Stay Awhile and Listen

Executive Summary: I can't get enough of Video Game and Computer history books. As a huge fan of Blizzard and Diablo this book was no different. I would have liked some more information from some of the Blizzard folks, but this book still felt well researched and written.

Audiobook: I'm a bit torn on the narration. Normally I like a narrator who does a variety of voices. However this is non-fiction. Every time Mike Rylander did a different voice for someone in this book, I got distracted from what they were saying thinking about if that person sounds even remotely like the voice he gave them.

I think he does a good job with his volume, inflections and speed but this really kept throwing me off and I think I'd have preferred he simply read the entire book in his own voice.

Full Review
There are mainly two companies that got me hooked on video games: Nintendo and Blizzard Entertainment. I played a lot of PC games growing up, but no other companies put out games that have sucked up more of my time than those two.

I was introduced to Blizzard with a demo of Warcraft 2. I've bought every game they've released since. World of Warcraft has sucked up more of my time than I'd care to admit. Until that game came out however, my favorite Blizzard game had to be Diablo. I spent so many hours both alone and with friends clicking until my fingers were numb.

I knew a little bit about David Brevik and Blizzard North before this book. I bought his (largely failed) attempt to release Diablo 3 under a new IP/company Hellgate: London when I found out he was behind it. For me however nothing beats the original. Most people will probably list Diablo 2 as the best/their favorite but for me it's still the original.

The first half of this book covers the early career of David Brevik and the Max and Eric Shaefer, who would go on to found Condor Games (which was later renamed Blizzard North). It also spent some time talking about the foundation of Silicon and Synapse (which was later renamed Blizzard). He spent some time talking about the development of Warcraft 1, much to my delight, but most of it focused on the Blizzard North folks.

The second half of this book is mostly about Diablo itself. I found a lot of this absolutely fascinating. There were a lot of good interviews, primarily with the Blizzard North founders and what I assume are all former Blizzard employees. It seems that none of the (at the time) current Blizzard employees were willing (or allowed) to be interviewed for the book.

I would love to see Blizzard put out a book of their own (especially if it focused on Warcraft) but I thought Mr. Craddock did a good job despite this limitation.

I have a few other books by Mr. Craddock on my radar as he seems to have written several non-fiction books after my own heart. I'll definitely pick up some of those books in the future.