The Exodus of Infinity Ward

Infinity Ward creates blockbuster game. Activision fires IW executives to avoid paying them. The ex-IW executives formed Respawn Entertainment and then signed with EA. Now, more of IW's staff leaves, likely heading to Respawn. Caught up? Good, because now its time for a history lesson with Uncle Heartless_.

Blizzard North was originally an independent company. It was established in 1993 under the name Condor, founded by Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik. The company was purchased and renamed by Blizzard about six months before the release of their hit PC game, Diablo, in 1996. Diablo proved to be incredibly successful, and their 2000 sequel, Diablo II, was even more successful.

On June 30, 2003, several key employees left Blizzard North to form the new companies Flagship Studios (8 moved here) and Castaway Entertainment (9 moved here). The Blizzard North exodus continued on with around 30 employees leaving the company in total.

Flagship Studios was founded by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik, the original developers of Diablo and former high level Blizzard North executives.

Castaway Entertainment is based in Redwood City, California. The company signed a publishing agreement with Electronic Arts in March 2004, but has yet to produce any products.

For everyone thinking Infinity Ward is doomed and Respawn Ent. is the next coming of game development Jesus, I ask what company you would put money into today: Blizzard or Flagship Studios or Castaway Entertainment?  It takes more than a few developers to make a game and good corporate culture doesn't disappear over night.  We're not talking about Shigeru Miyamoto or Will Wright here.

It’s not Battle.net, it’s me

I was less than thrilled to hear about the new Battle.net. I commented on other blogs that this new Battle.net was five years too late. I don’t want every new game to launch with its own developer tie-in service. I want simplicity; consolidation. For me that was Steam. Sadly, Blizzard has shown no move towards Valve’s digital distribution platform and as Blizzard has always been a heavy box sales driven company, it’s a pipe dream. I don’t like the idea of Blizzard’s new toy, but it’s me that’s at fault, not the new Battle.net.

I can’t accept that I have to maintain an EA, Steam, Games for Windows Live, NCSoft, SOE Station, Galanet, Gamespy, Rockstar, Battle.net, and God knows what else account. Whatever happened to launching a game.exe, typing in a display name, and hitting play? Where the hell is the OpenID or Facebook Connect of PC games? Even my cherished Steam platform is becoming a hindrance as the majority of games I play do not integrate with my Steam login for multiplayer or friends tracking, meaning for the majority of games I own via Steam I am logging in twice to play (thank God for the invention of the auto login features).

Battle.net will be successful and heralded as an industry standard. It is a Blizzard product after all. However, I don’t like the trend of every publisher/developer having their own separate platform trying to lock me into or out of their games. Hopefully my complaint has been noted and quickly dismissed somewhere within this crazy landscape of what we call PC gaming.

The New Battle.net

With the "eye in the sky" opinion out the way, lets get to the new Battle.net.  Ars Technica has a preview. It appears to have the usual Blizzard polish and is probably ready to go live now, but I suspect we won't see it until Starcraft 2 hits the shelves.

Nothing from the article is groundbreaking. The new Battle.net features streamlined matchmaking for Blizzard games with integrated social networking. It is what most expected and the Blizzard polish will seal the deal.

Conclude

I almost kind of wish it was opened to more than just Blizzard games, but as a long time Steam (and Steamworks) observer, I understand that even giving access away to a digital platform for free doesn't mean any of the larger developers will pay it any attention.  After all, that would be crazy. They can just make their own flavor!