The Blizzard Trifecta
Understanding why they won explains why they lost.
One of the things I want to do on Bending Pink Steel is reverse engineer the “ordered thinking” of others.
By that, I mean how did the thinking patterns of well-known people enable their success or lead to their downfall (and sometimes both). We’re actually going to spend the rest of 2024 on this task in a more structured way—so keep an eye out!
But today, I wanted to use the series gap to pull ideas from one of the best books I read all year: Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier.
If you’re a nerd, Blizzard needs no introduction.
If you’re not, the TLDR is that they’re responsible for some of the greatest PC games ever made (World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo) and have earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $100+ billion from their products.
Their creativity is legendary, and they have the numbers (and fans and awards) to prove it.
After reading Schreier’s 376-page book in less than a day, I found 3 patterns (aka ordered thinking examples) that appeared during every one of their major successes. I also found these same three items missing during every one of their major failures.
To say it was their winning formula might be a bit too simplistic. Instead, these 3 items came together to form a sort of filter that helped the Blizzard team see the world in only the way they could. And when it was stripped away, so was their momentum.
Here’s why Blizzard won. And maybe, if you adopt parts of their pattern, how you can too.
They had an external starting point.
Every single one of their hit games began as an iteration of a game they already loved.
“Warcraft would be a copy of Dune II”
StarCraft was a Star Wars version of Dominion
World of Warcraft was “a better EverQuest”
Diablo was their interpretation of the roguelike genre
Overwatch built upon Team Fortress 21
They copied what worked. Over and over and over again.
This is why expert copywriters and designers keep swipe files; they're constantly looking for proven starting points. They're honing their taste.
This tactic also solves the cold start creativity problem. It's much easier (and faster) to transform an existing thing into your unique version than to create a new thing from scratch.
They aimed at a small target.
For most of Blizzard's early history, the company was filled with hardcore gamers, people who lived and breathed base building and character leveling. Every day, they showed up to work to build games for themselves.
To balance the desire to make the games they wanted to play while also selling millions of copies, the founders developed the Donut Theory.
“In the middle of the donut was the hole – the hardcore gamer crowd. Blizzard’s games needed to be deep and strategic enough to appeal to that small, dedicated audience because they would evangelize the games they liked.
The ring around the donut – bigger, heftier, more significant-represented the “midcore” audience of people who maybe bought one or two games every year.
To reach those people, Blizzard’s games needed to be approachable and avoid turning people off. In other words, [they] had to be easy to learn, yet difficult to master.”2
Every game targeted that core audience—the folks who wanted a challenge, who wanted to go deep. Then, as the game developed, the team would soften the edges, build on-ramps, and help players master the game they picked up so easily.
They built for completion, not deadlines.
As hungry as gamers (and their creators) may have been for a steady stream of new content, one of the reasons people initially fell in love with Blizzard was due to their standout quality.
Every time they released a new game, it was unlike anything else on the market. Yes, you could trace its origin to other games that existed. But their version was a transformation—a glimpse into where the industry and technology were headed.
And the reason they could break through like that was obvious: they took a very long time to make stuff.
“Newcomers… quickly found out what made Blizzard stand out from other companies: a willingness to let games simmer, like chili sitting on the stove.”3
Simmering is a nice way to put missed deadlines and over-budget productions. But that’s where the magic lie. They believed the phrase “it takes as long as it takes” and, for a time, gave themselves permission to follow it.
Why Blizzard Stopped Winning
Schreier’s book captured a lot of the turmoil that’s defined the last decade of Blizzard’s history, from mistreating and underpaying employees to making enemies of their biggest Asian markets.
But for our purposes, the downfall feels simpler. Once you boil down what worked into the three patterns we mentioned, their absence in the later years becomes glaring.
Instead of iterating on games they loved, they focused on the games they had. For many, the starting points became less interesting. They felt trapped by franchise expectations (and sales goals) and relented to make what they could — not what they wanted.
As their revenue swelled, so did their targets. Their conversations shifted from Will our core audience love this? to How can we reach as many mobile players as possible? They lost the plot and the center of their donut.
As company needs overpowered creative timelines, Blizzard entered into a frantic release schedule. A quick glance at their timeline proves the point. You used to have to wait years for a new Blizzard release. Now, they came in months. The slow-cooked chili devolved into a microwaveable dinner.
The reason I wanted to tell this Blizzard story is not because I think you should immediately implement their same principles. Sometimes, it’s better to move fast or aim wide or ignore what everyone else is doing.
The real skill here, the underlying one, is awareness.
Do you know why you're winning? Or why you're not? Are you paying close enough attention to see your own ordered thinking?
From Play Nice: Warcraft references (pages 18, 87), StarCraft (46), World of Warcraft (88), Diablo (87), and Overwatch (218).
Page 28.
Pages 152, 215.
Why no reference to Warcraft 2!? But I digress.
Do you know why you're winning? Or why you're not? Are you paying close enough attention to see your own ordered thinking?
GREAT QUESTIONS!
I feel like I, in the near term, briefly pivoted my direction with Breakthrough Groups precisely because of these questions. I was planning on going in one direction, and I may still go in that direction in the future, but I decided in the near term to go in the direction where I was already winning.
It would be a good exercise to parse out WHY I am winning there so I can build in those building blocks in other directions. I do have a general idea though...