Former Blizzard Employees Say Upcoming Survival Game Will be Great
According to Blizzard employees, work on the new survival IP has been going on for almost five years, and the project is already playable. Many current and former employees of the studio also speak highly about the game and its team.
A few days ago we wrote about a new project of Blizzard Entertainment, a network survival game set in a new universe. We learned about its existence thanks to a job advertisement posted on Activision Blizzard's official website. This may have suggested that the position is in the early stages of production, but the latest reports show that in fact Blizzard has been working on it for almost five years. In addition, former employees of the studio strongly praise the project.
Work on Blizzard's survival game was conveived in 2017
Activision Blizzard's reveal of the project enabled the people involved to reveal a handful of details about it. Thus, we learned that the lead designer is Craig Amai. His Linkedin profile shows that work on the game started in July 2017, because that's when the developer left the group dealing with World of Warcraft and became the head of the team responsible for the new survival game
Craig Amai is a veteran who joined the Blizzard Entertainment in 2004. From the beginning, he worked on World of Warcraft first as technical support, then as a senior designer, and finally as the main adventure designer. The developer has therefore a vast experience in creating online games, which undoubtedly proved useful in the new survival game.
Blizzard's survival game is already playable
Blizzard's survival project is already said to be playable. Indeed, the head of the studio, Mike Ybarra wrote on Twitter that he has spent many hours playing the game with the team responsible for it and is excited about the vision of the developers and the new world they have prepared.
This shows that the game is already at a fairly advanced stage of development and thus is more than just a loose collection of ideas and artwork.
Current and former Blizzard employees praise the game and its team
Many other current and former Blizzard employees also speak highly about the project and the team working on it. Among them is Valentine Powell, who was one of the organizers of the protests at Activision Blizzard after the outbreak of the sexual harassment and mobbing scandal. If anyone he cannot be suspected of artificially hyping up the project in order to facilitate the recruitment of new employees, which is not easy with the current controversy surrounding the publisher.
Stephanie Krutsick, on the other hand, has stated that this survival game and her team are something she would be willing to return to Blizzard for. This producer was employed by the studio for 13 years and during her recent lawsuits against Activision, she testified that she was sexually harassed by one of her supervisors.
The lead designer, Craig Amai, was also praised by producer Tami Sigmund, writer Christie Golden and Melissa Kelly, the artist who worked on Overwatch. All of these people are employed by Blizzard, but former employees, including Katie L Malin (screenwriter of Back 4 Blood), graphic designer Michael Vicente, current Bungie employee Janice Chu, Jen Klasing (currently a task designer in New World), and Kim Acuff Steiner (now working on level design in Star Wars Hunters).
In turn, Geoffrey Virtue, who until recently was one of the lead designers of this survival game (and now works at Riot Games as producer of Teamfight Tactics), stated that the project will have a great impact on the shape of the entire industry.
Many of the recent scandals at Activision have involved Blizzard Entertainment, but these comments suggest that there are no such issues at Craig Amaia's team.
