The original Diablo
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The perfect storm: How Blizzard North channeled chaos to design the original Diablo

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

David L. Craddock is author of Stay Awhile and Listen, a new book series about the history of Blizzard Entertainment and Blizzard North and the making of the WarCraft, Diablo, and StarCraft games. He wrote this piece for GamesBeat.

Blizzard Entertainment has built a reputation for crafting addictive and immaculately polished games, leading many to believe that the veteran developer has perfected a formula for fun. Appearances can be deceiving.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.