In 1991, Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce launched Silicon & Synapse, a game development studio that would go on to obtain global recognition under its current name, Blizzard Entertainment. Morhaime and Pearce (along with Allen Adham, who is no longer with the company) started small, developing puzzle platformer The Lost Vikings and racing game Rock N Roll Racing before moving on to the first game in the Warcraft series, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Blizzard’s take on the real-time strategy genre helped shape the future of the company (and the video game industry as a whole) in ways that no one could have imagined. You can draw a direct line between that game and all of Blizzard’s subsequent projects including Diablo, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone.
So to celebrate all of the monumental things the company has done in the last 25 years, Morhaime and Pearce recently sat down to narrate a thank you to their fans. They reminisce about the past, they’re proud of the present, and they look to the future and the next 25 years.
Blizzard’s next game, the hero shooter Overwatch, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One this Spring. The developer will also release World of Warcraft’s sixth expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion, sometime this Summer.
