Allen Brack wrote when the company announced its decision to scale back development for Heroes of the Storm. “We’re constantly changing and evolving not only our games, but how we support and grow them,” Blizzard president J. Development on Heroes of the Storm (2015), Blizzard’s take on the MOBA genre, for instance, has already started to slow down as the studio shifts its employees onto more successful projects. It’s a thoughtful approach that has helped Blizzard become a beloved gaming company, but it’s also one that may be on its way out. Typically, Blizzard’s style is to stew on things for as long as it needs to, and once a game is out, chances are pretty good that the developer will support it for as long as possible - to wit, World of Warcraft, which at this point is over 15 years old, is still going strong. If Fergusson is on deck, my gut says that Blizzard wants it done sooner rather than later.īlizzard apologizes for the condition of Warcraft 3: Reforged, promises actionĪccording to that same report, the suits at Activision have been worried about the company’s growth over the last couple of years. While Blizzard hasn’t so much as announced a launch window for the game, a Kotaku report on the Diablo franchise states that the game may very well arrive this year. To hire Fergusson is to seek to get things done - in this case, presumably to ship Diablo 4, which is currently in development at the Irvine, California-based studio. Perhaps most notably, he helped BioShock Infinite overcome years of development hell, shaping it up into a product that was received positively by the general public. But Fergusson’s studio swap is curious when we consider the wider shifts happening at Blizzard recently.įollowers of the game business may know Fergusson by nicknames such as “the fixer” and “the closer.” The man has made a name for himself over the years as the sort of person who can run a tight ship and bring projects across the finish line.
Typically, shifts like these aren’t of note to the average video game player - people change jobs all the time, after all. One of the top game industry items this week was the news that Gears of War head Rod Fergusson will be making the jump to Blizzard Entertainment next month, where the development veteran will oversee the Diablo franchise.
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