The following story is spun out of an episode of the Hit The Limit Break podcast. It has been edited for concise reading. For the full conversation, check out the the video below.
You can also find the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts.
While reading about the legendary game developer in Jason Schreier's upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, And Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, one thing became abundantly clear:
“The volatility was always there in some form or another,” says Schreier in our interview for Hit The Limit Break.
While those on the outside might believe that the "fall" of Blizzard, to use Schreier's own title, came about when the studio merged with CEO Bobby Kotick's Activision to form Activision Blizzard, issues at the developer were baked in from its very inception, a cascading effect combined with the eventual merger eventually resulting in devestating consequences. While it's easy to point fingers at specific individuals, and some for good reason, the reality is a lot more complicated than that.
"As a journalist it’s really important to me to not view the world as heroes and villains," says Schreier. "I don’t believe that’s an accurate way to tell stories. I don’t believe it’s capturing the truth. I think the only way you can really find the truth of a story is to see things from as many perspectives as possible."
While the book details numerous troubles that Blizzard had in the lead up to its merger with Activision, the reason why this specific partnership would eventually collapse under the weight of itself came down to the two companies having radically different philosphies around game development. Blizzard was a company that shipped games when they were ready, no matter how long development took, and Activision was a hyper-efficient machine reliant on consistent output.
"[Kotick's] history is essentially taking these franchises, whether it’s Guitar Hero or Call of Duty, and, in his words, exploiting them, with franchises every single year releasing a new installment," explains Shcreier. In Play Nice, it's revealed that Kotick wanted Activision to become so efficient at releasing games that he envisioned a new Guitar Hero release happening every month, which left the executive he relayed this desire to's jaw on the floor.
For a while, Kotick was somewhat accepting of Blizzard's more open ended approach to game development as long as the studio kept creating hit games. This acceptance ended when Blizzard's "next big thing", Project Titan, was cancelled. "It cost the company $80 million, as well as six or seven years of opportunity costs; potential other projects that were lost along the way," explains Schreier. "It was just a debacle for the company as a whole. And it also, and this is the most important part, it said to Bobby Kotick, that the promise of 'You just let us cook and we'll make you hits,' is no longer true."
Titan never really coalesced mostly because it wasn't born simply from a desire to make another great game, but rather, to develop a game that could rival Blizzard's own World of Warcraft before another studio beat the developer at its own game. Play Nice goes way more into the specifics of what Titan was than has ever been revealed before. The game was meant to have the players take control of a character that by day, would live out their lives in an Animal Crossing or Sims like experience with activities like fishing, photography, and even a full time job. Then, by night, they would fight crime as a superhero.
Born from the ashes of Titan was Blizzard's actual next hit Overwatch, with several designs for various superhero classes in the cancelled game carrying over to form characters such as Tracer and Widowmaker in the studio's hero shooter, which launched in 2016. While Overwatch has undoubtedly been a hit for the developer, it has had it's own share of issues over the years, particularly around the launch of its sequel, which launched in late 2022 in early access. However, despite failing to deliver in numerous aspects, such as releasing a once promised single player campaign, Schreier doesn't consider Overwatch 2 to be down and out.
"They're still coming out with new heroes, new skins," explains Schreier. "A few months ago, they overhauled the monetization system so you no longer have to pay for heroes at all. In the past, it was you didn't have to pay for heroes, but you had to play for a while to unlock them all or pay for them pay to speed things up, essentially. Now that is no longer the case. So they are changing things pretty drastically. There's still hundreds of people working on it, making new stuff all the time."
For more from our conversation with Jason Schreier, please watch the full episode of Hit the Limit Break. Also, consider donating to help build the Limit Break Network into a video game outlet for the future (more details in our FAQ), and check out our own video game Punctuation Pop!
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