LAS VEGAS -- Team Blizzard kicked off the first full day of the DICE Summit by examining the core values that have made the company the success it is today.
The mantra of "gameplay first" has guided virtually every decision Blizzard has made during its seventeen-year lifespan, from character design, to keeping customer service in-house, to maintaining distance from their parent company.
"We're basically responsible for making sure you have a great time," said Blizzard co-founder and president Mike Morhaime. "If you buy a Blizzard game, we want that to be a great experience."
Sometimes that means knowing when not to release a game. "We don't have a hundred percent hit rate," said Morhaime, as a slide with titles like Shattered Nations, Pax Imperia, and Warcraft Adventures displayed behind him. "We just don't release the failures."
"The trick behind gameplay first is to make the game that's the most fun for the most people," explained Rob Pardo, World of Warcraft's lead designer.
Maintaining brand integrity doesn't end once the game ships, either, said Frank Pearce, Blizzard's executive VP of product development. "With World of Warcraft, all the staff responsible for operating World of Warcraft, they're all Blizzard employees. Customer service for World of Warcraft
is our core business."
Keeping the customer service in-house allows Blizzard to guarantee the quality of the total gamplay experience. "If you weren't talking to a Blizzard person, we wouldn't have control of that," said Morhaime.
Team Blizzard also commented on the ever-changing nature of its parent organizations, most of which "don't know anything about game development." Morhaime joked that once the Activision merger goes through, Bobby Kotick "will be my eighth boss."
"We're kind of like a cockroach, we keep surviving while everything around us changes," said Pearce.
The ability to keep that corporate structure at arm's length has allowed Blizzard to stay maintain its "illusion that we still own the company" and concentrate on game design. Both Pardo and Pearce agreed that Morhaime's knack for acting as a bridge between the development teams and the corporate owners was a key component of Blizzard's success.
"It's pretty rare for me to see people from our parent company at
Blizzard. They don't walk around the halls, we don't show them our games for approval. We still get to treat the company like it's ours," said Pardo.
All three men echoed Gore Verbinski's remarks in last night's keynote when they agreed that the secret to creating great games is to have "talented people who are passionate about playing games" making them.
"If you put smart creative people in a room together, great things are possible," said Morhaime.
