reason: SWG isn't Everquest in space.
It was never promised as such, yet everyone felt it would be this.
I say its a great game, I play it often and I love it.
A year? Try two. Actually it's getting close to three now. And at the rate they are going, it's going to be 5 years, or never if you ask me.
l
Here is a comic that sums things up pretty well:
http://darkness.diabloii.net/rrcomic4.shtm
You know what the funniest part of it is? The date.
Well, both are true depending on your perspective. For many true fans of SC, the former is more true than the later. Most die hard SC fans will argue that SC is deeper strategically, tactically, doesnt pander to newbies the way WC does, doesnt incorporate dumb 3d elements (which make it harder to play), doesnt automate (autocast) everything, doesnt include luck the way WC3 does (and a real RTS shouldnt), etc.
For most people that didnt spend hundreds of hours with SC, WC3 is pretty damn good. Its learning curve is no where near as steep, it has gorgeous graphics, four races instead of three (which must be better!), and breaks new ground by combining RTS and RPG.
It really is a matter of perspective, and that is all that I was getting at by labelling it both. I am definitely in the former camp, and could spend whole pages of text arguing my point, but that is senseless. And I hope I have enough perspective to know that not everybody will agree with me, and will have their own good reasons for believing what they will.
But, like it or not, SC is a seminal game, and WC3 is enormously important as it will sell millions, and by copied and imitated for years to come.
On the other hand, the default tooltip for the penguin unit is "Call uopn the spirit of a penguin to save you". Interesting, yes? ;-)
What were their reasons? I also wonder why twenty of the lead developers working on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault left an Electronic Arts funded studio to found Infinity Ward. Is it really the money, or is it something else? I have no knowledge in this field, so if anyone has any inside information or pertinent experience, please post, I'd love to hear it.
As far as the reallocation of talent goes, I had high hopes for Troika's Arcanum, seeing as how Troika consisted of several key members of the fantastic team which produced Fallout, but wound up disappointed at its lack of polish, whereas Inifinity Ward's soon-to-be-released Call of Duty looks by all means to be incredible even in its juvenile state. Maybe high-level-folk like doing things their way, for better or worse, without the interjections of a publisher seeking marketability. Once again, I'm only hypothesizing. Are there any game-developers out there willing to testify?
Huh. I've been enjoying Dark Age of Camelot quite a bit. You might want to give it a shot if you are consistently being disappointed.
sigs are a waste of space
More commonly, it's a euphemism for "we forced them to resign and they probably have nothing else lined up yet."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Blizzard employees have been leaving for a little while, quitely loosing the producer of Starcraft Ghost last year to Jaleco (the designer of Warcraft 1 & 2 had ended up there already).
What on earth is going on inside Blizzard?
(FYI, the game the above are working on at Jaleco is Goblin Commander).
I guess Roper's immediate comments regarding his departure validate many of the anti-Vivendi theories floating around.
Actually it is a fairly common occurance.
You see it alot of times where people will start a business, then sell it for a huge profit, stick around for a while then leave to start another business.
Most people who start businesses do so because they want to see if they can do it, if they can create business they are not really wanting to work for someone else, however the profits from selling a business are usally really good, so they do that. Then they decide they still don't like working for somone else so after a while they leave. It means nothing.
You are entitled to your opinion of course, but most revievers (and people I know that has played it) agree the Myth 2 was a great game, even if its installer was crappy,
and if you call Oni bad you must be on crack.. for its time it was a great game... try reading a few game revievs of newer 3rd person fighting/sneaking games and you'll often see statements in the style of "gameplay, camera and controls are not as good as Oni"
MMORPG Game developers are allowed to release complete shit and promise that it'll be fixed on the backs of the monthly fees people are forced to pay to fund the game to a fun/playable state if it ever gets there.
Most MMORPGs I know come with a month (or so) of free gaming time. During this month you have plenty of time to decide whether or not you like the game. I didn't like DAoC and eventually decided I don't really like EverCrack, either. If it's not fun, who, exactly, is forcing you to play it?
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
It really is a matter of perspective, and that is all that I was getting at by labelling it both. I am definitely in the former camp, and could spend whole pages of text arguing my point, but that is senseless. And I hope I have enough perspective to know that not everybody will agree with me, and will have their own good reasons for believing what they will.
But, like it or not, SC is a seminal game, and WC3 is enormously important as it will sell millions, and by copied and imitated for years to come.
To me, you sound like one of those people that didn't spend hundreds of hours on WarCraft 2 (or even the first WarCraft, for that matter). SC was just another evolutionary step on the ladder that eventually ended up at WC3. Personally, I don't see WC3 as anything spectacular other than the first step on the way to something else, which will probably be StarCraft 2 or WarCraft 4.
Nothing against SC really, as I truly enjoyed the game (except when it crashed during the single player game on a particular mission every time I played it, until the first patch). I just think a lot of people are missing some perspective on that title as well.
Maybe I'll install SC again to go through the expansion. I've been looking for something to play on the PC for a while, and what I'm looking for is probably something I already have anyway.
-PainKilleR-[CE]