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'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem

David Brevik's GDC 2016 postmortem of Diablo covers how it went from a turn-based claymation DOS concept to a real-time action RPG, plus the story of Blizzard North and development anecdotes.

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Why HN readers recommended it

Frequently recommended whenever Diablo or its origins come up, for its candid account of the human side of game development.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
GDC Festival of Gaming
Topic
game development postmortem
Format
talk
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
8
HN mentions in dataset
14
Recommendation years in dataset
2018–2023

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Allow me to quote Diablo developer David Brevik describing when he finally yielded to demands and hacked together a "real time" version of his turn-based Diablo, by making turns elapse the rate of 20 turns a second. 'I remember taking the mouse, and I clicked …

    AndrewOMartin on Hacker News · 2018-03
    In The original pitch for Diablo (1994) [pdf]

  • This story and many others are captured really well in the Game Developer Conference (GDC) post-mortem talks, heartily recommended if you want to know about the human aspect behind game dev!! [VIDEO]

    baristavibes on Hacker News · 2023-07
    In Diablo

  • Brevik was one of the founders Condor (Brevik was the president while the Schaefer brothers were vice-presidents) which later became Blizzard North when Blizzard bought them. The work on Diablo started before Blizzard bought them. He really was one of the "creators". IIRC they made …

    doikor on Hacker News · 2018-02
    In Diablo creator David Brevik is back with a new game: It Lurks Below

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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