Blizzard tips: Picky and jump tickets to stick to a single game

"World of Warcraft", "StarCraft" and other games have made Blizzard a great success. How did these games develop?　　Can Blizzard's success continue in the age of social gaming? Wen |CBN reporter Sherinning at the Los Angeles Bay City of Blizzard Entertainment (Blizzard Entertainment) company headquarters, the second office building in a floor hall with a "Street Fighter" game consoles.　　It is an old-fashioned double rocker arcade that has a history of at least 10 years. This is one of the most popular gaming companies in the world. For lunch or other leisure time, twos employees come here to spend their time. Blizzard is now a hot call for a series of works, such as World of Warcraft and StarCraft.　　But they do not seem to hide their fondness for good products from other companies. Blizzard "StarCraft 2" design director Dustin Browder said that his team's staff once the "Street Fighter" in nearly 20 characters in the game of the screen all "open", like a lattice decomposition of a cartoon,　　Find out from Japan's famous fighting game in the game setting rules and principles. "Street Fighter" sometimes comes in handy when it comes to hiring Blizzard Entertainment.　　In front of one of Blizzard's co-founder, incumbent CEO and CEO Mike Morhaime, if a candidate says he likes the Street Fighter best, he has to say what his favorite game characters are fighting or even how to do it. This is to find those who really love the game. In 1991, Morhaime borrowed 15,000 dollars from his grandmother, 10,000 of which became the company's registered capital, while the remaining 5000 dollars were deposited in his personal account--almost two years later--as the mainstay of his economy. When morhaime with Bill Roper, who was an important leader in blizzard, interviewing candidates for job seekers, he found that many people even included game designers who didn't play games.　　It made him intolerable, and he decided to "make trouble" to these people.　　Next, those who think they can read the latest game magazines in a few days ahead of time find themselves in trouble because Morhaime and Roper have more to discuss besides asking their favorite games. In some people's opinion, they are too picky.　　But in a video clip of Blizzard's 20 anniversary, Roper responded: "If even a graphic artist can really think about the performance of their work in the game environment, then this is definitely a wealth of immeasurable value." Mike Morhaime is easy to think of as a dwarf in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings, who likes to wear T-shirts and is not shy about smiling. More than half the space in the office is used to place the peripheral products of Blizzard games: Toys, models, and various posters.　　Every night for almost two hours, he will be on the Blizzard Battle.net (network) server, to join the "StarCraft" player ranks. The game fan, who is also the second winner of the American Texas Poker game, insists on believing in his own theory.　　The ability to maintain a high level of access to the workforce can guarantee a team's standards, while at the same time, the company can set up as many of its employees as possible to get the best ideas to practice the system, which will ensure the vitality of the product. Every Wednesday is Blizzard's "midday Meeting Day".　　This day, in addition to the need for a special confidential project, all product projects will be open to all product department staff, employees can participate in the products are not within their day-to-day work in the scope of the product meetings, and be encouraged to provide insights. "World of Warcraft," game design director Tom Chilton said, every three weeks to one months, the development Department of any one position staff, but also enough resources, in selected projects to try their own ideas. When it is proven to be good enough, it will be formally adopted.　　For the game of World of Warcraft, which has emerged in 2004, the constant addition of fresh ideas-specific pets, specific activities, etc.-is key to sustaining vitality. Morhaime know what "originality" means. "Warcraft", which laid the historic reputation of blizzard, is not the original product of their 100%. In world Outlook setting, level design and so on, "Warcraft" has the same age hit "Dune II" shadow, the latter from the then more famous Westwood company. But Blizzard is still in the product to leave its own brand: networking against the model, random map generators, a large number of shortcut keys, and so on, and later appeared in the "Fog of war" set, has long been a lot of similar games to imitate.　　In this setting, players must explore the area before they know the "enemy" of the force, greatly enhance the game's irritation. To this day, the company has formed a framework in which each project team sets up two top principals, the design Director (Chief designer) and the production director, who is responsible for setting the overall architecture of the game, including world view, checkpoints, and character design, while the latter is responsible for making the game. Morhaime decided to give the research team the maximum autonomy.　　As President and CEO, he will no longer be specifically responsible for a particular product unless they really need morhaime to make a decision. No one will be punished for delaying the launch of a product or a product, and the company will not give the team the impression that the product is selling well who has a high income. In Morhaime's view, this is the first firewall to minimize bad products.　　In the 2006, there was a game called StarCraft: The Ghost, which, despite 4 years of research and Development, ended up selling plans because of the timing of the IPO and the irrational gaming system. This set of practices, Blizzard hasFor 20 years, and achieved great success. "StarCraft 2" was first introduced in the US market in the second half of 2010, with the number of players breaking 500,000, and soon thereafter in Europe and Asia, including China. Due to the excellent balance of the game, now, it has become the WCG (World Electronic Competition), CPL (Professional Electronic Sports Association) and other international top professional game competition events.　　In game videos that are widely disseminated by enthusiasts, the pros will tell you that the tactics that are decided in the first or even a few seconds will change the game, or even the final ending, and it will have no repetition of the game's fun. But now, industry trends are changing.　　The real test of blizzard may have crept in when Facebook's rise led to a wave of social games, Apple iOS and Google's Android operating system that brought more "light games" to mobile phones, PS3 and Xbox360, and other home consoles to become popular electronic products. Blizzard insists that it takes years or even 10 years to burnish the big PC game, and it's a little maverick in the moment.　　By contrast, the former main competitor, EA and French Ubisoft, have already laid out a lot of layout on mobile phones and mobile terminals that are relatively easy to develop and have more potential users. And Morhaime seems to be still leisurely. "There is no need to simply cater to the needs of the player. "In an interview with the first financial weekly," he said.　　After 20 years of setting up the company, his philosophy of products was to figure out why users had such a demand, and then launch the product at their own pace and their understanding of the needs. StarCraft 2 's control of the balance of the game-no matter what race or tactic the player chooses-can benefit from this, for example by setting up software to match the warring parties and to count the odds in different situations.　　Dustin Browder and his team also collect information from ordinary players, professional players, track the most popular tactics and play, and constantly adjust the game settings to keep them fresh in the player community based on these feedback data. Similar practices are widely used in Blizzard's research and development system.　　Mike Morhaime says there are tens of thousands of checks on the balance of a game, which cover all aspects, including the dress of the person and the equipment used. When "Diablo 3" chief designer Jay Wilson joined Blizzard in 2006, he found that the company did not have the traditional model of most gaming companies: first select the target platform and then develop the product for the platform. From the outset, it advocated "the first consideration is to develop a good game", the platform to throw aside. Wilson has not yet reached a final conclusion on the pros and cons of both approaches. But he believes that "Blizzard's way helps game makers concentrate on theirAttention. "Diablo 3" will be an important product for blizzard in the 2011 and 2012.　　May, it mysteriously released a batch of settings and game Test screen, but the listing date is still vague-of course, there is no way to determine the date of the listing is another possibility. This attitude has led to the famous several times in the history of Blizzard "Jump ticket" (IT industry refers to manufacturers can not launch products, announced the delay), and it appears to continue to occur.　　And players seem to have gotten used to their pies. So far, the most far-reaching impact of the jump ticket event, occurred in 1997 years. This year because of the "Diablo" sale, Morhaime decided to take the "StarCraft" to the launch.　　However, when the video was released at an exhibition, the first edition of "StarCraft" encountered market cynicism, players think it is only the game background to the space of "Warcraft"-"Warcraft" is the 1994 Blizzard launched the first major success of the product, laid the reputation of blizzard. It was only a year before the planned listing of Morhaime, which had been developed for nearly 3 years. Morhaime finally decided to push the whole thing apart from the race setting. When the new "StarCraft" back on the shelves, the first month of the release of the game software sales in Europe and the United States the best-selling product list.　　Of course, this jump ticket also eventually led to the improvement of Blizzard's own research and development system. Since 20, apart from the early development of products for Nintendo and other companies, Blizzard self-developed products only 8.　　The number of such products is not only far less than in the US, such as EA (Electronic Arts) and other competitors, even in China, such figures are many companies within three or four years to achieve the goal. Blizzard, of course, is not ignoring the social game trend. The industry believes that the project, which is mysteriously known as "Titan", will be the second online game product after World of Warcraft. Morhaime didn't disclose any plans, he just said, "socializing will be a big trend for online gaming."　　"He often logs on to his Facebook account to find out what lessons are worth learning from." But the development of the 5-year-old Diablo 3 shows that the Company believes PC stand-alone gaming is still a solid market, provided it has to constantly improve its gaming systems to counter the attacks of increasingly powerful social gaming. In StarCraft 2, a player must first register an account to play a game, including a stand-alone task. This setting allows players to be "bundled" from the start to the blizzard user community.　　Morhaime confirmed that such a system would continue in the Diablo 3. The First battle-net system, launched in 1997 in the Diablo, has brought the world's players together in one or several servers for a "collective game" of stand-alone products-which already has the shadow of "online gaming". In those days, other players who need multiplayer games must manually enter their own IP addresses to interconnect, and Blizzard takes the lead in providing a ready-made platform. The platform also experienced a jump ticket. At the E3 exhibition in 1996, Blizzard announced the launch of the war-net system and announced that it would be available for Christmas in 1996.　　Players are waiting for a cold shelf. In the end, "Diablo" was postponed for a year before it was officially released to successfully build this now seemingly forward-looking platform.　　In that broadband has not been widespread, a large number of users by virtue of modem dial-up Internet era, it ensures that the user's basic experience. The idea, originally just "think more than anyone else," is now likely to evolve into a big new business for Blizzard. Blizzard chief operating officer Paul Sams revealed that when the time is ripe, it does not rule out the ability to launch a virtual equipment trading market on the Internet.　　This will bring it closer to a social network. For today's blizzard, it will face a crucial turning point--to continue to maintain existing product patterns, or to look for possible changes.　　Although many players believe that Diablo will appear in the Home gaming console market, it has not been morhaime confirmed.　　For those fans who are accustomed to blizzard-picky, jumping, sticking to stand-alone games, and Maverick research and development style-who can say that future changes can be good or bad? Blizzard main game Products network game world of Warcraft large-scale multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), officially released at the end of 2004, has launched three pieces of information, respectively, the Burning expedition, Wrath of the Lich King and the fission of the Earth.　　The March 2011 Global simultaneous online population of 11.4 million people, in the global MMORPG market share of more than 60%. Single game Warcraft instant strategy game, Blizzard first to lay the reputation of the product, the earliest version released in 1994, many of them set for many similar game imitation.　　The latest version, "Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne", issued on July 1, 2003, sold 5.5 million sets in two weeks of its release. StarCraft Instant Strategy games, officially released in 1998. Because the game itself has the antagonism, the ornamental and the balance, in some areas becomes one kind of professional competition item.　　July 27, 2010, "StarCraft Ⅱ" on sale, within 48 hours to sell 1.5 million, refresh strategy-type game sales record. Diablo action Role-playing (RPG) game, launched in 1996, the first to launch a war network system, can be a multiplayer networking cooperation or battle. 2000 "Diablo 2" listed, soon sold 2.5 million sets, the battle network reached 8.75 million registered users. Diablo 3 has not yet been released.