Stay Awhile and Listen : Book II
by Amie C. E. Kline, David L. Craddock · first published 2019
53% recommend40% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Account of how Diablo and Blizzard North were built, drawn largely from first-hand interviews; suits readers who liked Masters of Doom and want game development history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Also recommend reading Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - David L. Craddock http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G8UL474 Really interesting read, covers Diablo/Warcraft development from its humble…
on “An Oral History of Diablo II” ↗I can recommend Stay Awhile and Listen by David L. Craddock which tells the story of how the original Diablo was made. It's mostly told in interviews, so while it's not a single developer's story a lot of it is first hand.
on “John Carmack .plan Archive (2014)” ↗If you enjoy the topic, try to take the time to read "Stay Awhile and Listen" by David L. Craddock (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZQQRWS9?notRedirectToSD...). I was shocked to learn how little the dev team was financially rewarded (besides the owners).
on “Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]” ↗You might also enjoy the Blizzard book: Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire [1] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Awhile-Listen-Blizzards-Video-Gam...
on “Microsoft's forthcoming Minecraft Education Edition is written in C++” ↗Stay Awhile and Listen is also a very good one in this vein.
on “Ask HN: Do you know any good audio books for developers?” ↗Stay Awhile and Listen is an interesting one on the development of Diablo https://www.amazon.com/Stay-Awhile-Listen-Legendary-Video-Ga...
on “Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint (2012) [pdf]” ↗"Stay Awhile and Listen" is a great book covering the founding story of Blizzard North, creators of Diablo 1 & 2. While not as great as Masters of Doom, it reminded me quite a bit of it.
on “Ask HN: What are more books like “Masters of Doom” or “Showstoppers”?” ↗In the same vein as Masters of Doom, I enjoyed `Stay Awhile and Listen` for a peek into Blizzard.
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗…II, Guild Wars) `Code of Honor` blog. One of the more popular posts there: https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-... Also, it is easy to draw parallels between David Craddock's `Stay Awhile and Listen` book and Masters of Doom. I tried to quickly whip up the Amazon link, but I'm seeing multiple versions and listings... apparently multivolume? When I first encountered it, it was a single book.
on “Blizzard’s bringing its PC games to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2” ↗Anyone know a good book or books about the history of Infocom? Ideally, I'd like something along the lines of Hackers, Masters of Doom, or Stay Awhile, and Listen
on “Ask HN: Books about Infocom?” ↗…1996(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_%28video_game%29). So it was very delayed. I guess that the game underwent some huge changes to justify this delay. Some of the changes are described in this chapter of the book "Stay Awhile and Listen": http://www.shacknews.com/article/76406/chapter-8-finale-cond.... The part I found especially interesting was how they changed it from turn-based to ARPG: > Our company was saying, "We're going to take…
on “Original Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]” ↗There is a book titled "stay awhile, and listen" describing the early days of Condor/Blizzard North and Diablo.
on “Original Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]” ↗on that note, i read a book on blizzard's history "stay awhile and listen" that was not worth it. maybe it was because i read it right after masters of doom, but it felt like they were afraid to say anything negative, and as a result it's boring and also very hard to learn…
on “The original pitch for Diablo (1994) [pdf]” ↗…"5 out of 10" quest system used in Diablo 1. What is really simple but good for replayability. For those interested in Blizzard/Blizzard North/Diablo 2 history you can also check the 2nd book called Stay awhile and listen: heaven, hell and secret cow levels. Author goes more into what wenr wrong during Diablo 2 development (and obviously what went good). The 1st book is about Diablo 1 and is much weaker: it is mlstly quotes…
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗…strongly agree with this. You need someone around that actually uses what you develop, be it dogfooding or structured QA. I wonder if there is any books on game/software QA akin to Masters of Doom or Stay Awhile and Listen? Those pretty much skip over QA, it's usually just the devs playing their own game (which anecdotally is usually biased and of limited use).
on “I learned to love testing game code” ↗