How StarCraft beat Chess

I don't know if that's a huge factor but it helped. We do it because it's cool, not because it's going to market the game. There was a website that hosted millions and millions of map downloads for Warcraft III and that's great that the community's creating content that's so popular amongst them.

When I play other people's games, one of the things I'm constantly saying to myself is, "Boy, I wish this game had X," and every time I say it to myself I come back here and say, "we're having that". So every time I played a game and I said "I wish this game had a map-editor" I come back here and our game has a map editor. That's how these things get into the games.

One of the most popular experiences in Warcraft III right now is Defence of the Ancients. It's not our braintrust, y'know. We provided a really powerful map editor and someone conceived of something in the community that was extremely popular in the community and that's cool.

It started tower defence maps too, which had become their own genre.

To some extent we want to provide a defined experience for the community but we also want to provide a little bit of a sandbox, for the creative people who want more.

[Shouting along with Bob Finch] Because we want to play cool games!

One of the best ways to ensure that we get to play the games we want to, is to make them.

You have to like home-cooking, y'know! [Laughs]

It kinda goes back to the point I just made, they don't have all the features that I want. There are games out there that get 90 percent of the way, but I want to work for the company that pushes it to the 100 percent mark.

Not to say that there aren't other companies making great games out there, but we want to contribute to that.

No!

We're here to work on the games to make great games; that's why we're here! Once you've shipped the PC boxed product, it's behind you, but WOW we're always refining. An artist can work on a piece in perpetuity, it's never 100 percent, always can improve.

As an example, the entire time we've been talking Sam has been sketching. He's drawn, what is that one over there, a Night Elf? And what's that one? You can't make an artist not want to do it. An artist wants to keep creating. He's over here sketching, we're constantly making games, it's what we like, what we do, there's no reason we ever want to stop.