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: Over the last few months, things have been all over the place in terms of Activision and Blizzard, and how they are going to fit together. Where do you think something like StarCraft is going to fit into the portfolio of the new company? How long do you think it will take to achieve consistency in terms of how all the brands are managed under one roof?

Pearce: As far as the brand management of the Activision stuff, you'll have to talk to the Activision folks about that, but as far as the StarCraft II title fitting into the portfolio, it fits in very well. The Activision business and the Blizzard business are very complimentary; Activision has a very strong presence in the console space, and Blizzard has a very strong presence in the online PC titles. You know, they don't really have anything in their portfolio that's similar to StarCraft II, so it fits in well. That's true for almost all our titles - Diablo III, definitely and World of Warcraft definitely.

Colayco: But it terms of what you're talking about with consistency, Blizzard is still going to be very autonymous under the whole umbrella of the corporation.

Pearce: We have our own PR department and our own marketing department at Blizzard, and our own finance guys and human resources...

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Kikizo: It's kind of like how Rockstar fits into Take 2.

Colayco: I guess, yes, it's kind of like that.

Pearce: The way the organisation is structured, Mike Morhaime is the CEO of of Blizzard, he reports to Bobby Kotick, who is the CEO of the Activision Blizzard corporate umbrella, and Mike Griffith is the CEO of Activision publishing, which is the branch that does the development and publishing of Activision products. So in that sense, Mike Griffith and Mike Morhaime are peers, so the Blizzard business is a peer business to Activision publishing.

Colayco: We're kind of getting the hook but I think one important take-away message is you're not about to see Blizzard branding on say Tony Hawk or Call of Duty, and you're not going to see Activision branding on our titles.

Kikizo: And where does that leave the other Vivendi Games stuff? Can you complete the picture for us by explaining what the relationship between Vivendi and Blizzard was and how it looks moving forwards?

Pearce: Blizzard was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi Games. Vivendi Games was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi, the French conglomerate. So what Vivendi did was buy a controlling interest in Activision, and merge the Activision business with the Vivendi Games business, and then rename it all Activision Blizzard.

Diablo III

Kikizo: So as a co-founder of Blizzard, where does this leave you in terms of the management structure?

Pearce: I still report to Mike Morhaime, and we still operate pretty autonomously and independently. The Activision leadership is a resource available to us, but there's no mandate that we leverage that to any specific extent. So we continue to do business day to day, as much as we can, like we used to.

Kikizo: If I was Mr Kotick, one thing I might encourage both units to look at would be that they're complimentary at the moment, but could there be synergy beyond that; for example, could we see some of the PC franchises exist in a console environment. Is that something that could be encouraged at some point, something that may be explored?

Pearce: Bobby has been in the business for a long time. He bought Activision in 1991. And he understands the value of the success that we've achieved, and recognises that we've got a franchise that's successful, and doesn't want to mess with that. He recognises the value of the Blizzard franchises being under the Blizzard label, and wouldn't impose anything that we didn't feel was appropriate for the Blizzard brand.

Kikizo: Are you comfortable moving forwards with the new Activision Blizzard structure?

Pearce: Yes. Actually, we're excited about it. We actually requested that it be called Blizzard Activision! [laughs]

Kikizo: You can't win 'em all.

Pearce: Exactly! You can't win every battle.

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