14 DAY TRIAL // At the moment, Blizzard Entertainment is confirmed as working on three big projects: the Heart of the Swarm release for Starcraft II, the hack and slash game Diablo III and its new MMO concept, Titan.
The company is also widely believed to be preparing another expansion for World of Warcraft at the same time.
And at least one executive says that it's hard for the organization to find all the talent needed to support all the projects completely.
Speaking to Gamasutra as part of a bigger interview, Frank Pearce, who is an executive producer on World of Warcraft, has said, “Specific projects aside, the talent pipeline has always been one of our biggest challenges. So we've got a presence at GDC, to find some good talent, and we're trying to figure out ways where we can nurture and grow some of our own talent internally.”
He added that Blizzard was thinking about creating its own educational facilities, saying, “We're talking about what the Blizzard equivalent would be to Pixar University, if we can do anything like that to try to grow talent.”
Pearce believes that in the coming years more people will become familiar with game development, mainly because of the lower barrier for entry, like smartphone gaming and the programs that allow those interested to piece together a gaming experience from disparate objects.
World of Warcraft, a game that has been released and has required support since 2005, has probably created a core of very good MMO developers and will allow Blizzard to train even more over the coming years.
The developers has confirmed that a number of senior developers are moving over to work on Titan.
Blizzard has not said what the new MMO will be all about, but it has stressed the fact that it will not be a direct competitor to World of Warcraft when it launches.