Jay Wilson, who led the work on Diablo 3 for more than 10 years, shared a similar metaphor during the question-and-answer session at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.
According to him, at first Activision‘s influence on the processes in Blizzard was not felt at all. But later, when it came to new games, the publisher of Call of Duty began to exert the strongest pressure on the studio.
For example, every meeting with Activision was very frustrating for the Heroes of the Storm team, where they constantly talked about revenue and how to increase it, how to squeeze maximum money out of the project.
Again, it was Activision that wanted to get the deep-fried Diablo. While Jay himself was not eager to do it and left the company, like many other employees, disappointed with Activision’s approach.
“When I worked at Blizzard, it was customary to say that we want to be guys in white. I mean, we wanted to be the good guys who always want to do the right thing for the players. And if we took a fee for something (we are still in business), then we always wanted to take as much as it made sense. And this led to a direct conflict with Activision’s philosophy,” Jay said.