Blizzard CEO Paul Sams has said that rushing products to retail to meet financial milestones can undermine a development team’s work.
Speaking with GI.biz, Sams firmly stated that Blizzard never feels the pressure to rush a product, as doing so would “devastate a passionate development team” and heads of the publishing arm know not to even suggest it.
“If you’ve been in the games industry for any length of time and you’ve worked for a variety of companies, what you will hear from developers is that they were working on a game that they were so excited and enthusiastic about… and yet, when it got to the point where the company wanted to ship it and the game wasn’t done, that company would oftentimes make the decision to ship it anyway – because they needed to make their quarterly numbers, or whatever,” said Sams.
“So the people who have put in the blood, sweat and tears on making this game that has all the promise – which instead has to be pushed out the door – those types of experiences are pretty devastating to people.
“Developers know that when they come to Blizzard, they will get to make the game they want to make, because we let the developers decide what they’re going to make.
“They also know that we will not pull the rug out from under them – they will have ample time, budget and support to be able to deliver the game that they envisioned.
“We will not pull the rug out from under them and ship it before it’s done, so people feel that when they put their heart and soul into a game, they’ll be able to deliver the game they envisioned and there’s not going to be a situation where there are tons of compromises, we’re shipping too early and everybody does that thing where they say ‘Woulda, shoulda, coulda if we’d had the time.'”
Sams’ comments are in direct line with Blizzard’s “It’ll ship when its done” mantra- one that all consumers have come to know and love, or at the very least sigh at in appreciative frustration.
One such product fans are sighing in wait over is StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which was recently confirmed to have a Protoss story running alongside of the Terran campaign.
A video for it was released today, and the Beta is expected sometime this year.
The actual game could possibly arrive during Q2.
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