What do you think of Diablo 3?
David Brevik: They did a decent job. The game's pretty fun. There's lots of stuff they made some advancements on the whole Diablo franchise. But it is not the game I would have designed. It is not the game I originally designed for Diablo 3.
What advancements?
David Brevik: Some of the story stuff they did was much better than we'd ever done story before, and in that way it created a very different experience. Being able to be able to teleport to the other players and allow people to group up in a much easier fashion, those were some of the things that stood out to me as being much better than we had done before.
What do you feel fell short?
David Brevik: The skill system was very different than what we ever designed before. It played more like a load-out system from a shooter, which was a very different approach than we had ever even contemplated. I don't know if that necessarily works super well. Being able to change your build at any given time on the fly was a little bit too generous. So it fell down a little bit there.
There are other specific things, especially with the items and your main weapon powering a lot of your skills that were choices I would have not made.
What's your take on Blizzard's decision to make Diablo 3 always online?
David Brevik: I'm making a game that's always online, but it's different. I wouldn't make the same choices they made.
The fact is that it took a lot of time and money to make that game, and piracy is a problem. When you cannot manage that at all there are certain in which you're going to lose a lot of money. It comes down to, this is a business in the end, and when you spend that much time and effort on something, you've got to have some sort of path to recovery. Unfortunately it's a business choice more than anything.