“Some men were clearly from the 90s […] they were complaining about hiring women and how you have to be careful around them.” – former Blizzard assistant Connie Griffin
In hindsight, it seems as if Blizzard's alleged culture of toxicity and sexual harassment was destined to persist from its earliest days.
This is a clear lesson from Jason Schreier's new book Play Well: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainmentwhich will arrive in bookstores next week. The book is filled with stories and secrets from the game studio's history, including insights into canceled games, conflicts between key leaders, and the impact of Bobby Kotick's push to control the studio's production through Activision Blizzard.
Readers most concerned about the case recently resolved filed by the State of California for an alleged culture of sexual harassment, toxicity, and abuse won't find many new revelations here: the book doesn't quite answer the question “who knew what when?” which remained on the charges against the company. But it explores how that culture came to be and what factors prevented the company from improving it.
The first warning sign appears on page 14, when describing design meetings at Silicon & Synapse, the company first founded by Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce in 1991 and which would later take on the moniker Blizzard. “All Silicon & Synapse employees were men, and these design meetings, fueled by caffeine and testosterone, could get rowdy. Sometimes there was yelling; sometimes there was fisticuffs,” Schreier writes.
It was called “chaos management” and as time went on, with the added pressure of alcohol, the difficulty of developing the game and the explosive success of Warcraft: Orcs and Humansit became a fire that could not be put out.
Chaotic work environments aren't caused by just one person
It seems that creative leaders who achieved success with one game with minimal effort were trusted with the ability to recreate the magic on subsequent titles, but that trust created undue pressure and created scope for inappropriate behavior.
Anecdotes about veteran developers Chris Metzen, David Brevik and Rob Pardo in the company's history include a drunken brawl that resulted in a door being knocked down, Last in line sessions that slowed down the work Diablo IIand meetings that turned into shouting matches.
An active developer Starcraft II he told Schreier that the developers would “just sit there for a whole hour and watch Metzen and Pardo argue.”
“Metzen would say it should be pink. Pardo would immediately say it should be blue, and only an idiot would make it pink,” they said. “It was painful to watch.”
This leadership style eventually hit a wall during the development of the canceled MMORPG and Surveillance predecessor Titan. Metzen and Pardo apparently weren't as vocal in their disagreements during this project, but their conflicting ideas had the developers going in circles, unsure of whose boss they were answering to.
This overestimated trust in talented people led the company to look the other way when alerted to the behavior of employees such as former World of Warcraft director Alessandro Afrasiabi.
Another key issue in Blizzard's history is pay. Among the allegations against the firm was that the company underpaid female employees compared to their male colleagues. The company's agreements with the State of California and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not admit any wrongdoing, but still created funds that current and former employees could access as compensation.
Once again, Schreier's book documents arguments over pay that date back to the firm's early days. The first instance of employees not feeling adequately compensated for their hard work apparently occurred after the company was sold to Davidson & Associates.
Former employee Pat Wyatt explained to Schreier that he and other employees were furious at being denied ownership of Silicon & Synapse before the sale, and although the transaction provided better compensation for workers, he was so angry that he threatened to leave (the shares he was offered lost value after a subsequent parent company, Cendant, was investigated by the SEC for fraudulent accounting practices).
Blizzard would later become known for its employee profit-sharing program (a major point of contention between Morhaime and Kotick), but the path to that plan was full of obstacles for underpaid developers. In 1998, Spaceship the developers were told that they would not receive the expected bonuses because the game was shipped late. In 2005, developers received bonus checks of up to $2,000 after launch World of Warcraftand some left to form Carbine Studios.
This incident led Blizzard leadership to convince then-parent company Vivendi to allow it to implement the more well-known profit-sharing process.
Photo by Bryant Francis.
In theory, this scheme compensated employees who receive relatively lower salaries at Blizzard, since the company's success will bring salaries at the end of the year. But in 2024, Blizzard has revamped the system once again to give employees priority on the most profitable games, to the detriment of their colleagues.
If the company can't balance salaries to compensate all employees fairly, it's no surprise that it might find itself unfairly compensating women in its ranks.
The glue that held many of these problems together was the intense crisis, as long working hours were a constant in the company from day one. Blizzard employees have coped with long work hours by bonding over alcohol and turning the office into a second home, creating the foundation of a group that could be hostile to outsiders. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, reportedly faced retaliation from his colleagues for protesting long hours during a short stint at Blizzard as a software engineer.
Building life around the office meant workers began dating their colleagues and an “incestuous” culture of office romance took hold. While not all relationships were doomed or inappropriate, the idea that Blizzard's campus was a dating pool gave many workers tacit permission to sexually harass coworkers.
Any of these problems could have been resolved sooner, but the company was producing hits in an unpredictable market. If it wasn't broken, why fix it?
Game developers can learn from Blizzard's struggles
These are certainly the darkest and most frustrating anecdotes that can be found in Play Nice, which also celebrates important victories such as the pivot to be achieved Surveillance and shares important lessons on game development from names like Ben Brode, head of development at Second Dinner. It also gives workers like Rachel Day the chance to share their stories and explain how the sexual harassment they have experienced has affected their daily lives.
For years, developers have studied Blizzard Entertainment's popular hits in hopes of capturing its success. Now with Play Nice, developers can study Blizzard's failures and strive not to repeat them again.
The game developer has reached out to Blizzard Entertainment for comment on this story and will update when responded to.