Blizzard's Samwise Didier
The art director talks Warcraft and StarCraft. And checkers.
The reason why a lot of Blizzard games are popular is because the games themselves are just fun. You know, you could have worse graphics in our games and people would still be playing them. But I think the art really appeals to a lot of people as well, and helps get people who maybe wouldn't be interested in that sort of game to try it out.
I can't count how many times I've played a game because the art looks great and the game itself just isn't that great. But then there's like, stupid little Flash games you'll find online where the art is just X's and O's or whatever, but the game is just so fun and addictive. It's like, these guys did their job, the other guys spent all this cash making the art look great but they didn't have a fun game. It's like having a great-looking sports car that doesn't run.
I think it was pretty important, because it definitely was different-looking than any other MMORPGs out there. Everyone else was a little bit more realistic, and all that's great, but people live in a real world and look like normal people already. Personally I don't like to play a normal-looking human, I always try to play whatever character is the big monster. In Warcraft I love the Horde, in games like Street Fighter I play Blanka and E. Honda, the big sumo guy. Something that I'm not in this world.
Overall, the basic Blizzard art style is that everything's a little bit more over-proportioned, WOW being way more, StarCraft a little bit less. Everything's coloured a little bit more simply. We don't use a lot of light colours and pastels, it's more primary colours, you know, reds, blues.
It basically started out that it's easier to see. The easiest thing in the world to see in a game would be one red square and one blue square going against each other, right? Or even better, a red circle and a blue square. Different silhouettes with different primary colours, no confusion. It's those philosophies, but not as simplified. So we go back to the silhouette, try to make those distinct.
And we put a lot of humour into our games I think, more than other people. StarCraft not as much perhaps, but even then, you keep clicking on those characters, you're going to hear some goofy pop culture reference or something funny.
I don't think we take any of our stuff overly seriously. As cool and epic as a character is, if you play with them long enough, they're going to say something funny. If you watch them long enough, they'll make some goofy animation. We want to keep the coolness of that character, but we're also not afraid to cut loose a little bit and have fun with them. I think that's part of the Blizzard style too, the humour: you know, Diablo cow levels, the Pandaren in Warcraft...
And back to the question of the art: the art of the original StarCraft is not why people are still playing the game. It's because it was a fun game. The gameplay is always the most important. As much as I would love to say that people play the games because the art's so cool, there is that, but it's the gameplay at the end.
You know, people are still playing checkers. That has lame art. Circles on squares - aha! Red and black. See? Classic silhouettes, coming back.
Portrait photography by Morten Skovgaard.