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The History of BlizzardWe track the ascent of one of today's biggest and most important developers.by David Clayman http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1111475p1.htmlOctober 21, 2010

Activision Blizzard is one of the largest, most talked-about video game companies in the world. Never before has one entity so completely dominated the landscape of gaming, with a lock on the most popular genres and partnerships with the world's most talented developers. And its newest addition, an industry darling named Blizzard Entertainment, may be its most important.

Starting from humble beginnings, Blizzard developed a host of classic games that are held in high regard by retro gaming aficionados. Who doesn't get misty-eyed over the Lost Vikings and Rock n' Roll racing? It's hard to believe that this is the same company behind the biggest MMO in the world, perhaps the highest profile strategy game in the world, and a handful of big-budget upcoming projects. Getting to this point wasn't without its difficulties and hardships, but it's certainly been a fun ride. Join us as we take a look back at the History of Blizzard.

Two of the three founders of Blizzard Entertainment have remained completely involved with their original enterprise, a testament to the company's staying power. Allen Adham, Frank Pearce,

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and Mike Morhaime founded the company Silicon & Synapse in February of 1991, just after they graduated from UCLA where Adham had studied computer science and had previously worked on coding games with Interplay, Datasoft, and Software Toolworks. (Adham left Blizzard in 2004.)

The company's early projects were all ports, an easy way for the founders to become comfortable with coding techniques and art design. If you ever played Battle Chess on Windows or Commodore 64 you experienced one of Blizzard's first works. You'll also probably never forget the gory "castle takes queen" animation. Other ports included Lord of the Rings on Amiga and Shanghai on Windows.

In 1992 Blizzard (still known as Silicon and Synapse) released a remake of Racing Destruction Set called RPM Racing on the Super Nintendo Entertainment system. The title acted as the foundation for what would be one of the company's first original projects. The next year they released Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Lost Vikings combined a humorous attitude with a clever technique of having players switch between three characters to solve platforming puzzles. Rock n' Roll Racing is perhaps best known for its licensed instrumental versions of classic rock songs including Bad to the Bone. Oh, it also featured Larry "Super Mouth" Huffman providing racing commentary.

While Blizzard was gaining experience on the home console in 1992, Westwood Studios released the enormously influential Dune II. Though it wasn't much of a commercial success, this unique strategy title would certainly impact Blizzard's next project and PC gaming would never be the same.

"When we were a much younger and smaller company, the bonds that developed between everyone were very strong. It was easy to know everyone well because going out for a beer only meant taking 2 or 3 cars to bring the entire company." - Frank Pearce talking to IGN in 2001

In 1994, Silicon and Synapse briefly changed their name to Chaos Studios and then finally settled on Blizzard, a name that has become known the world over. They were also hard at work on their next project, one that would carry a moniker that would become even more popular than the studio itself.

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1994 was also the year Blizzard released Blackthorne for the SNES. This bloody platformer starred a shotgun toting space pirate that battled villains bearing more than a passing

resemblance to the orcs that would become so recognizable in later Blizzard products. By that summer, PC gamers were circulating the demo for Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans. The series

took the top-down strategy tactics in Dune II and added an approachable fantasy presentation. Anyone familiar with Tolkein's tales could find something familiar in the colorful and often

humorous characters portrayed in Warcraft. It no longer mattered who was "first" to the genre after Blizzard played to their greatest strength: tapping into mass appeal.

Perhaps what is most important about this landmark game for Blizzard was that it didn't just attract hardcore gamers, but it generated them. The addition of multiplayer over modem and LAN allowed for the full potential of the strategy genre to be explored by millions of friends experiencing online competition in a strategy game for the first time. Warcraft not only put Blizzard on the map, it also made the company profitable.

"For me, when I got my start it was back in '94 after we shipped Warcraft 1 and the company was probably 25 employees at the time. I went to CES and we had a ten-by-ten booth and there were a few dozen people who came by our booth to take a look at the game and they were all excited." - Shane Dabiri Speaking with IGN in 2009

When the first Warcraft hit store shelves it was one of three real time strategy games on the market. Years later this genre would be flooded by clones and knock-offs, but Blizzard had a

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foothold in what would become one of the most popular genres on PC. The follow-up, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, would be released for MS-DOS at the very end of 1995. A significant upgrade to the original, the award-winning sequel enthralled gamers and swept the awards season at the end of 1996. It's difficult to understand what we take for granted in today's games, but to gain some perspective, Warcraft II was the first game ever to feature the fog of war, scouting units (remember the blimps?), and of course characters that became audibly annoyed when players incessantly clicked on them.

Blizzard forged ahead technologically as well. Warcraft II included an easy-to-use map editor that let players share their .PUD files across the web. Along with two-player matches over a modem and eight-player matches over a local network, Warcraft II became popular over Kali, a tool that allowed players to take the game online and a third-party precursor to Blizzard's own Battle.net. The company realized the importance of this online aspect of the game and would incorporate it heavily into their next project.

Everyone has their favorite Blizzard title, but the importance of the original Warcraft series is undeniable. When WarCraft II went up against the Westwood-developed title Command & Conquer (which was released in August of 1995) it spawned a rivalry to Mario vs. Sonic on the consoles. This battle of the strategy games turned casual players into passionate fans, spurred innovation in both titles and bolstered PC gaming as a whole.

Blizzard has cultivated its sterling reputation over the years by putting its games ahead of its deadlines. As the founders have been quick to point out, the company is run by and comprised of gamers who have dedicated themselves first and foremost to putting out great products before they worry about sales figures and deadlines. It's an enviable mantra, and not one that many developers have the luxury of following. Blizzard's quest for perfection has left some casualties along the way, including two very notable projects that never saw the light of day.

Almost everyone involved with PC gaming in the early 90s was enamored with Lucas Arts' and Sierra's mastery of the adventure game genre. The folks at Blizzard sought to emulate titles like Monkey Island and expand the Warcraft universe through a similar title. They partnered with Animation Magic, the folks behind the Zelda CD-i titles to work on Warcraft Adventures.

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The project was supposed to fill in the mythology behind the Orc race of the Warcraft games. Its two-dimensional animations were stylish and filled with personality, but as the project wore on and missed its first deadline of completion in late 1997, Blizzard realized that the game was becoming dated before it was finished. Adventure games were a dying breed and the masters of the genre were moving on to three dimensions with titles like Grim Fandango. Just before E3 2008 the project was canceled. It was a bold statement: rather then release something mediocre they'd rather forge on to something new.

Every fan knows that the next step in the expansion of the Blizzard empire was a game called Diablo. The title was actually developed by Condor Games, a separate studio that was working for Blizzard. In 1996 Blizzard acquired Condor and renamed it Blizzard North, giving the company a campus in UC Irvine and in San Mateo California. Early the next year Diablo launched into the open arms of dungeon crawlers everywhere.

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The premise behind Diablo is deceptively simple, and though there have been countless other action-RPGs, all current references to the genre inevitably lead back to this one extremely popular game. The combat involved little more than pointing the mouse and clicking away, but the leveling structure, the interface, and of course the loot, made Diablo insanely addictive. And perhaps more important than the game itself was the service it came bundled with: Battle.net.

All over the internet players were beginning to take their games online through third party clients or subscription based services. Blizzard had seen how the life of Warcraft had been extended through online multiplayer and they decided to package a simple, free, online gaming service with their latest product. The original feature set of Battle.net was bare-bones by today's standards: you could chat and you could search for a match. But it was quick, functional, and eventually profitable due to the millions of ad impressions it generated. Blizzard had made an important foray into online gaming. It would surely pay off down the road.

While Condor had been working on Diablo, Blizzard was looking to take their success with Warcraft in a new direction. At the second ever Electronic Entertainment Expo the company debuted StarCraft, a game strikingly similar to the top-down adventures of the Orcs and Humans from their previous projects. We all know how far a game can evolve after an E3

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unveiling, and in the next couple of years StarCraft would undergo striking changes.

What made the game such a touchstone for the real-time strategy genre were strikingly new concepts at the time of release. A story was woven into the gameplay, changing mission objectives and allowing the plot to extend beyond the brief cut-scenes. Unlike Warcraft, the game was presented with an isometric view but with only simple terrain changes. Most importantly, StarCraft's gameplay was comprised of three very different, but equally balanced races. Not only did the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg have original designs, but they played differently, requiring players to change up their strategies depending on their allegiance.

After two long years of development and balancing, StarCraft was considered monumental the minute it was released. According to figures released by PC Data, StarCraft was the most successful game of 1998, with over 1.5 million copies sold worldwide. It was the third Blizzard game to break the million-seller mark after Diablo and Warcraft II, and no one could have imagined that StarCraft's popularity would only increase as time passed.

StarCraft was a masterful take on a now flourishing genre. For their next act Blizzard wanted to try something more original, and when they announced Warcraft III at ECTS in 1999 they referred to it not as a real-time strategy title but as a role-playing strategy game. Their goal was to bring players closer to the characters with more immersive towns and exploration. The original upending of the classic Warcraft formula was never fully realized, and it would take years before gamers would see the final product.

Blizzard's games never suffered from the turmoil that seemed to accompany changes of ownership. Just before the release of Warcraft, the newly named Blizzard was purchased by Davidson & Associates for $10 million. The makers of Math Blaster were themselves purchased

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by CUC International, which then merged with HFS Corporation. The resulting company was called Cendent. It owned Avis, Ramada, Century 21 and also included a consumer software division called Sierra Online.

The details of ownership were enough to make your head spin and probably not worth mentioning if not for the "irregularities and errors" discovered in Cendant's books in 1998. In 1997, the company had fabricated more than one-third of its reported income in order to meet analysts' expectations. The fallout from the scandal sent Cendant's stock plummeting.

Later in 1998 Cendant sold off Sierra On-line (which included Blizzard) to a French company named Havas, which was in turn purchased by Vivendi. Nearly nine years later Vivendi merged its games division with Activision to form Activision Blizzard, the company we know in its present form. With all of the turmoil at the corporate level Blizzard was able to maintain its identity and vision.

In 1998 Blizzard would release the Brood War expansion to StarCraft and in turn would spend the next few years iterating its core franchises. The company smartly re-released Warcraft II Battle.net Edition to funnel even more of its fans into the popular multiplayer service. Blizzard North also continued work on the Diablo series, releasing a sequel and an expansion in 2000 and 2001 respectively.

In September of 2002, at Tokyo Game Show of all places, Blizzard announced that they had partnered with developer Nihilistic (Vampire: The Masquerade) to develop an all-new game based in the StarCraft Universe. The game was called StarCraft: Ghost and was Blizzard's big return to the consoles. It was presented as a stealth-action shooter with vehicles, multiplayer, and plenty of references to the StarCraft universe. In the launch interview then-Vice President Bill Roper made more than a few comparisons to the recently released blockbuster

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Halo: Combat Evolved when describing the project.

What followed the announcement was an increasingly familiar series of delays that coincided with changes to the original project. When Nihilistic had to leave the unfinished project in the summer of 2004 due to contractual obligations Blizzard put Ghost in the hands of Swingin Ape studios. They acquired this studio in 2005 only to put the project on indefinite hold.

StarCraft Ghost was supposed to be Blizzard's triumphant return to the consoles, but it succumbed to the same combination of lags in development and high expectations that stymied Warcraft Adventures. Even as the project was narrowed in scope (canceling the GameCube version to focus on Xbox and PS2) the industry leapt ahead and Blizzard refused to release what was becoming a dated product. It served as another example of Blizzard's dedication to release something ahead of the curve, or nothing at all.

"Like many in the industry, we've been impressed with the potential of the new consoles, and we're looking forward to exploring that potential further. In addition to allowing us to determine the best course for StarCraft: Ghost, this review period will help us lay the groundwork for our future console games." - Michael Morhaime, Commenting on Starcraft Ghost in 2006

Not long after the unveiling of the doomed Ghost, Blizzard made an effort to revive their first projects on another platform that they'd previously avoided. In 2003 The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing, and Blackthorne were ported to The Game Boy Advance by the developer Mass Media. The three games were identical to their original visions, though Vikings came with a futuristic new cartridge save feature that did away with the old password codes.

More importantly, Blizzard was looking forward when it released the third true installment in the Warcraft series. Though they had originally intended this project to be a departure from the now established RTS genre it eventually grew to resemble the classic gameplay. There were, however, more than a few important qualities that made Warcraft III another Blizzard triumph.

For one, the game moved into three dimensions, leaving the old sprite based animations behind. Warcraft III also introduced hero units, two new classes, and an even more immersive story that further fused the lore with the gameplay. There was also a campaign editor which spawned popular mods like Defense of the Ancients – a game type so popular that there have been recent rumors that it will become a standalone game developed by Valve.

"It's a very exciting time to be making software. We're going to be looking at all the new advances going on in the world of technology and keep trying to come up with fun new ways to take advantage of them. I can't tell you what that will mean now, but it probably has something to do with the Internet, wireless devices, multiple platforms, amazing 3D graphics, and is much more immersive than what we can do today. I'd also like to see Blizzard Entertainment become more widely known to people outside hardcore gaming circles." Mike Morhaime talking with IGN.com in 2001

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There's hardly an unturned stone or untold story regarding the development of Blizzard's next project. The World of Warcraft was announced at the European Computer Trade Show in 2001 to a stunned audience. Blizzard would enter the arena of the MMORPG and try to put their mark on a genre that Everquest had previously taken by storm.

"An online experience can be a daunting thing to some people. We want to break the ice, give you a grounding, and let you know where you are at all times, and we've incorporated a lot of easy to understand features in our interface to allow you to do this." - Mark Kern, Producer on World of Warcraft in 2001 upon announcing the title.

After years of development and delays that were now somewhat expected to come with any Blizzard project, World of Warcraft finally launched in late 2004.

The gamble of focusing on accessibility and a colorful familiar design sense paid off. The initial response to the game was overwhelmingly positive and in January of 2005 it had already sold 600,000 units in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It broke North American records

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for the most concurrent users (200,000) and Blizzard even had to cease shipping copies of the game so it could add and test more servers.

"The company's grown with World of Warcraft. It went from just under 500 employees before World of Warcraft to over 4,600 employees worldwide now so we have a lot more resources to expand on things like that." - Shane Dabiri Speaking with IGN in 2009

Blizzard knew that they had a phenomenon on their hands and they've shown constant dedication to maintaining the lead they've taken with their popular MMO. Now working on their third expansion, each addition to WoW has been treated like a major retail release spawning its own advertising campaign and new set of features to satiate the dedicated fan base.

The latest expansion, Cataclysm, is currently in beta and it not only implements a world-changing event, but it fundamentally adjusts how people new to the MMO genre will experience the game. Blizzard has designed a system where individual players experience the world differently depending on their experience. It sounds like a simple concept, but it's really another example of Blizzard's ability to focus and streamline their games to funnel players directly toward the fun.

Blizzard has always had aspirations beyond the established audience of PC gamers. Due to approachable and scalable design, World of Warcraft took the MMO genre to levels of popularity beyond what anyone previously thought was possible. Its self-generated momentum combined with a mainstream marketing campaign featuring Ozzy Osborn and Mr. T made "WoW" a household name.

"I'd also like to see Blizzard Entertainment become more widely known to people outside hardcore gaming circles. Maybe we will even prove that a feature film based on a game license doesn't have to be bad." - Mike Morhaime talking with IGN.com in 2001

It's no secret that Blizzard has always been interested in bringing their work to the big screen. Back in 2006 it was announced that Legendary Pictures acquired the movie rights to the Warcraft series for a film based on the fantasy universe but not following any of the games directly. Since then the project has remained mysterious with only murmurings about its scope. In 2006 Paul Sams, Blizzard's Chief Operating Officer described the project as a "a big, high-budget blockbuster" and a "tent pole movie" for Warner Bros. who had become the primary studio behind the picture.

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Years later when the project was handed over to Spider-Man director Sam Raimi it was revealed that Gary Whitta (former PC Gamer editor-in-chief and writer of The Book of Eli) had been working on the project for the past two years. Currently Hollywood industry mags and fanboys alike can only guess at when Raimi will tackle the World of Warcraft movie, which stands in a long line of movies that have been attached to the popular director.

"With two games shipping in the same year for the first time since 1998, 2010 is shaping up to be Blizzard Entertainment's biggest year yet." - Michael Morhaime, Activision Blizzard Financial Call Q2 2010

With every success it seems as though it will become more difficult for Blizzard to continue to top its accomplishments. Though no matter what the circumstances it seems up to the challenge. When StarCraft II was announced in Seoul South Korea in 2007, it came with the expectations of an original game that had spawned an entire professional sport. Blizzard's decision to break the title up into three separate parts was disappointing to some, but perhaps an indication that the company is learning to balance their quest for perfection with the ability to deliver a product in a slightly more timely fashion. And of course the first installment in the trilogy, The Wings of Liberty, was just released to rave reviews.

From the very beginning, the founders at Blizzard have sought to bring their ideas to a broad audience. Through prescience, a little luck, and an excellent understanding of what makes games fun the developers at Blizzard have established a pedigree for excellence and a design sense that stays just in front of the curve. The future holds sequels for their most popular franchises and more interestingly, brand new games and ideas that will carry on Blizzard's quest for excellence.