Frank Pearce Jr.

gamecentral — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:57 +0000

Frank Pearce was Co-founder of Silicon & Synapse (later named Blizzard) in 1991 with Allen Adham and Michael Morhaime.

As Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.’s executive vice president of product development, Frank Pearce plays a critical role in the development of all Blizzard Entertainment® titles. This involves coordinating the work of multiple teams in order to ensure that every project maintains the same polish and quality that mark all Blizzard games.

Pearce takes an active role in the ongoing development of World of Warcraft as the current executive producer, and he recently oversaw the development of World of Warcraft’s first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. Before this, he directed the development process of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Currently, Pearce is coordinating the development of the highly-anticipated StarCraft II and World of Warcraft’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Since co-founding Blizzard with Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime in 1991, Pearce has been deeply involved in the company’s projects. Games he has worked on include Amiga ports of various licensed titles, as well as The Lost Vikings™, Blackthorne™, Justice League Task Force™, and The Lost Vikings II for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness™, Diablo, StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood War, and Diablo II for the PC, among others.

Pearce holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and engineering from the University of California in Los Angeles.

Incoming search terms:

Allen Adham
Powered by Article Dashboard television trivia
Powered by Article Dashboard world of warcraft: wrath of the lich king
Powered by Article Dashboard entertainment system
Published News Upcoming News Submit a New Story Groups michael
Powered by Article Dashboard computer science
Powered by Article Dashboard science and engineering
Powered by Article Dashboard science current events in the world
michael morhaime
frank pearce blizzard

Blizzard Entertainment

gamecentral — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:58:53 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment is an American video game developer and publisher headquartered in Irvine, California. It is a division of Activision Blizzard. Blizzard is the creator of several successful computer games, including World of Warcraft and the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo series.

Blizzard Entertainment was founded by Michael Morhaime, Ayman Allen Adham and Frank Pearce as Silicon & Synapse in February 1991, a year after all three had received their bachelor’s degrees from UCLA. In the early days the company focused on creating game ports for other studios. Ports include titles such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I and Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess. In 1993, the company developed games like Rock N’ Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings (published by Interplay Productions). In 1994, the company briefly changed its name to Chaos Studios, before finally settling on Blizzard Entertainment after it was discovered that another company with the Chaos name already existed. That same year, they were acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates for under $10 million. Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped their breakthrough hit Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

Blizzard has changed hands several times since then: Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996; CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger; Cendant’s stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line which included Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. In July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzard’s name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard.

In 1996, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, which had been working on the game Diablo for Blizzard at the time. Condor was renamed Blizzard North, and has since developed hit games Diablo, Diablo II, and its expansion pack Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Blizzard North was located in San Mateo, California.

Blizzard launched their online gaming service Battle.net in January 1997 with the release of their action-RPG Diablo. In 2002, Blizzard was able to reacquire rights for three of its earlier Silicon & Synapse titles from Interplay Entertainment and re-release them under Game Boy Advance. In 2004, Blizzard opened European offices in the Paris suburb of Vélizy, Yvelines, France, responsible for the European in-game support of World of Warcraft. On November 23, 2004, Blizzard released World of Warcraft, its MMORPG offering. On May 16, 2005, Blizzard announced the acquisition of Swingin’ Ape Studios, a console game developer which had been developing StarCraft: Ghost. The company was then merged into Blizzard’s other teams after StarCraft: Ghost was ‘postponed indefinitely’. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard announced the consolidation of Blizzard North into the headquarters at 131 Theory in UC Irvine’s University Research Park in Irvine, California.

In 2008, Blizzard was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the creation of World of Warcraft. Mike Morhaime accepted the award.

Game Central » starcraft

Frank Pearce Jr.

Incoming search terms:

Blizzard Entertainment

Company Information