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Michael Scandizzo is the president and project lead of Castaway Entertainment, a company formed out of former Blizzard North employees in 2003. He is also responsible for programming on Diablo II, the development of the Battle.net game server network, and the Quake 2 mod Loki's Minions Capture the Flag. He also created the Boat Anchor comic strip: which describes events that mirror the time he would have spent at Blizzard North and the eventual formation of Castaway.
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Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1994, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., then Blizzard Entertainment after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates.
Diablo II is an action role-playing hack-and-slash computer video game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and macOS. The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and designed by David Brevik and Erich Schaefer, who, with Max Schaefer, acted as project leads on the game. The producers were Matthew Householder and Bill Roper.
Blizzard North was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for its Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, California, before moving a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine, southern California.
Castaway Entertainment was a video game developer. It was established by former employees of Blizzard Entertainment's Blizzard North division, the studio responsible for creating Diablo and Diablo II. It is based in Redwood City, California. The company signed a publishing agreement with Electronic Arts in March 2004, but had yet to produce any products when it was shut down in 2008.
Sam "Samwise" Didier is the Senior Art Director at Blizzard Entertainment. As the art director for the flagship games of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises, the producer of several games, and an artistic contributor to almost every game released under the name Blizzard Entertainment, Didier has created a distinctive Blizzard house style. Edge described Didier's style as "a striking, pulp sensibility that may be an acquired taste, but one acquirable on either side of the Pacific, side-stepping polarisation of appeal to either eastern or western audiences." His other contributions to Blizzard projects include writing, voice acting, music, sculpture, the Pandaren species, and the name "Warcraft". Leonardo Marcato calls him "one of the game designers that can be legitimately called authors thanks to the imprint they gave to projects they directed."
Stieg Hedlund is a computer and video game designer, artist, and writer with over 25 years of experience who has worked on more than 30 games in the video game industry. Although he is probably best known for his work in action RPGs, he has also worked on games in each of the real-time strategy, tactical shooter, beat-'em-up and action-adventure genres on the PC and almost every dedicated game console. He has a professed interest in conlangery and linguistics.
Michio Okamura is a computer game developer and artist. He was the lead artist for the popular computer game Diablo, and senior artist on Diablo II. He designed many of the game's characters, including the title character. He is currently the art director for Rumble Entertainment.
Christopher Vincent Metzen a.k.a. "Thundergod" is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. On occasion, Metzen has published his art under the alias "Thundergod". Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist; his first work for the company was with the video game Justice League Task Force.
Bill Roper is Chief Creative Officer at Improbable. Previously, he was Vice President/GM at Disney Interactive Studios since June 2011, and headed video game studios and creative and development departments for two decades, including divisions at Blizzard Entertainment, Flagship Studios, and Cryptic Studios. He is also an accomplished musician, and a founding member of the folk band The Poxy Boggards.
Matt Uelmen is an American video game music composer and sound designer. He is best known for his work in Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, which was recognized with the inaugural Excellence in Audio award by the IGDA in 2001. He also worked as a sound designer for the real-time strategy game StarCraft, and worked on World of Warcraft's expansion The Burning Crusade in 2007. From 2009 until the studio's closure in 2017, Matt Uelmen worked as a member of the Runic Games team, as a composer and sound designer for the Torchlight games.
Josh Mosqueira-Asheim is an American game designer of both tabletop games and video games. He was game director for Diablo III at Blizzard Entertainment.
Patrick Wyatt is a game programmer and one of the three co-founders of ArenaNet. He was the leader of the Network and Technology teams and a programmer for Guild Wars. Before the founding of ArenaNet, he was working in Blizzard Entertainment where he was the Vice President of Research and Development and a senior programmer. Wyatt was the leader of Battle.net gaming network's programming and a major contributor on the multiplayer parts of Blizzard's popular games including StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Having been in Blizzard for more than eight years, his work also includes earlier Blizzard games like Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing.
Diablo is an action role-playing hack and slash dungeon crawler video game series developed by Blizzard North and continued by Blizzard Entertainment after the north studio shutdown in 2005. The series is made up of three core games: Diablo, Diablo II, and Diablo III. Expansions include the third-party published Hellfire, which follows the first game, Lord of Destruction, published by Blizzard and released after the second game, and Reaper of Souls, which follows the third game. Additional content is provided through story elements explored in other media forms. Diablo IV was announced at BlizzCon 2019.
David Brevik is an American video game designer, producer and programmer who served as the co-founder and president of Blizzard North. He is best known for the critically acclaimed Diablo franchise. Currently he serves as game designer and founder of his independent studio, Graybeard Games.
Diablo: Hellfire is the expansion pack for the video game Diablo, developed by Synergistic Software, a Sierra division, and published by Sierra On-Line in 1997. Despite the objections of Blizzard Entertainment, the Hellfire expansion was produced, permitted by Davidson & Associates, their parent company at the time. Blizzard North, who was developing the sequel Diablo II, thus imposed numerous restrictions upon Synergistic Software's development of Hellfire.
Diablo is an action role-playing hack and slash video game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment in January 1997.
Diablo III is a hack-and-slash action role-playing game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment as the third installment in the Diablo franchise. It was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X in May 2012, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in August 2014, and the Nintendo Switch in November 2018. Players choose to play as one of seven character classes – Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, Witch Doctor, or Wizard – and are tasked with defeating the Lord of Terror, Diablo, as in previous games in the series.
Echoes of War is a Blizzard Entertainment-produced orchestral version of the music from their three most popular video game series, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. It includes previously unreleased theme music from StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Diablo III, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.
Russell Brower is an American music composer and three-time Emmy Award-winning sound designer who has created sounds for Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Batman: The Animated Series, and video game music for games including Joint Operations, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III and Arena of Valor. He was previously the Director of Audio/Video for Blizzard Entertainment, the sound designer/editor at Warner Bros. Animation and DiC Entertainment, the Audio Director at NovaLogic, and the Principal Media Designer and Music Director at Walt Disney Imagineering.