I'd like it better if this post on HN had some commentary as to why it's relevant to startups. I don't hear of too many startups having to rely on Diabolo 3 coming out to make or break them.
One example: Diablo's culture is like a startup...and they "make something people want"
"Another gigantic reason for our success is our open development process. We strive to hire people who love games, and we make games that we want to play. Every member of the team has input into all aspects of the game. Discussions around the halls and at lunch become the big ideas that shape the game. A programmer suggested to a designer the concept of gem-socketed, upgradeable weapons, which turned out to be a huge crowd-pleaser. A musician's dislike for the old frog-demon's animation inspired us to redo it. As a team, we don't have to wonder what our audience wants, because we are our audience. If we like the game we are making - especially if, after two years of playing it, we are not bored to death - the game is clearly going to be a winner."
I think studying a good, popular game will give you a lot of examples of difficult design decisions that you have to make.
For example, in World of Warcraft, Blizzard intentionally decided to make the classes unbalanced in 1 versus 1 player vs player combat (one person fighting another), but instead focused on making them balanced in larger groups (3v3, 5v5, and "battlegrounds" which is potentially up to 40 players on each side).
How do you make a large game environment that has a variety of environments but also feels like it's a part of a whole? How do you entice casual players to really get into the game and play for quite a while but also reward hardcore players for putting in lots of time? There are so many tradeoffs to make, and considering what an organization like Blizzard must have had to think about is a good exercise.
In Diablo3 it seems they still do not allow players to rotate the camera - I was very impressed by that. Another thing I noticed was how Diablo-a-like every single screen of that game already looks. Improved all over, but still every detail just cries out "Diablo".
Btw, I guess I won't buy that game. D2 was just too addicting for me. I completely lost half a year on that and I don't want that happen to me ever again.
Dude. Its called culture. The totality of relevant experiences most of us share that shape our worldview. Have you heard of it?
Banning diablo 3 from hacker news would be like banning discussions of fairy tales in a forum on archtypal psychology or banning Judy Garland from a GLBT forum.
