Incubation
Incubation is a department and a development team at Blizzard Entertainment.
History
Incubation was formed in 2016 under Allen Adham. The genesis of the team began with a conversation between Adham and Mike Morhaime; at the time, Blizzard was failing to get new games off the ground, and Adham had always considered himself particularly good at starting projects. Adham was made head of the department, and Morhaime sent a company-wide email, encouraging employees to send Adham new ideas for games.[1]
Many of the ideas Adham shepherded never made it out of product strat, frustrating some developers who were told that they needed to prove that there was a potential billion-dollar market for their projects—logic that seemed backward if they wanted to do something innovative.[2] Adham's intended modus operandi for Incubation was to mimic Blizzard's early design approach—take a pre-existing genre without much competition, improve on it, and beat the competitors. However, while Adham had managed to get Blizzard's early games produced through sheer will, this approach no longer worked in the 2020s.[3]
Works
Incubation has worked on various other mobile games[4] across Blizzard's existing IPs.[5]
- Diablo Immortal (2022)
- Orbis (canceled in 2022)
- Warcraft Rumble (2023)
- Odyssey (cancelled in 2024)
References
- ^ Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, pg. 233, 234
- ^ Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, pg. 235
- ^ Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, pg. 354
- ^ BlizzCon 2018: Rhykker interviews Allen Adham – PC and Console Games in Development. Blizzplanet (2018-11-17). Retrieved on 2018-11-21.
- ^ Rhykker 2018-11-14. Blizzard believes in Diablo Immortal (Interview: Blizzcon 2018). YouTube. Retrieved on 2018-11-21.
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