Remowned

[Update: This piece was published on Gamasutra on July 9.]

A number of observers have hypothesized that the recent, vaguely-announced contract renegotiation between increasingly huge publisher Activision and star developer Infinity Ward may have been catalyzed by last year’s surprise regained independence on the part of Bungie Studios.

The move was revealed by Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling, who stated that the studio has renegotiated its deal with owner Activision, and will have “complete control” over its next project, a new intellectual property. (In an email, Bowling told me the company isn’t ready to go into any further detail just yet.)

The Bungie connection

The Bungie-related speculation is sensible, and almost certainly at least partially accurate, particularly from Infinity Ward’s perspective. Like Bungie, Infinity Ward was founded as an independent studio, and was acquired by its publishing partner; both studios retain key leadership; and both reached their incredible retail success after they were acquired.

Both also left their major properties–Halo and Call of Duty–in the hands of their publishers after years of unbroken franchise development, freeing up the studios to get back to what put them on the map in the first place: developing new titles.

Seeing the kind of leverage Bungie leadership was able to wield when negotiating its amiable departure from Microsoft ownership surely inspired Infinity Ward’s Grant Collier et al to knock on the doors of Activision brass, revenue sheets in hand.

Breaking the never-ending dev cycle

But inspiration may also have come from somewhere a little closer to home: Blizzard Entertainment, the fully-owned-but-nigh-untouchable rockstar developer of WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, a subsidiary of soon-to-be Activision partner Vivendi. (more…)

I was pointedly concise with my reaction, but it should be clear enough that I am fairly excited about the just-announced Diablo III. With the possible exception of Tetris, Diablo II almost certainly tops my personal lifetime list of most gameplay hours dedicated to a single game. For some five years or so, my friends and I played it off and on - several of those years considerably more “on.” I just reinstalled it the other day, and have reached Act IV.

Along with the inevitable internet furor that has arisen in the wake of the announcement (and in the days leading up to it, as the storm cryptically but powerfully approached), there has come an explosion of gamer-generated research to try and sate the hunger for rapidly-depleting new information about the game.  Much of this deals with singling out the personalities behind the game–and though none of this is secret information by any means, I have not seen it centralized or given full context.  So here you are.

First off, Leonard Boyarsky–one of the three co-leads on the original Fallout–now serves as lead world designer on Diablo III. Boyarsky also contributed to Fallout II before leaving with the other members of the original Fallout big three (Tim Cain and Jason Anderson) to create Troika Games.  He’s been at Blizzard for nearly three years now, and in an upcoming Gamasutra interview (look for it on Wednesday) he notes the game has been in the works since 2004.

Then, we’ve got Dustin Browder, a former Westwood Studios employee who lead the Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals projects (more…)