The Chilling Origins of Blizzard

Regardless of platform, running in the 90’s…


…is the last place you want to be.

In certain respects, in any case, and like most things: context is key. Which relates to my quickie today, as I recommend you checking out a really insightful interview over on Eurogamer, involving Tom Phillips talking to Jason Schreier about his new book, “Play Nice“, which launched just a couple of days ago, and details the vast history of the entirety of Blizzard. A monumental undertaking, which Schreier comments on by saying his initial intent was to just cover the recent years of the companies massive, modern day success story that would ultimately lead to Activision’s takeover of everything Blizzard. However, when Schreier started getting into the weeds of the project, there was so much more of a story to tell.


Hellish tales about Blizzard’s backstory…
even beyond just the development of
the Diablo series, from the sounds of things

The book sounds exhaustive, with Schreier going into in-depth detail in his interview with Phillips involving the very early days of what made Blizzard tick, their eventual rule under Bobby Kotick, and the myriad of controversies that followed:

“From a business standpoint, it’s impossible to understand why it matters so much that Activision did this kind of takeover at Blizzard, and started interfering with their operations more, without understanding where Blizzard came from in the first place. Also, how Blizzard was started by video game fans who wanted to make games that they love playing, in contrast to a lot of other gaming companies in the 90s. And also from the cultural standpoint, it’s impossible to understand how we got to the point where the State of California was suing Blizzard for sexual harassment and discrimination without looking at the rise of that ‘boys club’ culture and where it came from in the 90s, when it was nearly all men at the company.

You can see how Blizzard became the company it did, how some of those cultural elements that started in the 90s lingered and evolved, and how they turned into both good and bad aspects of Blizzard. You can’t tell the modern Blizzard story without going way back from the very beginning, so the early parts in this book expanded a lot more than I ever thought they would.“


The devil is in the details

It’s always a painful reality when one realizes there favorite creators or the people behind childhood nostalgia were responsible for so much heinous betrayal behind the scenes, but it is a story all too common in the media industry these days. Though Blizzard may have put out some of gaming’s most iconic games, like Diablo, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft, the companies lewd and illicit behaviors created a litany of litigation and a catastrophic amount of collateral in it’s wake on the way to the top of the mountain of success. The interview over on Eurogamer is an engaging and sobering warmup to what looks to be a damning indictment of one of gaming’s best kept secrets. Check it out.

~Pashford