After a couple years of development, they put together a vertical slice, or a sample of the game, to show the rest of Blizzard. It was a mage vs. mage battle, so they called it the “fire and ice” build, and they brought in the company’s executives and directors for a playtest. The following week, Pardo joined their team meeting, which was unusual. He stood up and congratulated them, declaring that Hearthstone had been greenlit. “I was thinking: I’ve been working on this game for four years,” said Brode. “It wasn’t greenlit this whole time?”
