Ten years to sharpen a single sword — guarantee the quality, not the quantity.
After watching Jiaokeli’s See Through, I fell unusually in love with it. (download page portal)
One person spent three and a half years pouring himself into creating a personal short film, giving up a stable job and material comfort, all for a little over 16 minutes of animation. What conviction sustained him through it? How could it not be a masterpiece?
A masterpiece is the daughter of time, not the son of money.
Look around: animation and comics everywhere, games everywhere. They swamp our entertainment lives like a flood of wild beasts. Abundance is no blessing — it’s a curse. More and more shoddy products roll off the line as countless companies chase volume over quality, with their eyes fixed on money and their shining ideals cast to the four winds.
For an otaku, ACG is a holy trinity — seeing (A)nimation naturally leads to thinking of (G)ame, so my mind wanders again —
Blizzard’s success has taught us all a lesson.
In nearly twenty years, Blizzard has conquered countless gamers with just seven games across three series.
If I remember correctly, the grandfather of PC RTS games is Dune.
Back in the day, Westwood was still a towering tree, its position at high noon. Every RTS player in the world had Dune II on their hard drive. Yet with such a formidable rival before it, Blizzard still set out on the path of RTS — and as events proved, Blizzard came from behind to take the lead. While developing Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, they had already studied every strength of Dune II in detail and grasped all of its weaknesses. Blizzard’s goal was to perfect, perfect, and perfect again the very concept of RTS. It was exactly this passion that forged Blizzard’s early legend.
In 1994, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans broke into the RTS market. It was Blizzard’s first game made exclusively for PC, and the first time the Blizzard label appeared on a game box. The product was an instant hit. At its core it imitated the Dune formula, which made it easy for Dune players to pick up.
Though it was an imitation, Blizzard still stamped Warcraft with its own mark. In terms of setting, it was the first to blend in a fantasy backdrop: swords and magic replaced planes and cannons, and the all-encompassing yellow sand gave way to lush forests, giving players a completely fresh combat experience. In terms of features — networked multiplayer, a random map generator, a wealth of hotkey settings — every one of these new experiences Warcraft brought to players pointed the way toward the future of game development.
Afterward, Blizzard released sequels in the Warcraft series, the Diablo series, and StarCraft. Every product was a spectacular success. I once didn’t understand why one of the first subtitles in the World of Warcraft opening cinematic was “ten years.” Perhaps more than a decade ago (2004 for World of Warcraft, ‘94 for Warcraft — ten years) today’s Blizzard glory was already destined. The Warcraft series now holds kingly status; even when such well-known settings as The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons were turned into online games, they still couldn’t shake World of Warcraft‘s position.
By the same token, as the world’s largest game company, EA Games’ titles just aren’t very replayable. Among strategy games, only the Tiberium Wars series still has a decent story left. As Jay (Chou) says: “Games come too fast, just like a tornado — can’t escape the storm circle, no time to flee. Games leave too fast, just like a tornado…” Near-assembly-line production makes games come fast and go fast. Too commercial. It lacks love.
Why is Blizzard able to create such a legend?
As Stephen (Chow) says: “As long as you put your heart into it, anyone can be the God of Cookery.“
The way I see it, the people at Blizzard all have boundless passion for their products, a ten-years-to-sharpen-one-sword attitude, and the mental readiness to scrap everything and start over whenever necessary (of course, they also have more material security than we do, so they won’t be blinded by profit and rush things through).
More than nine months pregnant, Annie Strain grabbed the phone and dialed her husband’s number. “She told me the time had come,” recalls Blizzard employee Jeff Strain. It was the fall of 1997, and he was still at Blizzard Entertainment making a final sprint to finish developing StarCraft in time for the Christmas release window.
“I went to the IT department, signed out a laptop, and then sped home,” admits Jeff Strain, who by then was already exhausted. “You know what? Five or six hours before the baby was born, I was still in the hospital writing code.”
When Annie woke up, she found her husband still clacking at the keyboard. She was instantly furious: “You’re still working on that damn game while our daughter is being born?” Jeff Strain’s fingers stopped at once. He looked up and said, “It’s not a ‘damn game,’ Annie — this is StarCraft!”
Three years later, Jeff Strain admits he’s still ashamed of what he said that day. But stories like his are commonplace at Blizzard Entertainment. The obsession Blizzard employees have for game development is often hard for friends and family to understand.
For Blizzard employees, game development isn’t a job — it’s a way of life. This may make their family lives a bit rough, but for Blizzard Entertainment, whose principle is to “produce only top-tier, best-selling games,” a great deal of sacrifice and boundless passion are indispensable.
Blizzard understands the difference between good and great, and that is precisely the hardest thing for a company to do: be willing to scrap everything and start over at any moment. If someone born in the ‘80s never played StarCraft, you can only say their childhood was incomplete — or that they were a computer-game illiterate. Perhaps not everyone knows that StarCraft was once sent back to the drawing board right before release. StarCraft remains to this day Blizzard’s “longest and most painful one,” yet Blizzard’s resolve to make a great game never changed. The earlier StarCraft ultimately kept only the race settings; all the rest of its design was thrown out.
Because of the redo, the schedule slipped, and by the time Christmas came, StarCraft still wasn’t ready for release — just like how we’re now waiting for the repeatedly delayed StarCraft 2. StarCraft‘s lead designer Bob Fitch said: “Everyone at the company knows that just a few disappointing games would destroy all our reputation.“ As events proved, it was precisely this spirit of relentless refinement and this ten-years-to-sharpen-one-sword attitude that earned Blizzard the admiration of players.
Blizzard once laid down a strict hiring policy: anyone who works at Blizzard must be a gamer. Make yourself both a user and a maker. As a user, you can understand the needs and judge the product; as a maker, you can find a way to meet those needs and make it happen. As our great “Three Represents” thought says: “Represent the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of players.” When leaders go among the masses and developers go among users, how could the work possibly be done poorly?
A voice from the heavens: “So you watched Jiaokeli’s See Through — is that any reason to blow hot air and inflate a great big balloon?” Sorry, I’ve strayed off course, nearly fallen into a ditch. Enough said — hats off to Blizzard, hats off to Jiaokeli.
StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 keep getting delayed, dragged out again and again. Drag it out, drag it out into a masterpiece.