Interview With Blizzard

   Blizzard Entertainment is one of the leading developers in the PC game 
industry.  In this interview, Master Gamer's Ivan Trembow asks Blizzard's 
Bill Roper about the company's ever-expanding PC game business, as well as 
its refusal to enter the console market.

Ivan Trembow: It wasn't a surprise that StarCraft appealed to hardcore 
gamers, but it was somewhat of a surprise that it appealed to casual gamers 
as well.  What do you think it is about the game that has made it a hit 
among hardcore and casual gamers alike?

Bill Roper: We always strive to create games that appeal to both the core 
gamer and the more casual game player.  Some of the basic fundamentals we 
always try to follow include an interface that's easy to use and understand,
a simple learning curve so that the game is easy to learn but hard to 
master, and engaging story lines and characters.  Above all, the game has 
to be fun!

Ivan: A lot of people complained that StarCraft's single-player game was too
difficult.  Are you taking these complaints to heart in the development of 
future real-time strategy games, or do you think that StarCraft was just as 
difficult as it should have been?

Bill: We always listen carefully to feedback from our customers.  When we 
take design considerations and suggestions, it's based on what players of 
our games want to see in the series of the genre, plus our own play 
experiences.  
   In StarCraft's case, it had very long campaign in which we wanted to 
teach the player a lot of skills.  The difficulty of the game certainly 
increased as the campaigns progressed, but we did try to balance out the 
flow of the campaign so that by the end of the game, most people would be 
able to finish it.  One of the difficulties here is that when a game is 
popular with both hardcore and casual gamers, you have to find a perfect 
level of difficulty.  The game needs to be challenging to as many people as 
possible without becoming boring or impossible to the other.

Ivan: You said in a recent interview that Blizzard won't develop console 
games because you "simply don't have enough development teams."  When you 
release four million-sellers in a row and you have the resources of a multi-
billion dollar company like Havas behind you, you could clearly expand into 
console games if you really wanted to.  So the question is not can you 
expand into console games, but why have you chosen not to?

Bill: While we may have the reputation and backing to expand into the 
console market, our issue has always been in having enough teams to make all
of our games with the same high level of quality.  One of the key terms we 
use at Blizzard is "Focus."  If you have too many projects running at once, 
you run the risk of diluting your talent pool and losing your ability to 
focus on making the best games you can.
   Every member of this company is a vital part of our development process, 
and we encourage our teams to look at, play, and comment on the projects 
that are being developed by other teams within Blizzard.  This fosters a 
great development community, but it also limits the number of projects we 
can effectively run.  The bottom line is that we can only make so many 
things at any one time.

Ivan: What is your response to the claim that the PC game market is slowly 
but surely dying?

Bill: Look at where the PC is now compared to where it was when the 
PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were when they first came out.  The beauty of
developing for the PC is that it's a changing platform.  It will advance in
many ways over the course of a mere 12 months, but consoles remain static in
their architecture for at least two or three years.
   The prices of PCs continue to drop while their power increases, and in 
what was considered a slow year, the industry had a 21 percent growth rate
in 1999.  I believe that the PC market is strong and thriving, and as long 
as developers take the time and care to make good, fun products, it's only 
going to get bigger and better.

Ivan: Is WarCraft 3's "first half of 2001" release date pretty much set in 
stone, or is it still tentative?

Bill: Well, we always wait until the game is done, and done right, before 
it's released.  Quality is always our first priority, and we will continue 
to evaluate the release windows of all our games.

Ivan: When WarCraft 3 was first unveiled, it was announced that it would 
have lots of RPG elements in addition to real-time strategy elements.  Is it
true that many of these RPG elements have been removed from the game in 
order to make it more of a traditional RTS game?

Bill: No, that's not true.  The biggest change that has made many people 
believe that we abandoned our original plans is the change in camera angle. 
All of the role-playing elements we discussed from the beginning are still 
going to be in the game, and I think people are going to pleasantly 
surprised when they see where we're taking strategy games with these RPG 
elements.

Ivan: What are the most-played games at the Blizzard offices besides 
Blizzard's own?

Bill: I'd say Counter Strike, EverQuest, and Icewind Dale.

Ivan: What is your opinion of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, and how they 
compare to StarCraft and WarCraft 3?

Bill: Tiberian Sun has play mechanics and interface controls that are very 
different from StarCraft's, so it's hard to compare those two games.  But 
Westwood does have a long tradition of making some great games, and it looks
like they're really listening to their fans based on the work being done on
Red Alert 2.  Blizzard and Westwood have always had a friendly rivalry, and 
I would expect both companies to continue to advance the real-time strategy 
genre in new and interesting ways.

Ivan: Do you feel insulted or flattered when you come across blatant Diablo 
clones like Revenant?

Bill: Anytime the success of a product is emulated, whether it's a movie, 
book, musical style, or game, it's a high compliment because it means that 
others have recognized the quality of the product.  In the video game 
industry, it only makes sense to play as many games as possible and learn 
from them all.  If other developers have seen something in our games that 
they feel is worthy of exploring in their products, it can only be 
flattering.

Send your thoughts on this interview to ivan@mastergamer.com

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