Massively successful PC MMO
World of Warcraft is celebrating its fifth anniversary, while the over-arching
Warcraft real-time strategy franchise has been around for 15 years now. At the core of both properties: The PC market.
We reflect with Samwise Didier, senior director of
StarCraft II and art director of the first three
Warcraft games, and J. Allen Brack, production director for
World of Warcraft, on Blizzard's storied history in
our latest Gamasutra feature, and part of the discussion deals with how the company sees the state of the PC business.
"I don't see the PC market as being bad. I mean, we didn't have 12 million players ten years ago," says Didier. "Whatever the format, console or PC, I think if there is a good game, it's going to be played."
"We're working on PC because it's familiar to us and it's relatively easy and it's not changing formats every other year and there aren't three different versions," he continues. "Console, we have to worry about [those things]. I think the PC is really a good market to target."
Brack says he's aware that there's a perception that Blizzard -- which has made only PC games for 15 years -- is somehow "anti-console": "That's absolutely not the case," he says. "We just want to make the right game for the right platform."
"Think about
StarCraft II," says Brack. "Some real-time strategy games have tried to happen on the console. Some of those have been successful, but overall, our experience is that it's going to be a better game on the PC, ergo it's developed on the PC."
Same with
WoW, Brack adds, a game developed for the PC and with a PC-centric control scheme. "But we're a company of gamers," he says. "I have two consoles at home. Sam has consoles. We're a culture of gamers. We will definitely work on a console game at some point. I have no doubt about that. It's just [a matter of] what game. What makes the most sense?"
