Rob Pardo, the VP of Game Design for Blizzard, spoke to the assembled audience at AGC for the keynote. Carolyn Koh reports.
| Rob Pardo gave an interesting keynote speech, describing the Blizzard game design philosophy which seemed like a “no-brainer” to a business major like me. But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s hard to practice what you preach unless this philosophy is embraced by everyone in the company. The simplest plans always seem to be the hardest to pull through.
They set their core target. Not the hard core gamers with bleeding edge technology in their gaming machines, but a wider, more general audience. They then set the system specs and designed for those specs accordingly. Wonder why the art of WoW is so stylized? That’s why. They designed for a look which would look cool and yet would not date quickly. They designed the art for longevity rather than what’s hot now. Art that wouldn’t take a computer with cutting edge components to run. |
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