Blizzard Entertainment Analysis
Blizzard Entertainment has shaped my childhood, as before I started playing some of their battle-chest titles I never got into pc games, which is all I exclusively play these days. On top of this, my dream game to make utilizes the combat and enemy style of Diablo, where you have an angled top down view fighting swarms of enemies.
But how did they get started? How could I get started education wise to one day be employed by them? And what other titles have they made aside from the big named ones everyone knows and predominantly loves?
HISTORY:
"Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse on February 8, 1991" [1]. It was primarily working on game ports for other companies, such as Lord of the Rings, Vol.1 and Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess. It would eventually make its own games (and others), most published by Interplay Productions:
- Rock n Roll Racing, an angled top down racing game with power-ups, small tracks and a pretty decent frame rate for '93
- The Lost Vikings, also in 93, was a side scrolling platformer where you had to swap between three vikings with different abilities to traverse multiple levels throughout time
Eventually they would re-brand themselves as Chaos Studios in the later half of 1993, and due to 'naming rights' legal reasons they had to re-brand again as Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. They ended up moving several times during these beginning few years, but are now permanently settled in Irvine, in the southern part of California.
Blizzard Entertainment are known best for their four main 'universes' of games:
Blizzard Entertainment are known best for their four main 'universes' of games:
- Diablo, a hack and slash RPG that initially released in 1996, where you fight demons and get loads of randomized loot. The current installment is Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, the base game released in 2012, and the Reaper of Souls expansion in 2014. This modern version tightens up the graphics and attempts to clean up the character progression into a more simplified ability / augmentation system, which many argue over simplifies the game, however that doesn't stop the die-hards from enjoying it.
- Starcraft, the primary RTS game that some argue is the reason why the Warcraft franchise changed genres as it did. The initial Starcraft released in 1998 was critically acclaimed for its three unique and balanced races as well as its story. It's current installment, Starcraft II, is effectively broken into three installments, each ones story building up to the next: Wings of Liberty in 2003, Heart of the swarm in 2015, and Legacy of the Void in 2017. This up-to-date installment of the franchise greatly tightens up the graphics, physics and pathing AI.
- Overwatch, released in 2016, is the newest 'universe' of the Blizzard Entertainment family. It's part of the mobile online battle arena (MOBA) scene, and although it's not the top of its genre like some of the other titles mentioned here, it can definitely hold it's own, with its rich character back-stories, to the ease of entry and mechanics, this game is a classic in its own right.
With critically acclaimed games like these, and of course I didn't list everything, Blizzard Entertainment has won dozens of awards over the years. A full list can be found here:
https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/awards.html
CAREERS:
Being a huge company, and having recently let go of quite a few employees, there are a wide variety of jobs available from their website. They currently have job openings (as of the date of this post) for every primary branch of game development; Design, Asset Creation and Programming. The full list can be found here:
As I am a programming developer with an interest in software engineering, these are some jobs that stand out for me:
- Software Engineer for a new mobile game:
- Software Engineer for core systems, either building new ones for a variety of ongoing projects or updating / maintaining current systems:
- Software Engineer for maintaining / upgrading the Overwatch game engine:
As one could expect from a triple A company, the above sample careers expect you to have several years working on (a) different project(s) to build experience before they will even bother giving you a once over, as they expect quality above anything else. While this may present a challenge for getting in, I feel it can only help me in the long run, as nothing is better when it comes to refining skills then putting in the hard work. They also emphasize inter personality traits to promote a healthy work environment, and some of them (the last sample in particular) are curious about your gaming history.
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