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How a Diablo expansion led to behind-the-scenes trouble
- dstick 8y agoIf you like these sorts of stories be sure to give Blood Sweat and Pixels from Kotaku’s Jason Schreier a read! :)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dom96 8y agoOff topic: the cookie acceptance dialog that polygon uses is broken. It shows a spinner and doesn't disappear. Why does this even need a spinner? I'm seeing similar behaviour on multiple websites now, it's infuriating.
- Chris_Chambers 8y agoGDPR requires you to “prove” you gained consent by creating a server-side timestamped log of the option each user chooses. But you cannot see my comment because I was hellbanned, so enjoy wondering.
- FreeFull 8y agoI can see your comment, so maybe you aren't hellbanned any more.
- grzm 8y agoUsers can vouch for dead comments which "reanimates" them. That may have been done in this case.
- louithethrid 8y agoThe dead are more interesting anyway
- vertex-four 8y agoThe user is only given one option here, to accept tracking - the website isn’t even trying to be GDPR compliant, apparently they do not foresee having any EU visitors and so have no need to be. As a result, I’m not reading the damn thing.
- polski-g 8y agoOr a US company isn't going to comply with EU laws because they have no reason to.
- vertex-four 8y agoIf you make money off E.U. citizens, you should comply with E.U. laws. Simple as that. If you don’t want to comply with the laws of a country, do not make money off people there.
- snvzz 8y agoIt's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
- heyoni 8y agoSome key people left after that project too. I’m sure some good stories will come out for that soon too.
- stevenwoo 8y agoWe signed some sort of NDA which for me at this point is buried in 30 years of paperwork.
- heyoni 8y agoSo you're not sure when it expires?
- stevenwoo 8y agoYes. To elaborate better, I would imagine most of the people involved probably want to be able to work in the industry again (or are still working in the industry) and are not independently wealthy and are keeping mum about the details they know. At least back then Blizzard the company was pretty secretive and we had to get approval for any media contact - it's probably like any larger organization, everything you see in the media is already pretty curated. The GDC presentation Dave Brevik tells about the Diablo 1 development process is extremely consistent and he's an excellent story teller - I heard almost the exact same thing in abbreviated form during my lunch interview more than 10 years before that and at some other candidates lunch interview when I went to that candidate's lunch as the interviewer.
- justinclift 8y agoWouldn't this be covered by the statue of limitations in your jurisdiction(s)?
- juskrey 8y agoCan anyone recommend a book on gamedev industry written by actual industry insider, and not a professional writer/journalist like this one?
- ieeamo 8y agoMasters of Doom by David Kushner (despite him being a journo) is pretty good.
- stuxnet79 8y agoAlso doesn't qualify due to being written by a 'journalist' but Blood, Sweat and Pixels is a great book. Has a lot of behind-the-scenes stories / vignettes about your favorite games of the past couple of years. Was a very informative read.
- busterarm 8y agoFor real. I got a strong whiff that the author had little to no familiarity with Sierra or Dynamix and the cult adoration their games and creators had.
- eropple 8y agoSomething tells me that folks like Jason Schreier or Patrick Klepek or--in a different sort of way--Jeff Gerstmann are actual industry insiders. Despite being, hisssss, journalists. Maybe we shouldn't play the dismiss-it-out-of-hand game.
- cpeterso 8y agoNot a book, but here are two GDC postmortem talks from people who worked on Diablo 3. There are many interesting GDC talks about game development! GDC 2013: Shout at the Devil: The Making of Diablo III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG10e0-JyjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG10e0-JyjY GDC 2015: Against the Burning Hells: Diablo III's Road to Redemption with Reaper of Souls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajI1oGPhog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajI1oGPhog
- zbentley 8y ago> Per the terms of the sale, Ken Williams was given a verbal promise by CUC management that Serra[sic] and the other studios wrapped up in the purchase would retain their independence. That does not make sense to me, though I may be missing something. It's either a "verbal [only] promise" or in the "terms", no?
- everdev 8y agoBoth are legally binding and they could have both a verbal agreement and have that reflected in the terms, but there sentence structure is odd.
- humbleMouse 8y agoSomebody should make a dramatized documentary about the making of diablo. It's discussed like every 2 weeks on here, somebody should make a documentary.
- seattle_spring 8y agoSomeone should just make a sequel worthy of the name.
- ixwt 8y agoA lot of people call Path of Exile a spiritual sequel to Diablo 2.
- rendall 8y ago"During a milestone check-in with Cyberlore, however, Blizzard’s managers had deemed the work subpar. They cancelled the contract, finished the add-on pack, Beyond the Dark Portal, themselves, and resolved that only an in-house team could nurture a Blizzard property to an acceptable level of quality." I was working at Cyberlore as a playtester when Blizzard pulled the plug on the Warcraft 2 expansion. It was baffling to us all. They never explained why, to us anyway. All these years later, to read that they felt the work was subpar is a surprise. We tried to get more info, but all we got was "Decision is made. Hand over all assets." We just thought it was some kind of internal political struggle. These days everyone does agile, so these kind of big expectation mismatches don't happen so often anymore. In theory, anyway.
- Apocryphon 8y agoHow was working on Majesty?
- rendall 8y agoI didnt work on Majesty, myself, but I do remember when my friend Jim came up with the concept. We were walking down the street talking about games, and he said "I want to make an RPG game where the heroes control themselves."
- electricslpnsld 8y ago> These days everyone does agile Is Agile common in game development?
- UnoriginalGuy 8y agoVaries by studio but some do.
- badlucklottery 8y agoAnecdotal: from talking with my friends who still work in game dev, something management calls "agile" is relatively common. Lean developer staffing makes having much agility in practice kind of tough.
- xor1 8y agoI loved every Blizzard game as a kid. Warcraft 2, Diablo 1, Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and then WoW. I can't stress enough how much of my life was consumed by Blizzard games. Warcraft 2 was one of the very first games I ever owned. I still remember my dad taking me to Comp USA to buy it for me after I read about it in PC Gamer. You can hear Starcraft 1 sounds in the background in a bunch of the camera footage that my mom shot in our home while I was still in grade school. I nearly failed out of junior high because I would do nothing but play Diablo 2 outside of school. I spent all of my free time in 10th grade playing Warcraft 3 ladder and DOTA. I was playing WOW on prom night. Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 were two of the biggest disappointments of my life. Not just gaming-wise, but out of everything. It was obvious that the people involved with making the originals great were either not involved with the new games at all, or they no longer had a major say in anything. I heard a second-hand account from someone who used to be high up at Blizzard in regards to what happened with Blizzard North. They said the original BN guys felt they were owed more than what they were getting, that what they were receiving in terms of overall compensation and creative control was disproportionate in comparison to their contributions for the Diablo franchise, which had become a flagship Blizzard IP on par with Starcraft and Warcraft. They gave an ultimatum, and Blizzard scrapped all of the ongoing Diablo 3 work (the Diablo 3 we got was not what BN had initially started making) and shut down Blizzard North in response. They then made Hellgate London. This is in contrast with the Guild Wars people, who left of their own accord.