The original development goes back to David Brevik and the brothers Erich and Max Schaefer. They founded the company Condor in 1993 in Redwood City, northern California, which was taken over by Blizzard about 9 month prior to the release of Diablo and was renamed to Blizzard North (Blizzard named themselves „Blizzard South“ for a short time). Inspired by games like NetHack, Moria and Angband and fascinated by J. R. R. Tolkien and Might & Magic, they came up with the idea of developing a game.
Diablo’s real-time gameplay and point-and-click control were not originally planned. Instead, it should become a turn-based DOS game. It was only through the collaboration with Blizzard, under whose leadership they were able to start their project, that it was redesigned as a real-time action-rpg game. Legend has it that David Brevik switched the gameplay to real-time in just a single weekend.
Diablo’s great success (both critically and commercially) was a huge surprise to Blizzard North and spawned many sequels. In the US, the title was at the top of the sales charts for six months and managed to sell 1 million units by the end of the release year. As of 2020, the whole franchise sold more than 35+ million copies worldwide.
A port for the Sony PlayStation was commissioned by Electronic Arts, the publisher of the console version at the time, from the British studio Climax and was released in 1998. It didn’t have online multiplayer, but featured a two-player cooperative mode. A version for the Sega Saturn was planned, but was never released.
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„We were thinking that if everything went well, we would sell 100,000 copies.“
– Max Schaefer – Co-Designer
Title: DiabloDeveloper: Blizzard North Publisher: Blizzard EntertainmentGenre: Action Roleplaying Game Year: 1997Plattforms: PC, Mac, Sony PlayStation
