Pearce: Blizz has "room for improvement"

By Tom Bramwell Published 27 May, 2010

"Constant struggle" to do the right things.

Blizzard still has "a lot of work to do" in order to come to terms with its enormous growth since World of Warcraft launched.

"It's a constant struggle every day to make sure we're doing the right things with the organisation," senior vice president and co-founder Frank Pearce told Eurogamer this week.

"I don't think our on-boarding process is very smooth at all, especially considering our size and what we're trying to achieve. We have lots of room for improvement.

"From the outside looking in, if you look at the end result in our products, we're doing OK, but it's a constant risk when you've experienced that much explosive growth in the last five years. It's a lot of work."

Pearce said that "a documented mission statement and core values" were helpful in keeping growing pains in check.

Blizzard was already a big company, of course, but the scale of its growth has been challenging for Pearce and colleagues to handle.

"Even when we had 500 people, it's very difficult to know who everyone was, and now we've got 4600 people, you just can't know who everyone is," he said. "There are many more people that you don't know than you do.

"On the development teams, they're very much like family. They know everyone on their team and they work together day in and day out.

"They have very distinct cultures, because there's the WOW team, and there's the StarCraft II team and the Diablo team. But we don't have that sense of small team and family as an organisation any more.

"And it's OK, right? We made great games to get into the hands of our fans, and this is a side effect of that."

Check out our in-depth hands-on preview of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty for more on Blizzard's latest, which is due out on 27th July.

For more on Blizzard itself, check out The Making of World of Warcraft.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eraysor #1 2 years ago

    Having played the SC2 beta, I don't think they have anything to worry about.

  • Slipstream #2 2 years ago

    Having played the SC2 beta, I don't think they have anything to worry about.

    Ah ha, this is what he menas from the outside looking in.

    Still, with so many employees I can understand how it feels to have what seems like a loose grip on the company. As long as the various sectors are narrowed down and controlled via management then that's less faces they'd need to get accustomed to.

  • levitate #3 2 years ago

    @Eraysor: I haven't played SC2 beta, you think the final game will be good then?

  • ignatiusjreilly #4 2 years ago

    4600 employees? It kind of sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. When WoW finally dies off, and it will, what will happen to all those people?

  • M83J01P97 #5 2 years ago

    They will move over to the still unannounced MMO I imagine...

  • anomagnus #6 2 years ago

    @ignatiusjreilly

    WoW won't 'die off' if it is handled properly. To date, blizz seem to have handled the game well. Yes they're not growing, but any market has a cap, and anyone that wants to play an MMO has either played WoW or is playing WoW.

    They'll keep over hauling the game, iteration after iteration, drawing people back in, and reeling in new customers to replace the old.

    Personally, i had to just quit WoW, cold turkey. My guild was third on the server, i was the best geared druid (any spec) on the server, and i just couldnt do it anymore. My world was filled with WoW, from raids straight after work, to spending my work days learning strategies, simulacrafting, and stat balancing, it was consuming my life. The further we progressed, the less life i had, until i just bailed, acting as one of the guilds main tanks, and quit cold turkey.

    I still feel guilty, two months later, and if i ever went back, i know i'd be right back where i was, so i uninstalled the game, threw out the boxes with licence keys, and changed my password into random gibberish.

    Any game that requires that from a regular player doesnt need to worry about dying off.

  • ignatiusjreilly #7 2 years ago

    Any game that requires that from a regular player doesnt need to worry about dying off.

    Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Everquest etc....

    Nothing stays at the top forever, especially not computer games.

  • Gurgeh #8 2 years ago

    When someone in your company starts talking about "our on-boarding process" and "a documented mission statement and core values" then you know your company has grown too large by at least one person.

  • Quint2020 #9 2 years ago

    Sounds like he's trying to convince himself of something...

    I'm still in two minds regarding Blizzard's growth, it was always nice to see an independent dev pumping out such high quality games and creating such iconic series.

    Still as long as they keep churning out great games I guess it can only be a good thing, even with their connection to Evilvision.

  • sneetch #10 2 years ago

    @ignatiusjreilly
    4600 employees? It kind of sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. When WoW finally dies off, and it will, what will happen to all those people?

    The same thing that happens with any other MMO: they'll get other jobs. These may be in Blizzards new MMO, in WoW's successor or in another company. Nothing lasts forever.

  • anomagnus #11 2 years ago

    Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Everquest etc....

    none of them ever had the same success as WoW.

  • FiZiE #12 2 years ago

    Aw I thought it was Pearce Brosnan

  • curtlikesmeat #13 2 years ago

    "Ultima Online, Anarchy Online, Everquest etc....

    none of them ever had the same success as WoW. "

    I guess what he was getting at was that they had equally hardcore people at one time or another (although I can only speak for Everquest), and that sooner or later, they too drifted off to real life or other games. Before WoW came, people were playing 15 hour days, camping rare loot spawns, competing for server firsts and all that - you just didn't hear about it as much.