It is no news that Blizzard produces some of the best-selling games ever made. World of Warcraft probably broke every games-related record there is, and Starcraft is still played, ten years after its release.

I believe this is due to what I like to call The Blizzard Principle. The way Blizzard approaches game making allows them to create perfectly polished games that sell like hot cakes. The principle consists of three rules of game development that I think we can clearly attribute to Blizzard:

  1. Simple Graphics
    There is no single Blizzard game that had a revolutionary graphics engine that pushed the envelope. All games have graphics that already appear somewhat dated upon game release. This has two benefits: The game is cheaper to produce, which allows for more work in other parts of the game (such as design and polish. At the same time it increases sales, as it can be played on older PCs, as only hardcore gamers update their PC every two years.
  2. Proven Design
    Blizzard games are undoubtedly well-designed, but no single Blizzard game has ever done something that hasn’t been done before:
    Warcraft I - III and Starcraft… Standard RTS with role-playing elements. Nothing new here, it’s been done before.
    World of Warcraft… Very standard MMORPG with features that all existed before in Ultima Online, or EverQuest.
    Diablo… Hack ‘n slash game with the basic game pinciple already seen in Golden Axe. The whole item-collecting has been there before, in 1980s RPGs and MOOs.
  3. Simplicity, Balance & Polish
    The game design is kept relatively simple, as there are very few systems that everybody can understand, which together create interesting gameplay (sounds a lot like Sid Meier’s design principle). Then a large part of the development process is spent on balancing and polishing the game.

While many other game companies struggle to get their game published on time, riddled with bugs and barely balanced, Blizzard manages to publish perfectly balanced games. Because they save time on programing the engine, and they don’t come up with novel design principles, they can push design balance and polish to the extreme. They’ve nailed simple systems that everybody can understand, and they then spend loads and loads of time on balancing and making the game accessible.

Combine that with very low minimum specs, and you’ve got a seller. Everybody can play it, both in terms of hardware and in terms of understanding the game principle: It’s familiar design, presented in an accessible way, and honed to be pure fun.

Whether this is a good business model for everyone is of course debatable… I would say it would be a sad world if everyone was doing it. Nonetheless it’s important to understand how they do things.