Interview: Blizzard Co-founder Frank Pearce

We sit down with the man running the show at Blizzard to discuss the what the unprecedented Activision Blizzard means, and get the latest chat on StarCraft II.

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Kikizo: Do you think that's reflective of the efficiency of how the studio is run, or do you think it's simply not as large scale a project as WoW?

Pearce: I think that we could probably put more people on the team and work a little faster, but at the same time, we need to take the time to get it right so that it's not a linear curve. You know, throw more people at it, doesn't mean it's going to get done that much faster. So they're very selective about the developers that they hire for the team; they want to make sure they're people who are very passionate about StarCraft, and very passionate about what their role will be on the team.

Colayco: There's something to be said about the type of gameplay experience... you know, comparing World of Warcraft to StarCraft, by the nature of the type of game World of Warcraft is, it necessitates a large group of people to handle content creation, versus something like an RTS.

Kikizo: I guess the development of a World of Warcraft never really ends, is that also true of the StarCraft universe? So once the game ships you don't get to go on vacation...

Colayco: Well historically with our RTS games, we've been able to provide content updates, like map downloads and things like that. I believe with Warcraft III there was even a short, free campaign that was offered for download, post-release of the game - those type of things. Historically our RTS games have had expansion packs as well, so you know, the development team has a project that transitions after the core game ships.

Kikizo: What about the CGI visuals we're looking at here? I know that you guys have said that the visual quality you have got in-engine is comparable to some of the pre-rendered stuff that you're using to progress the story. Are these visuals also produced from within the 40-man resource?

Colayco: Well the one that we have playing right here is actually a pre-rendered scene that was put together by our cinematics group, which is a separate group from the core development team. The cinematics team is about 100 people! It's in-house but it's a separate department.

Kikizo: And the in-game engine is your own engine, debuting for the first time in this project?

Pearce: Yes. But I don't think people will look at this engine and say, OK this is the engine we'll use to make other games for the future. The Diablo III team has their own technology that they've created. It's truly up to the teams how they want to leverage existing technology, if at all.

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