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Up All Night: Blackthorne

Blizzard doesn’t need to make games in a timely manner. They finish games when they’re finished. This is because Blizzard are masters of their craft. They are unimpeachable purveyors of the best the medium has to offer. Got something bad to say about the Warcraft trilogy? Best keep your trap shut, pal. Think World of Warcraft is a cunning way of enslaving free minds? Keep it to yourself. And heaven forfend if you question the merit of Starcraft, Diablo, or either of those series’ impending sequels. Indeed, Blizzard are new gods for the 21st century.

But this was not always the case. Once upon a time, Blizzard made trash. Fun trash to be sure, but trash nonetheless. That is to say, once upon a time, Blizzard stayed up all night.

Of the multiple Up All Night candidates from Blizzard’s catalog – and believe me, The Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force are prime subjects – none are so deserving as Blackthorne.

Diablo III Designer Responds to Criticism

MTV's Multiplayer blog has an excellent interview with Diablo III's lead designer Jay Wilson, in which Jay attempts to deflect some of the criticism leveled at his team due to the Lisa Frank-esque nature of his game's environments.

Jay's arguments are as follows:

It's one thing to create dynamic lighting in Photoshop, quite another to reproduce these effects in the game engine
Did you guys even play Diablo II? Hella colorful!
When the game's that dark, it's tough to tell the difference between an enemy and a friend.
The rainbows are scarce, and one of them was a joke.
Excessive darkness leaves little room for variety.

Screen Test: Diablo III

I came home from a weekend holiday to find a buttload of Diablo III info had been released.

Apparently some Blizzard fans are nonplussed, concerned that the series's art direction has taken a turn for the cartoonish. This online petition, which looks like it was composed by someone with a tenuous grip on written English, has gained some traction (nearly 5K signatures as of this writing!). Is Blizzard aiming for WoW's widespread appeal by toning down Diablo's gothier design or does someone need to call a whaaaambulance? Whatever the case, this petition is sure to go nowhere, as Diablo III has been in development for four years now. Making these changes would surely require a massive design overhall.

Some of the screenshots are darker...

than others.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.