{"id":94877,"date":"2023-08-26T15:53:54","date_gmt":"2023-08-26T15:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/26\/making-diablo-ii-was-pure-hell\/"},"modified":"2023-08-26T15:53:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T15:53:54","slug":"making-diablo-ii-was-pure-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/26\/making-diablo-ii-was-pure-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Making \u2018Diablo II\u2019 Was Pure Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>David L. Craddock is the author of more than a dozen books about video games, including <em>Break Out<\/em>, about the history of Apple II games, and <em>Rocket Jump<\/em>, about the history of first-person shooters. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tend to write a lot about games made in the \u201980s, \u201990s, and early \u201900s,\u201d Craddock says in Episode 481 of the <em>Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em> podcast. \u201cI love to write about creative people who had big ideas but very, very tight restrictions, and I think that from that comes some of the most enduring products\u2014most enduring experiences\u2014ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of Craddock\u2019s most recent books is <em>Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II<\/em>, about the making of Blizzard\u2019s classic action RPG <em>Diablo II<\/em>. Craddock says this volume was a much bigger undertaking than <em>Stay Awhile and Listen: Book I<\/em>, about the original <em>Diablo<\/em>. \u201cThere was just so much more to juggle in terms of timeline, in terms of game,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that a good 10 chapters in <em>Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II<\/em> focus on <em>Diablo II<\/em>\u2018s development. The game was just that massive, and things happening within Blizzard and Blizzard North were that important as well. It\u2019s just a much bigger undertaking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The creation of <em>Diablo II<\/em> was an exhausting process that involved a brutal 18-month crunch. Employees were handed sleeping bags and provided regular meals so they never had to leave the office. The experience took a heavy toll on everyone involved. \u201cYou miss your home, you miss your bed, you miss your significant other, you miss your friends, you miss your favorite TV shows\u2014actually watching them live with the rest of the world,\u201d Craddock says. \u201cThese people sacrificed a lot to make this game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the complete interview with David L. Craddock in Episode 481 of <em>Geek\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em> (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David L. Craddock on <em>Diablo II: Lord of Destruction<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Diablo II<\/em> launched on June 29th, 2000. One year later, to the day, <em>Diablo II: Lord of Destruction<\/em>\u2014the one and only official expansion for the game\u2014launched. <em>Diablo II<\/em> is great, but <em>Lord of Destruction<\/em> made it even better. Everyone who worked on <em>Lord of Destruction<\/em> considers it the high point of their time at Blizzard North, because for the year after <em>Diablo II<\/em>\u2018s launch, when a lot of other people at the studio\u2014most of the rest of the studio\u2014were drifting, getting very frustrated and very burned out, the <em>Lord of Destruction<\/em> team was really living every game developer\u2019s dream. You have a successful product, you have a pipeline in place to make more content for that product, you\u2019ve already gone through the labor pains of putting all this stuff in place, now you can just create more stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>David L. Craddock on David Brevik:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was one of the people most burned out by <em>Diablo II<\/em>, because he put so much pressure on himself to succeed. It was kind of controversial, because toward the end he kind of checked out. He was playing a lot of <em>Everquest<\/em>, and a lot of the other developers, who were still burning the midnight oil, were upset with him. But his marriage was falling apart, he\u2019d put a lot of pressure on himself for both games. He just kind of needed to check out mentally. \u2026 He said, \u2018I was a \u2018seagull manager.\u2019 I would stay home most of the time, and when I\u2019d come in I\u2019d crap all over everything, squawk a lot, and leave.\u2019 And <em>he<\/em> said that, that\u2019s by his own admission. I have a lot of respect for people who put the truth\u2014the creative truth\u2014ahead of their own ego.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>David L. Craddock on business:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBlizzard North didn\u2019t want Blizzard Entertainment\u2014the much larger company\u2014coming in and telling them what to do, and so [Blizzard North] shielded their developers from the other Blizzard. On the one hand that\u2019s something that a good manager does: If you\u2019re working on a game and you\u2019re not management, the last thing you want to worry about is, \u2018Are we going to get paid?\u2019 or \u2018I hear we might be sold.\u2019 You don\u2019t want to worry about that, and the managers don\u2019t want you worrying about that, they want you working. But the downside of that is that if and when those managers leave and a new regime comes in, they don\u2019t know you. You\u2019re just another face in the lineup, and so they have no problem letting you go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>David L. Craddock on storytelling:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe <em>Diablo II<\/em> cinematics were developed at Blizzard Entertainment\u2014they were completely separate from the development of the game itself. \u2026 You could play <em>Diablo II<\/em> without watching any of the cinematics and not miss a beat, because the beauty of <em>Diablo II<\/em> is that you don\u2019t have to pay attention to the story\u2014you can just kind of click through and pay attention to the loot. Those games are inherently replayable, and each time you play you pay less attention to the story, because it\u2019s just old hat by that point. That was actually one of the problems with Chris Metzen taking such a prominent role on Blizzard Entertainment\u2019s <em>Diablo III<\/em>\u2014the version that eventually came out in 2012. The story really got in the way, and that\u2019s a mistake that Blizzard North never would have made.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<h3>More Great WIRED Stories<\/h3>\n<p>\t\t\tGo Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David L. Craddock is the author of more than a dozen books about video games, including Break Out, about the history of Apple II games, and Rocket Jump, about the history of first-person shooters. \u201cI tend to write a lot about games made in the \u201980s, \u201990s, and early \u201900s,\u201d Craddock says in Episode 481 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Making \u2018Diablo II\u2019 Was Pure Hell - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/26\/making-diablo-ii-was-pure-hell\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making \u2018Diablo II\u2019 Was Pure Hell - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David L. 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