Activision Blizzard Part 2—Organizing Unbounded Creativity
It’s the community. You have players for 20 years. Somehow, someway, they see that little blue Blizzard logo, and there’s a point of connection.”—Chris Metzen
The following is part of the premium newsletter exploring owner-operators and cultures of publicly traded companies. Keep in mind I may own or have owned the company discussed. None of this is investment advice, do your own due diligence.
Find the archive of companies and people explored here
In Part 1, we explored Blizzard’s history, hit games, niche appeal, a lens into their users, and how the business made money. It ended with a prelude to Blizzard’s production function and the Activision creep that saw the mass exodus of talent from the 2016-2019 period. I recommend you read Part 1 before continuing.
Fundamental to Blizzard’s success in the first quarter-century of the business was the ethos of "embracing the inner geek." Not only was it a core value but it was entwined with the company’s mission to create the most epic entertainment experience ever. It was gamer speak for gamers by gamers. It made the business aligned from the start with their audience—fellow gamers.
This resulted in a culture where quality and discipline were rooted in making something epic. That meant making games that weren’t “hot” for a year but something that wasn’t in the market that those in Blizzard were would love to play. It wasn’t what others would love but what they would love and what other gamers like them would love as well.
It led to an organization that could spend five years building a genre-defying game. It created the discipline that led to killing a game after seven years of development. Embracing the inner geek was at the crux of developing games that spawned eSports and modern sensations like MOBA or digital collectibles. It meant game developers came first.
Developers First
When Silicon & Synapse, the predecessor to Blizzard, sold to Davidson & Associates in 1994, Mike Morhaime orchestrated a condition where the game studio would be able to maintain their independence and autonomy to operate as they wished. With the purchase price of $6.75m, Blizzard recruited people who would be long-time contributors to the studio like Chris Metzen, Samwise Didier, Nick Carpenter, and Joeyray Hall. They were critical leaders who created the StarCraft, Warcraft, and Overwatch games from story, illustration, cinematic to gameplay.
It was the start of a game developer-driven company with a bottom-up push. The developers collaborated with the leaders for every new project. It helped that the executive team was made up of game developers. Morhaime often joined the Game Teams as a game developer, writing code for StarCraft and Warcraft. The development team was always part of the decision-making framework.
Employees found themselves evolving as developers as well. Metzen joined as an illustrator but he moved on to write scenarios for Warcraft and became the author of the World of Warcraft (WoW) and StarCraft universes. Joeyray Hall had joined as a 3D artist but went on to create Blizzard Studios and the cinematic team. It wasn’t just the developers having the freedom to craft their careers either.
As Blizzard grew, they started recruiting gamers to become employees in the early 2000s. Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director for WoW, was an avid player of the game before he joined Blizzard to help create the improvements he wanted to see at the game.
“More and more game companies are tapping into the ecosystem nowadays, but 20 years ago, when Blizzard was starting up World of Warcraft, recruiting top MMO guild leaders to be members of the design team was, I believe, an extremely unusual move.” - Ion Hazzikostas
Looking at the Hearthstone team, in 2021, five of the developers were former competitive players and two were former esports broadcasters of the game. This kind of gamer-to-developer pipeline—one of the most authentic forms of fandom—was another component of building a developer-first and gamer-first culture for the community that loved Blizzard’s creations.