Blizzard has provided information on their plan to maintain some of their games.
On Blizzard’s webpage it states that they are looking for senior software engineers for their classic games division. GameSpot believes, “Blizzard’s new Classic Games team sounds like a small one, as the developer added that a successful candidate will need to “wear many hats” and be familiar with “small teams.””
They continue to say, Blizzard stated, “We need engineers to help maintain our legacy games. We have a history of maintaining our games for many years. Our earlier games are still played and enjoyed today, so we want to continue to maintain them for those communities.”
Blizzard’s webpage states under the senior software engineer position:
Compelling stories. Intense multiplayer. Endless replayability. Qualities that made StarCraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II the titans of their day. Evolving operating systems, hardware, and online services have made them more difficult to be experienced by their loyal followers or reaching a new generation.
We’re restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done.
So if you like wearing many hats, know small teams are the most effective, and look forward to challenges that will create millions of new adventures for our players: we would love to hear from you.
The open position specifically points out a couple of games such as, Warcraft III (2002), Diablo II (2000), and Starcraft (1998). Blizzard is looking to restore these games to their past glory.
It’s nice to see a game company focus on maintain their old games when they don’t have to. Some game companies after a while decide to no longer maintain their online components.
When I was young, I played Starcraft and Warcraft III for several years after the games’ release. I remember how much I loved the offline version of the games, but became addicted to the online version.
I became especially fond of the custom maps in the Warcraft III online mode. The game had a very flexible and powerful editing tool that players took advantage of. This allowed players to create their own custom maps and games. They were then able to go online, share them, and play them with others. The most popular custom game was known as Dota. Dota later went on to became it’s own game, which is awesome.
They then go into detail the responsibilities and requirements for the position.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Make gameplay first again on modern operating systems.
- Create conditions for experiences that look as good as they play.
- Own implementation and curation of features new and old.
- Combat hacking to improve multiplayer.
- Diagnose and fix all the things: crashes, deadlocks, overflows, heap corruptions, etc.
REQUIREMENTS
- Expert knowledge of C / C++
- A minimum of 5 years’ development experience
- Experience debugging unfamiliar code
- Passion for games
- Excite us
PLUSES
- Experience debugging Win32 or OS X game software
- Experience using Visual Studio or Xcode
- Experience with x86 assembly
The next big event for Blizzard is BlizzCon, which began today November 6th to 7th. In other news, the Warcraft movie has been announced. To read more about it click here.
