I used to work for a big video game studio that specialized in making licensed hand-held games that were primarily directed toward kids and teens. We’d have regular company meetings and during one such meeting one of our top designers who was a Warcraft RTS fanatic (he played feverishly during his lunch and even after work) defiantly stood up and asked this emperor has no clothes type of question:
Why can’t we be like Blizzard?
The CEO of our company was slightly taken aback. He replied that he thought the strength of our company was in sticking to the current formula of making games that tie into various movie releases and that there was no possible way we could ever be like Blizzard. End of discussion.
Needless to say many of us in the audience were disappointed as we ambled back to our beige industrial cubicles.
At some point in the career of most everyone employed in the video game business, the “Blizzard” question arises either consciously or subconsciously. In an industry that produces a surplus of crappy, unforgettable games the towering success of Blizzard shines like a beacon of hope for wayward travelers.
Everyone in the industry wants to make great video games like Blizzard. But somehow despite the best of intentions, that rarely ever happens if ever.
The Blizzard Magic
So why is Blizzard so special? What do they do that is so different from the rest of the industry?
By now most people who are somewhat interested in MMOs know that part of the answer is that Blizzard has adopted some mantras that speak to their respect for the notion of quality. These two you probably know by now:
- Polish the game experience
- Don’t release it until it’s ready
By now, everyone in the industry is aware of the Blizzard success formula. Even SOE’s John Smedley spoke highly of them back in 2004 just before the impending release of WoW. (I would have given anything to see the “we’re screwed” looks on the faces of the EQ dev team who participated in the first WoW beta).
So why haven’t companies adopted this winning strategy?
The Publisher Developer Business Model
The answer may lie in the inherently flawed and unequal nature of the typical business model that is employed to produce the average video game. Scott Cuthbertson (industry veteran and formerly of 38 Studios) in the opening chapter of the book The Battle for Azeroth hits the nail on the head when he explains how the people who make video games — the developers are beholden to the people that finance video games — the publishers. Here he reveals the crux of the problem:
Publishers and developers are the main players in the modern game industry. Their relationship is a pretty simple formula at least on paper: Developers make the game; they design it, they program it, make the art and write the words. Publishers pay to have the game made, packaged, marketed and shipped to your local retail store. Depending on your point of view, Developers are poor souls desperately seeking funding to craft their creative vision, while Publishers are large corporations with money to fund said poor Developers. (I’ll leave it to you to figure out which fish gets eaten in this relationship, but here’s a hint: it isn’t the one with the big bank account.)
The bottom line here is that the party with the money makes the rules. Developers get partial amounts of money from the publishers at intervals called “milestones”. The key here is that the video game must meet certain requirements regarding completion of design, artwork and scripting at these milestones before the developers are paid. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the publishers have all of the power in this relationship.
Blizzard is different. They don’t have to genuflect before the wishes of a publisher because they are owned by a publisher. The result is that they can take as long as they want (and usually do) to make the game as good as it can be. There are no corporate suits or marketing departments breathing down their neck urging them to hurry up the game before Christmas.
No other company has a stellar track record like Blizzard; their mind blowing financial success coupled with millions upon millions of loyal fans is proof of this.
Time, Cost, and Quality
In the book, Scott goes on explain his observations about the time, cost, and quality relationship with regard to how video games are produced. This is very important because it dictates how good the game will be in the end. From a player’s point of view, all that matters is the “quality” — they don’t really care about how it got that way — they just care that the game is the best it can be.
Scott amplifies this further:
Using the standard T-C-Q triangle from business school (which asserts that Time, Cost and Quality are all interrelated and one cannot be maximized without detracting from the other two), Publishers will almost always pick Time or Cost at the expense of Quality, especially because a company’s quarterly forecasts tend to drive the creative process.
Here we can see why most video games end up in the bargain bin. To be blunt, they suck because quality always ends up suffering.
Blizzard’s Freedom
What is even more amazing is that Blizzard has the freedom to make the kind of game that they want to play. This is almost unheard of in the industry.
I recall a recent interview with a Blizzard producer where he explained how they actually ask their employees what kind of games they want to make. Unlike most games, Blizzard games typically take many years to design and create, therefore it only makes sense that developers would rather work on something they are passionate about.
Scott sums it up well:
Time and again, Blizzard is allowed that rare freedom to work on a project until it is done to their internal quality standards and the results are consistently positive, both in terms of gamer satisfaction and the bottom line.
I highly recommend anyone interested in Blizzard, WoW, and MMOs both from an enthusiast or professional perspective to read The Battle for Azeroth. Scott Cuthbertson’s chapter alone is worth the price.
Conclusion
Blizzard’s success is no secret: they can take all the time they want to produce games of unsurpassed quality. They have turned the publisher-developer relationship upside down and they dictate the rules.
But that still leaves us with some lingering questions: Why aren’t there more Blizzards? Why aren’t more developers pulling themselves out of the mud and transforming themselves into companies that will be bold enough to take the time to make a quality video game?
–Wolfshead
You could pretty much interchange Blizzard for Valve. Both started out on their own, beholding to no publisher, creating games on their own terms, back in the day before games became big business. As a developer myself, it’s hard for a start up or small company to blossom as Valve or Blizzard have, as the aim of any games start-up is to make a killer game and be swallowed up by a larger company (Ironically, Valve and Acti-Blizzard are two of the largest publishers and buyers of games houses, along with EA)
The last great company to have the Blizzard potential was Elixir (A break-off of Lionhead and makers of Republic and Evil Genius), they had the spark and the moxie to make games on their own terms. Unfortunately, their publisher thought different and refused to go along with their high-risk new game and they closed. Demis Hassabis now works in Neuroscience, and the gaming industry literally lost a genius.
I think what you say about Blizzard is very true. I’d add a couple of other traits that they possess which seem obvious but which are not universally followed:
– their motto of “easy to play, hard to master”. They have implemented this extremely well in all of their games. WoW for all that people on the blogosphere sneer at it for being easimode is still one of the toughest games to beat at the top level. And many many people try an MMO, bang their head against the UI for an hour then uninstall. Or simply can’t run it at all on their low-end systems.
– they add a lot of humour. Exploding sheep, comically greedy goblins. If you spam click an NPC they get antsy and say something along the lines of “stop touching me”. (This is in WoW and has been in every Warcraft game since the first one).
Now you can follow the Blizzard model and not set the world alight. I think the company that for me stands out as doing it this way is Aventurine, makers of Darkfall Online. Unrepentant UO wolves who wanted to re-create the pre-Trammel experience.
I think I boarded the hype train for this game back in about 2003 and read the forums with great interest. They’d already been open about a year. The game just took forever to happen and there were persistent rumours it was vaporware. Eventually I lost interest and was mildly intrigued when the game launched earlier this year. They consistently repeated to fans that they had a completely secure source of finance and would take as long as they wanted until the game was ready.
Of course it wasn’t perfect at launch. Just like WoW wasn’t. Some things you can only tune after the game goes live.
Some design decisions sort of screw you either way. If you don’t allow macroing your game is tedious to play. If you do allow macroing people will progress while afk. Couple that with a skill-based system and you get cities full of afk sword-swingers levelling by whacking trees.
It’s also interesting that they deliberately restricted availability at launch in a kind of “don’t run before you can walk” move. I think this is pretty sound, I think the tourists make other games very unviable as they fill up for a month then become vast empty wastelands (cf Warhammer).
So games companies can and do act like Blizzard but you don’t notice them because they don’t sell 10 million. The way to spot them is to see which ones are growing as opposed to huge early adoption then a massive crash.
I think companies are WAY too impatient to be like Blizzard anymore. Look at all the publishers who would rather get a game out than wait for bugs to be squashed before launch. Many MMOs have suffered this fate as of late and it’s becoming mainstream to release something that’s half-ass done rather than make sure it’s polished.
People WANT to be like Blizzard, but lack the patience. Everyone is concerned about the $$$. Remember where Blizzard came from? The Three Vikings, Blackthorne? Most people remember Blizzard from Star Craft and Warcraft, but they were working their asses off even before that. It’s taken them a long time to get where they are now, but they started the way they wanted and now they can basically do what they want because of their success.
Nowadays people hope to compete with Blizzard so they just usher out the next WoW clone to hopefully ride the coattails, but the last MMO that could have truly been innovative (Vanguard) was sucked dry of money and then made into another WoW clone by their publisher: SOE (after they bought out Sigil). So … there you go. Blizzard does so many things right that people just don’t think about.
I think Wiqd brings up a salient point: How did Blizzard get to the position where they can take as much time as they want to do a game right? I think part of it is that they had tremendous talent and a bit of luck to create and take responsibility for some great games in their past. They were smart in focusing on that reputation and not just taking a quick-and-dirty project for some quick cash. Few people get into that situation. Taking a look at their business dealings and agreements might be really instructive.
The secret to their success is more than just having great games. As pointed out in the post, the typical publisher/developer relationship just doesn’t allow this type of of quality to be duplicated. When people point at WoW and talk about cloning it, I always mention that you not only have to copy the game, but you also have to copy the company by having a decade worth of experience and major hits in order to build up the fanbase Blizzard has. Easier said than done, though.
Very interesting. I think part of the problem is that people see companies as either “being Blizzard” or “failing.” There is no in-between in many cases, and I think when Ixobelle tried and failed with his raid dungeon, he was given some sound advice: Try other developers. Just because they aren’t Blizzard (or even Triple A), they can still put out quality games.
This mentality of “big names being better” irks me professionally, too. I get so much crap for working at a small, private college and having attended state schools for my degrees, and I tell people the same thing: From small community colleges to Harvard and Oxford, the same books are available to everyone; the ideas are the same everywhere. It does not take 50k a semester to get a good education, nor does it take a 5+ million dollar budget to make a quality game.
Don’t forget art direction. Love it or leave it, Blizzard has a definite art style, even going so far as to ask aspirant artists to show that they can demonstrate the “Blizzard style” rather than show a portfolio of their own style.
(The lack of solid art direction has sunk many games, especially sequels.)
Tesh, I agree with you regarding the art direction. It’s superb and it’s unique in a world of MMOs that were striving for photo-realism and failing.
There is a consistency that the art direction has from the original WoW to each expansion. Contrast this with the lack of consistency found in a MMO like EQ where each expansion the art direction was completely different. Case in point goblins in Kunark looked very different compared with goblins in the original EQ.
As a side note, I remember being on a plane from Burbank to Seattle after E3 one year. I sat next to the main artist from SuckerPunch who did all of the Sly Cooper artwork. We started talking about MMOs and he told me he really felt that Blizzard borrowed much of the Sly Cooper art direction for WoW.
Another possible influence for the WoW art style could be the Monkey Island games by Lucasarts. I worked with one of the artists who did the art for this. He’s an amazing guy and considered a genius in his field.
This makes me wonder how 38 studios are going to end up. They have the visionaries, but they were looking for money recently.
Someone really has to research how Blizzard got into the position that they can take their time.
I mean, if I remember correctly, I believed Warcraft 1 to be a quite good Command & Conquer clone, but not the real thing ™ by Westwood. I am not sure if they already had the big money at this point. When did it happen? During or before Warcraft II?
Diablo was very popular, but Wiqd is right, who remembers Blackthorne or Lost Vikings, these games were not bad, but for sure not outstanding. I have only played Blackthorne/Blackhawk.
It’s hard to say if 38 Studios will succeed. Curt Schilling has created his dev “team” much like a baseball manager assembles a baseball team — he’s poached people from various MMOs in hopes that the all-star team paradigm will work.
One thing that troubles me is that I keep hearing of people leaving 38 Studios. What’s that all about?
Needless to say, starting a game development studio from scratch is no easy thing. It’s a very formidable task to come out with a big budget MMO to compete with WoW with zero experience and track record as a company.
I was impressed with the few tidbits of quest/story design philosophy that I heard from Steven Danuser’s talk at the Austin GDC. Although I’m still waiting to be able to review a full transcript of his talk there. Austin GDC still has no audio or slides available which is unfortunate and makes me really quesiton the value of the GDC when public exposure of these presentations is so limited.
For those who feel that more money and more time is the cure-all for game development, I hold up Tabula Rasa as “Exhibit A.” NCsoft bent over backward giving that game all the time and money one could reasonably offer, yet it failed miserably. People may argue about the causes of the failure, but nobody in their right mind can say it was lack of time and money.
Regarding money, please remember that making games is a business, not a philantrophic endeavor. If a game doesn’t make money, there is that much less money available for trying again! Therefore, if you know a game is in trouble, really hard choices occur between (a) how much more to invest, and (b) how much greater success is reasonably possible. Giving the development team more years and more tens of millions may be wise, or it may be foolish.
Remember, every time a floudering game gets additional money and time, some other new game project is NOT getting funded. If you’re a starving developer trying to pitch a great new game, the money you get is almost certainly the result of your publisher telling a floundering project that it won’t get any more money or time.
Great points Arnold! I think Vanguard is another example of throwing millions of dollars at a project that was horribly mismanaged from the start. He was given all that money to make his dream MMO and it turned into a nightmare. I doubt if he’ll ever get that chance again. It’s time to fund someone else for a change.
The success formula has many ingredients. What I wanted to show was the business model component of it. If you don’t have that right, chances are don’t have the proper environment to make a great video game.
As others have commented there are lots of other reasons why Blizzard is successful. I’ve done a plethora of articles on this including the “easy to learn, hard to master” mantra which they borrowed from Nolan Bushnell.
To be successful you have to have culture of excellence and success in your studio. Obviously whatever Blizzard is doing is working for them. Having overcome the publisher developer limitations is just one example of why they have created an environment that is conducive to producing amazing games.
One of the things Brad McQuaid has admitted to insofar as his management was concerned was that his plan didn’t work, and that plan is exactly what Curt Schilling is trying now: Poaching big named stars from other MMOs. Unfortunately, as Brad said, big named stars come with big egos and not everyone’s going to get along.
Blizzard hired gamers to build WoW, not other developers from other games. Not just gamers, power gamers, hardcore raiders … The people who know what lack of content is because they speed through it. Kinda ironic that WoW is now the least challenging MMO available … 😉
Arnold Hendrick wrote:
“For those who feel that more money and more time is the cure-all for game development….”
Money and time are ingredients in making a game. If your cake doesn’t taste quite right, throwing more butter and eggs into the mixture doesn’t necessarily make a better cake. But, not giving enough butter or eggs will not result in a good cake, either.
Unfortunately, as someone with your years of experience obviously knows, there’s no printed recipe for “How to bake the perfect MMO.” However, looking at the various failures I think “not enough time/money” is a more common culprit than “too much time/money”. Not to say that game developers shouldn’t learn to manage resources better and learn real project planning, though.
Please do another subsequent article on “How Blizzard got where they are from a small collection of developers” That might inspire other people to do something similar and help alleviate the drought.
Great idea Thallian! If you look hard enough you can find scattered clues throughout the Internet regarding the Blizzard development process. I’ll see what I can do about compiling a list of articles in the future. Thanks!
The thing that gets me is why someone will put so much money into COPYING someone else. I mean, look how many WoW clones there are and NONE of them can get it right. Sure WoW came after other MMOs, but the focus right now for MMO developers is to, in some way / shape / form, copy WoW.
Blizzard created WoW. No one else can make WoW but Blizzard and yet people spend so much money trying to do exactly that. They don’t have the minds that conceived it so there’s no possible way to do exactly what Blizzard does.
It’s like those people who think if they post their “awesome idea X” on the interweb that someone will steal it. No one will steal it for multiple reasons, some of which are: they’ve already had a similar idea and are running with it, they can get their own ideas and don’t need your help, they can actually produce the tangible output of your idea, etc etc. But the most important part is that they won’t steal it because they won’t have YOU.
Having you is one of the key things to making an idea work. It came from your head, you (probably) worked out the mechanics and logistics. You wrote the story, you (probably) know where it’s heading. No one is going to bother taking that and trying to do what you were going to do. It’s a hassle. So why do developers do it?
As successful as Blizzard is, there are other ways to do things. There are other ways to be successful and there’s room for MMOs that function entirely different than WoW does.
Companies need to focus less on being like Blizzard and more on making fun games again. WoW already exists, don’t try to make it again. Don’t waste your money making something that people can already play. It may have feature X or mechanic Y that Blizzard hasn’t used (yet) but that won’t be enough to get you out of the shadow.
Making games is a business, yes, but there’s room for innovation, exploration and experimentation in business as well. Sometimes those who pioneer out and try what no one else will are the most successful.
(Sorry for the rant, I’m just pissed at the state of video gaming right now :P)
Good rant. Sounds like thoughts I’ve had rattling around my skull for a while. 😉
I’m tired of copycat design. Especially when it’s more like using fax machines than photocopiers.
“Money may not buy happiness, but it’s very hard to be happy without money.”
Heard that for life, and I think it applies to game development as well. Throwing more money at Tabula Rasa wouldn’t fix it, but there are undoubtedly quite a few potentially great games that never have a chance to see reality. Software development isn’t cheap, and especially in the current MMO market games are so big and complex it takes years to complete the arc. Hard to compete with deep pockets.
As to copying WoW, IMHO the problem is that there really ISN’T ANYTHING TO COPY. Blizzard has never stood out by being revolutionary in their game design – they take other people’s ideas, they amalgamate them, they polish them until it leaves you screaming “My eyes! It burns!”, and everyone loves it.
But how do you copy that? You can’t copy polish. But companies don’t seem to appreciate that – they think that if you use floaty ? and ! over character heads like WoW, and have 10 hotbar slots like WoW, then you can be just like WoW! Pfft. Auto Assault was the worst case of this I ever saw. They take what should be a completely original game and world, and WoW-ify it. Hotbar actions, “nanoinjectors” or some such silliness that act just like healing potions, etc.
Somewhere, developers have lost sight of what matters – the game. IMHO, Icarus is one of the first in recent memory who gets it – they may not have WoW’s polish, but they do have an actual game underneath it all, and I think a lot of people are starting to realize just how little GAME WoW really has.
@Buhallin You’re right about the actual lack of “game” that WoW has. Ask a lot of people who actually play WoW why they still play after all these years and you’re bound to get a lot of “Well there’s nothing better right now.”
To me all that means is “As soon as something truly better comes along, I’m gone.” Yea you’ll obviously get people who truly love WoW and play it because they’re in love with it, but many of the people I play with and talk to are just waiting for something better.
Funny thing is, whatever this “better game” is, it doesn’t have to be an MMO according to the people I talk to. Several people talk about SC2 and Diablo III taking them away from WoW for good … but look at that, it’s ANOTHER Blizzard game 😀
Brilliant article. I’m about to order that book from Amazon UK! Thanks for the discovery – I’ve been dying to read something like that.
And, if I can be bold enough to take a stab at answering Thallian’s question, I’d presume that Blizzard made enough money to get to the ball rolling by re-investing profit they made from their previous games. They started very small scale and eventually worked their way up by doing larger and larger scale projects each time.
Am I right, Wolfshead?
Bioware.
I’m not sure they’ll deliver with SW:TOR, but it looks like it will be better than SWG.
They’ve delivered a good number of memorable RPGs; Baldur’s Gate (the series that brought D&D based RPGs back to computers), Neverwinter Nights (a good attempt at giving people the tools to move their pen and paper gaming online), Knights of the Old Republic (really felt Star Wars and used the d20 system), Mass Effect (took me a bit to get into it, but I was hooked and couldn’t stop playing when I did get into it) and soon Dragon Age: Origins. (I don’t mention Jade Empire because I don’t have an Xbox and haven’t picked up the PC version.)
All of it has been good quality, fun and entertaining (IMO). I did have some stability issues way back when (BG crashing), but I suspect a lot of that was the system I had at the time.
Remember, Bioware did not make some of the sequels to those games. The one that comes to mind immediately was NWN2 which was decent, but a little rushed (bad AI, NPC healers never healed or buffed, etc. and horrible performance).
It has all been explained. The reason why Blizzard is different is becuase they have transcended the game industries infantile production cycle. The T-C-Q triangle reigns supreme with investing companies.
But…could there be a solution? What if a bunch of MMO/Game enthusiasts banded together to create an investment firm that funded the production of games in line with Blizzard’s mantra? A publisher owned by gamers for gamers? If 11 million people pay 15/month for WoW could we say that gaining support through playerbase is a feasible way to fund games? If 1 million people paid 50 cents a month for the development of a game, it just might work….
@Wolfshead You’re welcome 😉
I think the early history of SOE shows that at one point they were the Blizzard of the MMO industry, and just as arrogant/bold with the changes as Blizzard are today.
Blizzard have changed a lot way how they produce WoW, now they consider content that a majority of people do not run to be a waste while before they were motivated purely by making sure there was content to challenge all the population (Exhibit A – Naxx).
Compare that to EQ1, in a YouTube video SOE released celebrating its 10 years so far they came out with an interesting statistic, so far 3000 out of the 89,000 items in that game world have never been discovered by players.
I personally think that’s the right approach in game design for an MMO as it adds a certain magic to it rather then making it feel like a theme park where everyone gets to try every ride. Time will tell though if Blizzard are currently heading off the rails with WoW today or heading for even better success.
Personally right now I think most people play now for social reasons and the gameplay is second, hence so many leave for a few months on the launch of a new MMO before returning back, and this could explain Blizzards emphasis on new players above all else.
My problem with Blizzard is this:
They’re stuck in 2001. They haven’t created anything new or ground-breaking in years. Sure I like polish and readiness as much as the next gamer, but what Blizzard does is just as bad.
If there were more Blizzard’s there wouldn’t be a gaming industry. If every game took the better part of a decade or more to come out then we’d be up Mario Creek without a mushroom.
Seriously, think about it. What has Blizzard done that’s new? What can they do that’s not a real-time-strategy game or a hack-and-slash. World of Warcraft is just Diablo with a lot more people and a different setting.
Plus on the writing, story, and emotional draw levels Blizzard ranks last in my book. Some people say, “It’s about the stats, and the loot, and building characters.” That’s all well and good, but look at a somewhat unpolished game Dragon Age: Origins. It has the tech-trees, the leveling up, and the party building, but it also offers a story that was lauded, deep characters, and an objective that wasn’t, “Kill everything not a shopkeeper, sell the stuff, and repeat until you find the big bad boss.”
So does Blizzard release polished games? Yes. Are they good? From a technicality standpoint yes? Do they do anything new or innovative? Never. They’re the most corporate game developers on the planet. Long grinds to milk monthly subscription fees, releasing only one race’s side at a time to maximize sales.
Sure, you can refine a sword until it’s the best darn sword out there, but when a guy comes along with his gun it’s over. Sure you might be able to hold off the primitive guns with your great sword, but eventually if you don’t jump on the gun, the people who upgrade it and polish it less than you are still going to win.
Polish and releasing when ready are good, but change is what makes things what they are. Sure there are a lot of classic games, but the only reason they’re classic is because no one makes that model anymore. Releasing new games that look good but haven’t changed is not making a classic. It’s just dated.
Any other company that tries to do what Blizzard does with its long release dates would go bankrupt but Blizzard has released what is basically legal heroin. They have millions of addicts willing to pay into the dealer for a fix. That’s what keeps them going.
Looking back at this article from 7 years back.
All I can say is the Blizzard you speak about is gone. With Activision now owning Blizzard and breathing down it’s neck, it’s become painfully obvious that Blizzard is no longer making the games they want to play, and are just cashing in on current trends that some suit wants them to work on.
This wasn’t so obvious back in 2009 just a year into the merger, but it’s so clear how everything from Starcraft 2 onwards has no soul and no inspiration.