Blizzard Entertainment: An Overview
BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT
FROM THEN TILL NOW
Gary Buckman
GSP110 † Introduction to Game and Simulation Development
Professor Getz
03/06/2009
WOW! No I’m not surprised. If you or your friends have ever said you were playing WoW then you know the game I’m talking about.. World of Warcraft . If you have heard of this game then you have probably heard of Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 by 3 men Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pierce. The company was originally called Silicon and Synapse. In 1994 they briefly changed their name to Chaos Studios, but found out that there was another company out there with that same name so they settled on Blizzard Entertainment. During their first years they made games for other companies such as Rock N Roll Racing and Battle chess. Then when they got purchased in 1994 they came out with their first game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Blizzard has changed hands many times over the years. CUC International in 1996, Havas in 1998 and in that same year got sold to Vivendi, and then in 2008 Vivendi merges with Activision using Blizzards name in the resulting company Activision Blizzard.
Blizzard has many games under their belts and many have earned them top honors throught the years. Diablo, Diablo II, and Diablo: Lord of Destruction are a few. Some of the top awards that Blizzard has received are Game of the Year, Best PC strategy game of the year, they made it to the top 50 games of the year, and best of show. The list goes on. Blizzard hasn’t made it to where they are today without conflict. There have been a few setbacks throughout the years. In 1997 Blizzard came out with battlenet, a place to play many games online for Blizzard Entertainment. In 1992 Blizzards lawyers threatened legal action against the developers of bnetd, another online server that was created to play Blizzard games online. It took them many years but in the end Blizzard had finally one their case. Bnetd
FROM THEN TILL NOW
Gary Buckman
GSP110 † Introduction to Game and Simulation Development
Professor Getz
03/06/2009
WOW! No I’m not surprised. If you or your friends have ever said you were playing WoW then you know the game I’m talking about.. World of Warcraft . If you have heard of this game then you have probably heard of Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 by 3 men Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pierce. The company was originally called Silicon and Synapse. In 1994 they briefly changed their name to Chaos Studios, but found out that there was another company out there with that same name so they settled on Blizzard Entertainment. During their first years they made games for other companies such as Rock N Roll Racing and Battle chess. Then when they got purchased in 1994 they came out with their first game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Blizzard has changed hands many times over the years. CUC International in 1996, Havas in 1998 and in that same year got sold to Vivendi, and then in 2008 Vivendi merges with Activision using Blizzards name in the resulting company Activision Blizzard.
Blizzard has many games under their belts and many have earned them top honors throught the years. Diablo, Diablo II, and Diablo: Lord of Destruction are a few. Some of the top awards that Blizzard has received are Game of the Year, Best PC strategy game of the year, they made it to the top 50 games of the year, and best of show. The list goes on. Blizzard hasn’t made it to where they are today without conflict. There have been a few setbacks throughout the years. In 1997 Blizzard came out with battlenet, a place to play many games online for Blizzard Entertainment. In 1992 Blizzards lawyers threatened legal action against the developers of bnetd, another online server that was created to play Blizzard games online. It took them many years but in the end Blizzard had finally one their case. Bnetd