Tag Archives: frank pearce

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has the firm had no idea “what we were getting ourselves into,” when it launched World of Warcraft 7 years ago.

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The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced a new session for the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit featuring Epic’s Mike Capps, Insomniac’s Ted Price, and Blizzard’s Frank Pearce. The panel, which takes place on February 9, is titled “Staying Around, Playing Around” and the speakers will discuss “what it takes to survive for 20+ years in the game industry while maintaining growth and original content.” The 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit runs February 8-10 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. Thanks, IndustryGamers.

Blizzard has announced that its co-founder and EVP of product development, Frank Pearce, has joined the Board of Directors for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Pearce joins 15 other industry leaders representing Blizzard, Capcom, EA, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony,as well as independent representatives from Epic Games, Day 1 Studios, and Insomniac Games.

Gabe Newell and Frank Pearce, co-founders of Valve and Blizzard, respectively, are of the opinion that a “unified online community” would be ideal.

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Blizzard has said that its “completely rebooted” the DOTA mod its developed for StarCraft II since it was last properly shown at Blizzcon last year.

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During the Blizzard gamescom press conference today, the firm’s co-founder Frank Pearce was asked by an attendee what he felt the developer had failed at during it’s years in the business, and Pearce said one thing was the planned StarCraft marketplace.

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Blizzard boss Frank Pearce has said BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic can bring in growth to the MMO market, but only if it’s “done right.”

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Blizzard’s released a second video charting its history as it celebrates its 20th anniversary. It has some Blizzard high brass, including co-founders Mike Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham, talking about how it set up the company and more.

You can watch it on the Blizzard website through here. First video’s here.

Blizzard co-founders Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce have a very special message for you, delivered through the break in video form.

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Blizzard chief Frank Pearce confirmed to D’Toid at the VGAs last month that Titan is the codename of the company’s newest MMO.

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Blizzard boss Frank Pearce has told Gama retail still has bigger advantages in comparison to digital.

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If we didn’t know any better, we’d say the gaming industry never learned the alphabet, because it always puts the letters “PC” and “DRM” right next to each other. Oddly enough, however, Blizzard – PC dev extraordinare – has never really dropped its two cents on the subject.

Until now.

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Blizzard EVP of product development Frank Pearce has told VG247 that World of Warcraft will return to growth this year, moving beyond the 11.5 million subs it’s been stuck at since 2008.

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All the exclusive, convention-only Murloc plushies in the world can’t recoup the cost of cramming 20,000 frothing fans into the Anaheim Convention Center, it seems. During the 2009 Austin GDC, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce explained that – while certainly an excellent marketing opportunity – BlizzCon does quite a number on Blizzard’s wallet.

“BlizzCon is operated at a substantial loss for the company,” said Pearce. “It’s a huge marketing opportunity, so that’s the benefit we get out of that. But in terms of any kind of financial gain, it actually is a loss for us.”

As to how many arms and legs the company pays each year, Pearce wouldn’t say.

Fear not for BlizzCon, though. The jolly blue gaming giant loves its fans, and treats the massive gathering as “an operating expense.”

Thanks, GameSpot.

During J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce’s keynote at GDC Austin, the Blizzard guys revealed its canceled suqad-based sci-fi title, Nomad.

Apparently, some ten years or so ago, Blizzard put loads of hours and tons of work into it, but then decided to scrap it and go straight into work on WoW.

Joystiq has what little information there is on the title along with some artwork.

You should go have a look.

During a keynote delivered at GDC Austin, Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce dropped some numbers regarding what it takes on a daily basis to keep World of Warcraft running.

The game needs 20,000 computer systems, 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and over 4600 staffers to keep it going.

“Operating an online game is about more than just game development,” said Pearce. “World of Warcraft has completely changed the organization”.

And then some – the game has 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code.

For more astonishing numbers, Gamasutra has the full thing, and and so does Gamespot.

Blizzard bigwigs Frank Pearce and J Allen Brack are to keynote GDC Austin on World of Warcraft this year, Blizzard said today.

The talk, entitled “The Universe of World of Warcraft,” will tackle the challenges faced in creating subs-based MMOs.

The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Texas from September 15-18.

PR after the break.

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Blizzard bosses Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce are to turn up at the midnight launch of Wrath of the Lich King in New York this week, which starts at 8.00pm EST on Wednesday at the “Best Buy store near Times Square.”

There must only be one.

“At Best Buy, we’re passionate about helping gamers get the most enjoyment from their gaming systems – from having the latest releases to a full complement of gaming platforms, accessories, electronics and services,” said the incredibly-named Jill Hamburger, Best Buy vice president games and movies.

“Our newly introduced Reward Zone Gamers Club provides additional benefits and amazing experiences for our most loyal customers who love gaming.”

Press release after the link.

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According to this Hellforge story, Blizzard yesterday mentioned that WarCraft IV will use the same trilogy release system as StarCraft II in a panel at BlizzCon yesterday.

Blizzard announced at the expo last night that StarCraft II would be release in three parts, each product focusing on a separate single-player campaign.

We’re chalking this up as rumour: Frank Pearce told us at GC that all Blizzard teams were currently working on projects and nothing was decided on WarCraft IV development.

Thanks, hiuspaa!

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has said the monster-developer’s merger with Activision is “cool” from a business perspective and has affected each side’s money men rather than their game-creators.

“I think from a corporate family perspective it’s cool, right? The leadership of Activision has a lot of experience in the industry,” he told VG247.

“You know, there’s definitely lots of opportunities for us to learn from them and them to learn from us. They also recognise the value of what we’ve achieved and how we’ve achieved it, and they don’t want to impose anything on us, so it’s really up to us to figure if or how we want to leverage their experience, and up to them to determine if or how they want to leverage our experience.”

Pearce added that games like StarCraft II had been unaffected by the merger, with development continuing as planned.

“The StarCraft II team operates pretty independently and autonomously, and nothing related to the Activision merger really affected that,” he said.

“The type of folks at Blizzard that are affected by the merger are people working in finance, human resources and stuff like that. Development teams aren’t affected, really.”

Pearce was speaking at Games Convention in Germany. There’s still no date on StarCraft II.