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As part of the opening remarks at the 2008 DICE Summit yesterday the Blizzard executive team of CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime, Senior VP, game design Rob Pardo, and Executive VP, business development Frank Pearce gave some interesting insights into their company's success. Particularly of note was the role canceling titles in production plays. Morhaime explained, "We just cancel the ones that aren't going well." Sure, when you're weeding out marginal projects before they get to the shelves that helps ensure that the ones that do get there are top-notch. But it's a lot easier to say that when you've done the Diablos, Warcrafts, and Starcrafts.

So, what are some of those games that didn't make the grade? Most of them you likely never heard of. Names like Games People Play, Crixa, Denizen, Nomad and Raiko top the list. But then you also see the likes of Shattered Nations, a 3D game in a post-apocalyptic world where you struggled to help civilization survive. After its cancellation the team would go on to make Starcraft. And then there's the legendary Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. While it might not have made their internal cut, its cancellation caused quite an uproar at the time. For a little perspective on the subject we caught up with 1UP Network PC Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green:

    I saw WarCraft Adventures at least a couple times in the course of its development. As both a WarCraft geek and an adventure game geek, I was all over this game. It made total sense to me that they were doing it, too. The backstory to the WarCraft games had obviously been important to them, and this was a way for them to get the pesky strategy game part out of the way and just tell the story they'd wanted to tell. At the point it looked like the game might be in a little bit of "trouble," they brought in Steve Meretsky as a kind of "script doctor"--which to me was in even cooler sign, despite the trouble, because Meretsky is one of the all-time great adventure game designers. So when they cancelled it, I was crushed. I cried like a little girl--a little girl who's stuffed panda was taken away. And they were so close! It's actually probably done somewhere, sitting on a hard disk in someone's office at Blizzard. For years I've been saying they should just stick it on the disc of whatever game they have coming out next. They don't have to document it or anything--just put it on there for people to find. But no. They have this whole "quality" thing going on. They think it will taint their great reputation if a less-than-perfect game comes out with their name on it. To which I say: So what! You're trillionaires now! We know you're great! You know you're great! No one has anything to lose! Give us the damn game already! Please end my pain!

Pardo also talked about how the process keynote speaker Gore Verbinski detailed of refining Pirates of the Caribbean through storyboards sounded good, but doesn't fit well in the interactive world of games. Instead, what they do is actually start implementing stuff until they get to point where they say "shit, that kinda sucks," toss it, and figure out if they can reboot from some point. "It's one of the things that makes us infamous for never hitting a release date, but it's part of 'gameplay first'," he explained.

But what comes first for them now? In speaking to the continuing success of World of Warcraft Pardo named their chief focus presently to be "customer service." Yes, one of the best game design companies has been reduced to a call center. Given the tremendous revenue stream the game generates and its phenomenal subscriber numbers that's easier to understand, but damned if we weren't hoping to hear something more along the lines of creating Diablo 3 or perfecting Starcraft 2. And on that note, mentioned in passing was the little tidbit that they pulled resources from the Starcraft 2 design team to help finish World of Warcraft. Considering that it came out back in 2004, we figure that means Starcraft 2 has been underway since potentially as early as 2003. That's five years ago, which by our calculations makes it pretty likely we'll be seeing Starcraft 2 this fall!

We can always hope at least.

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