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Even the industry’s most colossal game developers have started from humble beginnings, and Blizzard is no exception. From The Lost Vikings and Warcraft to Diablo and Starcraft (and the successors therein), the innovative studio has been at the front of the pack for nearly its entire lifespan. Having been passed through many hands until its current place with Activision, Blizzard has remained true to its vision of “mak[ing] cool games and have fun doing so.” Simple enough, isn’t it?
With bachelor’s degrees fresh out of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce created Silicon and Synapse, which made its name by developing a slew of game ports for other studios.Three years later, the company changed its name to Chaos Studios, but quickly landed on Blizzard Entertainment after discovering that another company had a similar name. Just think of it – we’d be going to ChaosCon every year if the name had stuck!
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Blizzard has set aside a special section of its website to reminisce about all the things that have made it what it is today. As I write this, the page hasn’t yet been populated with content, but we can expect some tasty morsels (including a “Blizzard Timeline”) in the very near future.