How 30 years of Warcraft has taken Australian developer Darren Williams from Adelaide to Azeroth
Darren Williams remembers watching his dad moving fantasy characters across the screen of their home computer 30 years ago in Adelaide.
They'd sit together as his father played Warcraft, commanding battles of orcs, goblins, knights and mages across a medieval land, constructing bases and gathering resources to amass the strongest army.
Williams fell in love with real-time strategy (RTS) games, and his dad encouraged him to play, even though he wasn't very good at first.
He played the video game series developed by Blizzard Entertainment for years, all through high school and into university, where he was studying engineering.
"I had the realisation, 'Hey, engineering is a way you can make games. I want to make games,' and Blizzard games were my favourite."
Now, years after watching his dad play, Williams is working on the same series.
Williams spent hours building and learning the systems of the game alongside his university studies.
The games shipped with their own campaign and map editors, allowing players to build custom scenarios or characters and upload them to the web for other people to enjoy.
"It was so cool to realise the tools that game developers were using to build these games were available to players," he says.
Warcraft III was particularly influential for Williams, who says it was "a gateway".
"I'd follow games reporting and study how others built things, studying computer-programming languages used in the games in my spare time."
The follow-up to Warcraft III was World of Warcraft (WoW), first launched in 2004. The multiplayer video game changed the genre from strategy to third-person role-playing, and hundreds of players would work together to defeat bosses and complete quests.
Williams applied multiple times before successfully securing a job working on WoW around 15 years ago. He now lives in California, where Blizzard has its headquarters.
Returning to Australia for the 30th anniversary celebrations of the Warcraft series in Sydney and Melbourne, he says the games have fostered a community of fans across the world.
"Ultimately, for World of Warcraft, it is a social experience, right? You're jumping in and sometimes you're doing your own stuff, but you're doing that with a bunch of other people around. You're forming connections, the game connects you with other people," he says.
"So when those people get together and meet physically, sometimes for the first time, it's so awesome."
Edward Goodwin's path into making games also started as a player; the former professional esports competitor and broadcaster discovered the Warcraft spin-off card game, Hearthstone, in high school.
"I was going to school for engineering in college and, about halfway through, I realised that Hearthstone was kind of my main hobby," says Goodwin.
"I was getting to the point where I was good enough where I could transition from the engineering degree — which, while very important, was not really what I wanted to do. Instead I could play Hearthstone full-time."
Goodwin, who played under the handle Gallon, competed as part of French esports team GamersOrigin around the world.
But he never expected to become a game developer.
"I don't think I ever set out to be in games. I think [it was] a little bit of like, right place, right time — there was a clear need for them to have someone who had like a super-high-level understanding of the game," says Goodwin.
"I got older and my experience with Hearthstone kind of increased and my relationship with the game changed.
"I'd done really well at tournaments, it kind of felt like the next logical progression, right?"
Goodwin says the team worked hard to make their games fun for lots of different types of players — from professionals to people who are playing for the first time.
"These games are for everyone.
"With WoW being 20 years old … you'll have people who have played for a decade, two decades and, at the same time, you'll have players where they're literally playing their first game today."
While both developers started their studies in engineering, their jobs were ultimately much more creative than most people would expect, with the goal to make the games enjoyable for all sorts of players.
"Ultimately, it's very creative: you're taking a blank page, you're writing code and you're making something happen," says Williams.
"It's really fun to talk to a designer, they have a lot of cool ideas. It's good to say to them, 'Actually, that idea is possible, we can kind of engineer anything.'
"That is the best part about coming to work, working with people with different backgrounds, working with different disciplines and kind of bringing these experiences to life."
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