LogInJason Schreier shared a piece of his book.
Blizzard
Activision Blizzard has a long history, which isn't where the company wants it to be at the moment. You've probably met upset players even if you aren't a fan of World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, or StarCraft. Despite the current state of the company, it was once a great place to work at. So what happened?
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier recalled Blizzard's story in his book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment and summarized it in his article for The Atlantic.
"Why does success seem so awful?" he starts. Blizzard was founded by two UCLA students – Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime – in 1991, "with a little seed money from their families, some college-level programming knowledge, and a handful of artists and engineers."
StarCraft and Diablo were commercial hits, but World of Warcraft became a sensation that put the company on a pedestal of game-making.
"The company’s games were streamlined and approachable, in contrast with more arcane competitors that, especially in the early days of PC gaming, seemed to demand that players reference dense manuals at every turn," Schreier says, and this made its games stand out.
Blizzard
Moreover, Warcraft 2's web connection ensured Blizzard could keep up with the rise of the internet. It also created Battle.net, its own platform that allowed people to play online for free.
WoW wasn't free, players had to pay $15 monthly, and Adham and Morhaime weren't sure if it would work out, but the game reached 5 million users within a year instead of the 1 million subscribers they hoped for.
"Employees popped champagne, and colorful sports cars began dotting the parking lot as WoW’s designers and programmers received bonus checks that outpaced their salaries."
This was the success that pushed the company to expand, hiring thousands of employees and moving to nice new campus. In 2007, Blizzard's parent company Vivendi Games merged with Activision becoming the Activision Blizzard we know now.
By 2010, WoW had over 12 million subscribers, and they constantly wanted new content, so Blizzard had to move staff from other teams, delaying or canceling projects in the process.
"WoW’s unprecedented growth also tore away at Blizzard’s culture. Staff on Team 2, the development unit behind the game, would snark to colleagues in other departments that they were paying for everyone else’s salaries."
Blizzard
Then came Titan, a successor to World of Warcraft combining the driving and shooting mechanics of GTA with the house-building of The Sims. The company was plagued with "creative paralysis" and mismanagement, and in 2013, after 7 years of development and $80 million spent, Titan was canceled to be reborn as Overwatch later.
This failure was a huge issue for Bobby Kotick, who bought Vivendi's shares because of the title, and the rest is history, which Schreier shared in another article. Long story short, corporate relationships and the race to improve WoW ruined what was once a really nice company.
In 2018, Morhaime resigned, tired of conflicts with Kotick. After, there were lawsuits over sexual harassment and discrimination, Microsoft's acquisition, and Kotick leaving.
"Today, Blizzard is clearly not the company it once was. Although it retains millions of players and its games are successful, it has not released a new franchise in nearly a decade, and it is still reckoning with the reputational and institutional damage of the past few years," Schreier says.
He believes the fall of Blizzard happened because of the sudden success of WoW and the billions of dollars it brought the studio. He thinks it would be a different company if not for these factors.
"Creative people often find themselves hoping for that one big hit to propel them on a course to greatness, but getting there can also mean losing your soul along the way. As one former Blizzard designer told me: 'When millions turn into billions, everything changes.'"
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