Diablo: Original Game Development

jon d
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2021–2023
YouTube
12K views · 9 years ago · talk · intermediate · historical

A game-development postmortem on the original Diablo, told by a member of its original team. It covers how the game was made, including the multiplayer work and the business deals behind it, such as the contract with Blizzard.

HN people count it among the best GDC postmortems and mine it for anecdotes, such as the story of a missed Hotmail investment.

“GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1].”
Game design
#diablo#gdcpostmortem#gamedevelopment#blizzard#multiplayer

4 comments from Hacker News

m
@martinohansen2023 · in “MMO Architecture: clients, sockets, threads and connection-oriented servers”
Unrelated to the post here, but I think both Pat and this guy[1] say that they build the multiplayer for Diablo by themselves… Anyhow, both talks are fascinating and surely worth a watch. [1] ▶ this video
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s
@somedude8952022 · in “Wolfenstein 3D secrets revealed by John Romero in lengthy post-mortem chat”
I can't wait for this to go up on Youtube. GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1]. I've loved Fallout since I was 12 and it really got me into post-apocalypse fiction. I ended up watching and reading all the media that Tim cites in his presentation and discovered some wonderful things like On the Beach (the book by Nevil Shute AND the movie), A Canticle for Leibowitz, etc [0] ▶ this video [1] link
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n
@namelosw2022 · in “Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?”
An even more interesting and funny perspective is from another programmer beforehand: In this post-mortem talk [0] on Diablo 1. The creator mentioned his worst business decision - the Hotmail guy offering 10% of the company in return for an office in the back they weren't even using, and he rejected it. According to him, the pitch was: "I'm going to make email over the Internet". His response: "Dude, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard! What are you talking about, I already have my email over the Internet - this isn't even an invention!". 14 months later, that 10% was worth $40 million. Meanwhile they agreed to do Diablo only for $300k for Blizzard, and that was a bad deal - they even had to find more contracts to compensate it. [0] ▶ this video
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n
@namelosw2021 · in “The metaverse is bullshit”
> The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet You may be right, but here's an anecdote: David Brevik did a post-mortem on Diablo[0] on GDC. He first mentioned they accepted the contract for developing Diablo for Blizzard for $300000 which was extremely underpriced for a team of 15, so they have to look for other revenue such as accepting other contracts developing lame football games for $1 million. As they were busy shipping Diablo, Sabeer Bhatia came to them with an idea of "making the email over the Internet", he replied, "dude this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard! What're you talking about - I've already had my email over the Internet!". Sabeer insists this is a big idea, and offer them 10% of the company, only for an empty office in the back which they're not using in return. But David was stressing out because they were about to ship Diablo, so he turned him down because he want no distraction, ..plus "it's the stupidest idea ever". And the company of Sabeer was called Hotmail. 14 months later the 10% would become $40 million... [0] ▶ this video
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