- [eerie music] - [Deckard] Hello, my friend. Stay a while and listen. - I never really envisioned that Deckard Cain would become as popular as he became. I mean, he was always a really big father figure or whatever for your character, and so I wanted him to be your guide and your mentor, giving you help along the way. - [Deckard] If you come across challenges and questions to which you seek knowledge, seek me out, and I will tell you what I can. - My name is David Brevik, lead programmer on "Diablo", and this is how a show of hands turned "Diablo" from a turn-based game into real-time. [dramatic music] - [Deckard] I feel I have come to know this hero. - I got into video games at a very early age. My dad brought home an Apple II Plus in, maybe, 1979. Started learning to program at that time, before that we had had the original Pong machine and the Atari 2600, but program really became a passion once the Apple II came around and I learned how to program, taught myself to program, on the Apple II Plus. That was kind of the start of my career, and it was a passion that never really left me. I wanted to do nothing but make video games my entire life, ever since I sat down and started programming. So work began on "Diablo" probably in earnest in late 1993. We created a company and my friends and I, who I'd met at a previous company, we started pitching "Diablo" to a bunch of different places. The game was always titled "Diablo." The name "Diablo" comes from a mountain here in the San Francisco Bay Area that I lived at the base of that mountain, [chuckles] called Mount Diablo. I didn't speak any Spanish, so once I found out what the name meant for the mountain, then I said, "Yeah, that's gonna make "a great video game name someday." So we pitched it as "Diablo" and the name never really left. Blizzard first became involved when we got together for a trade show. It was Consumer Electronics Show and we were showing off "Justice League Task Force." We were doing the Sega Genesis version, and then another development company was working on the Super Nintendo version. We didn't realize that there was a Super Nintendo version of it, and they didn't realize that there was a Genesis version of it. So we didn't share any kind of design or anything like that, or any kind of assets or whatever. But strangely the games were very similar. They looked like they could have been developed in tandem. And so the two companies instantly kind of merged over our design sensibilities and our graphic style and everything like that. They changed their name from Silicon & Synapse to Blizzard Entertainment. They said, "Okay, well, we're working on this title. "Come take a look." And I went to their little meeting room that they had rented and they showed off "Warcraft." - [Video Game Character] Work completed. - And they said, "Yeah, we're also looking for other titles. "We're looking to work with people "that we think are good developers." And I said, "Well, we've got a great game idea, "but nobody wants to, you know, do this. "So are you guys interested?" And they said, "Well, after we finish 'Warcraft I' "we'll come out and you can pitch us." And they then agreed to do "Diablo." [dramatic music] So at the time, PC RPGs in general were kind of in a very strange state. Sales had really declined on any kind of RPG at the time. And even though that was a huge genre earlier, when we went to go pitch "Diablo" to a bunch of different places, we got rejected 20-plus times, but we knew that this was an unusual kind of style of RPG. In a lot of ways, we wanted to kind of make the antithesis of what RPGs were at the time. We went out of our way to do that, to make sure that the graphics weren't elves and dragons. We wanted to make it, you know, very different than that. We wanted to make sure that the style of game it was was much more like the way that I used to play "Dungeons & Dragons" as a kid. I didn't really care so much about the story and things like that in Dungeons & Dragons. For me, it was much more about the loot. It was much more about getting the awesome vorpal swords and stuff like that. And so I wanted a game that was ringing true with a game that was more about, you know, killing monsters and getting cool loot rather than having a long story with a deep character customization and stuff like that. I wanted to focus more on the action side and more on the loot side. And so we felt like we had a great idea that separated us from the crowd, but I think that a lot of people, especially a lot of people in publishing at that time, weren't necessarily gamers. Lot of them were just businessmen who had learned that this genre isn't selling anymore. I don't care what kinda game you're pitching me. And so getting to pitch the game to people that were actually gamers, that were publishers in Blizzard, was a kind of breath of fresh air. And they understood the vision and ultimately led to us doing a deal with them. I had many influences growing up, things like "Ultima" to "Might and Magic" to "Wizardry." And so I started designing "Diablo" when I was in high school. And then in college, I started playing a lot on Unix machines that were, you know, in the computer lab at the time. They didn't have really any kind of graphics associated with them. And that was really where I got introduced to things like MUDs and roguelike games, even though the term roguelike comes from games that are like the game "Rogue," which is one of the games that I was playing at the time. And then there were others like "NetHack" and "Moria," "Umoria" and "Angband." And those were huge influences in really, in a lot of ways it was "Angband," I think, that was kind of the model of what we wanted. The point of the game was just, you know, kill a boss and there was random levels and random items, but you were the @ symbol attacking the letter K. There was a game, "NHL '94." One of the things that we loved about that game is that with just a few quick buttons, we were in and skating around and could check each other and things like that. And that was the kind of philosophy that we wanted to bring to "Diablo." We wanted to be everything that RPGs weren't, and one of those things was, we want to just press a few buttons and get right into the game. Character creation was this big deal in RPGs. You would end up answering a bunch of questions about your history and giving yourself a backstory and putting numbers into all sorts of stats before you even knew what the stats would do. So we wanted to bypass all of that and get directly in. And that philosophy permeated every decision that we made. Time from boot up to kill was like, it's gotta be under a minute kind of thing. For "Diablo," there were a lot of technical things that we had to overcome that were different than the way that games had been at the time. So the loot lottery is kind of a system by which random items are generated, and the best analogy is it's a slot machine. Every time you kill a monster, you put a quarter into the slot machine and you pull the lever and out can come nothing, you get your quarter back, you know, you could do pretty well, or you could hit a jackpot. [game chimes] And so if you can think of pulling the lever as every time you kill a monster, it's got kind of this addictive quality. Just as slot machines are addictive, so is the, I am going to maybe win something big here. It was kind of loosely based on the system that came from "Moria," "Angband," "Umoria," those kind of style games. They had random item generation, but not to the same extent that we were gonna be doing it in "Diablo." Luckily, this was a really fun part of the game for a lot of us, and so we didn't mind working on this part. It meant that we got to play the game and get cool stuff. Random level generation in "Diablo" was extremely complicated. There were, like, four kind of subsections of the original game. There were, like, kind of four different tilesets, but also it was having to write basically four times the code that you normally would write for one of these things also made it kind of a big challenge. One of our pillars was your guy that you've made, your character that you've made, is unique. Your experience is going to be different than anybody else's forever, just because of the way the trillions of combinations that exist out there. Nobody will have the same experience twice. A lot of RPGs were like, oh, we've got a hundred hours, and things like that, of content. And we were saying, basically you have unlimited content here. One of the things that we wanted to do with "Diablo" was multi-classing. This was kind of a philosophy that was the, again, kind of anti-typical RPG. RPGs at the time were things like, oh, you're playing as a cleric, and as a cleric, I can't hold a sword. It didn't make any sense at all that, you know, a person who claims to be this cleric, can't just actually pick up a dagger or pick up a sword. They could only use maces. And so in a lot of ways, we wanted to make the anti-system for that, which was this kind of like multi-classing, or everybody can do everything, kind of system. So as a warrior, you could cast spells. You may be a lot worse at it. It may take you extra mana. Your spell casting animations are longer, but you could do it. It was the system where you could make any class you wanted. There were no restrictions, like so many of the other things that we thought were just barriers to fun. - [Video Game Character] Fresh meat. - And so making it so that it was kind of this free form was really important to us. And again, it was more of the anti-RPG at the time. - [Video Game Character] The spirits of the dead are now avenged. - The relationship between Blizzard North and Blizzard South was sometimes contentious, as any two groups can be or whatever, in any relationship. Largely, we got along really well. We were very reasonable with each other. We helped each other out. Obviously there were some fights, some things that they felt passionately about, some things that we felt passionately about. They were involved, but they weren't involved in a day-to-day basis. You know, we would talk often, but it wasn't like they were sitting in our office like with a producer or talking about what we're doing every day kind of thing. Originally, "Diablo" was gonna be a turn-based game, which is based on "Rogue" and "Angband," et cetera. All of those games were turn-based. At some point during the process, which was pretty early, I would say within maybe three or four months of the start of the project, they came to us after their success with converting strategy games to real-time in the same way that they did with "Warcraft." And they felt, hey, with all of these kind of turn-based old-school versions of RPGs, we should do a real-time version of it. And I was really against this idea. This was the line in the sand for me. I was not gonna, there was no way that I was changing this game to real-time. - [Video Game Character] His reckless overconfidence has proven costly to us all. - I was deathly afraid of losing what I thought was kind of the essence of this game. Oftentimes when you're playing these turn-based RPGs like this, you get to a point where your character's about to die. You were important decisions you had to make. There was just so much strategy and depth and the games were permadeath. So if you, you know, if you died, that was it. And there was on these Unix servers, so you couldn't, like, restore your characters or anything like that, it was gone. So it's this really tense moment. And I really did not want to lose that tension. I thought that was essential to the way that the game was gonna play. And our turn base wasn't really like our turn, their turn, our turn, their turn. It was a little bit more complicated. It was if a single turn was broken into 10 sub-turns or something like that, pulling out your sword may take like, you know, 1/10 of a turn, and then walking one square horizontally took a whole turn, but diagonally took 1.4 turns. So we kind of had this scaling list. So it was kind of a complicated turn-based thing. And there was a lot of conflict, and a lot of times that we would talk about the game and how things were going, and we would have phone calls and for weeks at the end, they would say, "Hey, so what about "changing it to real- time?" They would kind of keep nudging on this. I brought it up with some of the people at the office. It started to gain some momentum. People were like, "Yeah, no, "I think that it might be kind of cool." - [Video Game Character] My knowledge of the ancient ways might be of some help. - We all got together. The entire Blizzard North got together in the kitchen and had a vote. The development team was probably maybe 15 people at the time. We all voted and I was heavily outweighed. There were a few, three or four of us, kind of didn't want to change it, but it was, you know, 15 of them did want to change it or whatever. So reluctantly, I said: Okay, yeah, we can do this. We can give it a try. I think this is dumb. I think it's gonna be a waste of like, it's gonna take us a month to do this. We've done this game for too cheap. We're gonna go back. We're gonna try and get some more money as well, at the same time. I went back, I said: Yeah, it's gonna take us longer to develop the game now because it's gonna be this real-time thing. So we not only need an extra milestone payment, but also, you know, we're not gonna have anything to show or talk about for like a month, because it's just gonna take so long to do this. And so I said: Okay, I'm gonna start this process. Everybody go home. This was on a Friday, everybody cleared out. And Friday afternoon I started working on it, and by Friday evening I had it done. [laughs] I remember it just like it was yesterday. You know, I was working on it and I always kind of the warrior. I had this club in my hand, there was a skeleton on the screen, and I kind of clicked on a skeleton. My character walked over and swung and smacked the skeleton apart. And I was like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." That felt so good. That was, really, this was way better. The sun shone through the window, the clouds parted, the angels went, ahh. It was definitely a moment that I knew that this was definitely the way to go. This was way better. And I just sat there for like an hour, like clicking the mouse button over and over again, as I just swung the sword and we never really looked back. So when people came in on Monday morning, it was done, it was working. It was obvious that this was the way to go, and we never looked back. One of the great things about this change was that we had so many assets to work with. The game itself was already deep in production. We already had a bunch of different assets, so we didn't need to start from scratch. We kept the same perspective. We kept a lot of the assets that we had. So there wasn't really any kind of fundamental technology changes in terms of the graphics pipeline or art assets or anything like that, that we needed to take care of. It was mainly focused on our ability to change the gameplay and make sure that that was a smooth transition. Once the real-time change had happened and we kind of settled in, it was pretty obvious that it was the right decision. Throughout the office it was kind of an electric atmosphere. Everybody was really jazzed. Everybody's really psyched. Even the people that were kind of steadfast against us, including myself, came to me and said, "Yes, this feels amazing. This is really cool." We kind of changed some of the design of the game and the way that you're gonna interact with the monsters and the way that you're gonna do combat and stuff like that. And these things kind of evolved and changed over a period of the next few weeks and months as we kind of grasped what the real-time really meant and how that affected the actual moment-to-moment gameplay. So on that day that I had that incredible encoding session, we didn't let Blizzard know quite right away, but I couldn't hold it back that much. I couldn't withhold that information for too long 'cause it was just so damn exciting. And they had already agreed to pay us more money, so that part was taken care of. And the fact that it took such a short time and was such an improvement, and they kind of got their way, it ended up not really being an issue at all. And everybody was very excited about the new direction and the way that it turned out. - [Video Game Character] We have learned strength is making the right choice. - Looking back, I feel like "Diablo I" turned out way better than I ever imagined it would. I'm obviously very proud of working on it. You know, it's just such a highlight and a pillar of my career, but it wasn't just me. It was a lot of people. There are a lot of people, very talented people that I worked with, that made that a reality, from music to graphics, to other programmers, et cetera. There were just so many super talented people that worked together as a team to make that a just really special time. In terms of my overall vision, it exceeded what my vision of what the final product could be. I feel very, very lucky to have worked on it. We had a very different vision for "Diablo II." We had a lot more experience about what we were doing. We understood the market a lot better. We understood that we're building upon this fantastic game. With "Diablo II," it was definitely more in lines with my expectations. It still exceeded my expectations and still does today. I mean, the fact of the matter is that there are so many people playing the game today that, you know, 20 years after we released it, says a lot about the product. You can go on to Twitch and find people streaming the product at any time. It continued to sell, you know, a boxed copy of this game on target for 15 years after the product was released. And it was always in the top 10 sellers of the year. At the time, "Diablo II" was the fastest-selling PC game of all time. You know, it reached a million copies faster than any other game in history. And I think that "Diablo I", you know, sold a million very quickly as well. Right at the exact same time, "The Sims" came out. It was almost exact same time as "Diablo II." Those two games were on the bestselling list and still are on the bestselling lists of all time if you look up PC sales. People are so passionate about the game and they figure out every little aspect. And it's funny, they'll collect every single unique item in the game or something like that. And they play literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to collect these things. They do it unique ways. So I'm just going to, I'm not gonna use any kind of weapons. I'm just gonna punch my way to the end, or whatever. There's like all sorts of different ways that people come up with. They make videos on YouTube and all these kind of things, and it's really great to see people so passionate about the game after all these years. Both "Diablo" and "Diablo II" had such a huge impact on my career and still do to today. It's strange, having such success with your first PC game you've ever made, the expectations for everything that you do after that are just sky high, ridiculously high. That was a tough thing to deal with when we left Blizzard and made things like "Hellgate: London," and the hype for that game was outrageously high and didn't meet expectations. It was a really unique game. It was really cool. I think it was a game that was way ahead of its time. Basically it was the very first looter shooter that, I don't know, some people call it shooter looter, some people call it looter shooter. There are other names for or whatever, but whatever way that you wanna say it, it was the first of that style of game. And I get a lot of people that come back and compliment me on that all the time, despite the flaws, which were mainly bug-related. There are a lot of gameplay loops that I'm fond of these days. I think that for me, a lot of kind of like survival-esque games are really kind of my jam lately. I was really into MMOs for awhile and I think that any kind of survival, building, crafting, those kinds of things, I really enjoy that a lot, but still I harken back to ARPGs. Like, I still really enjoy the loop of kill monsters, get loot. I still really love that the most, much more than almost any other genre. The best general advice that I can give are things like from a UI perspective. Can somebody play this without reading a manual or getting any kind of instructions? Like, back in the early days when I was playing, when we were making "Diablo," we had this thing, which is now kind of unfair, but it was nicknamed the mom test, which was like, my mom was not computer-savvy at the time. And so like, if my mom can pick this up and play this, then anybody can. We wanted to approach the thing so it was kind of a wide audience kind of way to play the game and it made simplified things. It forced us to simplify any UI. And so kind of distilling the essence of what you're trying to do, whatever it is, and making the UI kind of enhance that is the best kind of experience that I can give. Making sure that something is really simple and straightforward, especially in your core game loop, is critical. A few years ago, I went completely independent. I made a company called Graybeard Games. It was originally just me. It's still largely just me. Made a product called "It Lurks Below." I did everything. I did the pixel art, the programming, the design, music. Later in the game, a couple other people help. My wife is doing a little bit of programming and design and my third eldest kid, but my eldest kid here still at the house, she's doing some of the art. We've done some of the pixel art and I've got some other friends helping me and stuff like that. So it's more than just me, but originally a great majority of the project has been just me. I wanted to try and do a project all by myself and "It Lurks Below," it's out. It's been out for about a year, and it's coming to Xbox soon and hopefully other platforms, other consoles after that. And then recently I also just started a publisher called Skystone Games and looking to publish other kind of indie products and take my experience from being an indie developer and trying to boost other indies and making sure that they can survive in today's harsh climate. Give them not only game feedback, but also make sure that they can get good coverage on their game and get seen by press outlets and things like that. There were a bunch of times during development that I felt like this could be a hit, but the thing that really drove it home for me while we were making the game, we would work and people would roll in and work all day, and then when it was time to go home, they weren't going home. They were playing the game that they had just spent all day working on. So I knew when that was happening, that it was, you know, it could be something that was kind of addictive. And the dream was never that it would do as well as it did. Our dream was maybe someday we can sell 25,000 copies. If we did that, maybe we could make a sequel. That was kind of the original dream. I had no real intent in making it, you know, that it was gonna be so addictive or that wasn't really what we had set out to be. It was just the hopes of us being able to make the PC games that we love. [dramatic music] [logo whooshes]