Gaming is filled with thousands of contentious issues, and the chances are that if you were to fill a room with gamers it would be very difficult to get them to all agree on anything gaming related. Obviously opinions will always be subjective, but when it comes to gaming – in comparison to other media formats – it is especially difficult to find common ground.
While most people will agree that Queen was a great band, and that Forrest Gump was a really good film, trying to find equivalents in gaming is very difficult. Even classic franchises such as Fallout, Half Life and Command and Conquer have a significant pool of vocal detractors who will say the games are overrated.
Amidst all the arguments however, it seems that one thing we can all agree on is that Blizzard is good at consistently producing addictive and compelling games. One need only look as far as Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft and of course World of Warcraft to see the impact they have had on the gaming industry. Some may argue that it is time the developer came up with something new, but it has to be said that working within these three primary universes, it has made some of the most memorable games yet created.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Blizzard’s Diablo III team revealed the secret to the success of all Blizzard games: ‘Endless Iteration’.
“Here’s the secret to Blizzard games, and this is a secret that won’t help any of our competitors: endless iteration. We’ll take something, we’ll put it in the game.
Maybe we’ll like it when we put it in, maybe we won’t. We’ll leave it in there for a while, we’ll let it percolate. We’ll play it and play it and play it, and then we’ll come back. We might throw it all out, or we’ll throw half of that out and redo it,” said Blizzard lead designer Kevin Martens.
Martens went on to elaborate saying, “It can be a long time, but it is fun to work on as well. That’s the thing that keeps you going. Multiplayer always works, and the builds are always playable. We’ve played them constantly, and it’s fun. You actually look forward to the weekly play session even though the game is still in progress. That’s what keeps us going, and that’s also why it takes so long. We’ll do it over and over again until it’s just right.”
The method described above unfortunately sounds like an expensive and time consuming process, one which most developers can not afford due to pressure from publishers and shareholders. Early in Blizzard’s career, when game development was not as expensive as it is now and the industry was still relatively small, they were able to get away with a process which appears untenable in today’s industry. However, it seems that thanks to the massive commercial success of World of Warcraft Blizzard is able to continue the model without the pressures faced by most developers.
This is probably why Martens was comfortable revealing Blizzard’s secret, knowing full well that it “won’t help any of our competitors” due to the fact that no other developer can afford to maintain the endless iteration process.
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