Flagship does indeed have many great talents from the former Blizzard North, but it wouldn't be entirely accurate to represent it as 'the Diablo team'. Stieg Hedlund (lead designer), Rick Seis (lead programmer), artists like Michio Okamura, Kelly Johnson, MIke Dashow, Anthony Rivero, Cheeming Boey, the entire sound/music team, and, perhaps most importantly, the Blizzard testing/feedback crew, are all not involved in this title.
there was a very brief golden era when E3 came to LA when the ps2 was young, the suits/marketers hadn't started to outnumber the devs, and the industry in general seemed to have more ideas, more mavericks, more indy productions, the kind of revenge-of-the-nerds anarchy which brought us 'the promised lot'. more juvenile, but also more creative and fun. now, it is just another industry, and the conferences reflect that. people are more out to market their personal 'brand' than to celebrate the fact that they've gotten away with another year in a non-job.
spend a grand or two after hotels and passes, see same old windbags talk about the same stale ideas, silently chuckle to self that everyone seems to claim expertise in what is probably their weakest area, make weak effort to pass out business cards and ignore the fact that conglomerates are sucking the life out of the business as surely as they did to the music business in the past ten years, silently cry at seeing the 15th copycat game of what was an original idea ten years ago, drink, sleep, repeat, go home
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Flagship does indeed have many great talents from the former Blizzard North, but it wouldn't be entirely accurate to represent it as 'the Diablo team'. Stieg Hedlund (lead designer), Rick Seis (lead programmer), artists like Michio Okamura, Kelly Johnson, MIke Dashow, Anthony Rivero, Cheeming Boey, the entire sound/music team, and, perhaps most importantly, the Blizzard testing/feedback crew, are all not involved in this title.
there was a very brief golden era when E3 came to LA when the ps2 was young, the suits/marketers hadn't started to outnumber the devs, and the industry in general seemed to have more ideas, more mavericks, more indy productions, the kind of revenge-of-the-nerds anarchy which brought us 'the promised lot'. more juvenile, but also more creative and fun. now, it is just another industry, and the conferences reflect that. people are more out to market their personal 'brand' than to celebrate the fact that they've gotten away with another year in a non-job.
spend a grand or two after hotels and passes, see same old windbags talk about the same stale ideas, silently chuckle to self that everyone seems to claim expertise in what is probably their weakest area, make weak effort to pass out business cards and ignore the fact that conglomerates are sucking the life out of the business as surely as they did to the music business in the past ten years, silently cry at seeing the 15th copycat game of what was an original idea ten years ago, drink, sleep, repeat, go home