Jay Wilson, the lead creator of the role-playing video game Diablo 3, reported the merging between Activision and Blizzard, which occurred in 2008, saying that Activision’s impact on Blizzard was comparable to a frog in a boiling water pot. This alludes to the rising stress put on personnel at the newly combined firm to deliver a hit edition.
The announcement was made during a panel presentation at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Besides Wilson, many other former workers of Blizzard, such as Producer Matt Householder and Sound Designer Matt Uelmen, were attending the event.
Activision’s effect on Blizzard was comparable to that of a frog placed in a kettle of rapidly boiling water. In the beginning, it appeared to be nothing. However, when business models developed for other items, it became increasingly apparent that Wilson gradually lost ground. As a result, extreme amounts of pressure were being applied to the relatively new and profitable products at the time.
After that, the designer gave a few particular instances, one of which was Heroes of the Storm. They were humiliated in meetings with Activision, where the focus was almost exclusively on the business’s bottom line and how to get more money out of it. According to Wilson, the impact on Diablo 3 was minimal because the game was sold in a premium boxed format.
Wilson left the firm in 2016 to explore a career in writing, but even up to the moment he left, the pressure about Diablo Immortal was already beginning to build up. Before I departed, the developer remarked there was a lot of discussion on Immortal.
Although Activision Blizzard had generated much buzz with its announcement of the upcoming Immortal event, the game has yet to launch. They were genuinely eager for a free-to-play Diablo version, but I wasn’t one of them. To be fair, at that point, I had already left Diablo.
