Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

by Jason Schreier

Adham decided that anyone who didn’t play games wasn’t welcome at Silicon & Synapse. Prospective employees would be asked their favorite video games, then quizzed extensively to gauge their depth of knowledge.

“You want your players right from the start to feel heroic and powerful,” he said.

“Everything’s better with friends” had become one of the company’s core philosophies: there was nothing as thrilling as coordinating with a buddy to solve puzzles in The Lost Vikings or getting to declare that you were the office’s best Samurai Shodown II player. They all agreed: Dune II with multiplayer could be one of the best video games on the planet.

In other words, Warcraft II had to be easy to learn, yet difficult to master.

Less than a year into the job, Weir was fired for his poor performance. “This was a dream job for me, working at Blizzard,” Weir said. “I was absolutely crushed.” But Andy Weir wound up doing just fine. Two decades later, he published a novel called The Martian, the film adaptation of which would star Matt Damon and earn more than $630 million worldwide.