“I didn't realise what an amazing ecosystem had sprung up to enable new studios,” says Morten. Also interested in those dreams are investors each of the three studios are receiving varying levels of financial support from parties interested in what Blizzard veterans can do when set free from the worlds of Warcraft and StarCraft. Joined by numerous other former Blizzard developers, Morten, Campbell, Kim, and Kaleiki set up their studios to follow their dreams. It's just the most fun to play, and watching it is secondary.” We require more minerals “We want to make the opposite of that, where anyone can play. “StarCraft 2 was, I think, made to be more fun to watch than fun to play,” he explains. That place would end up being his own studio, Uncapped Games, and the project would be something counter to Kim’s experience on building Blizzard’s once-king of esports. “Does Blizzard have a desire to make a game such as this one that is led by my game design ambition?” Unsure that his bosses could offer him that chance, Kim left to find somewhere that would. “Do Blizzard see me as someone who can take on that responsibility?” Kim asked himself. He and his team are working on a “gameplay first” PvP real-time strategy game, something he tells me grew out of his wish to “ a shot at designing the next generation RTS.” But he wasn’t sure the opportunity to create such a thing was there while working on StarCraft 2, and later, Diablo 4. That wish to create something that looks beyond what is available today is shared by David Kim, lead designer at Uncapped Games. Credit: Notorious Studios / Cole Eastburn “We're aspiring, almost, to make a new genre,” he explains. Visually it’s classic fantasy – all D&D-style warriors and wizards – but Kaleiki has ambitions to refine what those roles mean. Notorious’ own game, currently known as Project Honor, is a class-based RPG that blends PvP and PvE together. “Just having the chance to create our own game, our own IP, is an experience that not many people get in their lives.” “Our team are really people who love world-building,” he says. “And for us to have a chance to build something original, something new in this genre, is incredibly special.”Ĭhris Kaleiki, an ex-World of Warcraft developer and co-founder of Notorious Studios, also found the idea of working on something not already in Blizzard’s stable of established worlds alluring. “If you look at the big games that are released in the RTS space, they tend to be derivative games, sequels, licence-based, or things like that,” Campbell says. But Campbell sees Stormgate as an opportunity to not just introduce new design ideas, but to create a whole new universe, something Blizzard has famously been reticent to do. On paper, Stormgate shares much in common with StarCraft it will have a campaign as well as a PvP mode, and support co-op play across the board. “I think the ability to clean the slate is something that would've been very difficult to have if I was still at Blizzard.” “There certain expectations around what would come next,” says Morten, Frost Giant’s CEO, about life at Blizzard. A former Warcraft 3 developer, he’s teamed up with ex-StarCraft 2 production director, Tim Morten, to fulfil an ambition of creating something that doesn’t have to adhere to any existing lineage. “We believe, fundamentally, that the RTS’ brightest days are still ahead,” says Tim Campbell, president of Frost Giant and Stormgate’s game director. Each is approaching life after Blizzard in very different ways, but all seem united by their ability to thrive after being released from the enormously heavy shackles of Blizzard’s gargantuan IPs. Of the many new ‘post-Blizzard’ studios, I’ve spoken to leaders from three Frost Giant, Uncapped Games, and Notorious Studios. The result of this combination of factors was perhaps inevitably always going to be an exodus, but rarely does such an exodus result in the creation of quite so many new studios. The ongoing nature of the developer’s games also means staff may work on the same project for over a decade, which can understandably lead to burnout. Blizzard is at a crossroads a multi-year dry period has seen its franchises slow down or become stagnant, and development teams have struggled in their pursuit of innovation. We first explored these talent departures last year.
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