The Rise of Blizzard Entertainment: An Interview with Allen Adham (Co-Founder)

Allen Adham, Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment, is credited as an Executive Producer on iconic gaming franchises including Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.
In this interview, we learn more about what motivated Allen to start Blizzard and creating iconic game franchises, the process of scaling from 5 to 50, finding his source of inspiration, and his advice for the next generation of builders.
The business of games is ever changing however the phrase “games are hard to make” seems constant. As a reaction to this sentiment, we wanted to sit down with battle-tested developers, entrepreneurs, and startups, to learn how they navigated their own choppy waters. What we found is that winning isn't defined by the hand dealt but the strategy and foresight of how to play it. This is Win Conditions.
Host: Lester Chen - / chen
Guest: Allen Adham - / allen-adham
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:20 - Early Life
02:23 - How did your parents influence your early career?
04:10 - Early Mentorship: Brian Fargo
05:40 - Meeting Mike
07:00 - The inception of Blizzard
08:30 - What motivated Allen to start a company
09:50 - Blizzard’s Philosophy behind Game Development
12:15 - Approach to IP Development
15:24 - Hiring and Scaling
21:11 - Finding creative inspiration?
24:44 - New Adventures
26:35 - "Leaving Blizzard was the biggest mistake of my life"
28:53 - How did you go back to Blizzard?
30:42 - What were the biggest changes?
32:10 - Challenges from success
33:29 - Leaving Blizzard again, what excites you?
36:11 - Advice for a gaming company founder
Stay Updated:
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Find us on LinkedIn: / a16z
#blizzardentertainment #allenadham #blizzard #a16z #winconditions

[@jammuu]

Absolutely phenomenal interview. So much insight and wisdom that I feel is sorely lacking in today's major game developers and publishers.

[@zygomedia]

We had all the feels working on this! Such an incredible story! What Allen & crew built has had such a massive impact on so many of us here at Zygo 💜

[@chrishenry5534]

Zygo Media is the GOAT of thumbnails. No surprised ya'll produced this.

[@icarii9366]

Great interview. If only Blizzard was still run this way. The OG.

[@gravitymilk5251]

gaming industry needs alot of people like Allen Adham who understand what gamers need and save the gaming industry.

[@MichaelLoda]

What a legendary interview!

[@filiplazov5895]

Thank you for the interview, as someone who grew up with Blizzard games, it was fascinating to hear all the cool stories by the original makers.

[@megaossim]

I am echoing all the comments below, great job! Especially interviewing people that are hard to find information about. For example, Allen doesn't have his own Wikipedia page. I personally would love to see interviews of programmers or lead technical individuals as well.

[@A16ZGAMES]

We have some exciting guests lined up!

[@LordCiego]

Its sad to see how he empathises how important its talent in your company and how it made them succeed at the beggining and how modern Blizzard treats its employees.

[@catra195]

Think it's more sad about the hacks they're hiring at Blizzard,

[@erdrickk]

WHAT AN amazing interview........I grew up in the late 70's and have been gaming my entire life and the time I most fondly look back on were the mid / late 90's / 2000's - 2010. I still remember the magic playing Diablo 1-2 and Starcraft 1 the first time. I've been Subbed to WoW since 2004 and I also loved Unreal Tournament, Asheron's call 1-2. Gaming nowadays is not the same but I still enjoy it daily.

[@j0ma2_GG]

It feels like it was like 200 years ago when things were this way

[@badass6300]

Well it's 20, but with all the crap they do feel like 200.

[@A16ZGAMES]

Thanks for all of your support on this new series - please let us know what you think about the format as we are hoping to do more!

[@whatskrakalaken1940]

A+. Perfect questions and fantastic guest. Keep it up!

[@quadnine]

Having worked hard to work my way up from the Apple //e, Amiga, etc. as a small child, to being incredibly lucky to work at one of the most successful organizations in history, some of the patterns seems to be: -Teams. People enjoy team building, seeing what worked and didn’t, the silly mistakes, the fun they had, and what lead to ‘good’ teams, as varied as that is. -Surprises. We all like little surprising details we haven’t heard, from successful groups. -Organization. In addition to the people, what were the systems/structures that worked for them. All of this obviously tied together with new stories, but more than that, a lot of people, whether we realize it or not, are looking for patterns that make these people and places great. Suggestion: you may want to look across many episodes, and occasionally do an episode that looks at the patterns you and we have all noticed in the most successful groups, because we’re indirectly constructing our mental models of what we think works and what doesn’t. It will also allow you revisit some of our most beloved content, and maybe add a little something new to further deepen our love of these stories. I’m sure other viewers have noticed many other interesting patterns as well.

[@ferazu]

This is a great video and interview. It's also very inspiring to me to listen to Allen talking about his childhood and how he co-founded Blizzard.

[@codesx2]

"What are you playing right now" in the interview, or designing for both the casual and hardcore audience (while elevating the casuals), and blizzards core ethos and how it related back to these questions was extremely insightful. We should all shout out to Allen's parents for being so bad ass in a world where video games weren't something many parents would have supported a career in.

[@A16ZGAMES]

So many gems!

[@Vub.]

Love this. Anything that pulls back the curtain on game development is interesting to me

[@ozturkberkayy]

Huge respect!

[@DukeofMello]

Really enjoyed watching and listening to this interview. It's interesting to hear from Allen and his philosophy of how great games are made, the changes in the industry and his own experiences.

[@showlectro]

Excellent interview. So cool hearing his insights and his story, a very fascinating person.

[@danishdude2191]

One of the greatest interviews I have seen for a long time. Allen Adham sounds both fantastic and so inspiring at the same time. I loved watching this :D

[@whatskrakalaken1940]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Bravo. Great interview with a lesser known icon of video games. This gets the highest marks from me.

[@matthewmckee07]

Even Christina! Love it ❤️

[@cameronmetz9488]

Fantastic excellent interview

[@joranlefleur7942]

Great interview, interviewer and interviewee

[@ferinzz]

I feel like that simple design complex strategy has been a bit lost... You can see that with D3 and D4. It's simple design with so little strategic complexity and developers seem to fear players being able to make mistakes. I remember my numerous D2 build concepts that failed for one reason or another, but I was a hardcore gamer and that was just part of the game. Currently playing PoE and repeating my childhood with all my failed build designs :D insightful interview.

[@Ytubeadmin02]

Great video! What an inspiring, humble guy Allen is. Especially the part about "internal mobility" and using creative senior lead programmers, artists, designers, etc. for new ideas, while putting trust and responsibility in others to continue work on your "flagship IPs". He's very upfront and honest about the fears and risks involved. But it seems to have paid off in the long run. Keep making the series please. 3 Thumbs up! ;)

[@erikwurgler]

Here after watching Asmongold’s react. Great interview!!!!

[@shahinghasemnejad1260]

Thank you so much for this,as a game developer this interview taught me a lot and i appreciate it ❤

[@Masilya111]

Thanks for the interview. The origins of Blizzard Ent. and its co-founders are fascinating.

[@plentygolden]

these interviews are very important for future innovators. thank you very much.

[@fene2899]

Saw this on asmon's channel. Everybody in chat was saying how good your video was. Great interview that really showed what a remarkable person and entrepreneur Allen A can be. Hopefully Blizzard can return to its glory days without Bobby.

[@Grillhandle]

awesome Work, i loved listening to the interview!"

[@recas1091]

what a phenomenal interview 😮

[@J3ss4u]

The absolute GOAT

[@-L1K-]

AMAZING interview!

[@Austino204]

saw this from Asmon's channel. Fantastic interview, love it

[@TotoLakay]

Loved the video and watched Asmon's take on this. Very enlightening.

[@sugoidave]

Always a joy to listen to Allen and other founders from Blizzard speak and share insight. As kid I really looked up to those game developers from then who would would inspire me to be where I am today, at Blizzard!

[@A16ZGAMES]

Full circle!

[@comancostin4623]

Incredible interview.. thanks for sharing this!

[@Xsetsu]

He is absolutely right at the end. The times when Blizzard's games have been at the worst is when they lost sight of the gamers playing their games.

[@forestmanification]

Only 13k views? Come on we need at least 1% of past WoW players to see this.

[@Zergond]

Wow, that's based gamer and developer, a man from whom all major studios should take an example.

[@bonepicks9039]

Developers in Modern Gaming: So Instead of how am I making this fun for the players, how much money can I squeeze out of the players? Honestly, this was an amazing video, and I really like is gaming philosophy. Make something that is fun for you, and fun for the player. At least that is what I took from it.

[@selwrynn6702]

Amazing interview, really interesting insights into the mind of someone who has actually been there and done that in gaming.

[@winddruid9789]

Awesome video!

[@TDP808]

This interview is fire. Thank you for bringing such authenticity to the platform.

[@M00nlord]

Such a fascinating talk! He shares a lot of wisdom. I work as an artist in the games industry and I dream about making my own games some day, hearing his thoughts on all of it is very inspiring.

[@fabianmaryanowski2252]

This guy...I could listen for days. Hope he gives lessons at some point. Thats a sub right, great video!

[@frederikdjensen6520]

This is amazing, you should start uploading long form like this to X!

[@Joini50]

Came here to Sub and Like as I watched this on Asmon's channel. It was a true enjoyement to watch this interview! Great questions with even greater answers. I hope some of the companies creating games will learn from this too. I've said this before in comments on other game reaction videos, we need more gamers and gamer visionairs involved!

[@MANIAKRA]

Incredible interview with Allen but also top quality video and production. Great job, thanks

[@szacsesz]

such a based answer saying that devs should be gamers too

[@Startrance85]

Really good interview, and listening to him. Explains alot why game devs today seems to know nothing about what they are doing. Since they are not gamers.

[@ivayloindzhov8553]

This is an incredibly insightful interview, very well lead by Lester! Great job, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[@A16ZGAMES]

This means a lot - thank you! -Lester

[@Marunius]

The Chess analogy is interesting in the context of World of Warcraft.

[@tqs3]

It's why Classic is considered the best it ever was. Every addition of complexity just degrades the overall experience. Give us new quests, new raids, new experiences with the same simplicity of Vanilla.

[@pearlandinjun]

Really good interview with a very interesting guest that we don't see often in the interview/podcast space.

[@KnotsOfWonders]

15:45 Most important part of the interview.

[@squshy1]

I wish all devs would be like this Allen.

[@dwwynn]

Amazing interview

[@fridovsky5181]

Great Interview

[@poppyrider5541]

The first blizzard game I played was WC1, then WC2, Then SC1 came out. Then Brood War came and I knew what I was going to play for the rest of my life. I was 12/13 at the time. Chess is a good example but I would say fighting games is another. MK and SF on the snes. We can all button mash (and my son can still kick my ass in Tekken just by mashing X) but you can learn the combos if you want.

[@Xtimus]

Very nice interview thank you for this. ♥

[@RavenStryker]

What an amazing interview. Keep it up!

[@SleepingPanda700]

Such a smart man 👏👏

[@SleepingPanda700]

Games are good when gamers make them Good Interview

[@noblebearaw]

Damn good interview.

[@Hopyboby]

that guy is a legend

[@superWarChief]

Great interview, GG! PS: Saw it on Asmongold's channel and wanted to give you a big thumbs up!

[@A16ZGAMES]

THANK YOU!

[@wayslow]

Where Danny? Also - great interview, thanks for that!

[@A16ZGAMES]

Thank you! As an interviewer I pale in comparison to Danny! We'll be back with By Design later this week -Lester

[@Bleiser3]

Great video! Here from asmongold.

[@jeannetitor]

curious about the view and opinions from the other members now

[@tourdegadetheskankslayer1065]

W content

[@nftsasha]

legend

[@n9ne]

big issue with them testing out their own games and cancelling "bad projects" also comes from age and experience ..some of those games were probably not even bad games but rather their own experiences and overthinking too much. he even said so himself that in the early days they would cancel less projects. i might be wrong i don't know. same thing with valve they want to one-up themselves constantly but don't seem to understand that half life2 even today is still better than every other fps single player game in that genre and it's not even a competition. why one-up yourself when you're already the best? now they're making deadlock which is a brilliant name and definitely chosen by a real nerd/programmer even though they talk about not wanting to just release another game..deadlock is literally a moba sure it's a unique moba but it's still a moba. half life alyx whilst great in VR its actually a step back from half life2. sure the technology is amazing and its not boring to work on new things but why downgrade gameplay aspects for hardware technology. there are things in that game that confuse me like the ammo type you can find in the world depends on the gun you use the most and the game only has 3 guns. the mini puzzles are really not fun, and the game doesn't use physics as much as it did in half life2 even though the physics in this game are insanely good. the entire source2 engine is so much better than unreal engine5 but everyone talks about that engine which annoys me. i swear some shots in Half Life Alyx looks path traced its got that soft atmospheric lighting that path tracing does and it runs on a gtx1060.

[@MckaiserDragon]

it seems like game corporations only want their game to sell and dont care for the players still playing them. once u buy our game, we got ur money. im trying my best to stay away from these games but every1 else keep playing them. but now we can also see they these games want u to stay in the game and slowly drain money from u by being always online and adding new items for u to buy with real money. and then theres the failure of D4. a year later and players still have to beta test their game (cause im not doing that anymore) to make sure its good for every1. asmongold sent me here. amazing video.

[@aaainxsno1]

👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@sheen423]

"Play the games"

[@chix1]

Disgusting that this has 10k views and Asmongolds 'react' has 250k.

[@TolgaAtamtuerk]

Good thing he spreads this. More people have to hear this interview.

[@Jabbadoor2]

In regards to developers who don't play games, developing games: Imagine people who aren't musicians, being producers of music. 😐 "Something is rotten in the world of game development."

[@n9ne]

trust me i can tell most developers don't play video games because the level design keeps getting worse and worse in video games. how did wow go from BRM to the garbage we have today it makes no sense why is every dungeon so linear. elden ring had such good level design i played the game for 80+ hours even though i hate souls-like games. i don't have the patients for these games and my reflexes are too fast. i would play wow right now if the level design and combat system wasn't so bad. the only class i still enjoy is warrior but only with addons.. without it i can't there are too many procs it's not a game anymore it's one of those carnival whack-a-mole things now. procs are the worst thing in this game right now, and i am not saying do away with it just don't give every-single-class that type of system. too many buffs and debuffs, everything is a guided experience as well now with linear questing, pathing, and level scaling. the lore is cringe and too furry4me. and in diablo instead of finding a solution for backtracking they just make every dungeon 1 path when in reality it needs to be divided in sections with shortcuts you can open and reuse. backtracking is fine if you make the track back a fun experience but fun seems to be a thing of the past in video games and it's all about muh loot and meta rushing to the finish line. crazy thing about it all is even the ones that do play video games probably only play 1 type of game which is most likely league of legends or one of those cinematic experiences from sony.

[@gierfrissthirn]

Try WoW HC.

[@n9ne]

@@gierfrissthirn am good i wont touch classic again unless they release fresh with no addons allowed.

[@S3nCh4n]

the fall-off of blizzard needs to be studied

[@Robert_D_Mercer]

Good video man; I hate how people like Asmon can easily leech off your work.

[@eemmjay8728]

1-2 critical questions, would not hurt.

[@Phenomanon]

Even five minutes in you can tell he's passionate about the industry. It makes me sad that greedy piece of garbage capitalists got their hands on a once beloved company and essentially destroyed it's legacy.

[@TDP808]

RIP Blizzard. The passionate will carry the fire. The greedy will fight over the corpse.

[@juz882010]

shit name... too competitive.